Mighty Montero came home with me when he was only six weeks old, intended to be a buddy for Paco. Some people thought I picked the name “Montero” to “match” the name Paco, but the Latin nature of both names is sheer coincidence. I’d just finished a scarf with one of my then-favorite yarns, Montera by Classic Elite. ‘Tero was a boy, so I changed the name to suit.
I found him at the local Cat Clinic, and knew immediately he was meant to be mine. They warned me he was a “little whippersnapper,” and he was all of that, but it was an endearing quality. Well, usually it was. When he got older, if he was angry at you, he’d slap you. Hard. It would leave a little red mark.
As a kitten he always strutted with his tail held high, like a flag. Always, that is, when humans were around. If he thought we couldn’t see him, he let down his guard — and his tail — to play or roll on the carpet.
Montero ended up being my mom’s cat (well, judging from the above picture, he started out that way) because as adults, he and Paco didn’t get along so well. Still, he would let me know he loved me too, in his own special way.
Montero was a big fan of “Law & Order.”
He died a few years ago at the age of twelve due to multiple health problems. We still miss him, but thankfully, have pictures like this to remind us of the special time we had with him.
While my hand is healing, I’m re-publishing some favorite posts you may not have seen before. Here’s a piece from June, 2015:
If we’re lucky our homes will never look precisely decorated, because along the way we’ll accumulate campy pieces of kitsch, treasured objects that speak to our hearts, and we’ll have to display them.
For me, it was an ashtray given as a joke by some family member, probably my mom or brother. It had a black plastic base with a hand-painted metal flamenco dancer screwed into the middle. Joke was on them. I loved it.
I don’t smoke, and guests in my home aren’t allowed to either, so instead I loaded it with red cinnamon candy and proudly set it on my coffee table.
No one, but no one, saw the beauty in Francisco the Fleet-Footed Flamenco Dancer that I did. It was frequently suggested I replace him with something a bit, shall we say, classier. I really didn’t see how Francisco fell short. (Okay, I did, but love is kind.)
Then I got a roommate. She was appalled, and went as far as trying to enlist my mother’s help to “get rid of that thing.” Mom warned her it was useless. Thus began a minor battle between my roommate and me.
“People will think it’s okay to smoke,” she’d say.
“That’s why there’s candy in there.” I’d reply.
“The colors aren’t right in this room,” she’d try later, standing in the living room as I walked down the hall.
“It’s so small, it’s an accent piece, it doesn’t matter,” I called back.
I never feared for Francisco’s safety, however, until I came home one day while she was on a business trip. He lay on his side on the coffee table, completely twisted off the base.
“Ooooh NOOOOO!” I cried. She forever denied it, but all the evidence said that woman had hired a damn assassin to do her dirty work while she was away.
I immediately called my friend Bud and asked if he could solder the pieces together. Within hours, Francisco sat upright in his proper place again. But I was resigned to the fact he needed a new home, somewhere safer in the apartment.
My kitschy little ashtray went into a box and stayed there for I don’t know how many years. He resurfaced every time I moved, but never made it onto the coffee table again. Eventually he disappeared.
I miss Francisco. Everything in my living room now is so…classy. It could use a little lesser art.
When I was merely sixteen, my friend Tammy and I were cautiously driving through her neighborhood (specifically, Tammy, who’d just gotten her license, was driving) when, suddenly, out of nowhere, this startlingly handsome, exceptionally well-built man dashed in front of the car. Tammy slammed on the brakes, narrowly missing hitting him straight-on.
She was doing nothing wrong, in fact, she was driving well under the speed limit, which is probably what saved this man from critical injury. Tammy was driving the family car, and it was a hefty vehicle. No such thing as a little bump from its front end.
The man was her neighbor, an Olympic hopeful you’ve all come to know in recent years for very different things, Bruce Jenner. Aka Caitlyn Jenner. Remarkably, I had a hard time finding a copyright-free picture of Bruce from that time, frankly, I had a hard time finding any pictures. Suffice to say, Bruce Jenner was a phenomenom, a cultural icon.
