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Friday, April 23, 2010

Bliss Kitty and Mouse

Once upon a time I loved reading and even sometimes writing in bed, but because I am a terrible disciplinarian, and a complete pushover, Bliss Kitty and her brother Mouse will not allow it.

Every time I start to read or write one of two things happens. Slippers (aka Bliss Kitty) comes to get petted and drool or Razzi (Mouse) comes over to meow at me and play a game of cat and mouse. I’m the cat and he’s the mouse.

I start to pet him, he moves away with the expectation that my rubber arm will stretch across feet of bed to follow him. He looks at me with a disdainful stare as I try to explain that my body cannot do what he wants. He’s been doing this several years now. Either he’s an eternal optimist or somehow brain damaged.

Besides expecting my arm to magically grow in order to follow him around (I am sure he really does think this can happen and I’m just holding out – maybe he dreamt it and is waiting for the manifestation), Razzi has another interesting personality trait. Whenever I pet his sister Slippers, he turns away and faces the wall as if he is too embarrassed to observe what is happening, or as if he wants to give us privacy, or I suppose he could be showing his annoyance that she is the object of my affection because he is, after all, a cat, and expressing annoyance is part of their gig.

When I give up and go back to my book he shows up again until I begin to pet him and he begins to move away expecting my arm to compliantly grow. If he gives up, Slippers decides that it’s her turn and rubs her head against my book, effectively knocking it out of my hand so that the only thing I can do is pet her.

I began to worry because within minutes of compliantly petting her head or stomach there would be a steady stream of drool pouring out of her smiling mouth. Nervous, I looked this up on line, thanks be to Google, and discovered that when cats drool, if it’s not a sign of illness, it’s a sign of, that’s right, bliss. Therefore Bliss Kitty. How can I deny making another living creature feel so good?

Once upon a time, in an attempt to find a way to pet and read, I found a surprising method of petting Slippers. I grab her, flip her around to lay her on her back – a feat that is actually amazing because this is a cat who is really quite skittish and likes to be petted or handled only if it is her express desire at the moment – and I pet her neck and stomach. She wraps her sweet little Bliss Kitty paws around my arm as she purrs and drools. Sometimes when I get ready to grab her she’ll run away from me until I am focused again on my book at which time she is back for more. She NEVER gets tired of this and will do it for hours if I let her.

The bed is their domain. This is sad, I know, but for as long as I’m single, I have to admit that when I wake up in the morning and the two of them are curled up on the bed, sometimes snuggling together, and sometimes at opposite ends, I feel an instantaneous joy.

So here I am at almost 2 in the morning, writing at my desk because my bed is just for sleeping and nurturing animals.



copyright 2010 Nancy Grossman-Samuel

Monday, April 12, 2010

Attrition

by Susan Cameron

Sharon stared out her front window at the house across the street. Its bushes were pruned, its grass was perfect, its fresh coat of paint gleamed softly in the sun, and it had a dignified For Sale sign posted on the lawn. The short iron fence surrounding the front courtyard entry was decked out in clean white paint, as were the bars across all the windows. Those bars gave its ownership away -- it was a single woman’s house. But the woman who owned it was no longer single, and her new man didn’t want to live there.

Above and behind the new roof rose the huge arc of the old satellite dish, installed in the back yard when TV satellite dishes were the latest technology. She smiled as she remembered how proud Ron had been of that NASA-sized dish, how much he’d loved his TV. Genial Ron, laughing with her ex, Jim, about nothing in particular, raising the Corona beer bottle to his lips, blurry blue Playboy bunny tattoo on his forearm, chunky gold bracelet sliding on his wrist, sipping his beer, always laughing. Years later, she and Jim had boarded the boat that took Ron’s ashes into Newport Bay. His widow Cynthia had hysterics in the arms of her bewildered family. Mascara ran off her false eyelashes as she clung to the container holding Ron’s ashes, screaming “No, I can’t let you go!” as the boat heaved at anchor and the green-faced mourners tried not to do the same. So many years Ron had been gone. Jim, too.

Now Cynthia was going. Ron’s life insurance had been substantial, and Cynthia had her own pension and social security money as well. It had been more than enough to pay for plastic surgery and antidepressants, more than enough to attract inappropriate men who weren’t the least bit fazed by her panic attacks and neediness. Sharon stared at the empty house and silently wished her ex-neighbor well in her new life.

God, what was this mood she was in?

The past kept interjecting itself into her present lately. She’d be walking down the street with her husband Aaron and say things like, “There was a weeping willow tree in the center of that lawn when I moved here, back when it belonged to David and Diana.” Or, “That house was originally Paul and Evelyn’s. I used to play Bunco with Evelyn and her friends.” Or, “My friends used to call this street Van Land. Everybody on the block owned a van when Jim and I moved in – eighteen vans in eighteen driveways.”

