Almost a cardinal sin

I was trimming a bush today - you know, those evergreen ones with the hard little leaves with a half dozen needle sharp points to do you in - and taking great care because I knew there was a cardinal nest in the center of the bush.  For years now, smart birds, usually mockingbirds, have been building there, realizing that even my ornery cats aren't going to expose themselves to lots of excruciating pain trying to maneuver through the bush to destroy the eggs or the baby birds.

Unfortunately, upon the first or second snap of my clippers, two startled baby cardinals plummeted out of their nest and through the bottom of the bush, hopped a half dozen hops, and then made what I believe was the first flight of their life.  Mamma and Poppa bird materialized out of nowhere and started making warning chirps and circling the cardinal Wright brothers.  (Or sisters.)

I observed the commotion for a time, and when it appeared that the little fellows had the ability to fly short distances and attain sufficient height, I assumed all would be well, even though I'm certain flying lessons weren't scheduled that day.

Continuing to trim, I glanced over my shoulder at some point and saw Tiger, one of our three city cats, stretched against the chainlink fence, paws above her head, like she was going to leap or climb up the fence - something she just might be able to do but something she wouldn't do.  Would she?  Raising my gaze a few feet, I spotted one of the baby cardinals sitting on the top rail of the fence, three feet from my cat's paws.  Tiger was poised to pounce and all of a sudden I saw me spending weeks agonizing over the fact that it was my fault that the baby birds had exited their nest prematurely and one of them ended up as Tiger's brunch.

Momma and Poppa Cardinal were swooping like the Red Baron, screaming out warnings to the clueless chick. I dropped the clippers and grabbed Tiger by the scruff of her neck and carried her to the patio.  Simultaneously, the baby Cardinal, already sporting a little mohawk-looking cardinal peak, took the longest flight of his (or her) life, managing to wing his (or her) way across the back yard to the top of the fence on the other side.

Catastrophe avoided.  As long as both birds kept moving and I kept an eye on my cats.  Which I did and was able to feel completely at ease when, after a few minutes,  I noticed that both babies and both parents had made it to the stand of trees at the edge of my back pasture.

Later, I encountered a pouting Tiger in the basement.  Already the most standoffish of the three, she was, at this moment,  particularly perturbed at me.  And I knew it was because I had intervened on behalf of the baby bird.  And I'm sure Tiger couldn't understand why I had chosen to preserve the bird as opposed to allowing nature, and her cat instincts, to take their course.

So, I chose to tell Tiger the story of how she and her sister Gracie and brother Rocky came to have the life they've had for the last eight years.  How one late afternoon in July, we had discovered some evil people in a Toyota parked on a country road and reaching into their trunk and throwing things out.  And those "things" were Momma Kitty and her three kittens.  And how they had hit the ground running and disappeared into the woods.  And I told Tiger, pulling her toward me and scratching her behind her ears in an attempt to smooth things over, how the four of them were on the side of that dirt and gravel road the next morning.  Looking like forlorn little hitchhikers, flea-bitten bags of bones, hungry, thirsty, and near death.  And I told Tiger how we had rescued them and slowly nursed them back to health, and, except for maybe stepping on the toes of their cat nature a few times over the years, how we had given them a chance for a pretty doggone good life.

And, Tiger, I said, that's why I saved that baby bird from you.  The same reason I saved you.  To give it a chance for a good life.

Of course, Tiger didn't really care.  She pulled away from me, walked over to her water bowl, got a drink, and then disappeared through her cat door, tail high in the air and twitching with agitation.  Leaving me sitting there without even a glance over her shoulder.  Not even a bored yawn or dismissive gaze.  Out the door and into the yard.  Gone.

Probably to try to hunt down that very lucky little bird.

Brothers on the beach

Soon, four months will have passed since the day I lost my brother.  He was granted 727 months on this planet.  Right now, the four months without him seem more of a lifetime than the 727 months with him.  I can't explain that.  Let me just say that missing someone appears to be more time consuming than not missing them.

