thinking of those who have passed on

Today is the anniversary of two people's deaths. My former boss K, of whom I remain quite fond, lost his mother six years ago. I know he thinks of her often and likely always will.

And our dear friend Daniel Pentlarge died two years ago today. Oddly, Daniel accompanied us to visiting hours when K's mother died. In fact, Daniel was the only person I can think of who I'd take along as a friend in that kind of situation.

Last year, we went up to Maine to the summer house of Daniel's family, where the family graveyard is. We were there to celebrate Daniel and also to attend the unveiling of his gravestone. This year, we were invited back, but we're just not up for it. We'll stay open to going another year.

This does mean that we will actually have a wedding anniversary to ourselves this year, though I suspect it will be a quiet one. I feel much gratitude for those who have been in my life and for those who continue to be so.

is this how you make a perpetual motion machine?

Four years ago, in our last gubernatorial race, we had a competent, liberal, experienced, Democrat woman running against a slick, nasty, paternalistic Republican man. If you looked up "white male" in a dictionary, you would have seen a picture of our male contender. I thought there was hope for the Democrat, but I knew we were in trouble on election day. I was in the pool locker room and all the women were saying that they'd voted for Ms. O'Brien, but their husbands were so alarmed by the idea of a woman in office that they were voting for Mitt.

To my utter disgust, Mitt won. It's been a tough four years, and the poor dear has not been entirely successful. However, he has declared victory, and he's moving on with his movie-star face to national politics. Look for a defeated Republican near you some time soon.

Now, we've just had our primaries and the winners are... the unopposed Mitt-underling, Kerry Healy who seems beholden to the Republican machine, and the incredibly experienced, intelligent, and oh yes, black Deval Patrick.

So one question: what do the guys in the locker room do now?

plg

Today I worked extra hard at my job -- we have a deadline approaching -- and came home somewhat wrung out, knowing that Robert would be out for the evening. I stopped for a short visit to the kitty museum and chatted with the owners. When I came in the door at home, both cats were downstairs to greet me, and I noticed Theo was winking at me.

I picked him up. He started purring immediately. I looked deep into his eyes and noticed that one looked particularly awful. So I called the Kitty Museum ladies to ask what they thought. They both said to get him to the e-room right away, just in case it was something where time was of the essence.

I called the e-room, grabbed some cheese sticks and some reading material, wrestled Theo into his carrier while Koa, horrified, watched. And then headed back to the town where I work, making a few phone calls along the way.

We were seen almost immediately. Theo shook and shook, and the vet told him he was just a big baby, but I think she was totally charmed by him. He'd break into a purr every now and then and go back to shaking.

Bottom line -- all's well, but he seems to have an upper respiratory infection which has caused conjunctivitis of both eyes. He's now on antiobiotic eye goo three times a day, and he's wearing an Elizabethan collar (or e-collar). We'll take him to see Dr. Randy tomorrow.

Back at home, he's trying to learn to navigate with the collar on. He wants it off, so he keeps backing up. He forgets to lift his head up, so when he moves forward, it gets stuck. I know that cats adapt to these things fairly quickly, and it's important to keep it on so he doesn't scratch his eyes.

We'll all get through this, but Poor Little Guy.

addendum: maybe not so little. The nurse at the e-room weighed him and he's now over 8 pounds. I think he'll be a bruiser.

a heartening new start for the new year

My first cousin got married this weekend, and we did a drive-by visit to Manhattan to attend. The wedding was in the very elegant Puck Building (more pictures here), where according to a friend, the wedding scene from When Harry Met Sally was shot.

My sister and her husband flew in from Oregon, my brother flew solo from Costa Rica, and Robert and I somehow managed to get there too.

My cousin and her new husband seem to be madly in love with each other, which made the whole thing very joyous. And it was an incredibly elegant affair, with maybe 200 people, dressed for a very fancy funeral (there was much black in evidence) or a wedding as could only be pulled off in New York. In fact, I imagined that everyone wearing a color was from away, although some New Yorkers did go all out and wear a very dark shade of brown. (Well, there was one -er- dress -- if you can call it that, that was made up of thin rectangles of white and light green chiffon. I imagine that the top was glued on because otherwise, there would have been -er- floppage. Let's just say that it was extremely low cut front and back, and also high cut in the back. Afterwards, I realized that if I ever saw the owner of the dress again, there would be no way I'd recognize her. But I'd certainly recognize the dress.)

The three rooms we were in (where the ceremony was held on the 7th floor, the reception was held on the first floor, and the dinner was held, also on the first floor) had beautiful wooden floors, and I could only imagine an elaborate and huge contra dance held there, maybe three contra dances simultaneously with three different bands.

And everything was so perfect -- the flower arrangements, for example, included lavendar hydrangeas mixed with pale orange roses, just lovely. The band was really really loud but also really really good. Especially on their R&B pieces, I had to blink to make sure that the original singers weren't on stage. The food was outrageous and the wedding cake to die for. (This is one trend that I really appreciate in weddings -- excellent cake.)

Robert and I were seated at the kids table for first cousins of the bride on both sides and their partners. It was a lot of fun to catch up with everyone, including my own sibs.

