Snapshots: promises of spring

I’ve been wrestling with the Black Dog, on and off, for the past several years. Sometimes I can drag it to heel. More often it leaves me covered in ectoplasmic drool that reeks of old sadness. Sometimes at two or three or four o’clock in the morning it shoves its snout in my ear, snuffling the stories of all my failures.

I don’t want this to be a Depression Blog, so I’ve stayed away, but I’ve missed it. I’ve missed visiting with you – and some of you have told me you miss me too. And Life has continued happening, much of it really good, maybe even interesting – at any rate, worth telling; it’s for you to decide whether it’s worth reading.

About a month ago that dark beast pinned me down and gnawed my bones until I could no longer stand it. I called on my doctor. Told him I was ready to give Better Living Through Chemistry another shot. Gritted my teeth and braced for a season of emotional turmoil …

… that failed to materialize.

Instead, the sun came up. The Dog slunk off. It’s still there, watching me, waiting, I suppose. It never actually leaves. But I don’t mind it when it stays in the shadows. It’s familiar. That darkening of the shadows makes the light brighter. I don’t think I’d know quite how to be me if it left entirely.

But back when the dark was over everything and spring was just a hint of a promise I was talking about this – the Black Dog, and the Fundamental Pointlessness of My Continued Existence – with my friend the Gardener, and out of the blue he asked me to send him photographs.

“What do you mean, send you photographs?” I asked.

“You know, just photographs. Of your life. Of things you see and do.” He sends me pictures often – of his beautiful garden, and his newly refurbished kitchen, and the places he visits when he needs to run away from his everyday life. I, on the other hand, rarely think to take photos. I’m usually in too much of a hurry, or I’ll notice something worth remembering but I think I’ll come back for it later, only by then the light has usually changed and it’s gone.

I don’t recall the context of this request. He may simply have been trying to change the subject … but probably not. This friend likes to plant a seed and then step back and watch to see what may grow. Sometimes the result is unexpected. Usually it’s beautiful. So, after I’d thought about it for a while, I decided to do as he asked.

The problem, as it turned out, was that my pictures were incomplete without words – because I am a storyteller, not a gardener. That made WhatsApp an unsatisfactory medium for sharing them. Also, it occurred to me that there might be others who would enjoy them too. Then it took me a while actually to sit down and pull this together. But … here I am, rising through the rich, dark earth, thrusting past the choke of weeds. Choosing to grow, for as long as I can.

I love this view from our backyard. The poplar trees border a cherry orchard. They flex when the wind blows, painting the sky.

I do not understand people who don’t love dandelions. How do you call such bright, happy things weeds? They are little drops of sun that warm us before the sun makes up its mind to do so. They nourish the bees, the soil, us. I love them!

Nori was one of a litter of six or seven puppies that were dumped in the middle of a highway through the hills near our home. I found them about three-and-a-half years ago, around the time I decided to quit rescue for the second time. Her litter mates were all adopted, and she should have been too … but she has severe hip dysplasia, and while we were deciding what to do about that the Hubbit fell in love with her, and the Baby Dragon said it would be cruel and unusual to send her away, so she stayed. Only now, as it’s turned out, my bed is the one she sleeps on. This is the look she gives me when she comes out to help feed the chickens, because that’s also when I throw her ball, and she has to hypnotize me every time to remind me to throw it.

My Marmeee loved daffodils. They remind me of her. A couple years ago I bought a big bag of bulbs, but didn’t get around to planting them. Finally, last fall, I shoved them into one of the raised beds in the vegetable garden just to keep them alive, and later this year we’ll dig them up and put them where we want them, scattered around the little meadow we’re creating in the front yard. In a few years, spring will be a glorious mass of yellow – a promise of sunshine. Meanwhile, this spring they were there, reminding me and making me smile.

We have several fruit trees in the veggie garden – a couple of plums, a pear, an apricot, a peach that grew from a pit that someone dropped next to one of the plums so now it appears that a single tree grows two different kinds of fruit. And … we had a nectarine. The fruit was so, so good – tangy and sweet and tart and everything summer! But the tree got sick. This year I saw that it was dying, and I really didn’t want to risk infecting the other trees with whatever had attacked it – some sort of boring insect, I suspect, that had drilled holes, causing it to weep sap. We cut it mostly down, leaving just enough to support a bird bath and some hanging bird feeders. We’ll have to find a spot to plant another one.

The apricot tree is the first to flower, and she looks bridal! The blossoms are gone now, and have been replaced by tiny hard green promises of fruit. Usually there’s enough for jars of jammy syrup to pour over ice cream, and for eating warm off the tree, and for sharing with friends. A couple years ago she exploded with fruit, then last year she rested – we got only one or two. Much depends on the weather; an ill-timed wind or cold snap will snatch away her bounty and leave us disappointed. But right now it looks like a good harvest year!

Phoebe joined our family in around December 2024. She was one of many dogs I’d rescued from a horrible hoarding situation. I rehomed her, and that home fell through because of divorce; then I found her another lovely home, only her adopter became sick. She came to us for fostering while her adopter waited for a new kidney, but the wait was very long, and meanwhile she became the Baby Dragon’s special girl, so here she is. Her favorite thing is a puppy whip, and when we pull up at a coffee shop drive-through her focus is total, absolute, and unwavering!

There’s a long, narrow strip of flower bed running the length of our front veranda. It’s a problematic bed; I’ve struggled to find plants that work there. This year, once again, we’re ripping out everything and trying something new. But year after year, early every spring, a single paperwhite has bloomed. I have no idea where it came from. I dug it up and split the bulbs and planted them in a couple of pots for safekeeping until we put the bed back together again, and there are about ten of the lovely things!