I suppose if I were to scrutinize my writing, and apply labels that I so often see applied to other people's writing, I would probably fall into the scurrilous category of sentimental writing.  I don't think that I ever understood what a critic was trying to project when he or she labeled someone's book or poetry or newspaper article "sentimental."  What I do know is that it isn't intended to be a compliment.  I've heard the use of sentiment described anywhere between a pejorative and a cardinal sin.  So maybe that's not really a good thing for me, if you subscribe to the indecency of sentiment, especially when the next most used tool in my writing belt is sarcasm.   If sentiment is my hammer, sarcasm is my saw.

Regardless, here goes.

Early morning on the beach is my favorite time.  It's a great time to walk:  the waves break more gently; the gulls and waders and shore birds scurry and swarm in anticipation of breakfast.  Squadrons of pelicans soar overhead to their daily destination somewhere westward.   People are more scarce but more alive.  So I followed the pelicans and headed west where Destin rose like a mirage in the middle distance.

A lady popped out of her condo with a dog on a leash.  As she neared, I could see the wizened muzzle of the old pooch and I thought how the older a dog gets the more special he becomes.  The old fellow may have looked at my wizened muzzle and thought the same thing.  Like myself, he was still game for early morning beach exercise, even if it made both of us pant a little.

A couple strolled leisurely just at the edge of the water, perusing more than walking.  Speaking softly in the way that only people who have earned the gold standard of comfort with one another can speak.  Even in silence, they communicated.

A gentleman sat in a sling-type beach chair, puffing hard on the last couple of inches of a fat, aromatic cigar and laser focused on something intriguing in the vast emerald waters before him.

But what caught my full attention was the sight of two brothers walking toward me.  I guessed them to be five or six years apart.  The older one was probably 13 or 14...the younger, maybe 8 or 9.  Definitely brothers...similar facial features, same hair color.  But those details were dwarfed by their brotherhood.  Their closeness.  An obvious emotional bond, supported by genes and blood but fused by love.  No way,  you say.  No way could you see all of that in the ten or fifteen seconds you had to observe them.  No.  Way.

Way.

The older brother had his arm around the shoulders of the younger boy who sported a set of earbuds  but was still dialed into his older brother's excited stream of chit-chat.  Theirs was a comfortable embrace:  simultaneously protective, comforting, loving, and, for lack of a better term:  natural.  They marched along in quick time, the older boy subconsciously shortening his steps to compensate for the younger one's shorter legs.  Their eyes virtually shone with contentment.  Whatever they shared was good and fun and full.

Needless to say I pushed fifty years aside and imagined myself in the role of the older brother and my recently lost sibling in the role of the younger one.  For just a few moments, it was 1960, and me and Buddy were on Daytona Beach under blue skies and a much younger sun, and we were walking together connected at the hip planning our day of battling the waves, building sand castles, and looking for shells.  We were talking about things that made sense to only us.  Things that were uniquely sibling proprietary.  I had my arm around his shoulders and we were close.  And, for those few moments, I had a brother again and I felt his sunburned skin and I saw his tousled blonde hair and I heard his excited jabbering.   I shortened my steps so that we could travel down that beach in brotherly synchronization.  I didn't want to lose the rhythm, the sweet cohesion.  In 1960, life had no limits and time had no boundaries.  And brothers were forever.

But back to this morning....

I turned when I knew the two compadres were well past me and took a quick snapshot.  I wanted to remember this morning.  And the moment.  As they faded into the distance I had some hopes and prayers for them.  I hoped the older brother never got tired of putting his arm around the shoulders of his younger brother.  I hoped  the younger brother always felt good and safe and uplifted in his older brother's presence.  I hoped  the connection they had on this beautiful, sun-filled morning on this wind-swept beach would be carried away with them wherever they went and whenever they needed a memory.  I hoped that nothing would ever come between them, that they would never feel self-conscious in displaying love and affection, that they would always be best friends, that they would always put all pettiness aside.  I prayed that they would remember this day forever and that God would give them at least another  727 months together.  At least.

