We Lost an Original Today

“ ‘Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs. … We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”
—Roger Ebert

[Photo from Wings of Desire.]

News from Home

My mother just mailed another obituary to me—the second this week. Death has become an expected topic in her letters and in our weekly phone conversations.

At first, the deceased were the age of my grandparents and parents. Now they’re my age, too.

It’s sobering news. Reminds me to take nothing for granted. And reminds me of these lines from Billy Collins’ poem, “Obituaries”:

And all the survivors huddle at the end
under the roof of a paragraph
as if they had sidestepped the flame of death.

[Death in the Sickroom by Edvard Munch.]

BOOKreMARKS: “Cat lovers will adore this book”

I’ve just finished reading the awkwardly titled The Cat Who Came Back for Christmas: How a Cat Brought a Family the Gift of Love by Julia Romp. It’s the perfect feel-good, breezy read most of could use to lift our spirits.

Yet I’m not sure Temple Grandin, who endorsed the book with “Cat lovers will adore this book,” got it right. Cat lovers may squirm with impatience through the first 64 pages, wondering whether the cat will ever enter the story. If all you’re looking for in Romp’s memoir is an animal story, then you may be disappointed—for it is so much more than that.

Romp, who is not a professional writer, gives us a temporary view into her world of unexpected single motherhood. We share her distress when doctors fail for years to properly diagnose her baby’s odd behaviors, we suffer her embarrassment when she’s in public with her unusual boy, and we nod knowingly as her absolute and unshakeable love for her son George motivates her to constantly seek a connection with him.

George is autistic (hence the reason Temple Grandin was asked to comment on the book). As much as the general public is aware of autism through the mainstream media, there remains a grave disconnect between our knowledge and our understanding. Romp magnifies for her readers how other people—children, teachers, strangers—respond to George and how George perceives the world he shares with them. We learn quickly that they may as well be two different planets.

If you know someone who is dealing with autism in any capacity, I encourage you to read The Cat Who Came Back for Christmas (also published as A Friend Like Ben). On second thought, you should probably read it regardless, for if recent statistics are accurate, you WILL cross paths with autism at some point in your life. And if you’re informed about autism’s effects on families, you may enhance your understanding and compassion for those families. When an autistic child starts screaming in a mall, you may refrain from tsk-tsking over his bad behavior and realize instead that he may well be in pain from the lights and blaring music or that he feels threatened by the scores of people around him. In this respect, the book deserves a wider audience.

 As for animal lovers, the book provides a terrific role model (Romp herself) of animal advocacy. Cat and animal lovers should read it if only to learn how to find a lost pet. Romp’s search for her son’s beloved Baboo (aka Ben) is a showdown of determination and desperation. As her net widens, so does her stewardship: False leads (cats mistakenly identified as Ben) get new guardians or are returned home through Romp’s efforts. She helps others along the way because it’s the right thing to do—even when her hopes of recovering her own feline are fading.

Romp writes of the cruelty that percolates during a search—the people who cursed her out for putting a leaflet on their cars, the people who simply meowed into her answering machine, the person who claimed to have Ben and said, “We’ve got him and you won’t get him back.” She writes of the loss of the small, furry family member: how it devastated her son—“I can’t breathe. I can’t swallow. My heart is coming out,” he said over and over—and how it unraveled her relationship with him.

The Cat Who Came Back for Christmas probably won’t win any literary awards, but don’t let that stop you from reading it. It’s engaging and instructive nonetheless. It’s a story of loss and fierce love—for a child, for a cat, and for the family unit made whole by each.

A Love Primer

 





















“…To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go. ”

—from “In Blackwater Woods” by Mary Oliver


[Art by Jamie Wyeth.]

When A Remake Won’t Do

This economy has driven many people into dire straits. Some have nearly folded under the weight of adversity; others have reinvented themselves.

If you’re somewhere in the middle—struggling with becoming that cloying, self-help symbol of transformation, the butterfly, and can’t achieve enough lift-off to finish the job of changing your life—then I have an easier visualization technique for you caterpillars in stasis.