The view from our gate, before the leaves come through. And contrails – skyways to magical places. Maybe one day I’ll get to go.

Sunlight through spring leaves. One day soon we’ll have trees growing along both sides of the driveway, forming an arch.

Years ago we built a grape arbor in the vegetable garden, and I planted four vines, and for years cattle or goats would break through and destroy them. When they did manage to bear fruit, the chickens would cluster beneath the vines, stretching their necks and jumping up to gobble down as much as they could. We no longer have goats, and the vines are tall enough that the chickens won’t get everything, but at this stage I don’t even know whether the grapes we have are root stock or the actual varietals one wants to eat. But look how lovely the leaves are when they start to unfurl!

The Hubbit loves a bargain! He browses online auctions and snaps up a bizarre assortment of items. Recently he bought a job lot of 11 fruit tree ladders. We have four fruit trees … but it’s okay; he’s managed to sell most of them, and those that are left will serve us nicely. Some will go under the fruit trees, and a couple will be great supports for vines – squash, beans, tomatoes, all the delicious things. Mr. Orange, one of our barn cats, inspected every ladder, casually balancing on top of the fence as he made his way from one to the next.

I had a birthday in February and a friend knitted me this beautiful little basket.

Little things that keep you awake

I don’t often have insomnia. Used to be I’d drag my feet about going to bed. I’d promise myself an early night; I’d want to sleep – but around 10:00pm, if I happened to be watching TV, my inner toddler would kick and scream and insist on One More Episode! Just one! No, I don’t want to go shower! I don’t want to climb into bed with a book! No, no, NO! And my weary, disappointed inner adult, longing for the comfort of a clean body reclining between soft sheets, would fall asleep uncomfortably upright in my rocking chair, watching just one more episode of stupid.

That doesn’t happen so much since the Baby Dragon moved in. We share a bathroom, you see, and to get to it I have to walk through their bedroom, and dragons have Rules and Routines, and can be inflexible about enforcing Boundaries. My inner toddler is scared of the dragon, and my inner adult is loving having routines that cannot easily be overturned (even by a lifelong overturner of routines like myself), and consequently I’m usually in bed before 10:00PM and contentedly nodding off over a book well before midnight.

When insomnia strikes, it’s in the small hours. I may wake up to pee, and instead of immediately toppling back to sleep afterwards I trip over some small worry. I remember a mistake I made 10, 20, 30 years ago. I brood on an unkindness I committed, a kindness I failed to commit, a regret, a sadness, a what if. I worry about war and rumors of war, a new strain on our family budget, a hope that may or may not be deferred. At last I sleep, usually as dawn is breaking, and wake a few hours later exhausted and unfriendly.

The small thing that’s been keeping me awake lately is a little different from all that.

Goldilocks – because everything must be Just Right

The first week

The Baby Dragon walked into our big workshop to feed the feral cats, and disturbed a mama in the middle of giving birth next to their feeding station. As the scared little mama fled, a tiny new person literally fell out of her body. We put the baby up in the bed beside the feeder, next to another small furry ball, hoping mama would return. And she did – when we checked later the new baby was clean and had a full belly, and her sibling was gone. But mama didn’t come back, even though we waited and worried all day.

Naturally, I immediately called my friend Morkattepus, who has been rescuing neonate kittens forever, and explained that this was not something we were equipped to handle, and would she please magic away the problem.

She would not. She could not. It’s kitten season; her fosters are caring for entire litters – and no, apparently you can’t simply incorporate a new kitten into a litter, because cross-contamination and disease are a Thing.

So I went to the top. Bastet has been the acknowledged Cat Lady of our region for longer than I’ve lived here – and I arrived during the last century. She suggested I ask Morkattepus.

Clearly, this tiny, terrifyingly fragile being was our new houseguest.

One day old – deaf, blind, and utterly defenseless

Morkattepus stepped up with a supply of feed, an incubator, a bottle, and a list of instructions that were impossible to follow all at the same time. Feed her every two-and-a-half to three hours, Morkattepus said – but not too often because that could kill her, and not too long a wait between feeds because her blood sugar could plummet and that could also kill her. The incubator had to be around 90 degrees Fahrenheit, or she could get a chill and die, but not too hot or she could dehydrate. The formula had to be not hot enough to scald her, but warm enough not to form a cold mass in her belly (which would kill her).

That first week dissolved into a blur. It didn’t matter that she was deaf and blind; this fierce scrap of pure will-to-live made it clear from the outset that she was in charge, and also that she had not and would not watch a single YouTube video on how to be a kitten. She fought the bottle while in a frenzy to be fed. She insisted that I was hiding a nipple at the base of my thumb and suckled furiously there. If the formula was one tiny fraction of a degree above or below below Just Right, she spat out the nipple and shrieked her tiny shriek of rage.

Two days old

And she wouldn’t poop! Kittens cannot empty themselves without help. Mama cats stimulate them to eliminate by licking their genitals; we wiped the area gently with paper towel or tissue. She peed like a fountain, but poop she would not – not for days on end – and when she did, she would strain and scream and her tiny anus would swell like a balloon.