It was a good walk with an unexpected but well appreciated God gift.

 Call it sentimental if you like.  But you know what?  Sometimes, doggone it, just sometimes,  you just flat out miss yesterday.  And the ones you love.  Especially those you loved and lost.  Sometimes sentiment is the best tool in your writing belt because it lets you build the memory to your specifications.

But sometimes you just miss your brother.

Return

Moths spiraling to a flame have nothing on people being drawn to the ocean.  I suspect if I could finally grasp what pulls us to the sound of the surf collapsing against the shore, waves curling and white capping on themselves,  I would have yet another of those intriguing little puzzle pieces that I hunt like buried treasure.  What it does to us mentally, emotionally, spiritually, chemically...to stare out into that vast infinity of water, straining to see beyond the horizon, as if something we lost - or something we gnawingly anticipate - will suddenly appear along that picture perfect straight-edge. And solve a mystery.

On my walk this morning, I saw a young lady in a state of complete mesmerization.  I'm certain she was without and within thought simultaneously.  There was no ocean and there was nothing but  ocean.  There was deafening surf and sheer silence.  The sense of physical paralysis while hurtling through our solar system at a thousand miles an hour.  Absolutely everything in the midst of irretrievable emptiness.

I know nothing about this solitary human being.  I could virtually write one hundred and one stories about her...change her age, her marital status, children or childless, a marine biologist with a slight lisp or a newlywed who just awoke to discover she had married a stranger.  She is every-woman and she is one woman.  She is body and she is soul.

And for several seconds...a minute or two...she is one with all.  The only thing that separates her  from the sand between her toes, the salt water licking at her feet, the wind buffeting her face and stirring her hair, the distant clouds slipping down to taste the ocean...the only thing that separates her from the inhalation and exhalation of God's breath...is the density of the atoms in her body.  How tightly packed they are.  How well held together.   Change that one simple thing and she becomes the sand and the sea and as subject to being blown about as a stray gull feather.

And that oneness, that kinship,  leads me to believe that perhaps what we seek where the sky meets the sea...or that mystical square footage just beyond the range of our eyes... is actually what we seek within ourselves.  What we anticipate outwardly, we simultaneously ruminate inwardly.  The rhythm of the waves is the rhythm of our body...the blood coursing through the one hundred thousand miles of arteries, veins, and capillaries.  Thoughts skipping about our brains like shifting winds.  Each breath its own wave curling over itself and receding to make room for the next.  After all, there are more atoms in the human body that the combination of grains of sand on the planet and stars in the universe.  Doesn't that count for something?

Sea.  Meet me.  We are not so much different.  We can hang.


When we find that unique peace in those moments of magnetic connectedness, as I suspect this random lady did...when we get our souls into the eternal rhythm of God's breath, when we define that space just beyond the horizon and, for at least a few seconds,  meet the mystery face to face...isn't that the ultimate healing?  Whether ocean side or in a quiet forest or beneath a brightly stitched night sky, when we lose ourselves, do we find ourselves?  Could that be the coveted goal of our outward search and our internal quest?  Could that be peace, love, and joy all rolled up into one?  The Truth...capital T?  I suspect so.

I hope that random soul found some of that this morning.  Especially Truth.  I am in her debt now for she blessed me with fresh thought, renewed awakening, and a nice little glimpse of heaven.

 I pray she got a good solid look for herself.

Lost and found

Last week, there was a day of lost...but not found.  A friend and I spent an entire day looking for a lost calf, slashing the pasture in straight lines and diagonals, from behind the wheel of an ATV and on foot.  We were convinced that we searched every square foot of a 30 acre field, the ground obscured by red clover a foot high and spring grasses up to the knees.  Undergrowth that could easily conceal an eighty pound newborn calf.  We crossed the hot wire in several areas, around the pond, to the edge of and into the woods, into the bottom. Thinking that a newborn could stumble over the low voltage without missing a beat.   It was a great day for looking - blue skies and slight breezes - but not a good day for finding.  As the day wound down,  we conceded that there was nowhere else to search and were required to accept the "coyote theory."  That some time the night before, coyotes had slunk up from their dens at the river and dragged away the defenseless calf.  Not a pretty picture but one we had to draw.

