Was this just one day? It felt like four completely different ones. At least that many, maybe more. The morning felt like an entirely different day from lunch, which was separate from the early afternoon, and late tonight was a whole new day all over again. We woke to more horrible news from Europe. I spent the morning glued to the news. It was infuriating and heartbreaking and unfortunately not a unique situation anymore. It doesn't make me afraid. It just makes me angry at the perpetrators and promoters of this BS, and it makes my heart ache for the victims.
By the time I got to my usual Rotary lunch, I was able to separate myself from the atrocities overseas, and blend in with the gang. I'm really starting to feel like I'm one of them. I don't feel like a guest anymore. I feel more like a freshman. I see good things ahead with this group of people, and every time I'm with them, I pat myself on the back for recognizing that I belong here.
My writers group this evening was a fabulous escape. We were encouraged to bring in works by other writers that we particularly enjoy, so I brought a snippet of a Fish lyric. (I wasn't the only one to laud a lyricist -- an older man read song lyrics, and a woman younger than me read Shel Silverstein. She wasn't familiar with the Dr Hook connection before tonight, but she is now.) I explained that I'd had this song stuck in my head for a week, and after this morning, the spoken word section of a song railing against ethnic cleansing (of Bosnia -- it was a 20 year old song) was appropriate for this evening. Then we had a writing exercise. We brought in random items to trade in group, and we wrote about what we'd been given. I brought in a pocket-sized Operation game, a spool of green thread, a giant push-pin, and a plain white tile. The Shel Silverstein lady got my offering, and wrote a neat little vignette about a dream where she'd fallen out of a tree and been patched up in a cold tile hospital room, green stitches down her arm. I received a lint roller, a purple dog collar, a bar of oatmeal-almond soap, and a newspaper clipping of a Dear Abby column about teens who have been cutting themselves. I wrote a very quick piece in the 15 or 20 minutes allotted, and I'll transcribe it here. It's mostly fiction, but that scientific law contained in it is a universal truth, and it is all mine. I just pretended someone else coined the phrase.
It is as yet untitled.
It's been four months now that Duke has been gone. The kids stopped missing him within a month, and ever since, they've been bugging me about getting a cat instead. I think I need to grieve a little longer. I'm still vacuuming up dog hair off the couch, even though house rules said he wasn't allowed on the furniture. I'm pretty sure that the kids sat with him in their laps for the entire last month he was alive, cuddling him while they watched TV. I pretended I didn't notice. I don't think anything will completely remove those pale red dog hairs off of my best black blazer. I keep a lint roller in the car for before I go into meetings, but I know there will always be a few stray hairs stuck in that coat. With my luck, the kids will insist on a white cat, so this cycle will continue, or worse, they'll pick out a calico, so that no matter what color clothes I wear, a contrasting cat hair will be visible. My ex-husband would have called that the "inverse cat theorem," and I can't stand that he would be right. And if we got a cat, I know that my hands would be covered in little scratches, and what would my clients think of that? I finally got to stop bathing Duke with that stupid oatmeal soap that gave me a rash, only to end up a cat mom who looks like a self-loathing cutter? Then again, we always had a cat or two when I was growing up. They were easier to take care of than a dog who needed someone at home to let him out every few hours. Maybe I could sneak a kitten into the house. A little gray kitten, maybe, with a little purple collar. I could go to a shelter while the kids are at school, and surprise them. That way, they wouldn't each pick out a different cat and talk me into both. But then again, maybe two cats would be okay... I can let the kids think it's their idea.
No comments:
Post a Comment