Little cat feet....

The dog’s sharp claws make a staccato tattoo on the asphalt as she trots briskly ahead of me. The Flexi Leash is almost fully extended. She is able to sense how much tension is on the thin cable that connects her to me, and if I walk faster to catch up with her, she just speeds up even faster. On the few occasions when I have launched myself into a jog to see if I can draw up even to her, she has shifted into a gallop to make sure I don’t.

She often needs to be persuaded that she is not the leader of the pack.

I have given up trying to count the number of steps she makes to one of my steps. I can’t manage two counts at the same time, which I suppose is a good thing, otherwise I’d focus on counting steps instead of thinking about more important things, like rehearsing what I am going to say the next time I teach Sunday School... writing lead sentences for blog posts that never seem to get written...  

This morning a heavy fog has settled like shroud over the hills and hollars of the route we walk. I am reminded of the Carl Sandburg poem

The fog comes   
on little cat feet.   
 
It sits looking   
over harbor and city   
on silent haunches
and then moves on

The sun appears briefly as a pale, white disk. I can look directly at it, and then the mist swirls and it is gone again.

We walk around the pond just about every day. And today, for the first time, I notice a Red-winged blackbird...



arrived back from wherever he has spent the winter, flying into the large tree near the water’s edge. Its bright red epaulets flash briefly, and then it begins to sing.

It is supposed to be 70 degrees today, so although it is a bit chilly right now, there is no need for the knit cap, the ski mask, heavy winter coat, or the gloves.

The crocus have appeared...

their sweet lavender and yellow flowers pushing up through the leaf litter.

Spring is arriving, much like the fog on its cat feet… not quite as silently though, the birds make sure of that, but no one is quite ready to believe the winter is truly over.

In the footsteps of giants

Two days ago, when the dog and I walked the loop that circles the large pond near our house, the only footprints in the snow were those that we had left several days earlier.

In the meantime, the sun has come out, the temperature has warmed a little, and the snow is starting melt.

I noted with some interest that my footprints in the thinning show had increased in size. My footprint now extended beyond my toes by at least 4 inches and was also considerably wider. And the footprints of the 15-pound dog trotting ahead of me had turned into those of a 150-pound St Bernard.

Someone attempting to analyze who had been walking around the loop might think I was a giant of a person with a very large dog. And of course, they’d be right.

Where'd you say you were from?

The character Henry Higgins in the movie My Fair Lady had the ability, or so he said, to tell where a person had come from by the way they talked (There even are places where English completely disappears; in America they haven't used it for years). And of course his ability to change the way Eliza Doolittle spoke, so that she was able to fool another expert, was a key point in the plot of the movie.

In a general sense, our language is very fluid. Words pass out of common use, new words are added, and the meanings of old words change and become something very different. And for me at least, the way I talk and express myself has most definitely changed over the years.

When we arrived here in south central Missouri in 1981, both of us California natives who had spent all of our lives to that point in California (except for 2 years in Oregon), I made a conscious decision to change the way I spoke and chose words, and even pronounced words, so that I felt like I fit in more with the local people, after someone told me “you ain’t from around here are ya…”

As I began to meet more and more people and get to know them better, I discovered that almost everyone "wasn’t from around here" either, and even more interesting I thought, were that many of those who I became friends with, who were born and raised right here in this town and who never left, didn’t have a noticeable accent and sounded just like me. Or at least I thought they did.

I was given a link to a Web site with 25 questions about vocabulary and dialect, and depending on your answers, it provides a map with three cities that are likely candidates of your place of origin.

So, where did it decide I was from? Denver, Colorado, and Louisville or Lexington, Kentucky. Huh? What?

Denver makes sense because my mother was born in Colorado Springs and raised in Elbert, which is near Denver, and she certainly influenced the way I learned to pronounce words as a young child. Not sure about Kentucky though, except that makes sense in a way too, because Missouri and Kentucky share a bit of border in common.

Even as mathematically challenged as I am, I have figured out that I have now lived more than half my life here, in a place far from my linguistic roots. My vocabulary has, obviously, changed. But I found myself shocked to the core at what came out of my mouth during a conversation with a man I saw recently.

He and his wife own a trailer house (that would have written mobile home in a past life) on a lot that I walk by every day. For a while a young couple were living there. They had two small dogs that were loose in the yard, and every time we walked by, they would bark as us; it was all bluster, no actual threat implied, but Miss Molly became nervous about passing.

Then, suddenly, the trailer was empty, but it took Molly a while to realize the dogs were gone, so I still had a bit of a struggle with her.

