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So much for a "simple fix"

This should do it.

I was going to "bury the remains," but the scrap guy beat me to it.

On to more exciting things (like reattaching a gutter). 

Freedom's Ride

They say only the young have rash moments. You know those times when the laws of physics are still something to be learned about years later in university. Times when your mom is busy in the kitchen, your dad is at work, and you are left to your own devices.

With my big brother, we cut a swath through our parents' patience. There was the time we took the TV apart, literally, when we were 12 years old. Mom was still amazed we didn't electrocute ourselves as she surveyed the CRT, flyback transformer, demodulator, and filters scattered across her clean floor. It was worth the grounding (literally and figuratively). Then, the less physically risky, though not without its own penance. Mom and Dad had an electric blanket with dual controls, something NEW. We reconfigured it so Mom's control operated Dad's side, and vice versa. Mom woke up, "I'm freezing!" and cranked up the heat. Then Dad would say, "I'm hot!" and would crank his side down. It took them two nights to figure it out. Grounded again.

The world was ours to take, living as we did at that age, in advance of adulthood, when life knows no pauses and has no fear of what the future brings. I'm not sure when it changed. Mom's cancer was turning terminal, the splash of cold water against the bow of our lives, her death in her late 50s, that shadow line that marked the official end of that unfettered road.

I can't say I didn't do anything rash again; every fork in the road has its own seduction, but everything was tinged with the mark of mortality, the portent of possible loss. If you don't love hard, you won't be hurt, you think, reconciling yourself to the life of a gregarious loner.

40-some years later, with as many lessons of loss etched on my heart as there were marks in my logbook, I embarked on what was the rashest decision of all. A tattoo? You say. No. A change of job, residence, or last name? Certainly not. No, it was a decision made one night, Lorelei, our last rescue, having been diagnosed with an aggressive soft tissue sarcoma. We took her to the best Veterinary oncologist in all of Chicagoland, whatever the expense. They went in to see what could be done, but it was inoperable; she wouldn't have survived any attempt to remove the embedded mass. While she waited to come out of recovery, a dash was made to a local thrift store to obtain an extra-soft baby blanket, which would provide her with some extra warmth and comfort on the long drive home.

We took her home to make her remaining days as joyful and pain-free as possible, when the notice came in from the Rescue group that we had adopted her from. They had a young yellow Lab with an orthopedic defect that might need the "doggie elevator" my husband had made for Lorelei. Honey Bee was her American Kennel Club name. She was 10 months old, from an Amish Breeder who had released her when it became apparent she couldn't be sold due to markedly bowed front legs. Poor nutrition? Genetics? Growing up in a small pen for 10 months in a barn?" We don't know, and didn't ask; all we knew was they had the good hearts to take her some distance to a well-known rescue that would find her the right home.

So, with a thumbs up from EJ (who, honestly, would probably say yes if I asked to buy a tank), we brought her home. A PUPPY. What was I thinking? I'm 66 years old, still working, and I've now got an overgrown puppy with NO training, NO socialization, and the urgent energy of a 40-pound Velociraptor on Crack (with puppy teeth to match). Add in a husband who can be on the road 2-3 weeks a month, and there was a moment I almost called and said, "wait, I change my mind", but like that moment when that first labor pain starts, there's no calling it off.

Her first night was great; she had some cuddle time with Lorelei and her new mom and dad, and then slept next to EJ as he lay on the futon beside her. As he waved to leave for work the next morning, I thought, "I can do this!"

It was the calm before the storm. I likened it to those long, late flights overseas, when storms were forecast but not yet visible, the engines humming in a drowsy sky, senses alert but not fully engaged in the fatigue. On such nights, the few stars above cast their touch upon our aircraft, shafts of light penetrating a sky that was turning from clear to the blackened soot of nearby fire. The massed clouds all around would have had a singular significance of effect, had we been able to see them ahead. But the aircraft's radar was not yet painting any threat. You sensed it was there, but with no hint of the direction from which it would come, the nearing of a menace, feeling like it was coming from all and every direction. Then that first spray would hit the window as your radar screen lit up with what looked like the big red dot on a 7-Up beverage can.