Robert and Sarah, Mike and Mary, old Bill on the corner, Patrick and Janey, Chuck and Melanie, the children who’d played Marco Polo in her swimming pool, grown up with kids of their own by now – all gone. Sharon didn’t understand why all the old names and faces were suddenly coming back to her. Some of these people had been her good friends for a while, and some just friendly acquaintances, but they’d all vanished over the years – moved away, divorced and gone, dead and gone. All of this was perfectly normal, of course. She’d felt worse about the removal of the beautiful old overgrown liquidambar trees that had once lined her street than she did about the inevitable attrition of her neighbors. So what was this mood, this ache, this inexplicable nostalgia, if it was even nostalgia at all?

One restless night, while Aaron slept, she quietly stepped into the front yard to look at Venus shining near the crescent moon. Her old Toyota was parked in the driveway, and she sat on the trunk and tilted her head back to drink in the beauty of the sky. When she looked down from the moon and stars at Cynthia’s empty house, it finally struck her.

Cynthia was the last original owner in the neighborhood – except Sharon herself.

She looked back up at Venus and the moon and nodded once, as if they had spoken to her. She stood up, yawned, raised her arms toward the sky and stood on her toes, stretching every muscle in her body. She winced as she took inventory: a twinge in her right hand where she’d long ago cut herself in a kitchen accident, a zing in the left thumb where arthritis had set in; a ligament twanged near her left knee, trashed in a high-impact aerobics class thirty-five years before.

Sharon sighed, looked at Cynthia’s house and turned away. Her knee clicked all the way back to her front door.

copyright 2010, Susan Cameron

Monday, April 5, 2010

Late Bloomers

With thanks to MJ.

David and Joanna came late to love, just good friends until the hot summer night he first noticed the cereus on her back patio.

“What’s this scraggly thing?” David asked, his eyes smiling.

“My night-blooming cereus,” she said, caressing the sad plant. “My brother in California used to have one and it bloomed once when I was visiting. We kept vigil for a few nights, waiting for it to blossom, and we had a big celebration when it did. It only blooms once a year for one night, so you don’t want to miss it. One night, one huge perfect flower. The next morning it’s gone, drooping like a deflated balloon. It was so beautiful, so fragrant, I had to get one for myself.”

“I can’t wait to see it,” he said. “When will it bloom again?”

“This one’s never bloomed,” she said, shaking her head.

“How long have you been nurturing this thing?” he asked.

“Eight years,” she said.

“You’ve been waiting eight years for it to bloom?” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“Amazing,” he said, taking her face in his hands and kissing her gently for the first time.


For the twelve years they were together, the cereus never flowered, never even produced a bud. It sat on the screened-in back porch every summer, and Joanna moved it inside when the air turned brisk in the fall.

“Why don’t you give up on that thing?” David would say periodically. “It’s never going to bloom.”

“Just you watch,” she’d say, “one day you’ll eat your words.”

“Sure I will,” he’d say.

“It has medicinal value, you know,” she’d say in the plant’s defense. “There’s something in it like digitalis, something that strengthens the heart.”

“Maybe it should give itself a shot of digitalis,” he’d say, chuckling.

David would point it out to guests as if introducing a family member.

“This is our never-blooming cereus,” he’d say. “I hear it’s a real wonder when it blooms. Should be any time now.” He’d wink at Joanna.

“Oh ye of little faith,” she’d say, pretending disappointment in him, and she’d hover close to the plant, like a mother protecting her only child.


When David got sick, Joanna nursed him through surgery and chemotherapy, bad days and okay days and even some good days. Finally, he was better and they began to enjoy life again.

It was a mild summer with bright sunny days, and they went to the beach and picnicked in the woods like young lovers. One evening at dinner, after an especially good day, she thought he was joking when he clutched his chest. When he couldn’t breathe, she lost her smile. When he fell from the chair into her arms, they sank to the floor together and he was gone.

She couldn’t cry or sleep as the summer turned sultry. Family and friends carried her from one day to the next until one by one they returned to their own lives, leaving her alone. That’s when she saw the bud on the cereus - just the barest beginning of a flower. She glared at it, anger rising.

“So now you decide to bloom?” she screamed. “All this time I told him – just you wait – and nothing. How can you do this?”

She kicked the flowerpot, wanting it to shatter. When it didn’t budge, she turned her back on it.

But she couldn’t ignore it. Every night she sat up on the patio with the cereus, watching the bud become like two hands cupped together. On a night as steamy as when David first kissed her, Joanna sat, eyes closed, remembering his hands gentle on her face. Hearing a soft pop, she opened her eyes to a beautiful white flower unfolding to the size of a dinner plate. She inhaled the sweet vanilla scent and finally cried. When she had no more tears and the flower hung limp in the dawn’s light, Joanna fell as soundly asleep as if she were wrapped in David’s arms.

Copyright Liz Zuercher, 2010