One day not too long after they had left, when I was coaxing her to pass by, the man pulled up in his truck to pick up mail from the route box, so I asked what had happened to them. He said they (his son and daughter-in-law) decided they wanted to live in town. I said, “Well, when they were living here, my dog was ascairt to pass by…’

Ascairt? Where did that come from?

Perhaps I need to go back to Los Angeles so I can learn to talk again.

++++++++

Update several hours later: Took the test again because I just couldn't believe the first results. This time some of the questions were different and my answers map showed Stockton, Fresno, and Modesto, all cities in central/northern California. That's a bit closer to home...

I Imagine Happy Ever After

I grew up watching Walt Disney animated feature-length films. Very sad and scary things almost always happened in these films, but by the end, one could be fairly confident that the “good guys” in the story would live happily ever after.

We tend to want our novels and movies to resolve so that the characters with whom we have become emotionally involved will live happily ever after, even if we know in the real world that they probably won’t.

Even so, it upsets us when they don’t. Take, for example, what happened at the end of season 3 of Downton Abbey. The actor who played Matthew Crawley in the series decided to leave because he wanted to work on other projects. Instead of simply replacing him with another actor to carry on the Matthew character, the “powers that be” decided to kill him off. Fans of the dramatic series were furious. I admit I was too. Although I threatened to boycott Season 4, we started watching last week when the new season began.

Unfortunately, real life does have away of coming up and biting us on the butt,  just like what happened to the fictional characters on Downton Abbey, and we often face situations that do not lend themselves to “happy ever after” but must simply be “got past” and dealt with.

None of has a guarantee that there is going to be a “happy ever after” here on earth, and this was especially true of our son, Nathaniel. I have a good imagination, but as years passed in his life, it became harder and harder for me to imagine a “happy ever after” for him. Nathaniel had such a difficult time negotiating life. One of our greatest concerns was what was going to happen to him after we died and weren't around to be a safety net for him.

Now, however, I have no trouble at all imagining him living happily ever after. I have no trouble imagining the scene that took place when Nathaniel stepped out of his body on the morning of January 13, 2011, sometime between 11:30 and 11:45, and walked into eternity and into the arms of the Savior in Heaven.

Knowing that he is now living happily forever after, knowing where he is, gives me great comfort.

The crushing grief of his death is passing away, but I still miss him and always will.

In loving memory of our son...

Nathaniel (Feb 12, 1977--Jan 13, 2011)

A Different Drummer

I drove to town yesterday afternoon to pick up the mail, run some errands, and go for a walk in the park. Despite the bitter cold, very little snow fell on Sunday, and so the roads are not bad at all.

In fact, we were having a bit of a heat wave yesterday: it was a balmy 29 degrees according to the thermometer on the sign at the local grocery store, the wind was not blowing, and it didn’t seem that cold. It really didn't.

I had a very odd feeling when I got to the park.

On Monday when I went to the park to walk, I could see that nobody had been there since the light snowfall on Sunday. I knew this because the snow on the walking path was pristine. There were no footprints at all, anywhere, except for some meandering trails made by rabbits, squirrels had been scampering around near some trees, and a dog (or perhaps a coyote) had passed through.

Yesterday when I went to the park, the walking path was still pristine, except for my footprints from Monday.

We like to think of ourselves as special and unique – there is nobody exactly like us in the whole wide world, right?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away---Henry David Thoreau

Some people do indeed walk to the beat of a different drummer, but usually they can find someone else who also walks to that same beat. I think we all feel bit more comfortable when we are not so far out of step from everyone else.

As we made our way around the park, I began to feel very uncomfortable as it dawned on me that I was obviously, the only person in town crazy enough to walk in the park in the cold.

It is all the dog’s fault. She has unhinged me.

I see now that I have a screw loose. I need help.

Who was that masked woman?

Well, that would be me, of course.

Once upon a time I worked for this organization...

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

And although I did not deliver mail in the gloom of night, I did deliver mail when it was very hot, in a torrential downpour with thunder crashing and lightening flashing, and when there was a foot of snow on the ground.

I don’t have to do that anymore. And indeed, I don’t venture off more than a few feet from the back door if there is heavy snow or ice on the ground (I cannot afford to fall down again).  

However, a compulsive dog owner will take the dog for a walk if it isn't raining too hard or if the road is clear enough of ice and snow that it is safe to walk. This is part of the costume one wears when she ventures out on a balmy 15° afternoon (with a brisk breeze blowing).

What the picture doesn’t show is the two pairs of sweat pants, an undershirt, flannel shirt, zippered hoodie with the hood pulled up, heavy winter coat, and gloves. My sweet sister gave me the knit cap not long after we moved here – I’ve had it about 30 years and it is very warm.