I remember the first sharp expression of small puppy teeth in my flank; she had discovered that people have bottoms, and they are biteable. Ouch! It really didn't hurt that bad through my jeans, but the surprise came out in my voice, and she thought it was a game. The next thing I knew, she was running and jumping off the recliner, launching herself at the couch like one of the Flying Wallendas, knocking over a plant in the process, while Lorelei looked on, taking notes.

The typhoon had arrived, and I named her "Sunny."  Phonetically, it was close enough she responded immediately, yet avoiding the whole standing out on the porch at 6 am shouting at her in the yard while EJ loaded up his car for work, "Honey, NO, not the rabbit poop" or "Honey, NO! NO, don't lick that!" The neighbors would be calling the authorities (or the local sanitarium).

Lorelei was overjoyed to have a friend, and Sunny played with her surprisingly gently, then lay protectively nearby when Lorelei slept frequently in those last weeks with us. Bittersweet scenes to view, as it was impossible to see without that sense of unavoidable finality. The quietness as they slept came over me like a forecast of abrogation, that pause before the heart ceases to beat like a rundown timepiece.

The coming months were marked by continued mayhem, including stolen tools and shoes, shredded rolls of paper towels taken from the counter, as well as one late-night trip to the Vet when a dew claw was torn in the Zoomie to end all Zoomies. There were laughs, tears, and many days I would have gladly dispensed myself of the regrettable opportunity of "guess what gross thing I have in my mouth, Mom?"

We had a local dog walker who came by as needed, especially when we were working, playing with her, and teaching her the skills we were slowly building with her daily. But I'd still come home, approaching her crate like it was the den of some wild beast, with bravery but some bluster. I'd open the door while singing the notes of "Ride of the Valkyries", and our evening would commence, measured not in hours but by the kinetic energy of flying fur.

But, as with any storm, the skies clear, the winds calm, at least in the land of Puppy-Ville. It was during those last weeks before retirement that we faced one of our largest challenges, both intellectually and emotionally, on the job in several years. The loss of life was immense, the needlessness of it all, a bitter taste on my tongue as I worked late into the night. I'd learned long ago, my first official assignment after the earth shook in Pennsylvania on 9-11, that there was no point in asking "Death, where is thy sting?" as you stand before a vast, smoking hole in the ground. The images that day, 24 years ago, pursued me home, making sleep impossible without a strong shot of Single Malt.

But having put that bottle away years ago, I learned to take comfort as the shadows gathered again, with the little things of joy I had around me. In those last weeks, badge still in my pocket, regret in my fingers, I learned to appreciate the simple pleasure of a young dog. For she was once as I was, living in advance of an end she will not fear coming, because she doesn't conceive of its existence, that beautiful continuity of joy that knows no limits and no introspection.

I wouldn't have traded this decision for anything. - Brigid

Every Fire is the Same Size

A wise elder of the Seneca tribe once said, "Every fire is the same size it starts".

All of us have that fire within us.  But what makes it grow is so much more varied than simply fuel, heat, and oxygen.

Of course, there are some of us who literally and figuratively "play with matches". I remember being a kid, we'd go to the Oregon coast regularly, where we had a little rental cabin, now an eyesore of a condominium complex. I loved that area, the mysterious forests, the open shore, and those times when the fog rolled in, blurring the edges between safety and peril.  

On one particular trip, the beach was covered with driftwood, left by a storm, cast well up from the tide line, where it had dried out. My brother and I built a little bonfire to roast marshmallows and apparently set (according to Mom) "The entire beach on fire." It didn't get the press that the detonated, dead whale did, but after the fire department left, and the small blaze was put out, I think my matches were taken away.

That fire was always smoldering. Growing up in a small town, I couldn't WAIT to get out, to get away from a future that for most was the pulp and paper mills with life's ultimate goal, a bigger boat in the driveway. That fire lent itself to music, to motion, and eventually, as all budding hearts know, to that first love. But between us was that inevitable veil, woven of sunbeams and shadows, and I instinctively stepped back and away, so as not to catch it ablaze.

The years passed by in a blur, thousands of miles of charted and uncharted skies, bad airline food, and dispatchers who argued with you about whether the flight was safe to make; my one shining moment there, when I said "we're not launching, the thunderstorms are bad. . . look, the control tower just caught fire, we're going home". I then slammed the phone down in his ear, a joyful noise that anyone born in the last 30 years is SO missing out on. 