There was a lot of good humor, many people danced, and a good time was had by nearly all. Unfortunately, my mother's and aunt's first cousins left early. It was too loud and too late for them. I knew they weren't going to last long when one cuz came back from a fresh breath of air and offered to buy corn dogs for the crowd.

We didn't get out til 12:30, and of course were caught in a traffic jam before we knew what had hit us. I think we got back to the hotel around 2 (yes, in the morning, and no, I don't stay up that late very often).

The next day, we went to a brunch at my aunt and uncle's house. There was a smaller crowd, and of course, the whole event was quite elegant and understated. My brother, who went to the afterparty and was out til 4 (he said that he didn't have his practical-minded wife along to remind him it would be a bad idea ) was nonetheless fairly coherent and the b&g even rolled in after a while, looking radiant.

A good weekend. My regret is not having much time with my sister, whom I haven't seen in a while. Perhaps that can be rectified one of these days.

P.S. And it was good to come home, too. We boarded Theo for about 36 hours, which was probably too short a time, but definitely too long to leave him at home with just Koa to watch over him. We left Koa on her own. We decided that having someone check in on her would just terrify her and make her more anxious. And she was totally fine when we got home, happy to see us, no apparent damage done. We all continue to learn.

and glimmers of hope from parts feline, too

The Rodney King wall has come down permanently. The cats get along well enough, even going so far as to sleep peacefully on the same bed, though separated by a human.

There is much chasing, although it's never entirely clear who is chasing whom, and chaser and chasee can switch roles on a moment's notice. There is an occasional hiss or annoyed yowl. And certainly many windups and pounces, which is perhaps why we hear a vocalization from time to time.

Last night, we came home from dinner and the cats came down the stairs to see us. At one point, one was heading down and the other up, and there was an extended nose sniff. (They are accomplished and very polite nose sniffers.) To my surprise, that turned into face nuzzling, and then Koa licked Theo's head. Pause, and then more nuzzling and more licking. I think Koa would have liked Theo to return the favor but he's young and oblivious. Perhaps Theo will get the message some day.

We are at the two month mark of having a multicat household. I would say that progress is impressive. I think Rodney King would be pleased.

this is the dawning of the age of disappointment

I grew up in the age of aquarius, yes, but really, it was an era of disappointment. To date myself, my world went horribly wrong when I was five and John Kennedy was shot. It was the first time I experienced public grieving -- I'm sure it helped that I lived in Massachusetts at the time. But still, the unanimous shock, both initial and continuing, woke me up. The image of the riderless horse that I saw on our grainy little TV, those little children at their father's funeral, the incomprehension of a nation, will stay with me probably forever. Welcome to the world.

When I was ten, Martin Luther King, Jr was killed. Again, we went into grieving mode. And because I lived in Washington, I got to see my city burn, at least on TV. I walked to school protected by armed guards (except it wasn't until I was an adult that I understood those guards had been hired to protect little white girls like me -- I was terrified of them at the time). I didn't see tanks on our streets, but I did see them on TV.

And then a few months later, Robert Kennedy was killed. There were protests against the war that my mother and I attended. The betrayal of Watergate seemed minor in comparison.

Things were fairly calm after that. A few years ago, a slightly older coworker and I asked a young dude what the galvinizing moments of his generation were. He said "You mean like when North Carolina won the penant?" Uh, no. Not quite like that.

And then, five years ago, I was driving to work one beautiful fall morning and switched on the radio station I call "news lite" in time to hear confused anchormen saying that something, a small plane, maybe, had run into the towers in New York. Somehow, they managed to find an eye witness. As they were interviewing him, the guy, in shock, was describing what he'd seen. Except that he was narrating in the past tense and the present tense at the same time. When he got to the part about how a plane was headed for the towers, we all thought he meant the first, the only plane. Except now there was a second plane too. It took a while to work through our denial and understand exactly what had happened.

I called Robert's office mate from the road and told her to tune into something, anything, then continued on to work, still feeling like I was energized to get a pile of work done that day. Except when I got there, people kept running around the halls, and there was confusion and news updates, and suddenly it seemed that we were all under attack. Our boss pretty much suggested that we leave, but I felt paralyzed, confused, like I wanted to stick around for a while.

I finally sought refuge in the office of an old Air Force guy, someone I perceived as being calm and rational and somewhat kind. I asked him if he thought we were in any danger, given that we worked next door to an active Air Force base. He said no. Just then, another Air Force guy came hopping in, all excited. He said something unrepeatable about Japanese and Arabs and locking them all up. Then he excitedly ran out again. I looked at my buddy and said "I don't think that's the solution." And my buddy agreed.

A while later, the vice president came wandering by. He could have gone home to be with his family, but instead, he was walking around, showing true leadership by making sure that everyone was ok. At that time, our company was bicoastal and there was a lot of travel between Massachusetts and California. We asked if everyone was accounted for, and he said yes, except for one person. It later turned out that that one person was fine, too.