And the dog? Well, to spare her the embarrassment, I did not take a picture of her, but she is decked out as though she vying to be on the list of the Top 10 Worst Dressed Dogs. Richard jokes that, “the bag lady has a bag dog.”

This came about because in our search for the pack rat, Richard went up into the attic and found several plastic bags of clothes that were not actually in the bags any more because the plastic had disintegrated (that gives you an idea of how long the clothes were up there). Amongst the clothes was a very nice bright red crocheted pullover vest type sweater thingy. Obviously homemade. I no longer remember where it came from.

The clothes were washed and rebagged to go to the thrift store, but I held back the red sweater. I no longer wear bright red because parts of my face are permanently red, and wearing red just makes my face look more red. But I could tell it was very warm... and the dog needed a warmer sweater....and so I cut the sweater apart to make a warmer coat for the dog than the vinyl-backed fleece coat she wears when it is rainy out. And yes, we go for walks in the rain.

I haven’t finished her new coat yet, and so I have used the other half of the sweater to make a temporary coat for her, which I have to sew on her so it stays put. And then I put her vinyl-fleece raincoat on over top of that.

She looks ridiculous, and probably so do I...

But she indeed is very warm, and so am I..

Taking care of the girls…. it was quite a hen party

We were not sure what to expect when the young family with 3 children moved in to the building next door that used to be our church. For the first time we have had actual “next door neighbors” that are not a half-mile down the road.

We wondered what the children would be like. Great kids, it turns out. Happy, cheerful, polite, and very friendly. Two of our neighbor’s three children are girls, and the oldest child is a boy who likes to ride motocross. We were a little alarmed when they turned their front lawn into a motocross track, but because of the lay of the land and the trees between our property and theirs, the noise of the motorbikes wasn’t bad at all. 

A couple of days before Christmas, she came to the house with the kids and told us they were going to leave on Christmas day in the RV and head South to someplace near Florida so the boy could ride on a large motocross track and get some training.

Would I take care of the girls?

Sure I would. But it wasn’t her daughters she was talking about, it was these girls….

 I don’t remember how long it has been since I have had chickens but it has been many years. And even in the last years when I did have chickens, they were not permanent residents – they were the Cornish cross chicks that one buys from the feed store and raises for 2 months and the eats.

I had forgotten how much I like chickens. The soft sounds they make as they talk to each other, the clucking…

And these girls are beautiful… 

One of them laid an egg almost every day, despite the cold and the short days.

I did not mind taking care of them at all, but it came to an end today.

When I took the dog out this morning for her morning squirt, I saw the RV parked in the yard, so I did not go today carrying hot water for their bowl.

We did have omelets for dinner though.

Fatcicles and Channel 13

On Saturday nights I listen to the Prairie Home Companion radio program, but because our local National Public Radio station does not broadcast reliably – the transponders in our area frequently not functioning – I usually stream the broadcast from Minnesota Public Radio in Minneapolis, which is the link given on the PHC Web page. Periodically there will be breaks in the program for station identification and what not, and Minnesota Public Radio is good about giving weather reports during these breaks. Last Saturday night I found it very helpful to know that the forecast for overnight low was going to be “30 below.”

I am not being sarcastic. I am very grateful that –30° is not our temperature here. I feel a little less compelled to complain when it is in the “high teens.” It could be worse.

The fact that it has been colder outside overnight certainly -- and often during the day -- in recent weeks than it is in our refrigerator has been a big help.

Now, my husband does not go hunting for food with a weapon, but he does arm himself with grocery ads and fulfills that primitive instinct to “hunt and gather” in a less bloody way. Turkeys and chicken went on sale just before Christmas, and so within the last week or so he has come home with 4 turkeys and 9 packages of chicken legs and thighs.

Two turkeys spent two days in the car because there was no room for them in the refrigerator, and they were still frozen when we finally brought them in.

The house has been periodically filled with the smell of baking poultry and the stove top occupied with a large stock pot of boiling bones for broth. And with the refrigerator filled with plastic bags of meat ready to go into the freezer, it is a simple matter to put the 2-gallon pitcher of hot broth in a bucket with a tight lid (to keep the raccoons from getting it) and leave it out overnight for the fat to rise to the top. And indeed it is not only risen to the top but is semi-frozen, which makes it even easier to peel off the top of the broth.

And the fact that it is on the porch makes it is less likely that I will forget that I have the broth (things have a way of getting pushed to the back of the refrigerator, dontchaknow) and end up throwing it away because it has gone bad.