Morkattepus suggested diluting her feed. Google spewed up an assortment of terrifying congenital conditions that might kill her. Morkattepus told us to hold her under a stream of warm tap water aimed at her anus, but not to let the rest of her get wet because kittens cannot regulate their temperature and a chill could kill her. But how, exactly, does one keep a steady stream of water at exactly the right temperature, flowing at exactly the right rate, directed at exactly the correct spot on a tiny, flailing, freaked out piece of fluff with spikes on every foot that snag in your clothes, the wet rag, the paper towel, your skin, while a stinking stream the color and consistency of cheap mustard dribbles into the sink? You don’t, that’s how. You let her get as soaked as it takes to empty her out and clean her off, and then you dry her as best you can and hold her against your own warm skin, and you pop her next to the heat lamp in her incubator and hope for the best.

Five days old – when she fought the bottle, milk went everywhere!

The crucial measure of success, Morkattepus insisted, was her weight. If she was growing, all was well. And grow she did. We weighed her on my kitchen scale every morning, and she grew from 4.3 oz on Day 2 to 6.4 oz on her one-week birthday.

The second week

That was good news, but after a week of this the Baby Dragon and I were ready to kill each other and jump off a high building, not necessarily in that order. Morkattepus had sent us a table outlining how much and how often to feed a growing kitten.

Seven feeds a day? For another week? Seriously? Setting aside the need for sleep, how is one supposed to divide 24 by seven while sleep deprived and not go completely insane trying to keep track of feeding times? We decided that mama cats don’t wear watches or do arithmetic, and this kitten would do just fine on SIX feeds a day, a nice tidy four hours apart.

11 days old

That didn’t go well. I’m not sure how long we held out, but we buckled and went back to feeds every three-ish hours (we were too tired to do actual arithmetic, but she got seven meals a day). The Baby Dragon did the last feed at around 10.00PM, and I got up at around 12.45AM for the next feed, and stayed awake until the 4.00AM feed, then passed out and the Baby Dragon did the first feed after the sun was up, and … somehow we made it work. She acquired a name – I wanted to name her for a feminist heroine, the one who sang the song about “I am [kitten], hear me roar!”, but the Baby Dragon wasn’t feeling it and I was too tired to care, so we settled on Goldilocks because she insisted that everything had to be Just Right.

We had a group chat going by then, to ask Morkattepus for advice, record her weight, and share information. (It was easier than talking. Definitely easier than remembering anything we were told. Sleep deprivation … The torture is real!) I’ve just scrolled through it and that entire second week was all about poop. Did she poop, or didn’t she? If she did, was it yellowish (not good) or brown (much to be desired, and rare)? The consistency of peanut butter or toothpaste, or actual diarrhea? Unusually stinky? And – just giving you the Reader’s Digest version – she would go two or three days without pooping, and she screamed when it happened, and she usually needed the warm water treatment, and if you were to poop as much as she did (factoring in your relative size) you would fill your toilet bowl. Two or three times a week.

Morkattepus suggested a drop of olive oil in her feed, to ease things along. Bastet said mineral oil would be better. The poop got stickier.

We decided to collect some poop and take it to the vet to see if she had an infection or infestation, and she promptly stopped pooping except for tiny squirts of diarrhea that were immediately absorbed by the tissues. Morkattepus sent us to a vet tech who gave her an enema, but she still wouldn’t poop, so she loaded us down with meds and told us she looked great and not to worry.

13 days old – loves snuggles and tummy rubs

On her two-week birthday she weighed 9.7 oz. And actually other things happened that week, beyond the poop obsession … Her eyes opened, and she began reacting to sounds, and she loved having her tummy tickled, and she became aware of the world, and of us as fellow living beings worthy of attention.

The third week

That week she graduated to five feeds a day, with kitten pate (not made of kittens) mixed into her formula. She wasn’t a fan of the chewy milk, but she choked it down, gained weight, and within a few days was down to four feeds a day. I get to sleep a whole uninterrupted night now, you guys!

22 days old, and starting to pay attention to the things around her

Now that I’m caught up on sleep I almost feel like a pro! We moved her from the incubator to a big old laundry tub – the one that used to be full of all my neglected paperwork; we put in a heat lamp, some soft blankets, and a litter box. She started coming to us when we went to get her for a feed.

The poop situation got better while she was on the meds … and then it got worse, and I made up my mind that I was going to get a sample to the vet if it killed me. (Spoiler: it didn’t, but my psyche may be permanently traumatized.) I put a Zip-Loc baggie and a spoon next to where we feed her, and waited for my opportunity.

Her output became miniscule.

So … okay, be warned, this next bit is gross. Feel free to skip right on over to the next kitten picture. On the Friday afternoon, with the weekend looming and the vet getting ready to close, I fed her as much as she would hold, and I rubbed her belly and tickled her bits until she couldn’t hold back even if she wanted to, and, while yelling “EW! EW! EW!” at the top of my voice, I scooped the outcome off her butt with my finger and popped it into the baggie not once but THREE TIMES because I wasn’t about to go through that and not have a big enough specimen for the lab to test.

That particular finger may never feel clean again.

The fourth week

Here is the promised picture:

18 days old, and opinionated. But cute. So dang cute!

Naturally, as soon as I’d done hurtling to the vet on my errand of scientific inquiry, her poop turned a nice healthy dark brown, and stopped smelling worse than poop should, and when she had to go instead of screaming she started to relax right into it with an expression of beatific calm.

I tell myself this is a good outcome, and so are the wholly negative test results returned by the vet a few days later. And when she weighed in at 15.4 oz on her three-week birthday I didn’t wonder how much of that was because she hadn’t pooped in three days. I stopped worrying about poop altogether.

