Notes From Another Side

A work in progress for my grandson on his 13th birthday: I. We drive up to New York when you're a week old. We take turns holding you. Blue skies, early June. Your mom is torn. Your two-year-old sister sorely needs a trip to the nearby park, but you were two weeks early and shouldn't go out. I'll stay with him, I say. I promise to call your mom the instant you stir. Your mom, our friend Siobhan, Bill, Alea and Kathleen troop out the door; you remain swathed in blankets in your infant chair on the floor beside the sofa. I crouch across from you. I'm your grandma, I say. I love you so much.  The conversation's pretty one-sided. You're in your own universe, a tiny alien creature not quite ready for this world. We're in a bubble ourselves, you and I, in this now silent apartment. You're not aware of me, but I'm oh so aware of you. I touch your cheek. I talk a bit more. I stare at you. I could stare at you for hours. Twenty minutes pass. You stir just as ...

Not going into the reasons I've neglected this blog, but they might be what you'd expect from an older person dealing with her own health issues in addition to her husband's. Enough on that.  A few days ago, my youngest son and his family went to the zoo and left their dog with us for the day. An old sweetheart, Jameson, almost 14 years old and showing his age. My son came to pick him up around eight that evening. As Brian lifted him into the back of the car, I peered into the backseat. Fifteen-month-old and five-year-old grandsons were fast asleep, but six-year-old Gracie was holding on. She had a dreamy/tired look on her face as she told me about their trip. Her eyes were like pools of starlight. Okay, perhaps not the best simile, but those earnest, sweet, magical hazel eyes just about did me in. Look at her, I said to my dead mother and aunt. Just look.

  And Then I Exploded ( Response to a writing prompt. You look at the prompt, whatever it is, and take it from there. No idea what I'm going to write until I start.)   And then I exploded, because the addition of a pair of ferrets to the five dogs and eighteen cats living in my brother Phil’s two-bedroom bungalow had passed the edge of eccentricity and was fast approaching the bona fide insane. When I’d moved in with my widowed brother the previous year, our household consisted of two long-in-the-tooth humans, three assorted mutts – Ebenezer, a gentle Lab mix, the hyperactive beagle Claudia, and Susie, a moody miniature poodle – plus four cats, Christopher, Alphonso, Mimi, and James. “You’ll have your own room. Private. No animals allowed,” Phil promised me. Which worked for a time. Phil took in more cats, ceding them his bedroom and sleeping on the living room couch as the three pooches snored at his feet. He prided himself on keeping the bungalow immaculate, so cle...