I have a dream.

That is, I had a dream about a species of butterfly that doesn’t progress beyond the caterpillar stage. Just when this caterpillar can no longer sustain life as it is, instead of cocooning her/himself, s/he latches on to whatever might serve as wings—leaves, fabric, plastic bags—and flies.

In my dream, the butterfly that arrested my attention was as big as a dinner plate and having trouble flying. Its movement was arduous and erratic. This was largely due, I think, to the butterfly’s choice of wings: a sunny-side-up egg and a golden waffle from someone’s al fresco breakfast plate. Yes, the desperate butterfly I saw chose items of different weights and viscosity that kept him off-balance and made flight awkward. Yet he persevered, even with syrup dripping here and there. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

Upon waking, this segment of my dreams seemed initially like a complete non sequitur. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I appreciated its appropriate symbolism.

I came to believe that the “breakfast-food butterfly” represented every person who’s ever been hobbled by something—be it financial woes, chronic illness, or emotional turbulence. Sometimes when you struggle against the odds, transformation isn’t in the cards. The most practical option is to make do with what’s at hand in order to get by, get on, get ahead.

Latch on to whatever propels you and rise. It may not be beautiful. It may be nothing you ever aspired to or even wanted, but it’s far better to make do than not do.

[Butterfly photographer unknown; graphic art from Skirt! magazine.]

Wild Thing

As I rushed off to Pilates class the other day, a glance toward our basement window stopped me in my tracks.

There, on the INSIDE of the glass, sat a sparrow looking out.

My first thought was a Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson article, “Do Animals Get Depressed?” He contends that only captive and domesticated animals experience depression—not wild animals. Well, if he saw this tiny bird, I’m sure he’d change his mind. I see a LOT of sparrows around here yet have never seen any look like this one—forlorn, hopeless, still.

My second thought was to help the poor little guy.

I ran back into the apartment to tell my husband, who promptly (and without my feeble assistance) ushered the bird’s return to the outdoors.

Crisis averted and wild life restored. It doesn’t get better than that.

[Artist unknown.]

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy…

Considering this morning’s headlines, like so many other mornings, I believe Bear (and his creator, Ms. Diana Sudyka) is on to something:

No Holiday for the Unemployed

It’s Labor Day 2012 and many of you are enjoying the day off. For those without jobs, however, it’s a bitter reminder of what they’ve lost or can’t have—hardly a cause for celebration.

In an effort to reach across the divide, here’s something everyone can enjoy: two generations sharing their responses to a job rejection letter. (If you’ve seen this already, pass it on to someone who could use a smile.)

Groupon Wants My Feedback

Like thousands of other Americans, I have taken advantage of some of the discounts offered by Groupon. After my most recent deal, Groupon e-mailed me a “survey” about my experience—a private trail ride on horseback.

I wonder if the survey tactic is new for Groupon. They certainly didn’t ask me how I felt about the piece-of-crap keyboard I bought through them last spring. Anyway, I was happy to oblige.

The trouble was the structure of the survey. It allowed me to choose only one of two options, with no provision for comments or explanation: 1) I enjoyed ________ Stables and would recommend it to others, or 2) I did not enjoy ________ Stables and would not recommend it to others. Though this would seem to be the easiest kind of decision to make—as it would have been had I been asked about that useless keyboard—in this particular case, it was not.

The trail ride (actually, there was no trail; we just meandered through fields of wildflowers and butterflies) was fine. We were treated well and received what we were promised. For animal lovers, the place was a dream: 70 horses (including yearlings and seniors), a pony, a donkey, a variety of dogs from pug puppies to an ancient mastiff, cats, a rabbit, and a free-range pig.

However, for animal lovers, the place was also a nightmare: One dog was tethered to a tree, the cats were bony with opossum-like tails, tumors covered the large dogs, the pig’s stomach dragged the ground, and the rabbit—after surviving life at a research facility—seemed desperate to escape its small, filthy cage.

