Yesterday

In 1996, I was a freshly minted TWA flight attendant living with two roommates in a townhouse-style apartment in St. Charles, Missouri. One of my roommates, Kelly, had a cat named Sunny, a healthy orange tabby who had gotten into my heart a little bit and made me want a cat of my own to love and keep me company. I had a boyfriend at the time, so one wonders about the need for company.

Anyway.

I put the word out to my friends that I was on the lookout for a new kitten to call my own, with the operative word being “kitten.” Not much later, I received a phone call my St. Louis mama, Sandi Stafford. Sandi had a good friend nearby named Carol. In a recent snowfall, a cat with no identification had wandered up onto Carol’s lawn. She’d asked around in the neighborhood and been unable to find its owner. Sandi knew I was on the hunt for a cat, so she called me to go take a look.

I was unimpressed for the simple fact that I was not looking for a cat. I was very specific. I was looking for a kitten. I said as much to Kelly, on our way to Carol’s house. She just smiled.

Carol ushered us into the garage where she was keeping her foundling. Apparently, the cat was in hiding, because I couldn’t see anything. Knowing cats, though, I sat down on the welcome mat and waited. The cat would eventually get curious, I figured, and come sniff me out.

I was right. In a few minutes, as we casually conversed about the storm that brought her to Carol’s home, a slight-framed, long-haired cat slid stealthily out from under Carol’s car and stepped delicately across the concrete floor in my direction. She was gray, with a faint tortoise shell pattern, and—in the light of that moment—there was a pink hue to her coat. Carol’s favorite color is pink. She was ecstatic about that.

It was uncanny how the cat walked straight to me, without hesitation, crawled over my leg, planted herself into my lap, raised her face to mine, and then made the same chirping-style meow that would become her signature and a point of delight to all her knew her well. No, she wasn’t a kitten.

“Carol, this cat is mine.”

Sandi and Carol smiled like proud mamas who’d mid-wived a successful birth. Kelly was delighted to have a playmate for Sunny. I was quietly cleaning out a large space in my heart for its new inhabitant. I hugged my little fur-girl to my chest and off we went to gather supplies and get her home.

Rosie. I named her Rosie for the pink of her coat. At times, we also called her Miss Rose, because there was a certain regal quality to her demeanor.

Eventually, TWA would issue a furlough and many of us who were hired in ’96 would find ourselves in need of a job. I was only in St. Louis for work, and now, with no more work, I had no reason to stay. Kelly and I packed up our cars and headed back East to Virginia—she to Woodbridge in the north and I to Virginia Beach, the southern coast. I left Rosie in our apartment under the care of my then ex-boyfriend who checked on her and made sure she had food and a clean litter box for about a week until my father and I could fly back for her, make arrangement for some of my belongings, and bring Rosie to Virginia with us.

Rosie didn’t fly well, and she was plenty disgruntled after our trip, but after a day, she relaxed into her new home with my parents and me in the same house where my parents live today. They loved her as their own and laughed at her idiosyncrasies, like doing the “tuna dance,” as my parents coined it, whenever she heard the sound of a can opener. Rosie could be a finicky eater, so Mom took to calling her Picky Eunice (I have no idea where this comes from), which always made us laugh. Rosie’s long fur tapered sharply at the crook of her legs, as though she were dressed in jodhpurs, another of Mom’s observations— along with the plume-like curve of her long-haired tail. “Plume!” my mother would exclaim in admiration as Rosie would pass her by.

I worked odd jobs, tried on a few more boyfriends, and made a disastrous choice of one, but Rosie remained a pleasant constant through that time. Eventually, I would enroll in graduate school and have to shoo her away from my books and laptop so I could write my papers and study my exams. In my final year of grad school, I met and married my husband, Charlie, and Rosie made her second move with me as we made our home a mile down the road from my parents.

Rosie loved to sneak through the door in our passing through and smell the plants and grass around the house, the breeze lightly lifting the long strands of her fur and making her appear even softer, almost airbrushed. She was never nervous or erratic. Her disposition was serene and her presence calming. She was a cat built for love and lounging, the perfect companion for loss and loneliness. She was made just for me.