A short back-story on the missing calf.  My friend had put the mother up in the barn one evening since the weather was calling for flooding rains and possible tornadoes.  She was close to giving birth and he didn't want to take any chances of her or her newborn getting injured.  The problem was:  he didn't know she had already given birth that day.  When he released her from the barn the next morning, her older calf ran up to her and started suckling, confusing the momma cow into thinking that her older calf was her newborn.  So momma cow didn't venture out into the pasture to try to locate her new calf.  Letting that job fall to my friend and me.  And we failed. But not for lack of trying.

It's a sad story, but, during the search while my aching feet and legs covered acres of rolling land, I had plenty of time to think.  And the story that came to mind was the parable that Jesus told about the lost sheep.  And how the shepherd left the ninety-nine to go in search of the one.  And of the great joy upon finding that single one out of an even one hundred.

I've never admitted it, but I'm not sure that I ever fully understood the parable.  I guessed that it was a simple concept but, as usual, I was always looking for something else...something hidden in the undergrowth.

I felt many things during the search.  Frustration ranked pretty close to the top of the list.  Hope was embedded in there somewhere.  Futility crept in every so often.  But, strangely, each and everything that I felt was wrapped in something else.  And that something else was love.  Love for life in all its forms.  Love for the calf that I had never laid eyes on.  Love for things in need.  And love for the connectedness of all things under the sky.

Maybe that was all Jesus was saying when he talked about the lost sheep.  That it isn't about the sheep at all.  And not really about the shepherd.  The search, though.  That's different.  Because the search signified a caring heart and the recognition that all things are precious.  And worthy of effort.  The search was, and is, an extension of love.  My search said that something was important enough for me to leave my regular life behind - to allow the ninety-nine other things that were orbiting my existence to stay suspended in orbit for a little while - while I expended all my time and energy and, yes, love, on something else.  Something that needed me.  Something that couldn't help itself.

And though I didn't find the calf or experience the joy of locating something that was lost,  I found one more little universal puzzle piece.  And, snapping it into place with a satisfying click, I became just a little more whole myself.

Little brother

The hospice room is cold.  But that’s the way my brother wants it, and it is his death, so be it.  He wants it dark as well.  So the blinds are pinched tight, so now, even at noon, just the barest sliver of sunlight seeps inside.  And quiet…so very, very quiet.  The television that sits high upon a pedestal attached to the wall is dark and mute; voices behind that wall waver somewhere between hushed and a whisper.  That’s the way he wants it, it's his death, and I am but an observer.  

One sconce wall light aims a pale glow toward the ceiling, and, with the door closed tight, the silence and darkness create a tomb.   My brother's physical being has already begun to take on a waxy pallor, almost a translucence…a delicate, ivory container of a soul preparing to drift away.  He lies on his back, his breathing a soft snore.  He wakes sporadically, or appears to wake, his slitted eyes barely focusing with just a ghost of a glint,  his mouth barely moving, suggesting just the hint of a smile.  This wonderful man, this brother of mine, always bigger than life, always pleasantly loud, and with a presence that crowded rooms in a comfortable fashion.

Where is he going, this brother of mine?  I knew where he had been, I knew where he thought he would be going over the next several years of his life, the silver, golden, and platinum years, but melanoma stepped in and said, “Hey there, Buddy, hang on a minute.  There’s been a change of plans.”  My wife said that she was mad at the melanoma and I told her that hey, it’s just cancer being cancer.  Truth told though, if I could have personified it, I would have grabbed it and choked the life out of it, and sent it back to the bowels of hell from whence it came.

I profess my love over several hours but suspect my timing sucks.  It isn't the first time I've told him I love him, but I have to admit that the two of us only came to terms with terms of endearment late in life.  But I suppose that when it comes to expressing love, it may be late, but it doesn’t ever have to be too late.