This father-daughter operation includes riding lessons, horse breeding, dog breeding, competitions—and no help. We learned that half of this business duo was out of commission, struck by cancer. The daughter, while performing caregiving duties for her father, managed the farm by herself. Times were tough and getting tougher.

So, did the daughter partner with Groupon in hopes of garnering repeat business? Or was she simply going for an influx of cash? Her farm sorely needs both scenarios, which is why I didn’t want to choose “No” on the Groupon survey.

On the other hand, how can I recommend a business where animals are not given proper vet care, many animals have to forage for their own food and water, and breeding principles are hardly recognized? Sadly, these issues probably aren’t the result of the father-daughter’s recent misfortunes. More likely they’re the result of a faulty philosophy about animal welfare. Worse, I suspect this farm isn’t an anomaly; there are hundreds, maybe thousands more like it across the country.

Had Groupon devised an e-mail survey with more options—for instance, a series of value statements that rated my experience—I might have been able to give the desired feedback. As it was, though, I chose the only other option left: I deleted it.

[Painting of horse by Gustave Caillebotte; painting of pig by Stephen Filarsky.]

Ode to a Tree

esterday marked the demise of the last mulberry tree standing between my neighbors’ property and the expanse of now-shadeless withered grass that stretches out from our living-room windows. I can’t blame them. Who wants mulberry trees next to their driveway? Removing the tree will reduce their car-wash expenses and increase the natural light in their home.

Still, I will miss watching the sun’s shifting light on the tree’s leaves. I’ll miss the shade thrown by the tree and the songs of the birds who populated it. I’ll miss its stature, its profile against the sky.

Thoughts of this young mulberry tree evoke memories of a much larger and older one from my youth—whose smashed fruits supplied the boys’ war games with pseudo-blood, whose branches offered the most adventurous climbing.

Oh sweet mulberry trees, thank you for the time I knew you; you were loved.

[Drop cap by Jessica Hische.]

Don’t Leave Your Dog in the Oven

“WHAT?!” you exclaim. “That’s just stupid. No sane person would leave her dog in an oven.”

Ah, but lots of sane people do. No, not the oven in the kitchen; that’s reserved for psychopaths. I’m talking about the ovens that parked cars morph into in warm weather.

Just yesterday, in fact, I saw a pooch overheating in a parking lot. Just as I was about to take action, the young couple returned to the car. They gave their spotted dog a warm reunion greeting and took off. They obviously loved their dog but were unaware of the potential harm they’d put him/her in.

The weather outside doesn’t even have to be hot to be lethal. With windows cracked open, the temperature inside a car rises nearly 20 degrees in 10 minutes; in 20 minutes, it goes up nearly 30 degrees—and continues to rise.

Just think about it: It was 98 degrees outside yesterday when said couple pulled into their parking space at the grocery store and left Rover in the car (turns out, we passed the couple as we were exiting the store). Now do the math.

And it’s not just that you could potentially kill your pet. There are a whole mess of medical problems heat can trigger if your pet lives through the ordeal. Some states have laws against leaving unattended pets and children in cars; the Bluegrass State does not. Without a law, too many people remain uninformed.

Please help spread the word about this.

[Visit the British Columbia SPCA Web site for symptoms and treatment of heatstroke. Art is from the American Veterinary Medical Association.]

I Dream of…

Scattered about this blog are references to one of my grandmothers. She’s pictured here in a photograph I’m pretty sure she never wanted to share with anyone. She NEVER let anyone see her unless she’d styled her hair and makeup for the day. She didn’t mind you seeing her in her robe, but she had to “have her face on.”

I like this pic largely for its naturalness. My grandmother isn’t posing for the photographer.

I also like it because it’s my grandmother at an age of dreams instead of memories. Everything’s possible in this moment. She hasn’t yet created all the stories of her life.

Today would have been her 100th birthday, an age she vehemently opposed reaching.