After that it got easier. Sort of. I mean, she’s a cat-in-the-making, so she decided she needed to kill her food. This entails either climbing the bottle (and the hand holding it) and clinging with all claws engaged, or spanking the bottle as hard and fast as she can – and if a claw happens to go under a cuticle that’s just our bad luck. Morkattepus said, “Yeah, some of them do that,” and recommended a glove. I just pinch the scruff of her neck and give her a little shake. I’m pretty sure that’s what a mama cat would do.

4 weeks old – she thinks she’s a meerkat

Meanwhile, she continues to grow. I forgot to weigh her on her four-week birthday, but the day after she was up to 21.4 oz. That’s a five-fold increase in only four weeks!

The fifth week

And here we are. She’s a big, strong baby – but she still hasn’t studied up on How To Kitten. And momma, we are struggling to transition!

She does not like the litter box. The way she sees it, she’s spent the past four-and-a-half weeks learning to flop down on her side and offer herself up to the Tissue Priestess for emptying, and she doesn’t see why that should change. So Morkattepus told us to stop helping her and wait for her to figure out how to take care of her own business. Today the Baby Dragon heard her crying and just couldn’t stand it, and it was bothering me too, so I told them, “Go ahead and help her – she’s still young; maybe she needs a couple extra days.” Moments later I heard cries of joy and sounds of jubilation, because she pooped in the litter box, and also all over herself so she needed to go under the warm tap, but still, the baby girl did it! So, a breakthrough worthy of celebration.

But solid food? Nah, that’s another story. I’ve offered her kitten pate warmed up to the exact temperature of a freshly-killed mouse, just like mama would make it, and she’s not having it. So mealtimes now involve about 10 minutes of me shoving tiny bits of pate into her mouth, which she immediately sprays everywhere, and then I get to spend the rest of the day picking crunchy crumbs of fish-smelling stuff off my face, my sweater, my hair, my fingernails.

She also needs intellectual enrichment. I gave her a toy mouse, a couple toilet roles and an upside-down cardboard box with doorways cut out. She loves hiding inside the box, and also she likes to play with the kitty litter. So … a win?

32 days old, and starting to live large!

Two more weeks, and Morkattepus will put her up for adoption. But now I have a new reason to wake up and worry. Yesterday morning the Baby Dragon found the rest of her litter. They’ve been living in the hay barn, hiding beneath and behind the hay bales. There are four of them, as wild and skittish as their little feral mama.

What on earth are we going to do about them?

So now what?

It’s the silence that gets to me. For the first time in 18 years there isn’t a Belgian Malinois living in my house and it’s … quiet. There are spaces – in the house, in my day, in my heart – that are empty, and I’m not sure how to fill them.

Argos came into my life 11 years ago when I was falling apart after quitting rescue for the first time. He left last week, and now, as I quit rescue again (for real this time), how do I hold myself together?

I’ve mentioned him here often, and shared bits of his story. But what can I tell you now that might capture his essence, give a shape to my loss?

He loved to carry things, and he would never believe a thing was too big, too heavy, or too awkward to carry. When the Hubbit built the fences around our farmlet Argos sometimes went to keep him company … just for as long as it took the Hubbit to turn his back, so Argos could steal a 10 or 12-foot plank and carry it, proudly aloft, up the driveway. For several years, after Halloween, we’d pick up a truckload of pumpkins for the cattle, and we’d stack them in a pile next to the shop, and Argos would get his jaw around a big one and carry it off to some other corner of the farmlet. And he never jumped into the car without bringing something to chew – although several times we had to argue over whether or not he could get a large pumpkin or a fence rail into the backseat.

He loved the river. I’d stand at the top of a 10-foot high bank with a chuck-it and a ball, and hurl it as far into the Columbia as I could, and he’d retrieve over and over and over again … once I tried to keep track and lost count at around 50 retrieves and still he kept going without stopping.

Nothing fazed him. New vet’s examining table can’t be lowered? No problem – he just jumped up onto it. Hop onto a bus while out adventuring with mom? Say hi to random strangers? Help a friendly toddler eat an ice cream? Fetch his ball from the top of the climbing frame at a kids’ play park? Jump overboard into the ocean and swim to the beach? Whatever it was, he said Oh HECK Yeah! He lived in the now, now, NOW! and with him as my closest and most constant companion I quite often could too.

Early last year there was an accident. A friend failed to tell me she was on her way to visit; I failed to notice he was out front; he met her at the gate and launched into his favorite game – Bite The Tires. She ran over him.

He seemed more indignant than damaged, but of course I took him to the vet. No bones were broken. He was bruised and admitted to being a bit tender here and there, so she prescribed pain medication and anti-inflammatories. He insisted he was fine.

Over the past year it’s become progressively obvious that he wasn’t fine. In retrospect I know there must have been massive soft tissue damage – torn muscles and tendons that formed swaths of scar tissue as they knitted themselves together. Would his story have ended differently if I’d insisted on more diagnostics? Taken him to a specialist at the vet school? Tried other therapies sooner? Maybe. But living with his vigorous insistence that he was fine, his continued drive to run, to play, to scream, to fly and jump and swim and body slam and fetch all the balls and carry all the things, I figured it was just a matter of time and medication before he was back to his old self.

When he started falling over I took him for physical therapy, to loosen muscles too tight for spinning and weaving and sharp turns. He loved those massage sessions! The therapist told me to have him do exercises that involved stepping over poles. That didn’t work out too well because whenever I set up the poles on the veranda he carried them off – but I figured it was okay, the massage seemed to be working.