Hitting him with her car, even when not at fault, would have changed Tammy’s life in oh-so-many ways. Hitting anybody would have been bad, but we were weeks away from the ’76 Summer Olympics.
This isn’t a commentary on anything LGBT. Rather, it’s a look at what could have been. While Tammy and I joked for years “Bruce Jenner owes his life to me/my friend,” the reality is, his own carelessness (as I see it) almost did cost him his Olympic dreams, at the very least. How many of us lesser mortals are alive and walking today in much the same way?
Just two and a half years before this, I’d been out Christmas caroling with a group of friends. This was California, and while it wasn’t summer-like weather, it was warm enough for all of us to pile into the back of a neighbor’s pick-up truck and drive from house to house. Sensibilities about such things were different then.
Thirteen of us were in the back and two were in the cab with the driver when the brakes failed and the truck began to roll backward. The driver and the girls up front managed to get out, and several of the kids in the back jumped to safety as well. I sat there, frozen, not fully aware of what was happening, staring at my friend Susan, who was screaming, “jump out! jump out!”
The truck was heading for a cliff. By the grace of God, when it hit the edge, it flipped over, and those of us remaining in the truck were tossed on the side of a small incline. From there, it was a sheer drop to certain death.
Everyone survived, although the girls who had been in the cab suffered critical injuries. One hit her head on the pavement, the other, Tracy, was run over by the truck. Her mom was the driver. Later, they found the remains of the truck and were able to determine it was not her fault.
It is so easy to imagine the scenario where that would have been a tragic accident, killing up to fifteen teens and pre-teens, many of them siblings, and one adult. The world would be a different place today. How different, I have no way of knowing.
My life has not impacted the public at large, but who’s to say an offhand remark of mine, or one of the others in that truck that day, hasn’t had tremendous influence on someone who is frequently in the news?
Perhaps the injuries Tracy suffered led to medical breakthroughs. It was a once-in-a-lifetime case, doctors frequently said, challenging all they knew of medicine.
What they learned then may have saved the life of someone you know.
The lives of public figures have one sort of value to us, the lives of those in our immediate circle have quite another. Yet they are entwined in ways we don’t even know.
I may owe my life to you, today or sometime in the future, and never know it. Thank you.
“If you are going through hell, keep going.”
― Winston S. Churchill
It hurts. It gets old. It’s a dull pain one day and a sharp pain the next. Getting through the bad times wears you down and shapes you at the same time. You can’t see your way out and you’re convinced it will never end.
I’ve been there, and it’s hard. There are those saying, get it together. And you think you should have more together than you do.
Several years ago I was the victim of a horrible injustice, the target of powerful people convinced of a truth that did not exist. It ruined my life, no doubt about it. I was in a shambles. There seemingly was no way out of my situation, no way around the binding realities.
Whatever my part had been in the events that led to my despair, it was disproportionate to the result. I didn’t know who my friends were, who I could trust and who trusted me. Who cared for me?
Little by little I came to realize that the people most important to me cared. Yes, I’d lost some friends who bought into the half-truths and manipulated stories, and there was nothing I could do about it. Some of those people were important to me, and I mourn the loss of their friendship to this day. But I had to move forward, and rely on those who proved themselves true and kind of character.
My family saved my life. If nothing else, these events brought me closer to all of them, and for that I am grateful.
As time went on, things changed. I got a job, one I’m good at with people who care about me like family. While I still live in a less than desirable apartment complex, I have a new car (well, it’s a year old now) that has given me the opportunity to visit my mom on several occasions, both for pleasure and to care for her when she needs it.
And the future doesn’t look quite as grim. There appear to be options that will end all of this when the time comes.