Happy Birthday, Gammy! I hope you’re rediscovering your glamour and your dreams.

A Barnyard Lady Killer Bids Farewell

He arrived at Catskill Animal Sanctuary with 13 ewes and lambs and he was bad to the bone. There wasn’t a stall that could pen him in, not a creature who had authority over him. The humans called him Rambo, for he was all horn and rage—until…at last…he wasn’t. He transformed from wild to wise and became the self-proclaimed guardian of all the barnyard animals. He herded them, rescued them, guided them, and comforted them. They looked up to the Jacob ram and, if they were female, had a crush on him.

Yes, Rambo attracted the fairer sex of many species, especially the wingèd variety. Barbie, the rescued broiler hen, was one of his favorites. In Animal Camp, CAS director Kathy Stevens describes seeing Rambo approach Barbie and hoof the ground, the signal he used with humans to get a massage out of them. But Barbie didn’t understand the signal, so Rambo showed her what he meant: Ever so gently, he massaged her body with the tip of his horn. A few days later, Rambo could be seen relaxing in the barn with a busy Barbie at his side, pulling hay from his coat. As their relationship intensified, so did the jealousy of Hannah the sheep.

Hannah fancied herself the rightful mate of Rambo, in a Fatal Attraction kind of way, and was never far from the object of her affections. In fact, she fretted if he wasn’t in her sightlines. As Stevens entered the barn one day, she saw Rambo but no Hannah. This was odd and prompted her to ask a CAS employee about Hannah’s absence.

“She’s in time out.”

“What happened?” asked Stevens.

“She head-butted Barbie halfway across the aisle.” Hell hath no fury…

As Rambo aged, arthritis gripped his body and slowed him down, but it didn’t impair his sense of responsibility to his flock. A couple of months ago when the cows escaped, he couldn’t round them up himself so he did the next best thing: He hobbled to the humans and alerted them to the situation. Stevens knew Rambo would soon face his final transformation and she tried to steel herself for it.

She was right. Last Saturday Rambo transformed from earthbound to spirit while surrounded by everyone who loved him, both human and nonhuman. In a fitting portent, just the day before, the sanctuary had welcomed 14 sheep rescued from neglect—one of them a Jacob ram. While a new era begins for the flock, it seems Rambo’s legacy is sure to continue.

The Wingèd One

In February I told you about Birdy, a pooch of sweet demeanor who was scooped up from the mean streets of Oakland—starving and riddled with cancer—by one person who bothered to notice her and knew to take the ailing creature to Bad Rap.

From there, Birdy was adopted by “The Lady,” who knew their time together would be short but full of heart. The Lady, a writer by trade, helped Birdy keep her own blog: Birdy Flies Home. It’s a lovely chronicle of living, of making each moment matter and of facing the inevitable.

Today, at 4:00 p.m. California time, Birdy is donning wings to make her great trek Home.

Please join with me in wishing her a calm takeoff and a brilliant landing into a world where bully sticks are in infinite supply, cones of misery don’t exist, and she may dig as many holes as deep and large as she wants with no ill effects.

Birdy, may your Blue Jewel light your way to Joy. We’ll miss you.

Love in Shades of Blue

A month ago I got a call from a friend—the kind of call we dread receiving, the kind of call we dread having to make. I knew from B.’s voice that something was wrong. And then it tumbled out: His cherished buddy—his first dog—had reached the end of his Earthbound days. They parted physical ways with the assistance of a veterinarian’s needle.

I felt B.’s pain. Not just because I could relate, but because I’d witnessed the profound changes the canine brought to B.’s life.

I remember the first day I saw them together. B. had just adopted Roark from a rescue group (the same one our pooch came from). They were standing together in front of a neighborhood pet-supplies shop, turning the heads of drivers and passersby. In an area glutted by Retrievers and Labs, a stylish man with a sleek blue Weimaraner becomes a spectacle. B. was over-the-top happy with the creature at leash’s end. This happiness alone was an entirely new dimension of B.’s personality. Well, perhaps not new, but previously concealed most of the time. Roark had managed, in only a few days, to beeline straight to B.’s heart and make public B.’s range of emotional depth. They were bonded.