Only he kept falling over. Every time he started a spin, down he’d go, landing with a thump and a bewildered expression that asked WTF just happened? Meanwhile the meds were having side effects – he began to fall over his feet. He lost control of his bowels (and gained a new nickname: Mr Ploppy). He lost the ability to stand up on his own, so we got him a lifting harness. He lost some bladder control, so we started to keep a mop bucket permanently at the ready. We bought a cover to protect the backseat of my car, but although he still loved to come with me (and sang a song of heartbreak when I left him behind), I soon realized that riding along while I ran errands left him exhausted and crippled.

For the past several weeks, every time the Hubbit or I got up during the night, we’d detour past his bed on our way back from the bathroom to make sure he hadn’t fallen off it and that he was comfortable. In the morning I’d get up and open the back door to let the other dogs out, and then the Baby Dragon would help him out while I followed behind with a mop and also unplopped his bed. A couple hours later they’d help him outside again so he could stagger around yelling, and, later, lie on the grass yelling, while they tended the horses. Every afternoon he came out with me to feed the chickens, then later to lie on the grass and watch while I fed them.

Ten days ago we dug a grave for him, hoping we wouldn’t need it for at least a few weeks, maybe even months. We started having conversations about how we would know it was Time. How small would his world have to become? At what point would he tell us he was ready?

Last Wednesday I realized he would never, never, ever admit he was ready. That was going to have to be my job.

It took several calls to find a vet I trusted who could be available that day, but I did. Then I helped him out to a sunny place in the front yard, and went into the freezer to find a big marrow bone for him to work on while I sat nearby and weeded my garden.

He worked on that bone all afternoon. He cleaned out every last fragment of marrow, and was still crunching through it when the vet arrived. The Baby Dragon lifted him by his harness to help him to the soft blanket we’d laid out next to his grave, and found he could no longer walk at all – but he clenched his jaws and took that bone with him, and he was so focused on reducing it to shards it took two hefty shots of tranquilizer before he finally laid it down and let go – of his bone, of all the loud mad joyousness of life, of me.

And now the house is quiet, and it no longer smells of poop. The remaining dogs in our pack are calm. Getting up in the morning is stress-free and leisurely. Where, for a few days, there was a hole in the front yard, now there’s a shrub.

I’m in the final stages of winding down my work in rescue. The last two dogs in my care have gone home. I’m not completely done with it – someone else is taking over, so there’s admin to deal with, emails to write, a couple neuters to set up for dogs that were adopted as young puppies. I’ll probably volunteer, at least for a while, until the new director is up to speed. But I’m no longer the decider. It’s no longer my job to choose which appeals for help get a yes, which a no.

Looking forward at my life, I see an open space – an unmarked beach where the tide has just run out. Right now it feels like a vast absence, an emptiness waiting to be filled. There are all these things I want to do – projects the Baby Dragon and I have planned for the farmlet, things I need to think about and study and learn, friendships I want to nurture, places I want to go, books I want to read. I need to do something about my health. Writing, of course – at last to finish my book, and then the next story, and the next, and I think I’d like to get back to this blog as well. So much I’ve wanted to do for so long, only I couldn’t because life has been complicated and also rescue ate me alive.

I stand at the edge of uncharted space and wonder, how will I navigate this without my boy?

There’s a little Border Collie under my desk. His name is Zazu, and he came to us a couple years back because the shelter called and said if I didn’t take him they’d have to put him down, because he’s a freaky little bitey beast. He was Argos’ dog, and now he’s mine. I guess we’ll have to figure out what comes next together.

The week before the birthday party

Monday morning I dropped off a dog and cat at the vet for dental care. I futzed around figuring out what I needed to buy for Saturday’s tea party. I had some ingredients but … meh … didn’t feel like baking.

Tuesday morning I chatted with Nommomma, my daughter-from-another-mother in South Africa. She’s a warrior queen – I should give her the name Boudicca, except that’s the name I already gave my cat (the one who went to the vet on Monday) so it would be weird. She’s going to war against a cluster of corrupt individuals who have been systematically ripping off a community organization established to help children and youth and battered women, and I am so dang proud of her. She’s amazing!

Boudicca the Warrior Queen

Tuesday afternoon Birdy came over for tea and told me her shrink had started her on a new antidepressant, and I was glad because she’s been mired in the blahs for a while now. I’d been nagging her to get her meds adjusted, but she kept forgetting. I asked her if the shrink had discussed the results of a memory test they did last week, but she said they were so busy discussing the new meds she’d forgotten to ask. Or maybe they had talked about it, and she’d forgotten.

Wednesday was drop dead day to start baking for the birthday party, so I faffed around and binged on Reddit and did all the free games on the New York Times and I may have played Slither, and finally I went outside to feed the horses (usually Baby Dragon’s job, but they were visiting friends) and that’s when Birdy’s son called me.

“There’s something wrong with my mom. She’s just lying there and I can’t get her to wake up and I can’t get her to speak to me and she’s not making any sense,” he said.

So I told him to call 911, and then I finished feeding the horses, and I fed the dogs, because I’ve been down this road with the Hubbit and I knew I could trust the EMTs to deal with the medical emergency, but I also knew that once they’d taken her to the hospital I’d have several hours of sit-around-and-wait, and there was no reason for the horses and dogs to be hungry. Then I found the envelope of legal documents including the Medical Power of Attorney, and I called Birdy’s son back for a status update, and he said the ambulance had just left to take her to the hospital, so that’s where I went.

Birdy is lean and tough and looks taller than she is. She strides when she walks and she takes no shit from anybody. So it was disconcerting to see how tiny she looked, curled in on herself under a heap of those thin white cotton hospital blankets, her eyes sunken, cheeks gaunt, hair soaked with sweat and clinging to her scalp.

