If Not Joy….

There are, in my life, moments that defy expectation and belief. Extended moments of incomparable, inexplicable peace and wonder, in which I feel myself a tiny, delighted cog in the great machinery of the universe. Today gave me several of those moments.

The color of new leaves. The alchemy of breeze and sunlight. The feeling of the sun’s radiation on skin. The sweet bite of coffee. The knowledge that there are dear friends out there who love me as much as I love them. The gratitude that I have, in this moment, absolutely everything I could want, everything I might need.

My parents gave me this, in the riverside home that sustains me. My friends do, in their constant, enduring presence. Indifferent Nature does, if I am willing to look and listen. The breathing trees and migrating birds do, fresh and unexpected in every moment. The daily delights of a quartet of crazy felines do, a playhouse of surprises. The kindness of people from whom I have no reason to expect such grace does, a constant surprise.

In these challenging emotional times, I find myself thinking about my aspirations, my expectations. After a hard ten-year relationship in which I fell to the depth of “I have no dreams left”, I have realized, two decades later, that the gift is me in all my flaws and complexities. And in exactly what I have.

We are raised to an expectation of joy. Fall short of it, and we feel we have failed ourselves—or so we’re taught to believe. But joy isn’t the destination on the ticket in our pockets; isn’t necessarily the natural order of things.

It doesn’t have to be.

Sometimes the miracle moments are the ones disguised as “normal”, the million variants of feeling in between the extremes.

That’s what today was. Closer to joy on the cosmic balance, but not yearningly so.

What is enough? If not joy, then happiness. If not happiness, then contentment. It’s a knowledge that, in all its limitations, is its own perfection. And that is perfection enough.

Little Bones

I am not a crazy cat lady. I never expected to have five cats. Had you asked a couple of months ago whether five was a situation in which I wanted to find myself, I probably would have said “no”. 

I have five.

The situation I’m living in now was part loss, part luck, and part a stubborn refusal to let a little creature be left behind when its sibling was adopted. Today—daily—it is one of the greatest gifts of my life.

Clancy was 17. He was glorious, calm, dignified and loving. A 17 year-old cat has a limited prognosis, even if he’s in the best of health. He stayed with me, happy and loved, for several years after the vet said there was nothing more she could do for him, a “no” I refused to take for an answer.

When he passed peacefully, at home, I knew I couldn’t replace him. But I could make room for another critter that wouldn’t have had love. Mikey was that critter.

He’d been claimed…but his prospective parents bailed. Kismet. He purred like a Maserati at first visit. He was little and frail and loving. He came home that same day.

His sisters (not litter mates but buddies at Animal Control from their earliest days) had been rescued from Animal Control that, with great reluctance, must euthanize when an animal is not adopted. The extraordinary Heather Hilvert was the vet for all of them—wonderfully, she had been the vet who had treated an injured possum that was part of my wild family—and she told me that the two “siblings” were available.

Again synchronicity. The potential adopter ghosted the rescue. Where I had expected to take only the sister, I couldn’t leave one behind. I now had all three. And.

Against all hope, all expectation, Feets showed up after a month of absence. Scared, disoriented, uncertain, he came back to a home ready for him, but a psyche wracked by fear of his time in the wild. Patience and love were required in abundance. It has taken a month for him to realize that he has returned to a place of safety and love; a place where there are toys and treats and food and—omg—other non-threatening kitties to play with.

We are now five. Six if you include me. Acclimating the pride to one another has been an exercise in patience, wisdom and close observation. As they grow confident in one anothers’ company, as they become a group terror full of daring and curiosity, as they eat me out of house and home, I realize what a gift I’ve been given.

To watch them discover. To watch them experiment with one another’s boundaries. To watch them be pure jerks for the simple pleasure of being jerks. To turn to me with unexpected expressions of love. To find that I have no place to turn in bed because I have babies plastered against me on all sides. To find myself the landing place for soft, warm, bony little bodies roaring with pleasure. To be licked, nuzzled, batted, bitten with tiny kitty teeth. To find in them, the most expected depths of myself.

Could I ever have expected this? No. Would I trade it for anything in the world? No. Am I now officially a crazy cat lady? Yeah. Hella yeah. And, amazingly, delighted to be. 