I have looked at more than one sky over the years, and adjusted my course, seeing something in the portent of the clouds that meant something as strong to me as God would be to a believer, filled with wonder, and more than a little afraid.  For I was just one lonely sinner, and my craft was held together by pre-war engineering, aged metal, and more relays than should be allowed by law.

There are short periods in our young lives that hold no fixed place in memory, but only as the recollection of emotion. We are so focused on the contemplation of something worth rejoicing in or suffering over that we barely notice the body breathing, the instinctive urge to run away, or, less instinctively, to fight the darkness, the shadows, and the silence. Days pass, the feelings fade, we have found that living through all such moments is a high and rare favor, a divine grace we have no true appreciation of until looking back on it many years later.

Those moments of recollection come when least expected, there we are faithful to the illusion of life's stage, waiting for either applause or the final curtain, when it happens. Wandering feet stumble upon the blackened remains of extinct fires, kicking up the pale, dark dust of cold ashes. Sometimes it's someone's words, it may be an old photo, or it may simply be the life that is a play of light and shadow. As Blackfoot Warrior Crowfoot once said, "What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset".

In those moments, frames of the past come back, and just as suddenly, leave. The night, filled with the glittering confusion of stars, is stilled by a shadow, sounds cease, forms vanish, and the reality of the universe alone remains. I recall a flight over the Prime Meridian after stopping for fuel in Greenland. The Prime Meridian is the common zero for longitude and time reckoning throughout the globe. The one place where we are all at one point and the moment stands still, an infinite place where, for a second, time and motion are tethered to our aircraft like a careless rope.

 As we crossed over, I synchronized my watch with my copilot’s and attempted to capture that time, to somehow gather it to us. Only then does it hit all we have experienced aloft. Different languages and sights, smells, and sounds; the roar of a turbine engine, as it started with that artistic endeavor of curse words and meditation, the underlying scent of jet fuel, oily and dark, that hung in the mist on an early morning ramp. Yet such thoughts disappeared as the sound of the engines brought us back to our tasks; we're still at the Prime Meridian where there was precision and accord, spoken with the deep anesthetic hush of sameness. What was ahead was unknown, what was behind, we could never reclaim, outside only the glitter of stars pouring their light, ceaseless and proud, as time paused in the brief dark stillness of night.

My wings long since hung up, the fire within me has settled into a gentle, steady warmth, larger than the fire that it started with, but without the heat that can damage beyond what can be reclaimed.  I have traveled much, suffered a little, loved, and fought. I see the world for what it is: a place that contains both darkness and great light, both because it is inhabited by man. But without the darkness, though, we can't recognize the light.

We recently took down the remnants of the ramp built for our rescue dog, Lorelei, to access the motorized elevator my husband built for her to get in and out of our Mission Bungalow. The main portion of the assembly was carefully stored for future senior rescues. But the ramp, hastily treated when we redid it for her few, final days to lessen the incline, was rotting, and there was no saving it. I could picture her, tail wagging as she walked up it into the enclosed platform that would take her to the top of the steep stairs, and a sob broke from me as I took in that place where she had been so happy.

But I'd not trade that time, including the tears, for any amount of gold. As I write, I smile as I think of other things, a name that wakes up memories, a young woman writing in a journal by firelight, the small bonfire that glints like a jewel, the words scented with the smokey atmosphere of future regrets, the subtle perfume as the wind breathes through the trees, the advanced sentry of the dark forest that stands watch over the open water, She puts the journal down, as a line of surf thunders on what would otherwise be an empty beach, ignored between the hills and the sea.

There is no longer an ocean outside, but a Great Lake, the waters sleeping unseen, unstirring and mute.  As the subtle light from the east blooms in my window this morning, I simply pause and take a breath.  At that moment, my world centers, no thoughts of memories or regrets, just this single sunrise, a blazing act of special creation, disconnected from today and tomorrow. In this timeless moment that is the forerunner of sunrise and thunder, the world stills, but my heart remains a kindled bright spark.

