Friday, I took the rabbit to do his hospice visits. While I was there, the aide asked me to visit another resident. This lady was so sweet, so excited to see the bunny, and when she reached out to him, I realized that she was extremely spastic, her arms flailing around uncontrollably.

She realized it, too, and stopped extending her hand. I paused. However, Bob didn't hesitate. He stood on his hind legs, extending his head to her hand. Following his lead, I extended the basket closer. When her hand touched the rabbit, the lady's arm tremored, ruffling his fur, but Bob didn't move. Within seconds, all involuntary movement had stopped, and the lady's hand rested quietly on the rabbit's back.

Once again, I was humbled by his ability to discern what I could not.

Periodic Table

Yesterday, Kiki was helping Nita with her homework, which consists of Kiki pompously lecturing everyone within earshot about the "realities" of eighth grade.

Initially, she was regaling Nita with tales of painful torture devices and mind-numbing acts of cruelty, but now she mostly talks about the more mundane (and less frightening) activities of the day. Nita eats it up, obviously storing these nuggets of wisdom so she can be the maven of middle school.

In a rare moment of generosity, Kiki asked Nita what she had covered in school that day. Nita replied, "We learned about the periodic table of the elephants."

Kiki was, for once, speechless. In the moments of silence which followed, I was picturing a huge poster with Dumbo, Jumbo, Babar, and Horton. Snorky from the Banana Splits. And what about those Heffalumps from the Pooh cartoons? Would they qualify? And wooly mammoths, of course. After all, they started the whole thing.

Cracked pots

An old, dear friend of mine died last week.

He had been drafted at eighteen and had served as a medic in Vietnam, seeing the worst imaginable injuries and wounds, a witness of what people do to one another with the excuse of "peace-making."

He and I could spend hours talking about something as serious as this or nothing at all.

I hadn't seen him in a while, as we had moved away, and he and I no longer worked together. However, we had shared acquaintances yet, and it was through a friend of a friend that I heard.

At the funeral, a minister who didn't know him well despite my friend's devotion to his faith delivered the eulogy. He told us that my friend, like all of us, was broken and that caused him to take his own life.

My friend was not broken; however, like all of us, he was flawed, cracked if you will. My sister said, "We are all cracked pots--that is how The Light gets inside." I don't care for the term "cracked pots," as it sounds too much like "crackpots."

However, I do agree with the sentiment. Flawed is not broken, it allows access to what is inside us.

Missing a C

Today Rocky presented his agenda to be signed before he went to school.

On Monday of last week, the teacher had written "Rocky got a B on his science test."

How nice, I thought. On closer inspection, I found that the B was written in pencil and the page under the B was apparently erased numerous times. Okay, so one of three things had happened: Rocky's teacher had issues with remembering his real grade; Rocky retook the test five or six times, obviously getting a better grade each time; or Rocky changed the teacher's note.

Hmmmm.

I said, "Rocky, what was the real grade on the test?"

"A C?" he asked me.

"I doubt your teacher would write me a note about a C," I told him.

"A C minus?"

"Nice try." So I wrote a note to the teachers, describing my discovery and asking for the "real" grade. I put the note in a bright orange envelope and handed it to Rocky. "I told your teachers to email me later," I said. "If I don't get an email, I will be in the school tomorrow morning to follow up."

"You'd go to the office?" he asked, aghast.

"For a start," I assured him. "And then I'll come to your class..." His eye started to twitch.

I am somewhat relieved that he's so poor at forging--it makes it easy for me to catch on to him. This reminds me of the time in first grade when his teacher took me into the classroom to show me the toothbrush he decorated for the class's dental hygiene project. His two-foot-long toothbrush was inscribed with the mother of all cuss words, now three letters long because he spelled it without a C. I was aghast.

"Should I take some comfort in the fact that he misspelled it?" I finally managed to ask her.

Same thing with the forgery. Is this a sign of things to come, or is it something which he tried and will now forego because he is so unskilled at it?

Time will tell.

Duck, Duck, Goose

Yesterday we took Dirty Harry and Penny the Impetuous to the park for a walk. The main path is paved and makes a lovely 1/3 mile loop around a little lake which is populated with fish and waterfowl as well as transients who stop by. Once we saw a great blue heron wading in the reeds on the shore, and every year we are treated to a new batch of ducklings, whose progress we follow carefully, noting how the moms care for the babies, which makes a wonderful learning situation for kids who have attachment issues.

People feed the ducks, which makes them unafraid of people and most likely unhealthy little beggars.

Anyway, when we got to the bridge which spans the spillway to the outgoing stream, I let Penny wade in the water. A lone mallard duck approached us, hoping for a snack of Froot Loops or Cheezits. Penny suddenly reverted to instinct and attempted to go after the duck, who obviously needed to be retrieved despite being hale and hearty.

"Leave it," I said. However, Labs are bred to make judgement calls about their human's lack of sense about retrieving, so she scrabbled on the concrete spillway and got one foot in the lake.