Are these good times? Actually, I’ll be disappointed if that turns out to be the truth. These are better times, and hopefully good times, joyous times lie ahead. But I don’t know. I’m content with what I have now.
I fear the return of bad times, likely not the same bad times but something else, before experiencing truly good times again. If that’s the case, so be it. I can only take what I’m given and seek what can be found.
For my friends who are suffering, it can last an eternity, I know. Some of what gets you out of the pain is your own spirit, some is good fortune and some is dumb luck. I have no magic formula. But believe in the future.
I’ve found life isn’t getting harder, or more challenging, or more difficult than I expect it to be. But it’s getting more difficult in ways different than I expect.
I seem to be able to divide my life today into several parts:
making the same mistakes with the same predictable results; facing the same problems but with new challenges; blazing new, hopefully more productive trails; and dealing with the unimagined, some of it wonderful, some of it sad.
My Dad, me and my sister
Then there’s always the predictable, of course. My parents are aging; both will turn 80 this year. On my dad’s side of the family, that’s nothing. On my mom’s, it’s a little more meaningful. While today they’re healthy, the reality is, it doesn’t matter what you might reasonably anticipate, they are at an age when death might be unexpected, but you can never truly say it’s shocking.
I don’t worry about them dying, but I’m acutely aware they will someday, and I’m not looking forward to it. From time to time I’m made aware of the possibility that something I never thought of could happen, and one of them would be gone, just like that. I can’t dwell on those thoughts. Awareness it could happen is enough.
My friend Sandy, looking at family history, had no reason to believe her mother would live past her early 70s.
Now her mama is 90, and in reasonably good health, but little by little, her memory is diminishing. Sandy didn’t anticipate facing all the problems of finding care for her mother, who’s become increasingly incapable of caring for herself.
Fortunately, she found a good assisted living residence, and that will greatly take the burden off her shoulders. Believe me, she’s happy to have these problems, thrilled to have her mother with her. When she gets a chance to put it in that perspective. So often, she’s so tired.
She’s also dealing with the declining health of her husband, who’s doing well at this point but could turn at any moment. Or, live for years. That man is stubborn. In the back of my mind (okay, I have said it out loud once or twice) is the thought maybe we should worry a little more about Sandy’s health. She’s almost 70, but you forget it to look at her. If she died, a lot of things would fall apart for her husband and mother. Quickly.
That’s the sort of twist life seems good at turning. We expect her mom to go, we’ve been preparing, mentally, at least, for her husband to leave us, but one day she could just be gone without warning.
Many years ago my then-boyfriend’s childhood friend Dan had a rare form of cancer and was given months to live.
Because of his prognosis, he was asked if he’d be willing to take part in an experimental drug treatment. He did, and it extended his life long enough for another experimental drug program to come along…and then another. Eventually, Dan was cancer-free.
Dan had been prepared to die. He was left instead struggling with how to live, and floundered while adjusting his thinking.
Some days the little things throw me for a loop.
Mimi looking out the window
Today I reached over to scratch my cat Mimi behind the ears, and she cowered, terror in her eyes. I had no idea what was wrong. I held out my hand so she could sniff it, but she would have none of it. She walked away and sat five feet from me, staring in apparent deep contemplation.
That was three or four hours ago. Just now I got up from my desk and walked over to her, and she was fine. I have no idea what was wrong before, and I likely never will know. It upsets me. It’s never happened before.
If my cat is terrified of something, that’s not a little thing. Certainly not to her, therefore not to me.
I didn’t expect my life to be the way it is today,
and sometimes I’m at a loss with how to deal with the sense of sadness that surrounds me when I think of what I did expect and did want from life. Those moments don’t last, however, or dominate my thinking.
I’m proud of the skills I’ve developed in dealing with the pain and sorrow I’ve felt over the years, in the unexpected as well as absolutely foreseeable events that have transpired.
So now I’m going to cuddle with my cat. If she’ll let me.
My World With Words 
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