Anyone who has watched Princess Jane on the prowl, pouncing on helpless mice and chipmunks, would question the use of the word “pussycat” to describe a laidback or gentle personality. Then they’d look at her brother, Jim, cautiously peering out the window to make sure all the snow has melted before stepping outside the slider and five seconds later deciding it’s too dang cold to be anywhere but a on bed or a lap today.
“Plant peas as soon as the soil is workable,” the packet said.
“Sure, what could go wrong?” I asked.
Katy the wonder dog tolerates a fair amount of teasing about her wimpiness. Some of it she earns. She lets the cats have the first bite at the food bowl, and they regularly bully her out of her own bed. But as the beneficiary of her undying and unfounded loyalty over the last decade, I know that, even though it sometimes smells like chicken scraps, her heart is as big as a lion’s.
Early this morning, Jim-Bob got to see Katy’s lion heart.
Yesterday morning Jim went out. He’s normally snuggled in my arms or stretched out on the bed most of the morning, so we all assumed he’d be back in five minutes (he and Princess Jane had been playing their favorite game of making us open the window every 8 minutes).
Jane went out for her morning constitutional and returned to nap on the fuzzy blue chair. The snow stopped. Katy committed to a full day nap in my office. Jim was still out.
At five the family gathered for our daily walk, agreeing to dedicate part of it to calling for the orange man.
We got nothing.
My gut started to churn. Jim is a committed homebody, I thought. Only a tangle with a fisher would keep him from responding to the sound of the food bucket opening (which he can hear through double-paned glass and 10-inch concrete walls). Even Princess Jane and Katy seemed to understand that this was not normal.
There was no sign of him after the second lap or even walking up the 900’ driveway. Katy stopped when we stopped and sniffed the forest as if she knew someone was missing. With no one to chase her, Jane stood on her hind legs to rub up against Katy’s neck.
The Big Guy and I went inside to watch TV and do some stress baking. The boys stayed out to play frisbee and call Jim. By the time I had dinner ready, we were taking turns going out to call for him. I was trying not to cry as I remembered the wolves that had visited our yard a few months ago, prompting a rigid routine of keeping the animals in at night.
We went to bed by midnight, hoping we’d hear his paws on our bedroom slider soon. Katy wandered onto her pad in our room, and Princess Jane snuggled on Katy’s pad in the office.
Katy, at ten years old, has the leaky version of what Professor Farnsworth on Futurama called “wandering bladder syndrome” and rarely makes it through the night without a potty break. If she wakes me up at 2am, I take her out on the leash and stand on the deck shivering in my nighty so she can find a spot for a tinkle. If she wakes up at 4am, I’ll open the sliders, she’ll do her business, investigate the family of deer that takes its morning constitutional in the pasture beyond our woods and then come back for her morning nap.
Last night was a 4am morning with a twist.
Katy has different barks. She has a happy bark when she’s trying to ‘play’ with the deer (I’ve watched her try to frolic with a young buck by the pear tree who, I swear, was raising an eyebrow as if to ask, “Are you serious right now?”). She has a sharp ‘I’m ready to come in and sleep by the wood stove bark’, and, once in a very great while – like last night – her growl-tinged bark warns, “I’m your worst nightmare!”
So I let her out, thinking there might be something worth scaring off, and, even if the something was just a funny shaped twig, the bark might be a beacon to bring our wayward tabby home.
I listened as she moved around the yard and then close to the house, growling as she pursued some critter who had broken our quarantine. She raced into the forest again, and I heard a few growl barks. I could hear tromping on dead leaves near the woods. Suddenly there was a thunk, thunk on the window.
I sat up in bed and shined my flashlight at the glass, hoping I saw a Jim-shaped shadow just outside. He saw my movement and putting both paws on the window, pantomimed a meow.
I cracked the slider so Jane, now by my side watching the drama unfold, didn’t try to ‘help,’ and Jim scampered in, making a beeline for the food dish.
I followed him to the kitchen, switching on the light to check for injuries. His tail, momentarily puffy and confirming that there had, indeed, been an unauthorized critter out there, relaxed as he emptied the food bowl.
Katy appeared at the window ten minutes later. She settled on her pad in watch-dog position, occasionally growling to assure us she was still on duty.
Jim and Jane joined us, Jim on my legs and Jane on the dresser where there’s more stuff to knock off. Jim washed, seeming to have a little trouble settling down, but, like a teenager returning home after a bender, he soon passed out and did not move from the bed until I did hours later.
I pulled on my sweatpants and t-shirt and subjected Jim to a little petting and head scratching. As I put on my ankle brace, he hopped down off the bed and padded over to Katy.
Katy and Jane are BFFs, but Katy is suspicious of Jim whenever he approaches her bed. The first time they met, he swatted her on the nose. He goes out of his way to bully her out of food and sleeping spots. But this morning, still hung over from his wandering, he just sniffed. Then he butted the soft part of his head against her face and hopped back on the bed.