 - Brigid

Things You Never Know

It's been 17 years since I started this blog.  I don't have the time to post as I used to when I was single and didn't have an old Bungalow to restore with my Partner in Grime, but I do enjoy sharing my thoughts with those of you who still show up to have a cup of coffee and say hello. A few of you I've known most of my adult life, both on and off social media, and a few I have never met.  But for those of you who haven't known me my whole life, some things you probably DON'T know about me.

1. I once got sent to the principal's office for reading a copy of Road and Track behind my history book.

2. I started taking college classes at age 14. It was the free-wheeling '70s, but the reason I was the only girl on the local campus not wearing a bra was that, sadly, I was the only one who didn't need one. 

3. I HATE tomatoes in their cold, seedy, alien, larval life form state.

4. I will do aerobatics in a plane all afternoon, but I am afraid of the escalator at O'Hare if I have a roller bag.

5. I was jogging in the park when I realized I was in the middle of some college running event. Up ahead, the tape for the finish line. What could I do? I picked up my pace, ran through the tape, arms raised, shouting. "I won! I won! and kept going.

6. In 4th grade, Mom bought me the world's ugliest and sturdiest shoes. Money was tight in our house but I hated them. I beat them with a hammer, dragged them behind my bike for miles, and smeared peanut butter on them so the dog would play with them. After a month, they looked suitably worn out. Mom dragged me to J.C. Penny to complain about the quality and got a replacement pair, EXACTLY the SAME.

7. I would rather watch old episodes of Top Gear than ANY show involving shoes or fashion.

8. I used my first four-letter word... loudly, on the pastor from the Lutheran Church. I used it a few more times before I hung up my wings.

9. I can choreograph an autopsy without blinking, but went full "tears and waving arms" on PA State Cop once, when Abby Lab got a hold of HALF a dead bunny when he and I were walking my property, and she would NOT drop it.

10. I can play 3 instruments. I can't whistle to save my life.

11. I took ballet for 14 years and can still go "en pointe" in the right shoes. Once.

12. Without strong, hot Scottish tea in the morning, I have the decision-making abilities of a squirrel crossing the road.

13. When I got married, I wore the whole Princess Bride outfit. My garter, however, was leather and contained Ninja throwing knives.

14. While on a "quick turn" on the ramp at SFO airport, I used the lavatory on our airliner, which had a window. Used to only being in it at 30,000 feet, I didn't close the shade and mooned half a dozen Samoan bag handlers.

15. I have never watched "The Bachelor/Bachelorette/", "Sex in the City", or any of the "RealHousewives" shows. I can quote way too much of Red Dwarf.

Rimmer: "Step up to Red Alert."

Kryten: "Sir, are you absolutely sure? It does mean changing the bulb".

16. I gave up alcohol years ago, but I have a 2-pound bag of Tootsie Pops hidden in my desk drawer.

17. Biologically, I'm a direct descendant of Walter Woodworth, one of the original colonists/settlers of the United States.  That, along with my driver's license showing my age, will get me a free coffee at Chick-fil-A.

18. I am type-rated (qualified and experienced as a Captain) on 7 different transport jets.  I don't own a SmartPhone.

19. I will not eat shellfish, but once ate a roasted tarantula (tasted like chicken).

20. I'm half Ashkenazi Jew (bio father).

21. I modeled professionally in college for a skiwear company. I have never skied in my life. 

- Brigid

"Mort"

A cricket has moved into the walk-out basement. Each time I ventured downstairs to the laundry or pantry, he chirped away. Leaving the door to the outside open a bit didn't encourage him to leave, only to have a party with some of his bigger friends. I managed to shoo them out, but he slipped into a small crack to hide, continuing to serenade me while I did the laundry.

After a few nights of that, I wanted to find ways to get rid of him. (Would using a silencer on a cricket be illegal or apropos?)

I did a little checking online---apparently, the life span of the average field cricket is just a couple of months. Already an adult, he likely had only a few weeks to live, if that.

The poor little guy wouldn’t even make it to Halloween, but each night he sang as if he would live forever. I didn't have the heart to capture him and move him outside. He could stay safe in my basement as my pet cricket. I named him "Mort." 

Think about it. As a society, we now live decades longer than our ancestors. I remember reading the book Alaska, by James Michener. In the opening chapter, in the dawn of time, they speak of"the Ancient One," a woman who was a great healer and spiritual leader. She was in her thirties. Oh great, I thought as I read it, first the big three-oh, now I'm ancient. These days, most of us can expect to live well into our seventies and eighties, some even into their hundreds. Yet some creatures live only months or even days.