“Hey,” I said, stroking her arm through the blankets. “How are you doing?” She blinked at me but didn’t respond. I noticed her foot was bare, so tucked the blanket around it, then sat in the uncomfortable upright chair and waited for something to happen.

Someone – a doctor? – came into the room. “Relationship?” he asked. “Friend,” I said. “And I’m her POA.” He nodded. “Good. Does that mean we can do the tests we need to do? She wasn’t very cooperative earlier.” “You do whatever she needs you to do,” I said. He nodded again and left.

Nurses came in – two women and a man. They needed a urine sample. Needed to insert a catheter. I jumped up. “Oh!” I said. “Should I leave?” The older, larger nurse – she wore her hair like a cap of tight blond curls – shrugged. “Up to you,” she said. She folded down the blankets. Birdy snatched them back, pulled them up to her chin, glared. The nurse said soothing words and folded again. Another snatch. Fold. Snatch. Fold.

I walked to the head of the bed and took Birdy’s hand, lacing my fingers through hers and studiously ignoring whatever the nurses were doing further down the bed. She opened her eyes and fixed me with the fierce, uncomprehending glare of a trapped hawk. Her mouth opened, her voice a harsh squawk. “Get. Out!” she demanded.

I was embarrassed. Did she think I was a party to her violation? Only … of course, I was. I had approved this. “Get. Out!” she insisted, and I thought maybe I should – maybe she wanted privacy while the medical people did what they had to do. But then she twitched her head to aim her glare at the nurse. “Get. Out!” she croaked again, and I understood that those were the only words she had, and she wasn’t directing them at me – she didn’t know me, and if I left the only unoccupied nurse was the little male one, and to be held down by a strange man would surely be more frightening, so I stayed and held her hands until they were done. Then I asked them to bring her a heated blanket, and after I’d tucked that around her I sat down again to wait some more.

I don’t know how long I stayed … six or seven hours, I think, sitting in that chair under the harsh white light, watching her sleep, talking occasionally into the emptiness of her occasional angry stare. Nurses, doctors, orderlies – it was hard to know what each person’s role was – came and went. They asked her name, pushing at her, trying to break through, but she would not or could not respond. They took blood. They did an EKG and again I had to hold her down because she kept snatching at the wires, yanking the sticky sensors off her sweat-sticky body, viciously pinching the nurse’s arm.

They ruled out a stroke. All the test results came back in normal range. The only drug they found in her system was weed – no surprises there. “Yes,” I told them every time someone asked, “she uses weed every day. No, no other drugs, except for the prescribed ones. No, I don’t have a list of her meds. Yes, I’m her POA, but mainly I’m her friend, not her keeper, but if you call the pharmacy they’ll be able to tell you exactly what she’s on. She’s just started on something new.” I told them which pharmacy to call, over and over again, but they kept asking.

After a few hours a doctor came in – a short Asian man with quietness wrapped about him like a magical cloak. “Can you tell me your name?” he asked her. She told him. “Do you know where you are?” he asked. She did not. He nodded, patted her hand, turned to me.

“Has she been depressed?” he asked. I gave him the answer that had become rote. “She’s on meds for chronic depression. And lately she’s been a bit down. But no, this wasn’t a suicide attempt,” I said.

“You’re sure of that?” he asked. I was very sure. Suicide is Birdy’s plan for when she decides she’s losing too many marbles too quickly. I don’t like that and I’ve told her I won’t help, but I accept and respect her choice. So it wouldn’t be an impulse. It wouldn’t happen the day before we had plans, she wouldn’t go without leaving a note, and she wouldn’t screw it up.

“Okay then,” he said, and handed me a document to sign – a Do Not Resuscitate order. “So what do you want me to do if her heart stops? Or if she stops breathing?” It was my turn to stare uncomprehendingly. He nudged me for a response. “Must we do chest compressions? Intubate her?”

I had no idea. “Well … will she be okay, if you do that? Will she recover? What’s even wrong with her?”

He shrugged gently. “I don’t know,” he said.

Sometimes they break your ribs when they do chest compressions to restart your heart. If your bones are brittle and fragile, they may take the rest of your life to heal. When they intubate you, they cage your breath and bind it to the rhythm of the machine.

I looked at the doctor. “I have a copy of her living will,” I told him, pulling out the manila envelope stuffed with her papers. “Would you look at it? Advise me?”

He scanned it, pointed to one phrase: If I should be diagnosed to be in a terminal condition by the attending physician... “You know, if your heart stops beating or you stop breathing, that’s pretty terminal,” he said.

I looked at Birdy, curled so small under the heap of sheets. I imagined her standing beside me. Silently I asked her, What would you choose? “Let me go,” she said.

“Okay, then,” I said. I fished a pen out of my handbag, signed the DNR, handed it to the doctor. About half an hour later I went home.

I called to check in around 4.00AM, when I got up to pee. Her nurse told me he’d found her wandering down the corridor in search of a bathroom. When I woke I went to visit her, which involved an hour or two of “But there’s nothing wrong with me and I want to go home!” and “Birdy, you collapsed, you were unconscious and you need to give the doctors time to figure out what’s going on,” and “Well I don’t remember that, and I feel fine!” Then I went home, did chores, baked pound cake for a trifle, and and mixed up dough for a batch of oatmeal apple cookies for the party. I was too tired to visit that evening, but I called and the nurse said she was “doing great!” so I left a message for the doctor to call me, and went to bed.

