Archive | February 2018

The Last Joke

Feb28

Casper called out our brother’s name, “Billy!” I turned to look at him. He’d been drifting between reality and hallucinations since I sat down at his bedside half an hour earlier. His eyes looked dreamy, but his raised hands showed intent and concern.

I asked, “Casper, why do you need Billy?”

“The cows are out!” my brother responded. His dream shifted then, to field-dressing a deer. He asked for help lifting it and marveled, “This is a big animal”.

After quietly sleeping for several minutes Casper woke and once again called, “Billy!”

I leaned towards him and asked, “Are the cows out again?”

Casper shook his head and waved a hand, saying, “They’re in pieces.”

I flippantly teased, “Casper, when cows are in pieces, that’s called hamburger.” To my surprise, despite his mind being clouded by illness, my brother laughed! Remembering the great stories he liked to tell through the years showing the funny side of his life, I joined him in laughter. Casper had a funny, sweet sense of humor. He especially loved original one-liners, his own and others. Continue reading →

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Going to Seed

Feb21

In the pine tree next to the house a small red breasted nuthatch watched for a turn at the bird feeder. On the feed tray, two chickadees pecked and scratched for the biggest seeds. Sunflower seed shells littered the dirty, half-melted snow below. I sighed and shook my head. Winter was dragging on forever.

Seeing a large flicker land on the suet cage cheered me a little. After he left, a white-breasted nuthatch took his place. Watching him made me laugh out loud. Nuthatches operate just as well upside down as upright.

Each winter I get to a point where I’m sick of snow by late January. No longer pristine, sparkling white, the snow is dirty and full of tracks. Watching fresh snow flakes drifting to the ground no longer thrills me like it did in November. February snowfalls are merely seen as a chore to shovel aside or a travel hazard.

On February 2nd the famous groundhog predicts when spring will come, but the bottom line is that no matter what he predicts, we’ll still have cold and snowy weather for at least another six weeks, or longer if you live in Wisconsin.

Restless, I walked over to a window on the backside of the house where I could see my garden hoop building. A strong hankering to see lush, green, growing plants washed over me. I watched wind sweep small, white clouds of powdery snow off the garage roof, to do a swirling dance on the snowbanks below. Continue reading →

Art of Sacrifice

Feb14

Agnes smiled as she recalled, “When we were kids, we gave up candy during Lent.” She explained, “If we were given candy, we put in a jar to be saved as a treat on Sunday afternoons or after Lent was over.”

I’ve never been very good at sacrificing the things I like and want. I tell my family, “I’m a spoiled pussy cat.” I chuckle to myself because as a child I had wanted to be a human cat. I imagined myself having fun playing, being petted, and being idle, stretched out on the sofa. The sacrifice I didn’t want to make to be a cat, was the human ability to talk.

Parents make sacrifices every day without thinking about it. Some sacrifices are huge and heroic, while others are small, humble, unnoticed ones. I remember my Mom serving dessert at Sunday dinner. She made sure she got the cracked or chipped dish. Her serving was very small if there wasn’t enough to go around, usually the first serving that crumbled and didn’t look as nice. She tried to give the family slices of pies and cakes as pretty as those featured on the covers of her woman’s magazines. Continue reading →

Going Batty

Feb7

I opened my eyes. The only light in the dark room was the soft glow coming from an electric alarm clock on the bureau; the only sound, its quiet, steady tick-tock. Waking during the night at least once isn’t uncommon for me. Happily wiggling into a more comfortable position, I prepared to drift back to sleep.

The sound of the scrabbly, scritch-scratch of a small rodent made my eyes pop open again. I thought with resignation, “I have mouse in the house. That figures. It’s exactly a year since I last had one.”

While trying to remember where I put the mouse trap I had used last January, I heard a new sound. It was the distinctive rapid, high-pitched chatter that bats make. Then I felt something swooping low over the bed. It made one pass, then a second. When my night-time visitor tried to land on the bedroom wall, its leathery wings fluttered against the textured-plaster as it tried to get a toe hold.

I debated with myself, “Do I have to get up? Maybe I can just ignore it.” With a reluctant sigh, I decided the bat might keep me awake by fluttering around, so the best thing to do was remove it from my room.

I’m not afraid of bats. Leastways, not anymore. I’m ashamed to admit there was a time I not only demanded that someone other than myself capture the creature, but that it be put to death. Continue reading →