Big Music

My dad and his music. He would phone me in NYC, then hand the phone to my mom so he could go on the extension and play “Memories” from Cats. It was a musical he would never see. Didn’t matter. That strange, sentimental love language was one of his ways of reminding me that he loved me. He knew it would make me cry…and his silence at the song’s end told me that he was crying, too.

My dad was not a musical sophisticate. But he did love his big music, his big sound. And movies.

Down here in the house by the river, before the days of home theaters, he bought two big old Sony speakers, and a cassette player/receiver through which he routed his VCR. There, through his old clunker tv, he made his own tiny theater there in the living room, in the same spot my tv is now.

Invariably when I was visiting—which was often—he would say “You know what we need? A good science fiction movie!” Out would come the air popper (with long-gone Pie-dog lurking underneath, waiting for escaping popcorn kernels to fall). He’d crank up the volume through those speakers, and the good science fiction movie would happen. 

I still have those speakers. They sit where they always did, silent for all the years since my dad died. And today, after all the years of them catching dust, I hooked them up through an old CD player, and filled the room with music. Big music. Through the speakers he loved. A sound as big at its heart was my dad was.

The Vertical Miracle

Of the innumerable things I love about Nature, the greatest is its constant, endless ability to surprise. Today was one of those amazing days.

Saving three turtles from their dire roadway fate would have been good enough. But then the struggles of our local drought gave me another gift.

Water my potted patio garden. Okay. Fill the birdbath. Okay. Set out the sprinkler to water some parched, hopeful grass seed. And there was the miracle.

The sprinkler’s fan of water intersected the maple tree I planted for my mom more than 20 years ago. Fair enough: The struggling tree wanted water, too. And so did every bird within a half mile.

Dozens of them, suddenly, appeared on the tree, as plentiful as ornaments on an overindulgent Christmas tree. Ten, maybe a dozen, species. And a maple as full of unbridled joy as I expect maples ever see. Splashing, fluttering, chirping. Bird laughter. These several-dozen celebrants splashed in the wet leaves, in their vertical gift, in a way I have never seen them do in their always-full birdbath. 

Gene Kelly in “Singin’ in The Rain”. Tim Robbins in “Shawshank”.  Me in any long-awaited storm. This was what bird happiness looks like. And mine. In a sprinkler’s stream. In my vertical miracle. 

The Story of Sid (Not)Vicious

When I was a kid, camping with my folks, learning lessons I didn’t know would stay with me for a lifetime, my dad would place bread and syrup at the edge of our campsite, saying “you  have eyes watching you right now;  sit and watch and something will come”. Something always did. 

My dad fought forest fires in Montana when he was younger. He would place bait on our camp picnic table and rig a camera so the marauding critter would take its own photo.

I am my father’s daughter. At 73, I still am.

Sid (Not)Vicious is my possum buddy. He’s been visiting for a long time. He’s different from my other two regular visitors, Spike 1 and Spike 2. Not amazingly smart, he knows enough to visit early in the evening, when the best treats are available. Sometimes, if I’m quiet and cautious, he won’t run when I open the door.

Possums are misunderstood. They are ugly-beautiful. They rarely carry rabies. They eat ticks and beetles and wicked things. They don’t attack. Sid is wonderful. He visits often for treats: peanuts, apples, bananas, veggies past their prime. He drinks from the recycled sour cream container I put out for him. And he was hurt.

He was dragging his right hind leg. Did he fall out of a tree? Did something attack him without leaving a scratch? He yawned, something hurt critters rarely do. His appetite was good. But the thought of him with a broken leg, existing in pain on the treats I offered? No.

Thus began a rapid quest to find a wildlife rehabber and a vet who would treat a wild critter. I found disappointment that didn’t surprise me, and wonder where I never expected it. 

A local vet practice would only see him if I signed a form to release him, which gave them the freedom to do what they would and release him whereever they wanted. My home has been his home for years…so that was not a possibility. A local critter rehabber helped point me in the right direction to get the help Sid needed.

Then, the miracle. A local vet who would see him in her home; who understood that it was more humane to keep him in his familiar surroundings than to traumatize him in a clinic and an unfamiliar new home.

So. I caught Sid; got him into the live trap in minutes (never underestimate the power of bananas). I place the trap in my utility room on a moving blanket where he would be warm on a freezing night. I gave him water and cat food and apples and more bananas. He lived up to his (Not)Vicious name. I gated-off the room so he would be secure and untroubled by cats. 