I hold his right hand.  The one that I shook so many times before we got comfortable with man hugs.  If we ever did get comfortable with them.  His hand is cold, really cold.  And it makes me think:  you know, it just isn't right for him to be lying there in that bed.  That’s not the territory that he is supposed to be exploring.  He is supposed to be on the beach with his wife and with Dude, the rescue dog, while Pearl, the rescue cat, waits for them to return to their retreat on St. George Island.  He is supposed to be cleaning his pool or claiming a stalk of bananas from his tree out back or seeing what's good on the tube for the evening.  He is supposed to be walking and talking and breathing big, huge breaths of humid, salty Gulf of Mexico air.  Or planning to return to the farm on Champ Road in Kelso to prep seedlings for the upcoming garden season.  Or just sitting on the front porch of his cabin and gazing in the direction of the Elk River, wondering if the herons would return in the spring after last year's tornado turned their century old habitat into splintered and twisted ruins.

He isn't supposed to be taking shallow breaths and making restless movements in a metal bed in the hospice wing of a hospital in Panama City, Florida.  He isn't supposed to be battered and beaten by a nasty, aggressive cancer that made the fury of last year’s tornado  as innocuous as an April breeze.  He isn't supposed to be dying in front of my eyes.

Little brothers aren’t supposed to die before big brothers.  It’s the big brother’s job to see the little brother all the way through.  A big brothers’ work doesn’t stop at holding onto the back of the bicycle until the little brother  learns the physics of balance… running alongside him as he gains confidence…faster and faster…until the little brother says, “Hey, I got it!”  Until he wobbles and twists to that point of no return, where, if you love him, you let him go.

 It doesn’t stop at the sideline coaching of Little League games.  A big brother doesn’t get to stop pacing the floor when his little brother with brand new driver's license isn't home at midnight or when you stand with him at the altar waiting on the love of his life to appear or any of those times as an adult  when he asks for a little advice he doesn't plan to heed anyway.  It doesn't stop just because you're both north of sixty and with more age spots than hair.

Oh, I’m not saying it doesn’t happen.  Because I’m here to tell you it does.  I’m hear to tell you that little brothers sometimes leave this world before big brothers.  Oh, yes, they do. And it isn't pretty but it is what it is.

So I sit in that cold, dark, quiet room and listen to my little brother breathe.  I whisper I love him in case he can hear.  I pat his hand and kiss his forehead.  I cling to the seat of that strange ride he’s on...as he goes faster and faster, I strain to maintain my grasp.  I run alongside him as we both grow breathless.  Until eventually something tells me he’s got it…that, yes, it is time...for he has reached that point of no return.

And then, because I do love him, I let him go.

Re-tire-ment

The online etymology dictionary tells us this about the word "retirement":

  

retire (v.)

1530s, of armies, "to retreat," from Middle French retirer "to withdraw (something)," from re- "back" + old French tirer "to draw" (see tirade).  

Meaning "to withdraw" to some place, especially for the sake of privacy, is recorded from 1530s; sense of "leave an occupation" first attested 1640s (implied in retirement).  Meaning "to leave company and go to bed" is from the 1660s.  

I suppose retirement is a little of all those things.  Now, with nearly a full year under my belt, I wish I had volumes of wise thoughts and profound suggestions for those of you a year or a decade or several decades from retirement.  Heck, I'd settle for being able to provide a few words of wisdom, but, unfortunately, deeper wisdom isn't something I can claim as a result of retirement.

I have retreated a bit.  But to an introvert, that's not only natural, but it feels welcoming as well.  Withdraw?  I suppose.  Though I would prefer the word "redraw" if there's such a word...as in redrawing priorities.  

What have I missed...being retired and all?  