"Leave it!" I told her. She maneuvered herself, putting both back feet on the vertical ledge of the spillway and shoving with all her strength. I braced myself, and we pushed/pulled against one another for a few seconds. The duck, thinking Doritos might me in order, cruised closer.

Penny started to yap. "LEAVE IT!" I said. Some woman, walking with a little girl with an annoying voice obviously sharpened by a few years of use, as she never shut up, came racing over to see the show. The child started to laugh hysterically. "Gaaahk!" Penny said.

"LEAVE IT!" I repeated, feeling a little desperate that I was going to join the duck.

"What's the dog's name?" The child asked, still laughing in an eardrum piercing manner. I didn't respond, as all my energy was now devoted to keeping myself out of the drink. The duck, apparently reassessing the situation, had decided that he might be the snack and started to paddle furiously away. "GWAHRK!" Penny gagged, lunging after the departing vessel as if she was missing a trip to the new world.

"What's the doggie's name? What's the doggie's name? Lady! What's the doggie's name. WHAT IS THE DOGGIE'S NAME?" the annoying child kept asking, coming closer each time. If I had experienced any slack in the leash whatsoever, I would have whipped it around her body a few times and let go. No such luck.

Finally the duck sailed behind some reeds, and Penny, whose oxygen level was at an all time low, allowed me to reel her back in. "Sit!" She did. "Wait!" I said. She did, obviously thinking I had Plan B for bird recovery in mind so still scanning the lake. The annoying child kept up a running commentary which neither Penny nor I acknowledged, as she had no oxygen going to her brain and I had too much.

Today it is in the fifties and sunny. Perhaps we will do it again.

The party you have reached...

My father died three years ago, and yet we still receive mail for him. The most annoying offender was a hearing aid company which repeatedly sent mailings, despite me calling them and telling them he was deceased. After the fourth time around the mulberry bush with this company apologizing for their error, yet another mailing came. "Are you hard of hearing?" it said. I called and told them that Dad was, indeed, hard of hearing, and there was NOTHING they could do to help him at this point. A fifth apology and promise to remove him from "the list." Yeah, right.

Within three weeks, guess what, another mailing. "Are you hard of hearing?" it asked. Kiki took a pen and wrote, "No, are you? We have told you five times he is dead." She put the mailing into the postage-paid return envelope and sent it back to the company.

The mailings stopped.

Mom died this summer. A month after her death, a mailing came which read, "Here's the second chance you've been waiting for!" Remarkable. And here I thought that resurrection was pretty close to the time of death and was done by God, not Mutual of Omaha. I sent the mailing back with a note telling them Mom was dead. Last week, another second chance came. I was irritated and sent the mailing back with a forwarding address for mom: Eastlawn Memory Gardens.

So, last week, when the phone rang on Sunday afternoon, and the person on the other end said, "Mrs. P?", the kids alerted. I replied, "She died last summer."

"Oh," he said, thinking fast on his feet, "the name I really have here is Mr. P."

"He died three years ago." The kids went off into gales of laughter in the background. Flustered, the caller hung up.

And I was just about to give him the phone number for the cemetery.

Thanksgiving

Yesterday was hard. It was the first year we did not have my parents, so EG made arrangements with the partner of my sister's brother-in-law to have a big family Thanksgiving at one of the houses. F, the partner, then invited his mother, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew, as well as my sister and her two adult children.

Then F called my sister and said so many guests might be too overwhelming for the brother-in-law, B, whose mother was in rehab for a broken hip and whose father was now obviously declining from dementia. He asked my sister if she thought we would mind if he backed out of the invitation. She said we would most likely understand, and when I heard, I called and said, "We get it--we will back out of the invitation."

However, when my sister tried to back out, she was told her invitation still stood, as did the invites for the rest of the guest list. When my sister called and refused my invitation, saying she was still going to F and B's, I expressed to her that we didn't understand why we weren't included and everyone else still was; my sister said, "You aren't family."

Ouch. Apparently not. Imagine my reaction when I found out that niece's boyfried of two months was added to the guest list at the last minute.

So we stayed home. We watched the dog show, as we always do, stared out at the clouds, and we ate our turkey and stuffing and tamales and rice and beans. And I was sad all day. My sister called later, telling me how hard the day was, and never once asking how we were doing. Kiki started crying and wanted to go to bed at six o'clock. Finally, Nita marched into the room, bearing my yellowed deck of Uno cards, and started playing with Rocky, of course making up rules which suited her plan of whipping his behind at the game. I refereed, and eventually she said, "We all should play." I faked enthusiasm, convinced EG (another enthusiasm faker) to join us, and rather forcefully made Kiki participate as well. Pretty soon we were all hitting EG with "draw four" and "draw two" cards, laughing at his exaggerated reaction of dismay, and I realized that we weren't faking the fun anymore. We were sad, yes, but we were enjoying what we had.

And we were hopeful that things might be better.