About two and a half years ago, we received word that we would have to make another move, this time far away from our loved ones. In order to prevent a desert deployment, Charlie, a brand new father, travelled to recruiter school to keep his family together. I stayed home with our darling baby boy, and—as ever before—Rosie kept me company and played mama herself to her two little kitten siblings, Norman and Pansy, named for my precious grandparents. For my family, pets were always bonafide family members. They still are.

Once more, Rosie and I would make a move, this time as a family of six. We loaded up the FJ Cruiser and trucked down to Bossier City, Louisiana. It took four days, one heart-stop in Atlanta to see my best friend Leigh Anne, three cat carriers, and a bottle of prescription tranquilizers (for the fur-babies) to get it done. Charlie drove and I paved the lonesome highways with tears that might one day lead me back to the place that will always be “home.”

We made it safely and carved out our new home. Rosie crept the floor boards and gave tentative assent. She liked the thick carpet and the large window in the living room that gave her gracious sunlight all day long in which to stretch and lounge. Occasionally, I would let her explore the back patio, but only on her leash. Grudgingly, she would deign to step into its tethers and bear its restraint for the promise of rolling on hot concrete and chewing the green grasses that sprouted at the edge of the stoop.

Once more, Miss Rose was put upon to relocate, this time to a home with a larger yard and more spacious rooms just a mile down the road, fittingly, on Rosemead. She found solace in a sun-bathed breakfast nook, stolen trips through the garage to the shrubs around the water spigot where the earth was dark and cool from shade and moisture from the dripping faucet. Summer gave way to autumn and winter thawed into spring. Change and age settled into her bones, stunting her gait and dimming the pink light of her fur. She slept more, ate less, and stayed very close to my side. One day, loud noises brought no flinch or turn of her head. She could no longer hear my kissing call; her face flashed no recognition at the sound of her own name.

Yesterday, we Corbetts took to the Air Show to see the Air Force Thunderbirds. It was the day I took two thousand shots of magnificent airplanes performing masterful feats of gravity-defying aeronautics. It was the day I played paparazza, running down the flight line to catch Nicholas Cage greeting the Thunderbird Crew with his four year old little boy, Kal-El, who hid playfully from the crowd under the back of his father’s bright yellow shirt. It was the kind of day that wears you out completely and leaves you glad for the experience and pining for your bed.

Back at home, we dragged our bags in from the van and stumbled around the house, putting things away and putting on more comfortable clothes. Charlie drew Jackson a bath, and I walked through the house trying to decide where to begin with straightening and preparing for the coming week. Every step, Rosie followed me. She had been feeling sickly and only drinking a little water. She weighed heavy on my heart all week, and I made a mental note to get her to the vet. But yesterday afternoon, her shadowing was unrelenting. She would stand before me and summon a pitiful meow, without any hint of her signature chirping. She no longer had it in her. And I knew intuitively what I did not want to know. I made some calls, talked with Charlie about dinner without me, and kissed Jackson who was splashing about in the tub. Charlie brought down a carrier from the attic for us.

One more time, Rosie and I travelled together in the car. We rode in silence, and I opened the door of her carrier so I could keep my hand near her for comfort, hers and mine. I didn’t know what was wrong, but she’d lost so much weight that I knew it wouldn’t be good news from the emergency vet. After a little while, I spoke softly to her of the day we met and the trip to Virginia and the days of heartache she helped me through. I spoke to Love and asked for presence, for help that Rosie could no longer give. My heart tore open and spilled through my face and I was unable to find composure as we stepped into the waiting room and found a chair to somehow fill out the papers on the clipboard I didn’t remember picking up.