I had a possum in my house. 

I was up with him throughout the night, feeding him treats, talking to him calmly, covering the cage to help him feel more secure. I got to touch him through the cage wires. He didn’t hiss or bite or panic. He lived up to his name.

Sid was seen by the vet the next morning. She treated him with all the care and respect she would have afforded a beloved pet. Not a broken leg, but most likely a sprain. She gave him antibiotics, and an anti-parasitic, and pain meds (the latter with a supply to take home). And she didn’t charge me for the visit. I cried all the way home.

Freed from his prison, Sid ran away back to his home down the hill. But he came back. For bananas and pain meds. Sid is a wild thing. Sid is my buddy. And a magnet for unexpected kindness and hope, both human and wild.

The Longer Light

I forget to look, sometimes. We all do. The constant vista—for me, the river and field I’ve been looking at on and off for 40 years—closes me in rather than opens me up. The boundaries, I’ve discovered, are not boundaries sight but are boundaries in my head; a constant that wants to be shifted, shaken. And yet.

Nothing is the same. Not day by day or minute by minute. The water that rises and falls, that changes from flood-brown to breathtaking blue-green. The heron stalking the pools of the waters’ retreat. The eagles, earthbound, seeking an easy meal. The daffodils that weren’t there yesterday or blooming trees that weren’t blooming hours ago. The startling backlit glow of new leaves, “new green” as my friend Mary calls is. These are the teases, the dares, of this place; the challenges to see right now or to miss forever.

Sometimes I need to drive to unbind my brain. The longer light is a revelation, different in the drama of morning or the forget-me-not of afternoon. I choose my route based on possibility; the close view, the long vista, the shrouded mountain, the hooded valley. This is not the drama of the Colorado I love. It’s softer. Sweeter, somehow. Worn-in-the-tooth hills older that the Rockies, shadows softer and rounder. Light warm in arrival and retreat. A place that defies the ugly that people can impose. 

I cry in the longer light. After four decades, I still do. The long strokes forgive me of anger and limitations. The long light doesn’t care that I’m here, a religion with an indifferent deity. Words are the sad and wonderful attempt to express the thing I join. The longer light: it’s the morning of me and the me of my declining years. The forgiveness. The grace that continues in the will to Be.

The Moment of Crossing

When you’ve adopted a sick, starving little cat that shows up at your door, you expect a period of adjustment. He doesn’t know kindness, doesn’t know toys, doesn’t know anything but primal self-protection. Hunger is a substitute for trust, his only permission of proximity.  Slowly, slowly, he learns the comforts of companionship, even though he flees the approach—the possibility—of everyone else. 

Then, if you’re lucky, comes a distinctive moment. You cross over from being a warm lap to something more. You become a being that is loved.

So it was with Feets. From the skinny, bronchial, eye-infected critter that showed up at my door, he became Tom Drooley, the little guy that purrs with such loud abandon that he drools on your hand. The buddy who would only be touched when distracted by food now looks to you with clear, pure love.

The difference is not imaginary. It’s a palpable change in nature, in character. It’s the moment that permits you to recognize it, if you’re willing.

And strangely enough, it’s the same with your dear ones, your humans.

You have been friends for years. Or years and years. Or even months and months. You have seen the regular revelations of wonder in their hearts. You have seen the reaching out of their souls in surprising new ways. As your own constant search for self opens new doors of awareness, so does your knowledge of them, of the wonder of them, of the endless ability to affirm and surprise and offer you parts of themselves that you have not, in months or years of familiarity and closeness, seen before.

It’s a gift you have to be willing to receive; to change enough, surrender guardedness enough, be un-strong enough to recognize. You get to be loved as you yourself have loved. If you’re lucky. If you’re open to it. If you’re willing. 

The Few Wonderful Words

In the midst of the current kerfuffle about short-term rentals down here, the disruption to this place of peace by forces of greed, comes an odd—and surprisingly emotional—moment of wonder.

I was doing a quick phone check in with folks, reminding them of the importance of attending next week’s meeting, the urgency of using their presence to counter the moneyed interests that will undoubtedly be out en force. One of the folks I called is a scion of the family whose name is etched into this place. 

