In Which Lill Begins Anew

The other night, just as the pooch and I stepped beyond our gate for her last Tai Chi walk of the day, an opossum appeared. S/he waddled from the property south of ours into our yard—purposefully crossing to the north side where she entered the pooch's fort.

There's no sign declaring ownership of the fort, but you can see it on the pooch's face. The opossum was trespassing onto sacred ground.

The fort is a small area sequestered behind the rhododendrons between the spirea bushes and the building. The pooch hides there sometimes, or digs, or plays with imaginary friends. She loves her fort. But one of the new tenants recently discarded a Christmas tree there—a magnet for wildlife, including tagalong fleas. The pooch is now forbidden access to her own cathedral. In fact, she's hardly allowed in the yard at all because the new tenants don't pick up after their dogs (yet another good reason to move).

As the pooch and I watched the opossum cross our yard, I noticed that this opossum sighting differed from the previous ones:
1. The marsupial wasn't a mutant. Its coat looked healthy; it had a complete tail. (I didn't get a look at its face, though, so maybe it had a third eye or something.)
2. The pooch had no interest in befriending the critter, but watched it respectfully.

Hmmm. These were clues, but to what? Here's how I'm choosing to look at it:

The healthy opossum marks the end of an anomalous year—a year of melons in the lake, lost vision, a fabricated eviction, stealthy stress, body altering, and forced time off (i.e., joblessness). It was a year of freak occurrences and, though I tried not to let it get the best of me, consuming grief.

The healthy opossum ushers in normalcy and stability. And I think even the pooch looks forward to that.

I'm ready to don bright hues, think of myself as looking for a new workplace rather than as unemployed, add connections to my LinkedIn profile, and let other people assist me as I enter my future.

My Year of Unenjoyment is over, the first decade of the 21st century has slipped into history, and I'm happy to say farewell to both!


[Goldfinch photo by Lara Ellis on The Daily Green; opossum photo from NatureWorks.]