He turned three times and curled up in a ball at the foot of the bed where he is still snoring.
Jim is not known for learning lessons, so I expect that, by the time he wakes up this afternoon, he and Katy will be back to their established pecking order. But, for a few minutes last night, our humble little heroine reminded all who were awake never to confuse a gentle temper with a faint heart.
We got the big orange tabby when Thing1 was in high school, going through a rough time healthcare wise as he was getting ready to expand his boundaries to try to go to college. My sister and I had talked our parents into “going to look at“ cats often enough to know that Jim Bob and Princess Jane would belong to me and the Big Guy, both because we would end up doing more of the caretaking and because the boys are getting older. I worked at home at the time, and the animals kept me company most of the day, so it took two seconds for the two cats to warm their ways into my heart.
Thing1 was on his academic walk about for most of the year but is home now. Thing2 is out of school for the rest of the year, and, even though I no longer work at home, my pneumonia has made strict Quarantine a necessity. There’s plenty of company around the house.
Still, I get up in the morning to write, and Princess Jane is on the fuzzy blue chair. Katie the wonder dog is on the fuzzy blue dog pad (if princess Jane hasn’t decided to sit there instead). Jim, who has been sleeping at my feet all night, will take a quick trip to the food bowl to graze and, five minutes after I sit down, hop on my desk, knock a few pens or post pads onto the floor and then curl up in my arms to make sure my hands are properly positioned for typing.
Tonight, though, there’s no orange tabby therapy at the foot of my bed. Our boy without boundaries went out for a walk this afternoon and has yet to return. He’s been out overnight once or twice in the past, always making me worry and always showing up the next day with a very satisfied look at his face.
But tonight I find myself looking towards the window every five minutes, hoping to see him pressed up against the glass with an impatient look on his face. I go to the deck to call for him every ten minutes, trying to hear the slightest hint of a meow, and knowing i’m being ridiculous.
The world is falling apart, and I am going to pieces over a cat.
The last month at home, our family has been mostly focused on how incredibly lucky we are to be able to be home and (mostly) well. After four close-knit weeks, we’re still be able to share a good fart joke.
The adults in the house keep abreast of the news. We have all expressed horror that the number of Americans killed by this pandemic is almost equal to the number who were killed in the Korean War. The numbers have grown so quickly, however, that they have become statistics overshadowing the people behind them in addition to all let all the other losses and trials this pandemic has caused.
I love Jim and how his extreme need to be cuddled coincided with my two boys moving well beyond the cuddle stage, but I know my occasional sobs are about more than just the worry he’s causing right now.
Her Royal highness, Princess of the house and yard and especially the fuzzy blue recliner, is not a lap cat. She wants to make that clear before I, her humble but disobedient servant start spreading rumors about her being fussy.
In all fairness, I did get to the fuzzy blue chair first today and, not being selfish, even spread out an Afghan so she wouldn’t have to sit on my actual lap. Princess Jane made it very clear that she would climb on the arm of and back the fuzzy blue chair and be petted, but, unlike her brother Jim-Bob, who knows no boundaries and has no self respect, she will not sit on my lap.
Instead, she climbed on every part of the chair and me, apparently trying to dislodge me, before retreating to the window to regroup and plan her revenge.
When he was little, Thing2 was Prozac in Pampers, a tight bundle of goodwill who could tease a smile out of Ebenezer Scrooge. As he got older, he was a flight of fantasies, a constant comic, David winning over Goliaths with a well-timed burp or fake fart instead of taking them down. Optimism as hard as a colored-candy shell was Thing2 (a.k.a Superdude’s superpower), impregnable even in the face of impending teen angst.
But the era of Covid 19, with its empty hours is threatening to become his Kryptonite.
Thing2 started the lockdown indulging his love of computer games in between online classes, but, as Spring Break rolled in, even the little remaining social outlet provided by classes laboriously organized by dedicated teachers dried up.
Superdude quickly exhausted his favorite reruns on Netflix, tired of zapping the last space invader, and started surrendering to the chosen time-killing strategy of depressed teens everywhere — sleep. He still joins in the family walks, playing catch with Goliath (Thing1) as we take our laps around the house and sometimes deeper into the woods, but in the absence of social stimulation, the boy who scripted fan-fiction videos, casting his friends and adding digital special effects is still.
We’re reinstating nightly card games (a fertile venue for burp and fart jokes). We work to entice him away from the land of Nod, but the part of me that abhors hovering also believes he needs to navigate some of this brave new world on his own and learn how to make new adventures.
He’s doing some of this already — watching online cooking classes and connecting with the Big Guy over a shared interest – but the marathon has just begun.