Consider the hummingbird: such a small creature with such a high metabolism, yet it has a life span much greater than you'd think, with some living more than a decade. I watch them from the feeders in summer, warring for the liquid nectar found within, fending off others that wish to take it; watching, guarding, always wanting more of life's sweetness. Not much different than the rest of us.

I think of lives cut short that achieved so much for their brief time here, like my favorite poet John Keats, who threw over medicine to write some of the most sublime odes in the English language and died at 25 from tuberculosis; Percy Shelly; M.F. Xavier Bichat, French army surgeon turned pathologist; Évariste Galois, mathematician and inventor of group theory who died at 20; and Robert Fergusson, Scottish Poet.  Their words, their teachings still follow me where I go, whispering to me in unexplored depths or darkest of nights---such great thoughts tinged with wonder and mystery, those whispers of slain genius.

Fortunately, our human life span is much longer than most creatures’---if we are blessed and take care of ourselves. But even the most significant expanses of time seem so short in recollection. Walking through the little village where I live, the sidewalk glinted with little bits of mica. Not the prophet Micah, who told us our human task is to do justly, but the geological kind. As a kid, the sidewalk would glitter like broken glass upon the tide flats from the small glints of mica within it. My brother said it was made of broken starships, and I believed him. For though there are limits to what we may accept as children, there is no limit to what we can believe, nourished as we are by the embrace of the incredible that is found right beneath our feet.

Into the warm days of fall that is childhood's longest hour, in those weeks of summer vacation, we believed we'd live forever. We weren't content just to ride our bikes on these glittering trails of star-stuff; we'd get big pieces of chalk and draw on them, hopscotch, tic-tac-toe, and our names. We'd play well into the dark, coming in only when we were hungry, the front doors unlocked to our comings and goings---time for us was something we could pick up and put in our pocket.

When I look at a shelf of old family pictures, the laughter of those days is silent, but there is no weather of distance between that time and now. It seems like yesterday. But I have realized that the saying is true: man does carry his life in his hand. My dad's siblings, though blessed with a hardy disposition, also possessed an intrepidity of spirit and courage that might have been called reckless in others; but in them it was a natural trait when tempered with a soundness of choice. They honored their bodies as vessels of God and didn't abuse them with drugs or an excess of alcohol or even food. In the pictures I have of them together, I see only lean, honed strength and purpose of duty. 

I look at a collection of bones on a table, beautiful to me in their pristine immobility. I look at a glass box my aunt left me that sits on my desk. In it is Urania ripheus, more commonly known as the sunset moth, hovering on lifeless wings that glow in the light as if lit aflame. The sunset moth is found in the shaded areas of river banks in Madagascar. The essence of life floats elusive, half-submerged in the waters of science, buoyed by God. I've spent the last twenty-five years studying the many tragic ways life ends, and still, I draw great comfort from the way it maintains that faith to remain.

I remember Dad’s last days, after he celebrated his 101^st birthday. He’d outlived two wives, two of his children, and the senior Dalmatian he adopted from rescue in his 90s after he swore he’d never get another dog.  The day was hot, but he had the window to his assisted-living apartment open, enjoying the sun against his form while he watched the light fade from the sky.  It was uncomfortably hot to me, but I knew his days were few, and fussing about closing the window and turning the AC on was discord in the quiet he didn't need.  So I sat and just kept him company, fanning myself with a magazine, contriving some sense of comfort from what was merely motion. If he didn't seem aware of how quickly those days were passing, I certainly was and appreciated each moment.

So we'd sit, Dad in his recliner reading the old family Bible, the book for all the days remaining.  Dad never knew his destiny would be to live to such an age, to love deeply, and outlive those he loved greatly. The love that entranced him and made him its own to the most secret of thoughts, to the disquiet of blood, to his last exhalation. He did not know when his path would come to an end, but he followed it with unfaltering footsteps. The Bible was gently laid in his lap as he nodded off to sleep. The window would fade, and then glow---a living spark there among the shadowed embers as at his feet lay an empty dog bed. - Brigid