I would quickly say the "social" side of being employed.  It likely makes some people smile, and others cringe, to realize and be comfortable with the fact that the majority of your life is spent with your co-workers.  Your waking life anyway.  If you do the math, you've got at least eight hours a day "at work," eight hours a day sleeping, and then the rest of the time is divided between non-work friends and social activities, traveling (sometimes for work) and family.  And let me be quick to say that spending the time with these "work people" isn't a bad thing.  I'd argue that much of who you are at the end of your work life is molded by these folks - your work family.  That will be where the majority of your memories lie, like it or not.

What else have I missed?

Well...the paycheck was pretty darn nice.  I realize that many of you work for the sheer pleasure of it.  Me?  I worked for the moolah.  Fortunately, I enjoyed what I did, so getting paid for something you enjoy doing is definitely a blessing.

What else?

A sense of productivity.  Which, I readily admit, can be satisfactorily replaced if I get off my rear end and do some or all of the things I said I was going to do when I retired.  But, let me say this, it's been nice to be lazy.  To have no goals to hit.  To have no objectives to meet or exceed.  To have no responsibility toward anyone but myself and those close to me.  I figure that I owed myself a year of that.

There is one thing I can tell you without hesitation.  And this is something that has been percolating for the entire first year of my retirement.  Something that has risen to the surface in all its glory and splendor.  (the caveat here is that I don't expect any of you to accept this at my face value...you'll probably have to experience it for yourselves.)  It's not deep.  It's not wise.  It's just fact.  

It is a waste of good brain cells to worry about whether you will have "enough money." You likely will, and, if you don't, folks are standing in line to hire the cheapest labor known in modern times:  Baby Boomer retirees.  What you will come to realize is that your continuing prayer will be that you will have enough time.  Enough time to, in a fully unencumbered way, enjoy waking each morning to a fresh day...a brand new number on the calendar...a newly printed lease on life, with the ink still wet and glistening like morning dew.  Enough time to laugh at the silly things that you once thought were so serious and important.  Enough time to radiate in the smiles of friends and family.  Enough time to curl up with a good book; take long, ground-grabbing strides through the woods or along the river; hold tightly to the hand of someone you love; or sit quietly at the ocean or atop a ridge or in a comfortable chair and just luxuriate in the glory of God.

Let me repeat...it ain't about the money.  It's about the time.  

Instead of dollars and cents, make my currency days and months and years.

One more thing.  If you're really up for a challenge, go and ahead and start practicing some of those retirement activities now...you know, the ones that don't require a red cent to enjoy.  And that bring priceless joy to your life.  Go ahead and practice a little unencumberedness.  It'll give you a leg up when your retirement genie knocks on the door.  

Sort of a preview of coming distractions.

Happy New Year - all.

Thanksgiving Eve ramblings

At the farm this morning, a seasonal chill slowly gave way to an optimistic fried-egg sun simmering on an icy blue sky.  The weak attempt of a frost from the night before surrendered, turning to a harmless dew that produced thousands of quivering rainbows in the diamond strewn grass.  Coat weather slowly evolved to jacket weather and finally to shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

Casper and Jelly Belly, freed from the confines of the farmhouse, took a constitutional hike, fanning out across the tufted fields before returning to the yard to wallow in the crisp air and upon the moderating lawn.  The sun caught the brilliance of their black cat hair which, delightfully, reflected as pure silver.  B-Man, 'Stache, White Kitty, and Cali Cat wandered cautiously from the stalls of the nearly two hundred year old barn, finding their own patch of sunshine in which to preen and groom the morning away.  Momma Kitty remained staunchly solitary, patroling the edge of the woods, with careful posture and watchful eye for whichever one of her rivals might decide to swoop upon her unannounced and most certainly unwelcome.

I have a friend who jokingly claims that I have a cat ranch.  It often occurs to me that he might be correct.

With great effort and no small amount of back strain, I moved the headstones of Benji, Gidget, and Little One closer to Shirley's gravesite.  It was just one more small repair job sitting around waiting to be done since the April tornado.  Their graves remain in the backyard of Mom's former house, unbeknownst to the new occupants.  No harm, no foul.  I certainly couldn't move their graves, but I could at least preserve the headstones, and, at least to my way of thinking, their memories.  Kelsie's ashes are with Mom, just as she requested...just about every week for two years prior to her death.  If you were one of Margie's dogs, you never got treated "like a dog."