Date. I couldn’t catch hold of it in my mind. I looked to one of the other waiters and asked for the date, recognizing faces as those of new friends from a board on which we serve together, their little precocious Vivian, and an ailing puppy named Blue. I offered through a broken sob that I thought I knew them. Yes. We thought so, too. I’m sorry I’m so grieved. I don’t usually make it so public but, but, but…
The distraction was welcome, and their kindness was warm and genuine. My strength recovered a little and our conversation was light and careful. I managed to laugh and forget, if only for a little while.

Our turn. The doctor. Blood work. Leave her with us, go eat. Come back and we’ll talk about our options. I drove to a drive-thru joint and ate fried food in a cold dining room empty of customers but crowded with memories and fears. So lonesome.
Twisting knob. Somber expression. A sheet of paper with red marks and too-high numbers. Costs and chronic care. It’s true. It’s true. It’s true. This is it. Make ready. My heart bleeds fire and screams from my chest.

Do you want to be present? Sunlit naps and green grasses. Yes. Sign here please. Do you want us to handle the body. Rental house. Someone else’s ground. Yes. Initial here. You’re doing the right thing. You gave her a good life. Jesus is an overweight, menopausal blonde with compassion radiating from her arms and eyes. She hugged me hard and long and left me alone. I want you to be here.

The towel was soft from wear and splotched from many washings in bleach and antiseptic detergent. She lay listless, spent. The door closed respectfully, and I dropped to me knees and met her glazed-over gaze. I prayed for hearing, and whispered of love and longing and loss, private things that are too painful to recount. I can’t give you health, but I can give you rest, Rose.

The gentle doctor, my mourning companion, came bearing a syringe to fill a catheter and bring rest. The fluid was pink. We stroked her fur together and I held my face so close to hers, whispering I love you over and over and over and too soon no heart beat. Is she gone? Stethoscope and a heavy nod.

I left the last room she ever saw and found her vacant carrier waiting for me at the front desk, an unintentional stab into the fresh wound of my grief. Three hundred thirty-seven dollars is the clinical cost of goodbye. Blonde Jesus gave me a cup of cool water. I realized it was still in my left hand as I walked through our garage door.

Food bowls of uneaten tuna. Water flecked with two strands of her fur. The pillow by the window still depressed from the weight of her last nap there. Blankets that were never completely free from the evidence that she’d slept on them, by my side. Voicemails left for cancellations. My only appointment would be with my grief. I left messages for my parents, and my father called me right back. They buried Gotti just two months ago. We wept together softly on the phone at midnight, for the loss of my little love and the distance that separated us in our grieving.

Life is relentless. It insists on pressing forward, when I so wish it would go easy on me. The phone rings. The mail beckons. The coffee brews. On it goes. My head hasn’t caught up with my heart. I’m still looking for her in her favorite places, finding her unexpectedly on fabric I forgot to brush free of fur. It will be that way for some time, I am sure.

Over the next few days, I will pull together some photos I’ve taken of Rosie over the years and choose one to have printed for a wall in our home. That’s how I want to remember her.

Healthy. Vibrant. Soaking up the sunlight in a warm window. Chirping back brightly at the sound of her name.

Rosie Walton Corbett
1996-April 25, 2010
Gone to rest

A Man of No Reputation

I have grown up listening to Rich Mullins. My father has a storyteller's heart, and so the great storytelling songwriters were among his favorites. I spent hours riding around in my dad's Olds 442 with 8 tracks, cassettes, and then cds of Don Williams, Waylon Jennings, and Rich.

The kid brother of St. Frank died too young in a car accident on a road to or from a show--can't remember which--where he probably played barefoot to the crowd and poured his heart out in every note. I used to joke in seminary that God killed my husband. Of course, that was before I met my actual husband. Love you, honey!

The song you are hearing is "A Man of No Reputation," from The Jesus Record, a studio-produced album of fellow Ragamuffin band members and industry colleagues honoring the life and work of their friend. The project also included a raw demo disk of Rich singing and playing.

The Jesus Record is Easter for me, and this particular song tells the story of the Savior so heartbreakingly and reminds me that I am loved with relentless affection, just as I am.