By the next morning they’d moved her from the ER to a ward. She grinned when I arrived, informed me that I’d been popping in and out of her room every couple hours. “You must be bored here. Where is your room?” she asked. We chatted for an hour or so and most of the conversation sort of made sense, and she agreed it was probably better to stay in the hospital until the doctors figured out what was going on with her. Before I went home I left another message for the doctor to call me.

I baked a Passover cake – chocolate, orange and hazelnut flavored, rich and delicious and perfect treat for the gluten-free. I started baking the apple oatmeal cookies – just a few at a time because you can’t put them too close together on the baking sheet – and that’s when Cornucopia called.

“Do you know Birdy thinks she’s going home?” she said. “Argh,” I said. “I went to visit her – took her some chocolate – and she thought I was the taxi driver. She said the hospital had called a taxi and was sending her home. I don’t know if it’s real or a fantasy,” she said. So I called the hospital, and it was true. The doctor – who still had not called me – had spent ten minutes chatting with Birdy, determined that she knew her name and address, and had indeed ordered a taxi to send her home.

My Inner Karen erupted. “Are you kidding me? Do they even know what’s wrong with her?” Well … not as far as that nurse knew. There was nothing in her chart. No, the doctor wasn’t available. “So you’ve sent home a woman who two days ago was unconscious for an unknown reason, who today didn’t recognize a good friend, and who is now free to hop into her car and drive all over town and potentially collapse all over again and no one knows why or how to prevent it. Are you fucking kidding me?” The nurse said, helpfully, “Well, can’t you take her keys away?” I explained that no, I did not have the right to take car keys from a grown-ass woman after a medical professional had told her she was fine. I left another message for the doctor to call me.

I finished baking my cookies that evening. The next day, Saturday, I made the trifle and we covered the table with deliciousness. Birdy didn’t make it to my birthday party – she wasn’t feeling well, so I told her to stay home and rest – but it turns out I have a surprisingly large number of people I can regard as friends worth baking for.

This all happened a few chaotic weeks ago. For a while I called Birdy several times a day, then daily. Now we’re back to checking in two or three times a week, having tea together most weekends, helping each other out as needs arise. The doctor didn’t ever call. I figured out how to stop being The Person With The Power Of Attorney, remembered how to be a friend, and tucked all the legal documents back inside their manila envelope stored inside a folder labeled “Birdy” in my filing cabinet. I gave away most of the leftovers, and am about ready to bake another batch of oatmeal apple cookies. Maybe I’ll do some in time for Birdy’s next visit.

Gospel

So.

It’s been a while.

Thank you to those who have periodically asked when I’d be back. Special thanks to the friend I had coffee with the other day, who told me she’d popped in here just for a read, and enjoyed it, and hoped for more.

I’ve wanted to stop by. Say hello, share a bit of this and that, invite you to comment (that’s the best part of blogging, after all – the comments, the dialog). It’s a rare day that doesn’t see some event or thought unfurl into the beginning of a post – this, after all, has always been the best way I’ve found to unravel thoughts, encapsulate experiences, try to make sense of a world and a life that so often seems to make no sense at all.

But actually sitting down and getting it from head to keyboard to here? The more time has passed since I last posted, the more impossible that has felt! I fret, I overthink – people have been nice about this little corner of the web, but really, who cares? And if anyone does – or even if this is just for me – where to start? And what about all the other shit I should be shoveling? There are boxes of random junk (to be repaired / donated / put away but I don’t know where / made into art) in odd corners of my house … it’s 10 years since we submitted our taxes and I’m pretty sure that’s a felony … the few remaining rescue dogs in my care will never go home if I don’t update their profiles on the online adoption sites … the trumpet vine I was supposed to kill off this year is throttling my hydrangeas, which also desperately need water … I need to go to Costco, WinCo, online to buy things we really must have – if not immediately, then definitely before the apocalypse … I have a book that I ache to write that simply isn’t moving … I have a freezer full of stinky meat that needs to be cooked up and fed to the dogs before the [vegan, squeamish] Girl Child arrives next week … there’s an actual trolley load of unread / unsorted / unfiled / too-long-untended paperwork (bills, records, appeals, demands, Christmas letters and birthday cards, maybe even checks for all I know) looming behind me as I sit at my desk – don’t believe me? Think I’m exaggerating? Here’s a picture!

Yes, my desk really does get that dusty. I live on a farmlet, with dogs, in a place where wind blows. Also, life is short. And yes, my workspace does include dog crates – two of them at present with more standing by, and dog beds as well. And yes, that damn trolley will be empty of paperwork before I die, unless the apocalypse comes first, in which case it won’t matter, or unless I unexpectedly kick the bucket, in which case I’m really sorry, Hubbit-honey.

I digress. My point is, I need to STOP!!!

I must – I NEED TO – yawp!

I know my yawp doesn’t matter. I know that in the year-and-a-half since my last yawp, AI has developed that could write these thoughts just as well as I can (listen to Act 2 of Episode 832: That Other Guy of That American Life if you don’t believe me – it’s chilling).

But … I think, therefore I yawp. If I don’t yawp, I can’t grok – not you, not the world, not even my own self.

So where to start? Does it matter?

I’ll start right here, with a bundle of thoughts that have been rattling around my head for years, and that are suddenly front of mind. I’m not going to try to make any sense out of them today. I’m just going to dump them here for future attention – because, yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m back. I know it’s a long shot, because chances are most people who used to follow me have drifted off by now … but I’m kinda hoping for a response. Just a bit of dialog, you know? To help move things along. I’m not looking for an echo chamber or an argument- just a meeting of minds to share perspectives. But that’s up to you – I’ll be here, gnawing on this or some other bone, either way.