The place where I live is named after his dad.

We didn’t talk for long. We’ve never been chatty neighbors. But he knew my folks. Brought them up unbidden. Knew this house and when they’d acquired it, back when the road out front was paved with nothing but dirt. 

Those few fond words left me in tears. Happy tears, not sad. The knowledge that those two wonderful Biederstadt people are still alive in the memories of other people besides me. The bond that we have, fixed in this place where our parents, his and mine, still live. The reason we persist. The reason we believe.

We honor this place, not for gain but for love. For the treasure of continuity. For the knowledge of the trees planted, the kindnesses shown, the neighbors we could—and can—rely on. A few wonderful words can bring that knowledge to life…in a way that a ghost town of short-term rentals, created by investors with no roots in this soil, never can. 

Exercises in Greed

I’ve rarely used this page for anything beyond celebrations of my beloved river or meditations on creativity. 

This will be an exception.

This house was the culmination of my parents’ dream. They put their labor into getting it; put their love into it. My dad’s deathbed was in this living room, in view of the river he loved. I bought the house from my mom so she could continue to live here. After her death, I spent every weekend, every holiday, every available minute here. I contribute daily to the local business community. I’ve made improvements. I pay taxes. I am a neighbor, a member of a community.

Now a number of non-resident investors, realtors, and a (very) few locals are trying to push through their will to offer properties along the river to short-term renters. They don’t live here; many of them own multiple properties, often hidden behind LLC entities, and most of them rarely spend a day here. (My newest neighbors, for example, purchased the property with the intention “in part” to rent it to weekenders; thus far, their VRBO renters have spent more time here than they have.)

These investors have organized; they’ve created a FB “friends of Norfork” group that touts the “benefits” of STRs to the community. They lie, mislead with industry-published articles, speak in unsubstantiated absolutes about nationwide “truths”, and block participation by those who don’t agree with them. They talk about their rights as owners, while at the same time disregarding ours as residents. They have sued our little town–and lost. When they pressed the issue only months ago, they were told that residents don’t want STRs. They are renting anyway, in open defiance of the local rules, counting on–as my neighbors told me–inconsistent enforcement. 

What they don’t say is how their taxes are not used for the improvements they claim, or about how those so-called gains are counterbalanced by the increased costs of regulations enforcement and compliance. They don’t say how, in virtually everywhere STRs have taken hold, property prices have gone up, removing affordable housing from the market and excluding non-moneyed interests from the ability to buy. They don’t talk about the impact on community and lack of accountability (ever tried to lodge a complaint with VRBO?)  They don’t talk about the increase of traffic or the loss of quiet that attracted so many of us to this place.

We are a community, not a commodity. And what is for them a matter of dollar signs is for us lost nights of sleep and constant aggravation. When we are a ghost town of STRs, when we have no more neighbors to turn to, they will be sitting on their decks miles and sometimes states away, counting their profits and planning their next conquests. But for us, these are not investments, they are our lives.

Talks to Leaves

Happens every year. Never fails to amaze. 

Spring.

Hillsides like clouds of green mist. Smells that promise their richest potential but have yet to reveal it. The drunken joy of extra oxygen in the air. New colors, new songs in the feathered creatures. Flowers in trees, a snowstorm of warm blossoms. Newborn clematis. Purple chive blossoms challenging me to look or to cut and eat. Violets half hidden in unexpected places. Lilacs whose blooms dare me to wait just a few days longer.

Spring.

I talk to leaves. I admit it. I visit every fresh-leafed tree and bush—many of which I planted with my own hands—and touch the sweet, soft extensions. One gets to enjoy that tender wonder for only a short time each year. Miss that short-lived beauty and it’s gone until next year.

So, do I talk to it, plant by plant? Of course I do.

I don’t own all I see. Not the hills. Not the river (right now, brown and peevish from the rains). Not the vista near to far. Not the grass that my neighbor so kindly mows for me. What I have planted belongs to Nature as much as it does to me. But for these few, dear weeks, what I see is personal. Intimate. The breeze sounds different against the fresh, sweet leaves than it will in the months to come. The perfume changes with the moisture of the air and the angle of the sunlight. The touch on bright green growth on finger or cheek will be different tomorrow than it is today; different in the afternoon than in morning. 

She talks to leaves. Because she can.