A Man of No Reputation

It was said this man was of no reputation
Yet He could stop the rising storm
With a gesture of His hand
But He chose to use
His hands to heal
Hearts of darkness, hearts of stone
Just like mine would be revealed

He was a man of no reputation
And by the wise, considered a fool
When He spoke about faith and forgiveness
In a time when the strongest arms ruled
But this man of no reputation
Loved the weak with relentless affection
And He loved all those poor in spirit
Just as they were
He was a man of no reputation

It was said this man brought only confusion
That He'd achieve his ends by any means
And the truth that it brings revolution
And for once they were right
The truth set us free
The hearts of the captive were his only concern
And the powerful knew their days were ending

He was a man of no reputation
And by the wise, considered a fool
When He spoke about faith and forgiveness
In a time when the strongest arms ruled
But this man of no reputation
Loved the weak with relentless affection
And He loved all those poor in spirit
Just as they were
He was a man of no reputation

One day soon the gates of heaven will open wide
And the Prince of Peace will come back for His bride

But for now we live on these streets
Forbidding and tough
Where push always comes to shove
And it's said love's never enough
Where a prophet in rags gives hope to a fearful world
No injustice, no heart of darkness
Will keep this voice from being heard

He was a man of no reputation
And by the wise, considered a fool
When He spoke about faith and forgiveness
In a time when the strongest arms ruled
But this man of no reputation
Loves us all with relentless affection
And He loves all those poor in spirit,
Come as you are
To the man of no reputation

(Copyright 1998 - Rick Elias)

Hunting for...

So we just got home from what was to have been Jackson’s first Easter Egg hunt, at the church where he attends the Mom’s Day Out program.

He’s two.

The hunt was divided into age groups. The third- through fifth-graders went first. Jackon’s age group wouldn’t start until 11am. We arrived just after 10.

He’s two.

There were activity areas set up for kids to color, have an egg-on-a-spoon race, get face-painted, decorate cupcakes, and make various crafts. We made the rounds in 10 minutes flat.

Now what?

Now comes the meltdown, that’s what. We made it through ten months of age two without the violent body spasms I remember from watching other beleaguered parents attempting to calm and control their own toddlers. They always seemed very sad and dejected to me, completely bereft of energy.

That was me today.

I know Jackson’s a toddler. He’s a fledgling communicator who doesn’t understand the subtle nuances of mingling among strangers in a new place. He doesn’t get that Momma would really appreciate it if he didn’t throw himself on the linoleum floor in the middle of the fellowship hall of a church full of people who find that interesting to watch.

I shot my husband a look and exclaimed that I was leaving. He scooped Jackson up and out the door we all went, still ten minutes away from that very elusive Easter Egg hunt.

Moments like these, it’s hard for me not to feel sad. We live 18 hours from family and what I will always consider home. Holidays and special occasions—those are all on me to make the magic that I felt when I was a little one throwing tantrums of my own. It feels about as awkward as those colts learning to walk for the very first time—leggy and fumbling for bearing. I’m glad that Jackson is only two. This means I’ve got time to get it right before he starts to remember.

I have a dozen hard-boiled eggs in my fridge waiting to be decorated. We have an Easter basket full of stuff for him to open in the morning. We have a Fedex box from Mimi and GrandBob for him to open as well. This afternoon, I will put on my mental bunny suit and dutifully hide those eggs in our own yard and watch him delight in finding them and placing them in his Easter basket.

Come to think of it, that seems to be the way our special days work best. Homegrown. Close to the heart. And a very selective guest list.
Momma, Daddy, and Jackson. Perfect, just the way we are.

Reflecting on Easter

I came across this post last year. It was originally posted here, on a lovely blog entitled At Home With the Farmer's Wife. I was deeply moved by her reflections and those of Loren Eiseley, whom she quotes and credits. See if your heart is not stirred as well.

Sunday, April 12, 2009
Easter Sunday - the Lesson of the Birds

My neighbor introduced me to the writing of scientist and native Nebraskan, Loren Eiseley. He didn't write or think like any scientist I'd ever encountered. He was an archaeologist, anthropologist and naturalist who spent much of his time in reflection upon his scientific observations and was able to maintain a high sense of wonder about the universe.