For many, Thanksgiving is being with families or missing the families they want to be with.  Maybe both.  For me, Thanksgiving is remembering the old days...the days when my parents were younger than I now am and my grandparents were...well...not much older than my current age.  And there are new generations creating their own versions of the old days.  I'm just not.  Though I think of my parents often, it's on the holidays that I think about them the most.  And missing them becomes most acute.

I inherited my Mom's love for animals.  Heck, let's be honest.  I inherited her fanaticism for animals.  Take Misty, for example.  She was part of an odd threesome that Mom discovered one day on the way to the farm.  There was an old abandoned school house that squatted several yards off the dirt road, becoming a makeshift haven for three odd fellows:  a dog, a cat, and a rooster.  Those three were the best of friends, you never saw one without seeing them all, and, as did every animal that came into contact with my mother, they took to her.  It probably helped that she stopped every day to feed them.  The three amigos preferred to take their meals together, so my mother would open a can of cat food, a can of dog food, and spread a handful of chicken feed, each and every day, rain or shine, sleet, snow, or sun, and provide them with a comforting audience while they chowed down.  There were no days off, no holidays, no every other Sunday.  Each day, they listened for Mom's Jeep and were lined up and ready to dine before the dust settled under her tires.  Unfortunately, mankind intervened, and some not so nice fellows shot the cat and the rooster, but the dog managed to escape.  Mom found the cat and rooster and gave them a proper burial.  Misty got to go home in the Jeep.

Kelsie was found on a sub-freezing January day at the end of the long driveway that winds to the farmhouse.  She lay beneath a dead sibling.  Kelsie was also assumed dead but when Mom placed the tiny pup in the palm of her hand, she noticed just the slightest of movement.  Wrapping the little ice cube of a puppy in her sweater, she hurried her back to the farmhouse and performed a famous Margie Miracle.  Kelsie grew to weigh sixty pounds and lived another ten years.

Our four-legged friends have similar stories.  Casper and Jelly Belly were on death row at the Animal Shelter, hours away from the dreaded walk.  B-Man, 'Stache, White Kitty, and Cali Cat were holed up under the porch of a building on busy Highway 64 probably only days away from death by speeding car.  Or hungry coyote.  Or callous human.  And some of you already know that we caught some beings, questionably human, tossing Momma Kitty and three kittens out into the woods from the trunk of a car.

There was not even the mew of a cat at the farm this morning.  Other than two loud shots from across the river, likely fired at some unsuspecting deer, the only sounds I can easily recall are the raspy rattle of the breeze through brittle leaves and the thumps and bumps of an industrious woodpecker, searching for some tasty morsel just beneath the outer layer of bark of an ancient, rotting elm.  This was a morning in which the whole landscape seemed to be anointed with the Balm of Gilead.  Not one shred of the hate and anger and rage that is running rampant in other parts of the country and world wormed its way into the late autumn peacefulness of this part of rural Tennessee.

And I was thankful for that.

I was also thankful for my ancestors who decided to settle among acres of woods and pastures along the Elk River and worked and managed those acres through hard times and times of plenty.  I was thankful for a mother who had a sweet, angelic connection with nature and animals and a father who tolerated, and even at times, shared it.  I am thankful for grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and the Thanksgiving feasts of the past.  I am thankful for tradition because, in frequently troubled times like these, tradition is a tangible and accessible branch jutting from an otherwise steep and stony precipice.  The saving grace, if you will.

I'm even thankful for that perservering woodpecker whose percussion lent excellent accompaniment to the leaf stirring breezes as well as sweet accentuation to the light, heavenly silence of this wonderful Thanksgiving Eve.

And I thank God for allowing me to not only experience a wonderful, soul-enriching morning, but to have the good sense to realize how blessed I am for the experience.   And for comprehending how rare and sacred these simple pleasures are.

I wish something just as rare and sacred for all of you.