We as a company were lucky. A colleague had non-stop tickets to California that day for a slightly later flight than the ones that crashed. Another colleague thought she had tickets for one of the planes that eventually went down, but our incompetent travel agent had struck again and had actually booked her for the following day. After finding out how expensive it was to rebook, she decided she'd go out the next day and returned home.

And yet, although our immediate loved ones and colleagues were safe, I still felt personally under attack. I kept thinking "My beautiful country, what are they doing to my country?" I felt like I was fogged in for about six weeks.

And then of course the rhetoric started, especially with American flags. People with pickup trucks, especially, would plant a flag on the back, and that would give them extra permission to be even more obnoxious in traffic. And that attitude was symbolic of how our country's leaders managed to alienate the rest of the world.

But before that, the weekend after that awful Tuesday, Robert and I were scheduled to attend dance camp out in the mountans of western Massachusetts. A message went out that anyone who felt they couldn't attend would get a full refund. Very few people took the offer. I think the rest of us who went were, frankly, reticent. Dance camp is usually so joyous, so lovely, and we were all feeling so awful. It was hard to imagine having fun or connecting at such an awful time.

But of course, dance camp was just what we needed. It was a little somber, but oh so loving. Our group came together and made our own little statement about the power of dancing in community. And yes, there was some joy in the dance and much healing. I drew a lot of strength from that weekend.

So five years later, amongst the somber rememberance, the memorials, the "where was I when" stories, our community came together again. This summer, the founder of our group, the man we call the "Queen Mum", injured himself and required several surgeries. He does not have adequate health insurance. A fellow dancer decided to do something about it and put together a benefit. He said that part of being in a community means that we take care of each other. So he arranged for a hall, he got people to bake goodies, he signed up a few callers (and a few more volunteered), got a band (and a couple more bands signed up), sent out publicity, and ... where we usually get 25 or so dancers, 60 or so people showed up. And he reports that people sent in checks from all over the country. And now the organizer feels better about the community we've created, and so do I.

Just tonight, we went out to eat and started talking to the couple next to us. She teaches tolerance and social justice by teaching about the holocaust. She and her husband are appalled at the current state of affairs in our state and our country, and she's working to effect change in the next generation.

So yes, I grew up in an era of disappointment and betrayal. But as always, there are rays of hope shining through it all, little stepping stones that keep me going, even in the face of tragedy and bleakness.

and the walls come a tumblin' down

Koa and Theo continue to improve their relationship with each other and with us; we're seeing little changes every day.

A few days ago, Koa let me pet her while she ate treats. And she's been eating dry food in the kitchen with two humans and one kitten milling about. Just last night, I fed Koa, and she came into the bathroom while I was in there (a big step; she seems not to have forgotten a terrible trauma in the bathroom that occurred last May) and she let me pet her while she ate her food.

Meanwhile, Theo has calmed down a lot. He's become super snuggly at night, and instead of sleeping at the foot of the bed, he now snuggles up to a human and stays there pretty much all night. Downstairs, he's still a madman, though he's not scratching the furniture at every opportunity. He still scratches it a little, though. The big word we're trying to teach him is OFF which we seem to repeat every 30 seconds as he hops on the dining room table (OFF OFF OFF) or jumps on the counter (OFF OFF OFF) or leaps over to the sink (OFF OFF). The biggest NO, of course, is the stove (OFFOFFOFFOFFOFFOFFOFF). Sometimes he walks over to a spot from which he might jump, looks hopeful, whimpers, and walks away. We think this shows far more maturity and self control than many humans have.

But the big news is that the function of the Rodney King wall is shifting. The two cats now sniff noses very politely and occasionally blink at each other across the room. Although they're aware and interested, they're no longer horrifically obsessed with each other, nor are either of them fearful of the other. So the wall no longer separates them. Rather, it keeps Theo from going downstairs unsupervised (he still hasn't internalized OFFOFFOFF OFF despite our efforts). Koa will occasionally ask to go downstairs by herself, where I'll later find her peacefully sacked out on a sofa or a chair.

We do hear thundering herds of elephants upstairs and sometimes we witness hysterical interactions that are half playful and half hostile (at least we hope they're at least half playful; there's no crying, growling, or bloodshed involved). Last night, Koa was chasing Theo around the downstairs but was enough faster than he was that she was basically straddling him as they were tearing around.

More sweetly, they have a funny approach to playing. One of us will get out an interactive toy and engage one of the cats. The other cat will come and watch, and as the first cat's attention wanders, will jump in. Then the first cat will sit out for a while while the second cat plays. And they actually patiently take turns.

Because of Koa's previous experience living with hordes of cats, she's actually fairly patient when Theo fake-jumps at her or swoops in on her toy; he usually doesn't faze her much. But then again, last night, when Theo was snuggling quietly on Robert's chair, Koa stood up on two hind legs, rested one foreleg on the armrest, and air-batted at Theo for quite a while. Robert and I almost couldn't sit up from laughing too hard.

We both feel that the cats are better than any television show imaginable. I'm so glad that we took a lot of time to allow the introductions to take place. And of course, I'm delighted that we chose both of them to come live here. I feel very lucky in that regard.