The back door came unhinged in the hovel she lived in. so when she got back home from wherever she had been, there had been a kind intruder who sparkled up the place. Tidied up the dishes and polished up its face. Brightened up the house by cleaning all the glass— giving the mirrors and windows more than just a pass. Plumped up all the sofa cushions, scrubbed down all the floors. Polished all the bathroom fixtures, fixed all of the doors. Grime and dust and smudges that had grown over the years were abolished in one massive cleaning in arrears. Who the house fairy might have been, she never quite determined, but her house was clean and glowing, its corners all de-vermined. At first she was in shock and astonished at the brass of the home invasion, but then it came to pass that she kind of liked the order, the cleanliness and polish. She wondered who it was who might have come in to abolish all of her disorder, her smudginess and mess, replacing it with all this pristine loveliness. She never found the answer, but to encourage even more, for the whole rest of her life, she never locked the door!!!
She was disciplined and stern, rigid, staunch and taciturn. Her back seemed starched, her mouth a line. Her clothing smelled like turpentine. Each morning she dished out our gruel, then perch herself upon a stool expecting that we’d finish it. A spoonful left? She’d have a fit!
She’d stamp her foot in consternation and deliver an oration of how hard her life had been. Abandoned at the age of ten, working in a factory not pampered like the likes of me! And so I’d spoon the gruel up, or sneak it to my hungry pup,
leave the kitchen and escape to hall or street or fire escape. Every yule time was the same when my Aunt Winona came to visit us. “She’ll soon be gone,” my mother told us. “Just play along.” And so we did, all grateful for the day that she walked out the door!
Mexico, 2002.Annie, my second kitten adopted in Mexico, in her favorite place. She was adopted a year or so after after Talulah, whom I had found in a basket of scarves in a shop in Tonala that she had streaked into a minute before I walked in. The owner, whose daughter was allergic, begged me to adopted her and guess what?
Annie as a kitten and almost 19 years later. Seems impossible. The second two photos are of the day the kittens arrived and I found Kukla on the wall in a standoff with Annie, whose meal they were eating! Fiesty little thing. (Photos will enlarge if you click on them.)
Dream’abort’ Annie
Two A.M. and four A.M., six A.M. and eight. My nineteen-year-old cat is such a reprobate. She awakens me with yowling to be fed again or simply for a rubbing over ears and under chin.
My night’s full of awakenings, my days are somewhat muddled. I try to block the sound of her. I’m bleary and befuddled. I’m sleep-deprived, exhausted, and yet she is so old, how can I consign her to the night air and the cold?
I awake at 5 a.m. with no bleats for attention— that every-other-hour irritating cause of tension. And yet what mixed emotions this five-hour rest has brought. Finally, a full-night’s sleep, but Annie I have not!
I knock upon the closet doors, follow every lead. I mix up her favorite cat foods, but she does not heed all these invitations—the water and the calls— the peering under beds, searching the bathrooms and the halls.
I look behind each open door, behind the stereo— so many hidden spaces where a cat can go. The old cat’s turned up missing? It’s an oxymoron that nonetheless is true when applied to my gray cat.
You may find it silly, putting up with such a cat once so wild and kittenish, so active and so fat. An outside cat who never deigned to come inside, Annie chose walls and bushes as places to abide.
Every year she grew more wild and more free, making an appearance on demand for only me. Twice a day for meals, she would jump up on the wall In between, she vanished—not visible at all.
Two years ago, four kittens abandoned at my door meant that she just left for good, and I saw her no more. One month later, she returned, hip shattered, skin and bone. with stomach and liver problems, she was Annie’s ruined clone.
When the vet said nothing could be done, she came to live inside. I thought, to make her comfortable there until she died, but two years later, she rules the house and she won’t abide any other lesser cat to be found inside.
She eats small portions all day long and though she’s lean and spare, it seems she’s come into her own in my cozy lair. The problem is, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since then. For all the constant roarings that disturb the old cat’s den.
If it isn’t food she wants, it seems it is a rub, or for me to clean her litterbox that’s found inside my tub that I haven’t used for the two years she’s been here. I use the guest room shower in lieu of one that’s near.
Sure that she’s died in some dark corner that I cannot see, I move aside the furniture. I peer on bended knee beneath the beds. I search each room with a fine-toothed-comb, but no evidence of her is left within my home.
I’ve thought so often how much easier that it would be if she would slip away one night and leave her master free. What a lovely gift it would be for her to give me, for often I have thought that probably she would outlive me!
The house seems oddly empty. By her water dish, her meal left uneaten these long hours has started to congeal. Her gray hairs left upon the rug where she liked to sleep. Although I’ve loved her absence, it’s true that now I weep.
When the other cats give voice and I decide to heed them, I get an extra surprise as I go outside to feed them. When I open up the door, Annie scoots right in, dashing from the overgrown foliage where she’s been.