Shortly after reading Willa Cather's, O Pioneers, I launched into one of Eiseley's book of essays. It was the dead of winter and I was battling brochitis, clutching my newfound friend the heating pad. This passage called "The Immense Journey" stunned me with it's eloquence.

In three paragraphs I was transported to a springtime meadow, the warmth of the heating pad translated in my mind to that of the afternoon sun. In my mind he has captured the essence of the story of Easter. I was so moved by the story that when spring finally arrrived, I drove around the countryside looking for an open glade that mirrored the image he'd created in my mind's eye.


The Leafy Glade

THE IMMENSE JOURNEY

“I leaned against a stump at the edge of a small glade and fell asleep. When I awoke, dimly aware of some commotion and outcry in the clearing, the light was slanting down through the pines in such a way that the glade was lit like some vast cathedral. I could see the dust motes of wood pollen in the long shaft of light, and there on the extended branch sat an enormous raven with a red and squirming nestling in his beak. The sound that awoke me was the outraged cries of the nestling’s parents, who flew helplessly in circles about the clearing.

“The sleek black monster was indifferent to them. He gulped, whetted his beak on the dead branch a moment and sat still. Up to that point the little tragedy had followed the usual pattern. But suddenly, out of all that area of woodland, a soft sound of complaint began to rise. Into the glade fluttered small birds of half a dozen varieties drawn by the anguished outcries of the tiny parents. No one dared to attack the raven. But they cried there in some instinctive common misery. The bereaved and the unbereaved. The glade filled with their soft rustling and their cries. They fluttered as though to point their wings at the murderer. There was a dim intangible ethic he had violated, that they knew. He was a bird of death. And he, the murderer, the black bird at the heart of life, sat on there, glistening in the common light, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed, untouchable.”

“There the black bird sat, formidable, unmoving, unperturbed. The sighing of the little birds died. It was then I saw the judgment. It was the judgment of life against death. I will never see it again so forcefully presented. I will never hear it again in notes so poignantly prolonged. For in the midst of protest, they forgot the violence. There, in that clearing, the crystal note of a song sparrow lifted hesitantly in the hush. And finally, after painful fluttering, another took the song, and then another, the song passing from one bird to another, doubtfully at first, as though some evil things were being slowly forgotten. Till suddenly they took heart and sang from many throats, joyously together as birds are known to sing. They sang because life is sweet and sunlight beautiful. They sang under the brooding shadow of the raven. In simple truth they had forgotten the raven for they were the singers of life, and not of death.”

- Loren Eiseley (New York Vintage Book: 1957) 174-175

No Whining (?)

So I forgot that Jackson’s preschool was out today. I went to bed last night, high on Nyquil, mumbling to my husband about getting Jackson off to school without me in the morning.

He’s so sweet, so—of course—he complied.

I got up just for the few minutes he needed to be in the shower and packed Jackson’s lunch. Off they went and back to bed for me.

I have no suitable words to tell you how absolutely decadent it is to be able to crawl back into bed knowing that no husbands and children will be neglected by it. I was feeling so crummy and stopped up, breathing like a Dyson, but slipping back under still-warm covers was heaven.

A mere ninety minutes later, I feel an unwelcome tugging on my covers accompanied by the words, “Jackson’s school is out today, he’s in the living room watching a video.”

Oh, GOD, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

“Okay.”

So Mollie crawled out of her sick bed, stumbled toward the kitchen and poured herself a big mug of strong coffee. She swallowed a tab of Loratadine, took two hits of nasal spray, and stepped into what she likes to call her big-girl pants.

No time for whining. No time for sinusitis.

I’ve done some laundry, had a shower, and got my little man down for his nap. Maybe I’ll do some menu planning and finish up clipping those coupons from last week. Just a few hours ago I was struggling for motivation.

I’m really glad I have the ability to make my day better. It doesn’t always work, but I am grateful that it did today.