Then came trouble. For, of course, Life is a bloody seesaw and won’t let you experience long-awaited joy without soon balancing that out with a burst of bad news. In Roark’s case, it was a wonky heart and kidneys. B. saw more vet specialists and emergency teams in his first months with his first pooch than some of us see in our dogs’ lifetimes.

The rescue group stepped in and defrayed the costs (financial, not emotional) of the healthcare roller-coaster Roark was riding. In the wings, B.’s friends and family held their collective breath. Would the dog make it through? If not, would B. make it through?

When both made it through, there was a collective sigh of relief. Death had not only released the dog from Its grip, but had also left Roark and B. even more devoted to one another.

B. was no longer alone. He became part of a six-legged man-beast hybrid, half of an inseparable pair. They walked together, lazed around together, travelled together, ate together, snuggled together.

B.’s fashion priorities shifted. In the B.D. era (Before the Dog), my friend never stepped beyond his threshold without being tastefully dressed. And he could get snarky about people who did otherwise. But once B. accepted his new status as dog steward, along came “dog clothes.” Stylish still, but not always so perfect.

B. started to rethink his life’s purpose. He gave up everything in the Windy City and ventured West—with Roark at his side—in search of new terrain and soul-fulfilling work. They camped. They met interesting people. They smelled the unusual, saw the magnificent. They had a truly great adventure together. And on the road, B. learned more about himself and realized he belonged—at least for a while—back in the Heartland. The answer was not in the West. And so they journeyed, from Oz to home, together.

B. and Roark lived with us for a bit until their new apartment was available. We were happy to have a dog roaming the rooms again, and B. was a great help to us as we prepared to move to the Bluegrass. I took Roark for walks, but mostly I just watched him, for he made it quite clear that his affections were meant only for B. When B. left the apartment for any reason, Roark cried and pined inconsolably at the door.

After we moved to Kentucky, B. and Roark moved to the East Coast temporarily. B. had been accepted into a degree program that would springboard his life’s calling. We were thrilled for him. At last, with Roark at his side, Life was falling into place for him.

Three months later, the seesaw shifted. Roark’s body started turning against them both, his impaired organs becoming markedly wonkier. Filled with toxins, the poor dog could no longer control his actions, and knew it. Soon, according to the vet, Roark’s brain would also be affected. The inseparable pair knew this couldn’t be allowed to happen. The inseparable pair knew they had to let go of one another.

B. spent Thanksgiving weekend snuggling with his best friend, giving Roark his undivided attention. It would be their last weekend together.

When B. and I talked, he mentioned that Roark had been with him for only 4.5 years. I couldn’t believe it. Obviously, I’d lost track of time, but they were so much a part of each other it seemed they’d been together a lifetime.

Whatever the time they had together, I believe B. and Roark spent it “ankle-deep in Heaven.” And it just doesn’t get any better than that.


À bientôt, Master Roark…

My Year of Reading Aimlessly

“I do not want to be a book worm. If its book is taken away from it, the little blind head is raised; it wags, hovers, terribly uneasy, in a void—until it begins to burrow again.”
—Katherine Mansfield

For the past year, reading has been a salve for my grief and a substitute for exploring the world beyond my apartment (doctor’s orders to stay off my feet). I’m not alone in turning to books for spiritual sustenance and guidance. Nina Sankovitch read a book a day a few years ago to comprehend her sister’s death, then turned the 365 project into a best-selling book—Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading.

Unlike Sankovitch, I’ve no best-selling book as a result of my year of reading. And I certainly didn’t match the pace and quantity of her reading. I had no deadline and no specific goal in mind.

Yet I feel changed by my bookwormishness. My grief has lightened, I’ve learned loads, I’ve discovered (or rediscovered) some critical aspects of my nature, and I feel not quite whole but substantial enough to serve the greater good in some way. Though reading didn’t heal me physically (I’m still supposed to stay off my feet), it accomplished remarkable emotional and spiritual feats.

