Meanders

Monday, June 14, 2021

The smallest brilliance

An old poem, 1995 or so, and some lights that are visiting now.

Interlude

Fireflies between the olive trees,
our own little Leonid off the balcony.
The moon in her shy interlude with night
stares at her own bright face in the sea.

Our children doze, faces slack and beautiful
sure that the moon and all lights
have danced for them this night.

This is our sliver of independence
this weary day-end sleep that holds
them silent and still as night deepens.

Come, we have so little time
before day draws them back
to the center of our universe.

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Saturday, June 12, 2021

Cat prayers

Ursula taps the arm of the chair she’s been sitting in, she then stands on the arm and lowers one paw until she feels something solid, the table between the chairs in what we call the reading room. On the table are magazines and books. It is a small round table. She steps onto its surface, checks the edge slowly, isn’t sure what side she’s on. She stops and listens. Whatever echolocation she’s using tells her not to jump off the side close to the mantel. She crosses to me and then taps the arm of the chair I’m in, steps up and into my lap. She has gained weight since her cancer diagnosis in September. We now refer to her as “pulling a Kiki” in remembrance of the gray cat who lived more than nine lives. She seems better most days, she is active and animated. She stays on my lap purring, I’m reading so I balance my book and rub her head, massage her shoulders. She stretches out over my legs and purrs louder. She has become a lap cat if only for a moment. She’ll never match Comet, the Queen of Lap-dom, but I’ll take this small gesture. Zora comes into the room and takes the chair her sister just abandoned. She assumes the Sphinx position and faces me. She half blinks, blinks again and then dozes. Zora is morally opposed to sitting on a lap, she doesn’t like being picked up, she hates a cuddle. Her time is always her time, did I ask you to touch me? she seems to say. But when she does want attention, she is demanding, under foot following you, doing her ack little meow. She likes to be brushed, but once again, on her time and when she’s done, she’s hurt your feelings done.

Ursula shifts and turns, she walks up, across me to get to the back of the chair where she stretches out and washes her face. I’ve turn just slightly to watch her. She wets the paw and then crosses her face; it reminds me then of something. I have visited a lot of churches over the years. I liked to sit in the wide arc of the cathedrals, those cave-like expenditures of human want, and watch people. If people were inside, praying or sitting quietly I’d come along a wall and sit far back. Many times people crossed themselves as they came to the nave, a curtsy motion, a genuflection, but the crossing was much the same as what Ursula does now, rote and unthinking. Something slowly repeated. Innate. This gentle washing. This cat blessing.

I love both the cats, maybe more than I should, and I sing their little songs to them throughout the day. It is hard to fathom they have been with us a year now. The pandemic year did change trajectories of space (not the Representative Gomert trajectories) and time. One year became many or was lost like dust. But in the plane of cat time, there is always an errant whisker, a dash of fur, a small round body print on a blanket; a cat who may or may not want you to pick them up. The successful cat lady learns to read the signs and alter her day, and her song, as needed.

Thursday, June 10, 2021

Neighbors

(Photo by Jeff Hall)

Yesterday morning the windows were all clouded from the heat and humidity and rain overnight, like stepping close to a mirror after a hot shower. On one screen a slug was making its way from top to bottom, on the window that looks out onto the front yard something had been writing asemic poems on the glass. Between sips of coffee and talking to Ursula I saw a movement like a shifting shadow outside the window, hopping along the sill. I picked up Ursula and peeked out. A Carolina Wren zipped from the window and into the tree. It hopped and flitted from branch to branch but always turning to look back at me, holding the blind cat behind the fog. Finally, it went up higher and then sang its clear loud song, a song that seems too brash for such a small being. A song I hear often and can identify and that makes me madly search for the body that sings it. And here it was, right outside the window, and the voice comes from this lovely wee bird. And it looks at me, holding my blind cat, the cat that is focused on the song, her tails twitching. The bird sang one more chorus and then disappeared into the morning. Soon after when we went outside for our walk I could hear the rusty brown wren singing far off in another yard as the day heated up.

Tuesday, June 8, 2021

Over the river and through the wormhole

My great grandfather, John Murray Wortman, walked out of Nebraska sometime after 1888 to Oregon. He'd had enough of the Midwest apparently after the great 1888 blizzard. He left my great grandmother, Lydia Ann Etchesion Wortman, behind with nine (ten?) children. After he had established himself (bought a farm? got a job?) his family joined him; my grandfather, Ord Wortman, was born in Wallowa County in 1895.

With a little digging I’m getting information that they married in 1861 when he was 19 and she was 10. Hmmm. Then they married (again?) in 1872. Hmmm. No children born until 1873. And then if you follow the trail, it says they married again in 1878.

When she died in 1922 she may have been married 60 years. They had 12 children. 10 survived to adulthood. John lived until 1926.

But what of that time when he was walking to Oregon? Did he go by himself? In one census count I see they had a border, in the chronological listing of children, a daughter, Cassie, dies in Oregon at age 16 in January 1892. Lydia and John have a son in August of that same year in Ord, Nebraska. This is Ancestry.com info. Looking to fill in some gaps, maybe help tell a story. A good story, a good tough pioneer story. John’s is good too.

I’m more interested in Lydia.

Monday, June 7, 2021

Beasts we mourn

I’m grieving for a little cat that I wanted to be my friend, but she wouldn’t participate. Grendal, Ian’s monster and by extension, Justine’s, and by super extension, Prince Myshkin’s role model and antagonist. She was a beautiful creature, emerald green eyes and white and gray fur that glowed and spun. She will live on in film and literature, becoming immortal. Here is a formal portrait I received as a gift, painted by Ian. Good-bye, sweet kitty. Good night. 💔