Thus ends her great adventure and ends my great travail. As I sit here writing, I can hear her latest wail. I guess we’re back to where we were. Annie’s on my lap, and as long as she is quiet, guess I’ll take a little nap.
“Heading out this morning, into the sun
Riding on the diamond waves, little darlin’ one
Warm wind caress her, her lover it seems
Oh Annie, dreamboat Annie, little ship of dreams
Oh Annie, dreamboat Annie, little ship of dreams
Going down the city sidewalk, alone in the crowd
No one knows the lonely one whose head’s in the clouds
Sad faces painted over with those magazine smiles
Heading out to somewhere, won’t be back for a while”
We’ve brought your breakfast tray for we know that you’ve been restive, but now we’d like to urge you to try to feel more festive. Will you remain forever, questioning and forlorn because you could not go downstairs on your wedding morn? You cannot stay much longer in this sealed-off room. The wedding guests are gathering. It’s time to jump the broom.
Jumping the broom is a time-honored wedding tradition in which the bride and groom jump over a broom during the ceremony. The act symbolizes a new beginning and a sweeping away of the past, and can also signify the joining of two families or offer a respectful nod to family ancestors.
Think of all the things you wouldn’t be able to do if you didn’t have knees!
(Click on photos to enlarge.)
Knees, Please
Knees, knees, folks have knees
from Katmandu down to Belize.
In Peru, where they ride llamas,
they still have knees in their pajamas.
Further north, up where it freezes,
even Polar bears have kneezes.
Knees, knees, folks have knees
to ogle, fondle, pet and squeeze.
(It’s easy when they’re under kilts.)
Some knees on roller skates or stilts
are scabbed and scaly, skinned and sore,
but still they know what they are for.
Knees are great to bounce a baby
to kick a soccer ball, or maybe
to bend in prayer when they’re in church,
or form a perfect sort of perch
for lovelorn boys on bended knee
to ask girls, “Will you marry me?”
Knees, knees, folks have knees
In sun they burn, in snow they freeze.
Yet knees can cross and knees can knock
Knees can jog you round the block.
Knees are handy and dependable.
And aren’t we glad that knees are bendable?
Matin for Patella
When begging, kicking,
flower picking,
shooting marbles, playing jacks,
checking out important facts
in books that live on lower shelves,
checking under beds for elves
and asking for a loved one’s hand,
you should never, never stand.
Instead, place one bent leg or more
solidly upon the floor
and as you kneel with grace and ease,
please thank the Lord for making knees!
This whole sequence was inspired by the first photo of little girls in the kids’ choir that performed at our Christmas party. I then remembered these silly poems I wrote years ago…and started looking for other knee photos. One hour later, here they are! In the meantime, someone has been knocking insistently on my gate..although it is 11:30 P.M., so I called the guardhouse and had a security car drive by. The knocking stopped right after I called and no one is out there. Dogs weren’t barking. No telling what it was…..but knuckles, not knees were involved. (Putting in my tags, I see that one has already been done for “poem about knees” so perhaps I’ve run this before. Oh well. We can all read it again if we make it that far…
That vacant place in my heart.
That pool missing from the ocean. If the purpose of life is to live it, why all the fuss and bother? Why the wars and thievery? Why the empty heart? Is it the law of supply and demand? Peace more treasured when a rarity? Love more precious surrounded by hate? Let us make a little cave here in this place where no one else wants to be. Let us take pleasure and do no harm. Let us fill up the oceans of our hearts and pray that the world with all its problems keeps its distance.
Image by Ivan Dodig on Unsplash. Used with permission
Wardrobe Change
Her sequined dress, once fabulous, has lost its shape and glitter. It lies beneath her window, reduced to roadside litter. She might have been more charitable—donating the gown. They could have earned a pretty penny for a dress of such renown. But she needs its story ended. She could not bear to face another woman’s body and another woman’s face pictured in the tabloids in that gown made just for her. Its memories running through her mind, quickly, in a blur.
Trips down long red carpets, the flashbulbs and the fuss. Minding how she sat so its gathers would not muss. How its beauty cut into the soft mounds of her flesh. The sharp knives of its edges. The fine silk of its mesh.
The fusing of those opposites—the pleasure and the pain. His gentle kiss, but how, at last, he left her once again. The lovely words once spoken that turned out to be just script. The dress tugged off in anger. The dress she’d pulled and ripped
to be free of all it brought to mind—the glamour and the pain. Best it be diminished by harsh sun and rain. She flung it out the window, not caring where it rested. Rid of it, would painful memories be bested? Covered up by road dust, bogged down by stormy weather, sequins floated gutters, each weightless as a feather. Threads loosened and seams parted as the garment ceased to be— its combined pains and pleasures consigned to memory.
Mixed Media Retablo “Macho” by Judy Dykstra-Brown
Image by Ivan Dodig on Unsplash. Used with permission
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 