Like Katherine Mansfield, I need to be more than a bookworm now. Venturing forward, my reading will be specifically purposeful: to strengthen and improve my physical well-being, and to advance an animal-related education project for which I’ve volunteered my time. I’ll miss making random book picks at the library, but I look forward to reading for a cause.

Correction: I (almost) ALWAYS look forward to reading. Period. Don’t you?

[Art by Ramón Casas.]

Heaven on My Mind: Never Can Say Goodbye

Heaven’s been weighing on my mind, but I’ve had a hard time envisioning it.

“Every living thing dies. There’s no stopping it.”
—the opening paragraph of Unsaid, by Neil Abramson

As I posted earlier on Lull, my reading these last few months has been full of heartbreak and partings—people from dogs, horses from people, goats from turkeys, geese from cows. There’s no end to these losses.

I grew attached to the animals I read about on blogs and in books and when they passed into the Great Beyond, my thoughts followed them. I was reluctant to let go.

I take some solace in imagining an idyllic Afterlife where once-Earth-dead creatures now frolic (or graze or float or whatever they desire) and live beyond their psychological and physical constraints.

When I finished reading The Eighty-Dollar Champion: Snowman, the Horse that Inspired a Nation, I kept thinking about the sweetness and patience Snowman had extended to everyone. He had a good life back in the day, but I wondered what his life was now. Surely his story continues.

I e-mailed a friend to share my thoughts about the book (which she had also read) and said I hoped Snowman had found his way to Just-A-Bob, our favorite character in Jane Smiley’s Horse Heaven.

I e-mailed again after realizing my remarks had populated Paradise with fictional creations as well as the blood-and-bones variety. My friend, ever gracious about my many blunders, wrote back to say that of course our fictional favorites reside in the Afterlife. What’s more, fictional places are part of the landscape there (think environments devised by Tolkien and Lewis).

Fictional places? Wow! My friend had just exponentially expanded Paradise for me. I started rewinding my memories of all the books I’d read and all the films I’d seen. It made me dizzy.

“I have always imagined that paradise will be kind of a library.”
—Jorges Luis Borges

Playwright Eugene O’Neill imagines Heaven for us in “The Last Will and Testament of An Extremely Distinguished Dog,” a piece he wrote for his wife in dreaded anticipation of their beloved Dalmatian’s death. It’s written from the perspective of the dog, who describes Paradise as a place “where one is always young and full-bladdered … where each blissful hour is mealtime.”

Like Borges, O’Neill (on behalf of his dog) fashions Heaven in simple and self-serving terms that I can easily understand. It’s whatever you want most—every birthday and twinkling-star wish you ever made all rolled into one. While these are sweet notions, I suspect the truth is a bit more complex.

In his essay “Sick Dog,” environmental activist and writer Rick Bass speaks to the sorrow of loss and posits a different type of Heaven,* one that stokes my imagination and belief:

“[P]erhaps the seams, the laminae, between the various worlds—the past, present, and future, as well as the living and the nonliving—may not be as distinct and clear-cut as we have been taught, or as our somewhat arbitrary clocks and calendars have led us to believe.

“Sometimes—not always, and I think I could even say rarely—but still, sometimes, I perceive that there is a stillness and a wholeness in the world, or in some portion or corner or fragment of the world, for some little place in time, where things just feel so right and huge and powerful and easy that I will have the perhaps blasphemous thought that maybe there are layers of heaven, and that, with our species’ dependence upon visual acuity, we might fixate too much on notions of streets-lined-with-gold as indicator or marker of when a traveler arrives in that place.

“There are definitely moments in time and places in the world where we have each felt the peace and wholeness, the stillness, spoken of in such prophecies and promises. For me it is experienced most often when I am deep in the wilderness, or up on the ridges of mountains, or in the fields and prairies with nothing but field and prairie to the horizon, or when I am simply in the presence of family. In such moments I think very much that the case could be made that we are already ankle-deep in heaven.”