And the morning after,
the ancient fir,
bearing one more scar,
and having surrendered
one more piece of self
to the swirling storm,
counted,
not the broken branches
beneath its boughs,
but the heights still to scale.
I love when the first shoots become somethings with leaves. It’s hope rewarded. It makes the morning check-ins better than Christmas.
Most of our house is buried to save on energy bills. When the wind tears through in the spring and fall, however, I find myself wishing we’d buried the entire thing until I look at the sleeping Sisters from a Different Litter.
The wind and rain have completely blurred the view from our cave at times this morning. It howls through the mountains, making 100 year old trees dance and sway like a bunch of twenty-somethings doing the Batusi — and it’s just as hypnotic (and occasionally horrifying) to watch. I play Monday morning sportscaster, wondering which tree will twist too hard and go down and which one will live to play another day. Anything that could fly into a window is secured against the house, but every once in a while a gust will come from the south, actually pushing on the glass. A gust will come through the forest at the north end of the house making us wonder if that massive pine tree is too close to the part of the house that isn’t buried.
But then Monday morning sports turns from Tree Dancing to the Sleeping Sisters competition. Today’s event – who will move from their cushy spot last (with no cheating by the refs by opening the food bucket lid in the kitchen)? Popular wisdom has it that animals can sense when something is wrong, so when the gusts make the entire forest seem to bow to the ground, I always expect a response from at least one of the Sleeping Sisters.
The wind has made the windows heave at least three times, and, so far, the Sleeping Sisters are in a dead heat. Literally.
So, for the moment, I’m listening to popular wisdom and putting my faith in their instincts over my over-active imagination.
Winter in Vermont doesn’t really end in March. That happens sometime in mid-May after a last coating of snow, but in April, just when cabin fever seems like it’s getting critical, we do get signs of hope.
Most years, our first sign of hope has been the email from the Little League coach announcing the first practice schedule. There’s the tipped over composter as hungry bears wake and begin their neighborhood prowls. There are the signs for announcing community Spring cleanup‘s and Sunday brunches.
Our composter was upside down when we went out to the garden at the beginning of April, but, even if our kids were still playing, there will be no Little League this year. There will be no Easter or Mother’s Day brunches or, possibly, even a Green Up day – Vermont’s statewide, community spring clean up.
This cool, sunny morning, on the day before Easter, however, I went out to the garden inspect my peas and was greeted by vibrant yellow buds about to become daffodils. I’d been waiting for them to appear for weeks and had almost given up hope that they had survived another winter.
In spite of everything, the sun is still shining longer every single day, Mother Nature is still working her daily miracles, the daffodils will still come up, and winter will end.
It started with a writing prompt a few days ago. Write a scene with no more than four characters that happens in one room. It was a good assignment, but at first it took me to some very dark places before I remember I was in control of this story. I don’t have to go there.
I’ve tried to treat the last month of Sparkling (and, at our house, often smudged) Solitude as a gift of time, but, as many people are finding, worrying about loved ones, finances, and the world of suffering happening beyond our driveway more than dulls the sparkle. As I wrote, I realized that, while my own respiratory issues have kept me off the frontlines but not terribly fearful, Thing1’s nearly fatal history with a chronic illness that makes him particularly vulnerable has caused more anxiety than I like to admit.
My prompt response grew into a story about a family cursed with endless time and a dark choice that might save their firstborn. The scene grew out the worst night of Thing1’s illness, but, in the story, the husband and wife debating their children’s fate begin to fall apart, and I couldn’t figure out how to put them back together. I had written myself into a corner, but, as I took a break to finish cleaning the pantry, I remembered that during that seemingly endless night, the Big Guy and I had not fallen apart.
We had pulled together.
We may have squabbled briefly about how fast the ambulance would arrive in a blizzard or if the emergency room would do anything we weren’t already doing or if we could even get there. We had nothing but bad options as our firstborn faded on the couch. In the end we did the only thing we could do. Pulling ourselves together as a team, we decided everything and every phone number until there was nothing else to try and Thing1 started to improve.
That night wasn’t a gift. Thing1’s illness hasn’t been a blessing in disguise. Those challenges were crucibles so hot we sometimes felt our resolve begin to melt, but when that heat abated, hope solidified around our family, forging an infinitely stronger bond.
So now I’m back to my made-up husband and wife, still at a terrible crossroads with endless time and a horrible illness and choice in front of them. There is a temptation — for the sake of art – to finish tearing them apart. There is the option to treat the endless time and choice as a curse.
But I don’t want to go there.
When grading papers or doing homework, I always have music or reruns on in the background. I want white noise.
When I write early in the morning, the only soundtrack I need is the sound of scribbling which, surprisingly, sounds like two cats purring and a little dog happily groaning as light starts to fill my office and they realize that they are sleeping in the sun.
Picking My Battles 