And we are still giggling at what my younger brother did at Christmas.

When we were in L.A. in October, both of my brothers made references several times to “Channel 13,” and Richard didn’t get what they were talking about. Back in the day, Channel 13 was an independent TV station in the metro Los Angeles area that ran a lot of commercials for gadgets that you could only buy on TV (But Wait! Order now and we'll double your order. Just pay extra shipping and handling...)

So, my younger brother sent Richard a “Channel 13” present.

A “Clever Cracker.”

It actually does work. It does crack the egg, but it also broke the yolk on all of the eggs I used it on. Perhaps that they were jumbo-sized eggs might have had something to do with it.

My brother assures me that we can look forward to a Channel 13 present every Christmas from now on.

Yippee!

Rump-a-pum pum…phooey

Let me stay right off that I do like Christmas music. I like the old-fashioned carols. I think it is wonderful that young musicians are writing new Christmas music. And I understand that each generation of singers likes to modernize and upgrade the old classic songs. I get it.

I normally listen to a Christian music station that plays contemporary “rock” style songs, but lately? The station began playing Christmas music the day after Thanksgiving. At first this was just occasionally, but now that Christmas is upon is, it has reached a crescendo. I do not want to hear one more upbeat “rock” style version of “Oh Come All Ye Faithful,” and so I am pushing the button quite a bit more often.

The Carol of the Drums (Little Drummer Boy) is beginning to become especially irritating. One wonders how many singers and groups of singers have done that song since the first early recordings of it. Some of the new groups that are doing this songs are amazing. And some are not and one would like them to just stop.

But, I do recall one particularly beautiful version of the song that I heard a long time ago – in fact I remember watching this on television back in 1977. Two men with beautiful voices and with very different careers—David Bowie and Bing Crobsy— singing a duet. David Bowie and Bing Crosy? You betcha.

The video on YouTube does not play in sync very well on my computer and if it does not on yours either, then just listen…

And Merry Christmas!

A time to grieve and a time to dance.

People often have a difficult time coping with holidays after someone they love has died. It is particularly hard if the person has died during the holiday.

In the months after our son’s diagnosis, we were given a few streamers of hope to hold on to:

Perhaps God would reach down and heal him….

Perhaps the melanoma specialist in St. Louis would be able to enroll him in the clinical trial for the new drug that was showing so much promise…

But as December advanced, our grasp on those streamers became more and more tenuous.

I tend to think of December 13 as the day marking the beginning of the end of our son’s life, because that was the day he went to the hospital for a palliative operation to remove the tumor in his abdomen and was so sick that the surgeon cancelled the procedure.

That was the day we were told any further surgical treatment would be futile. The day the streamers of hope were jerked out of our hands. Our son’s physical life came to an end a few days short of a month later.

Last year grief settled heavily on my shoulders, like a heavy winter coat. I was not expecting that to happen; it was, after all, the second Christmas since his death. The surprise of it hit us like a 2 x 4. I barely functioned. I had little enthusiasm for anything. I don’t think I sent a single Christmas card.

I can feel it happening again this year, but not nearly as bad, perhaps just a windbreaker instead of an arctic parka.

We almost never cry anymore. If one accepts the definition of mourning as outward expressions of inward grief, then our time of active mourning appears to be coming to an end. Another stage in the process of adjusting to the new normal in our life and moving forward.

After every snowfall, the huge state dump truck with the plow on the front comes down the access road and scrapes the snow to the side, leaving a huge berm of snow right in front of our driveway when it turns around. Depending on how much snow was on the road, we could sometimes just drive through it, but on other occasions, we would have to go out with a pickaxe and shovels and break through the barrier so we could get out. This year, God bless them, our new neighbor got into his handy dandy little Bobcat machine and cleared the ridges of snow away from both of our driveways.

When it comes to grief, however, there is no helpful neighbor to clear it away…

I have learned that if we are to heal we cannot skirt the outside edges of our grief. Instead, we must journey all through it, sometimes meandering the side roads, sometimes plowing directly into its raw center, Alan D. Wolfelt, PhD

So, while acknowledging that the grief at our loss will never go away, it is indeed becoming less painful. The center is becoming a little less raw.

And this year, on December 13, the sadness was balanced a bit by my being able to share the joy of someone I love very much who was finally able to get married, to her companion of 26 years, in a happy celebration surrounded by her daughters and grandchildren and friends.

Being a conservative Christian and a political liberal often sets up a conundrum, and for me this is one of those occasions. I cannot set aside what I know the Bible says, but given that the situation with her is what it is, I am also so pleased for her that she now has the legal protections that everyone else is given under the law.