For the past couple of days, I just don’t feel like I’ve been able to get started. Part of the problem is that I have this icky icky bit of work to do, which is entirely annoying and which I didn’t know I’d have to do. Plus, the City is making me do it which is the ickiest thing of all! Bleah! Part of me knows that I just need to put my big girl panties on and deal with it, but a bigger part is saying, “No! It’s Friday! Do something else! Do anything else!”
Problem: Nothing else to do.
Dang.
Over the weekend, my father called to chat and let me know that my aunt and uncle are going to put my grandparents’ house on the market. They’ve been dead for a few years, so I know that they don’t mind. However, even though I know that I’ve probably already made my last visit to that house, I got used to the idea that it was there.
That house sat quietly in my mind waiting for my return. The pecan tree dropped its pecans and waited for my grandfather to pick them up and shell them at Christmastime. The garden never lay fallow, but continually produced prodigious harvests of tomatoes, watermelons and other yummy produce. The wild rose at the top of the driveway blossomed with abandon in the spring.
I suppose, in my mind, my grandparents are always there too. After they left their home to go into a nursing home, I never entered that house. I guess I just couldn’t bear the thought of that house being empty.
Maybe a nice little family will buy it and fix it up. They could teach their children how to crack the pecan shells by pressing them together, and plant nasturtiums along the fence for the garden, and change the color on the hydrangeas. Their grandchildren could come to visit: climbing the trees and sitting on the porch and drinking sweet tea until only total collapse can bring about naptime.
I sure hope so.
I don’t know why I expected him to be Lassie-like. He’s not ever been that way.
This Sunday, I rose sleepily and put Cappy out on his lead just like usual. Then, bed, pillow, sleep…maybe not even in that order. I woke maybe five seconds later to hear Cappy going apeshit on the end of the lead. Barking, yelping, flipping out. I thought he might have hurt himself, and I ran out the door in my pjs and with my winter booties only partially attached to my feet.
Cappy turned and looked at me.
“What’s up, mama?”
Oh please. He sat firmly and primly upon the snow. His lead had been tangled around our aspen tree and the top of the next-door fence.
Wait! Something you should know is that the snow in our front yard is between three and four feet deep. That’s after the thaw last week.
I knew there was no extraction with Cappy at the end of the lead, so I climbed up the little path that he’s formed up onto the snow bank. Steps one, two and three were no problem.
Step four? Clunk. Suddenly, I was sitting on the snow - one leg firmly attached to the dirt, the other lying atop the snow.
Jersey pajamas were not made for protection from the snow.
I began to pull my foot out of the snow and realized that only my foot was coming up. The shoe remained at the bottom of the hole. Arrgh! I decided that Cappy could help.
“Cappy! Come help me like Lassie! Come here boy!” And Cappy pranced over to me. I hugged his neck and detached him from the end of his lead.
“Pull me! Pull me, Cappy!” I grabbed his collar.
Cappy looked deeply into my eyes, and leaped up to punch me in the shoulders.
“No! Lassie would never do that! Be Lassie! Be Lassie!”
No, Cappy would not be Lassie. Cappy will only ever be Cappy and I should know that.
I hauled my foot out of the snow, now fending off my ersatz rescuer who continued to leap and bark around me (not running off though. That’s a plus for him!). I could see my shoe, so I reached into the hole and saved it. Then, one foot bare and one shod, I limped into the house, yelling “Come on Cappy! Come on boy.”
And he trotted happily into the house.
What a good boy.