So what got me thinking about this today (as opposed to all the other days I’ve thought about it) was a text I received yesterday from someone I’ve loved since she was a toddler. She wrote to say that someone she loved had died unexpectedly – she’d found him – his empty body – just a few hours earlier. I called at once and we talked for a while. I wished I could just jump on a plane to be with her, but that’s not something I’m free to do right now – and anyway it’s probably not what she needs, to have to deal with an extra person underfoot and needing to be told what to do.

The thing is, she’s a Christian, as am I. He was not a believer. I don’t know whether he strongly believed in not believing – which is faith of a different flavor – or if he was indifferent, or backslidden, or disillusioned, or simply hadn’t got around to thinking about it. According to church teachings, it makes no difference. And that, for a Christian who accepts the teachings of most of the church, is frightening and it hurts and it makes the loss so, so much worse.

When Twiglet died, it was comforting to imagine her marching around, making Heaven resound with the jangling cackle of her laugh as she got everyone organized and reassured the other saints that they were doing a good job. When Marmeee died I pictured her being home, comfy and happy with her Lord, singing with the angels in perfect harmony. When the Olde Buzzard died it was a little harder, because he’d been vehemently atheistic for all my life, but I could take comfort in the fact that we had a conversation about God and faith the last time I saw him, and at that time his thinking seemed to have shifted to Team God … and although I didn’t know whether it was a real shift that he was finally able to cop to because Alzheimer’s had freed him from a lifetime of stubborn pride, or whether he was merely expressing the faith he had as a young child, I hoped.

But…

The Bible quotes Jesus as saying, “No man comes to the Father except through me” (John 14.6) – and the church teaches that this means if we don’t believe, we’re doomed and damned. And Hell and gnashing teeth and wailing forever and ever amen.

The problem with that is, sometimes I don’t believe – or I do, but … maybe not in the right way? You know – maybe not with the requisite amount of childlike faith? Because I doubt and question (and disobey “Lean-not-on-your-own-understanding”-Proverbs-3.5) – because the Bible contains so fucking many contradictions, and I don’t believe in “the inerrancy of Scripture”, and I’m not convinced that the trinity (as presented by the church) is actually a thing, and…

And that’s a bit scary. Because … what if? What if I happen to pop off while in the throes of doubt? Saved is saved, I’ve been told – it’s permanent, like a tattoo – but what if it isn’t? What if everything I believe is wrong – or, rather, what if I’m just not able to believe what’s right? What if I’m not … enough?

I mean, what do we make of faith when a hideous caricature of a golden calf rides down a golden escalator and half the nation, and a sizeable chunk of the church (that part of the church that I’d previously regarded as my people) falls to its knees in adoration, and all the stuff that follows…

Ugh, no. I don’t want to go there. That’s a whole other conversation – so many conversations – and I’m not up for any of it now – or, maybe, ever. I don’t know. But not now. And frankly, unless it turns out that we’re dealing with the Antichrist, it really doesn’t matter, probably.

So to return to my point, the thing I need to yawp about today is Hell.

It doesn’t make sense to me. I just don’t believe in it. I used to, but only by ignoring the itchy dissonance the idea made in my head, and I just can’t anymore. There are people out there who are so loathsome that part of me kinda wishes it were real, just for them, but … nah. Not even for them.

I have thought, using the brain I believe God gave me (“It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings”, Proverbs 25.2, and the church teaches that I’m the beloved child of the king of kings, which makes me a king, right? Or a kingess. Whatever) to ponder the often arcane, contradictory collection of writings we call his Word, and the teachings around that, and here are a few of the conclusions I have reached:

1. If I am created in God’s image – and I’m going to assume that both those concepts (that I have been created, and in his image) are true – then it’s reasonable to assume that I can look into my own mind and heart to see him reflected there. It’s not a clear or complete reflection, because I am a very small and imperfect mirror, but it’s there.
2. If God is good, and if God is love – and I’m going to assume both these statements are true – then he will not act in a way that violates my core understanding of what goodness and love are. My understanding is limited, and his love and goodness are huge beyond my comprehension, so it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the concept of a loving, good God who allows the suffering that happens all around the world every moment of every day, but I can accept that somehow, from a perspective way beyond my own capacity, it all makes sense. I can say, “It’s okay – he’s got this. He’s go the who-ole wo-orld in his hands, tra-la-la.” But Hell? Damnation? Just for not believing what the church teaches about Jesus? No. That wouldn’t be merely incomprehensible. For a loving, good, all-powerful God to create a destination like Hell, or to tolerate a destiny like eternal damnation, violates the core meaning of love and goodness.
3. The first four books of the New Testament, which tell of Jesus’ life and summarize his teachings, are called the Gospel – the “Good News”. The church teaches that the good news is that Jesus came to set us free from sin and death. But how is it good news if what the church actually teaches is death and damnation? I do accept that it’s possible that we, humanity, had somehow become ensnared by sin and death, and so I do believe Jesus came to set us free, and I do accept that for some reason he had to die to accomplish that – or, at any rate, that he was willing to die. (All these are topics beyond the scope of this post, but maybe we can explore them some other time.) But I have come to the conclusion that the way the church interprets the good news of his coming is way too narrow, and frankly self-serving.

So … okay. That’s where I stand on that subject. It took me a while to get to this point, and another while to feel ready to say it out loud, but here I am, and I have yawped it.

Over to you. Or not. You choose. I’ll be back when I can … and maybe I’ll pick up on this some more then, or maybe I’ll talk about something else. My garden … the weather … dogs … writing. Life is rich beyond measure, and the possibilities are endless!