Ahhh. Thank you, Mr. Bass. A picture of Paradise is coming in clearer now.


I think again about the people and animals I’ve met through my reading—their deeply felt bonds, their unfathomable grief over the deaths of their mates. It’s a comfort and a relief to view them through Rick Bass’s lens: to believe that in each relationship, long before the untimely departure of one being, the pair’s Earthly life together was already “ankle-deep in Heaven.” In the future, this is the layer I shall try to commit to memory.

* Paragraphs may not be in original order. Essay is included in the anthology WOOF! Writers on Dogs.

[Painting by Abbott Handerson Thayer and recolored for Lull.]

Thanksgiving Plenty: The Food that Binds

Thanksgiving 2010 seems like yesterday to me. From his deathbed, my list-making, eternally instruction-giving father supervised the kitchen proceedings. In his hyperspecific way, he detailed what he wanted on the menu and from which restaurant I was to procure it.

At first, I was crestfallen: No home-cooked holiday meal? Then irritated: I wasn’t fond of the food at the restaurant he’d chosen. And embarrassed: The “restaurant” was a CHAIN!

But how can you not fulfill the wishes (or demands) of the dying? Upon reconsidering the situation, I realized the upside: If my father didn’t like the food, it wouldn’t be my fault. Grateful for that, I decided to add a few homemade dishes to the mix as backup—if not for my father, for my husband.

As it turned out, the massive quantities of food from the restaurant languished in the refrigerator while my father repeatedly requested the corn pudding, sweet potato casserole, and pumpkin pie I had made (without his instruction) in his kitchen.

I was secretly happy about this, though not just because the homemade won out over the chain restaurant. It felt good to be able to provide some pleasure to my father’s difficult days and sustenance to his deteriorating palate. It was especially meaningful—to me, anyway—that those particular dishes represented a host of Thanksgivings past, recollections permanently attached to my childhood and happier times. The time before the losses—the deaths and the divorce. Those dishes were traditional to our family’s gatherings, and now I had connected my father’s final Thanksgiving celebration to a sunnier, familial reminiscence.

Today I’ll be making pumpkin pie, corn pudding, and sweet potato casserole again. I’m grateful for the role they played in last year’s meal, and I take comfort in the memories they conjure that I will continue savoring for many years and meals to come.

May Peace and Plenty be yours this Thanksgiving.

So Happy Together

Recently, I read a short memoir about the horses a writer had grown up with. Clydesdales, they were. And her father brought the first one home—the one he’d fallen in love with, the one who started his obsession—in the backseat of his Cadillac convertible.

I SO wished to see a photo of that!

Just now, looking for something else, of course, I happened upon this next best thing:


This is Jim Sautner with his special pal Bailey, the unexpected antidote to his loss of a previous best friend. Click through to read their charming story.

Experiencing A Disconnect

On my reading docket is a collection of Katherine Mansfield short stories. It’s my first foray into Mansfield’s work and after consuming a bit of it, I needed more context. Who was she? Where did her characters come from?

When I was scanning book titles at the library’s 2-for-1 sale, I noticed Journal of Katherine Mansfield and without hesitation scooped it into my stack. When I opened it the other night, this passage popped out: [Caution: It’s funny at first glance, but becomes tragic the longer you think about it. Read fast and don’t think!]

I positively feel, in my hideous modern way, that I can’t get into touch with my mind. I am standing gasping in one of those disgusting telephone boxes and I can’t ‘get through.’

“Sorry. There’s no reply,” tinkles out the little voice.

“Will you ring them again—Exchange? A good long ring. There must be somebody there.”

“I can’t get any answer.”

Then I suppose there is nobody in the building—nobody at all. Not even an old fool of a watchman. No, it’s dark and empty and quiet . . . above all, empty.

Can you relate? I know I can.

[Portrait of Katherine Mansfield by Anne Estelle Rice.]