Houston to LA. Sunday, January 8, 2012
It seems when good things happen, there’s something else that’s taken away. I don’t know about you, but life seems to have appointed me a personal guardian, an overseer that makes sure my life doesn’t get too much one way, or the other. It’s going to make damn sure it stays in balance.
It also makes sure I don’t get too big a head, throwing me little curve balls like – I have a fantastic trip where I’m treated like royalty and made to feel really important, only to arrive back home and within twenty minutes, one of my dogs has diarrhea. Not just diarrhea, but a bowel evacuation of such epic proportions that it trails from one end of the house to the other. And as I’m scrubbing poop out of the carpet at two o’clock in the morning, I can’t help but look upward, and ask, “Why? Why?”
Also, I was damed at Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles (yes, the title dame!) back in July, and twenty-four hours later, I was laboring on a caretaker’s house in New Mexico, pounding nails into a concrete wall. A concrete wall. And I had to wonder –
How did it come to this?
I’m a “just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water” type of person, and it was only just recently that I decided that I should just roll with it. This is my lot in life, I thought. Sometimes I even find myself getting nervous if something really good has happened to me, looking over my shoulder for what might be coming next, because while this ‘give with one hand, and taking with the other’ can explain all the unexplainable in life, there are times it can be painful.
Although I say I don’t, I think I do go through life looking for signs. And I know I was literally seeing signs in New York as I started my book tour. It was the word GHOST whizzing past me every few seconds! They were ads affixed to the top of taxicabs because the musical GHOST was opening on Broadway. It was like these signs were a message from Patrick (and yeah, I guess sometimes I have to be hit over the head to get it), making sure that I knew that he was there with me, every step of the way. It was so eerie, so fantastic, and so joyful to see those signs everywhere. I felt he was clearly reminding me of his presence in my life, and heart. It made me smile.
And then, the second day, I got a call… My cat is missing. My brother let her out the door in LA, and she hasn’t come back. She hasn’t come back for six days now. And I’ve been dreading the thought of returning home to an empty house without her.
Possum (that’s her name) is the most incredible cat. And while I try to be diplomatic, and love all my animals equally, Possum has been my favorite feline. I’m crazy about her. She is endlessly inquisitive and adventurous, has a cranky-sounding meow, and she loves me. She takes shoes out of my closet and brings them to me as her prey gifts. And she waits for me to start waking up in the morning so she can spend those first minutes sitting heavily on top of me (and my bladder), purring, and touching my face with her paw. Ah! It’s going to be hard to go home.
One step forward, and one step back… There are positive things happening in my life, but also, at this moment, I’m feeling that it’s unfair for Possum to be taken away from me. I realize it’s probably not life’s “chaperone” that’s come to level me once again, though. She was an older cat. Sixteen years old, in fact. And I remind myself that she got to live a long and full life. I try to remember that with all my animals because, at some point, I’m going to lose them – I should be happy they had a good life.
But still, I will go home, and be alone without her.
Via Con Dios, my darling, darling Possum.
