Zachariah In Memoriam

We found out several months ago that our beloved cat, Zachy, 11 years old, had terminal stomach cancer.  There was really nothing to do but try to keep him comfortable and put him down when it was time.  For me, figuring out when to euthanize an animal is the hardest part.  But I had faith that we would know when the time came.  So, with a bottle of Prednizone, we went home and hoped for the best.

The steroid really seemed to help, and Zach was almost back to his normal self.  Meanwhile, we were also taking care of our daughter Fiona's three kittens.  Zach actually got along with them quite well;  in fact one, Harley, seemed to love Zach and followed him all around and slept next to him.

As the weeks went by, Zach got sicker, of course, and sat on my lap less and less. Eating became more and more difficult and he stopped grooming himself.  Finally, last week, he couldn't keep anything down.  We knew it was time.

We took him to the pet hospital and he sat on Rich's lap on the way.  When we got there, he was very calm and stoic.  We were called and went into the smaller of the two examination rooms.  As Zach lay on the table, we cradled his warm, furry body and stroked his white whiskers.  His bony spine was a ridge of tiny mountains.  Dr. Merrill came in and shaved a small patch on his leg, then inserted the first needle which put him to sleep.  He relaxed and became limp.  After the second shot, he was a rag doll with no stuffing. We buried him in the backyard next to our other cat, Sam. Deciding that today was the day was difficult, but I knew he was finally at peace.

We miss our tiny kitten (who in his prime was a huge 16 pound cat).  He was more like a dog than a cat:  he came when called, played with our dog, and led us to his food bowl.  He was always hungry!  We have many pictures of him to enjoy and he will live in our hearts forever.  Good bye Zachy.

Mom

"She passed at 7:15," the hospice nurse told us as we, my sisters and I, arrived that morning five years ago, at my mother's apartment.  We had been called a week ago to come "now" because she didn't have much longer to live.  My mother, so opinionated, precise, funny was gone, just as they had said she would.  And typical to her style, she had died on schedule the day before we were leaving.

"You might want to go in separately and spend a little time with her," the nurse suggested.  It was hard to imagine my mom not criticizing the nurse because she smoked, making jokes, cracking us up with her humor.  My sister Lynn did not want to go in, prefering to remember her as she was in life.

I decided to go into her room.  I held her cold limp hand.  The blue veins stood out under the translucent  skin, but she was still my mom.  "You were a wonderful mother," I said,  something that sounded so trite but was in fact very true.  "You did so much for me.  I am a musician because of your love of music spreading to us girls."  (My sister Amy is a public school music teacher in Pasadena.  My sister Lynn played oboe through high school and has handed down the love of music to her daughters.)  "You always had advice to give, most of it very wise and useful.  And I loved that you loved polar bears."  My mother worried about polar bears, how their habitat was vanishing.  But in her last week, she told us she didn't need to worry about them anymore.  Let someone else do that now.  Maybe that is how paradise would be for my mother, happy with the life she had lived.

Metro Man

The year was 1981 and I was spending that season playing bass in the Mexico City Philharmonic.  This is an excellent Orchestra that is made up of about a third Mexican musicians, a third American, and a third eastern European.  My younger sister, Lynn had come to visit for a week.  She is fluent in Spanish and had spent a summer in Cali, Colombia.  Now she wanted to experience Mexico City.  The DF, as Mexico City is called, had a population at the time of at least 20 million and was considered the largest city n the world.  I was living in a beautiful colonia called Coyoacan, in the southern part of the city. But I decided to take Lynn to the city center, La Zona Rosa, where we would have lunch at La Fonda de Refugio, a favorite restaurant among my friends and me.  It served traditional Mexican cuisine, food from this more southern part of the country.  It was nothing like the Tex-Mex stuff you get in the United States.  Since the restaurant was in a very crowded part of town, the Metro (or subway) seemed the most expeditious way to get there.

It was 11 AM and rush over was supposedly over.  But the Metro was still packed.  Lynn and I crammed ourselves into one of the cars and were standing as close to our fellow passengers as jelly beans in a jar, unable to move.  Both my sister and I are 5 feet, 8 inches tall and she has yellow, blond hair.  Being taller than most of the other passengers, we could see all around us and stood out from the crowd like two geese in a flock of chickens.  After a while jostling and bumping, I felt a strange poking in my backside.  Not anything sharp, but a blunt instrument.  I managed to turn part way and look down.  To my horror, I saw an erect penis butting up against me.  Completely unable to move away, I yelled something unintelligible in Spanish OR English and started bonking the offender on the shoulder.  The people around me couldn't see what had transpired and thought I was the crazy one.  They backed away from me as fast as they could.  I still vividly remember the startled expressions of the other passengers, not to mention the look of consternation on the man in question.

After what seemed like hours, though it was probably just a minute or two, I grabbed my puzzled sister and promptly got off at the next stop.  "What the heck happened?" she wanted to know.  I filled her in and after I calmed down a bit, we went and had a delicious comida (lunch) of squash blossom tacos and huite la coche.  And I vowed that the next time I rode the Metro at rush hour, I would definitely take one of the cars for women and children.

Nutcracker

Back when our daughter Fiona, now 18, was 9 and in Ballet 2 at the San Francisco Ballet School, we found out that she had gotten two roles in the company's brand new production of the Nutcracker.  She was to be Daisy in the party scene and as a clown in Mother Ginger in the second act.  We were very excited as this was Fiona's first time  performing in the Nutcracker.  First row tickets were on reserve at the Opera House for parents, so I naturally bought two for Rich and me.  I also bought three more so my mother and sister could come to San Francisco to see the ballet.

On opening night, Rich and I sat in the darkness, listening to the Overture.  A thrill washed over us.  As the curtain went up, and Fiona came running down the stairs with the other party children, my heart nearly burst.  She absolutely glowed in her yellow dress, with her hair curled into shining ringlets. Rich and I turned to look at each other and we could see  tears in each other's eyes.  A swell of pride washed over us both.  This has to be one of the best moments of parenthood, I thought.  There are many triumphs, big and small, along the path of raising a child.  But something like this makes for pure, unadulterated love and joy!

As it turned out, Fiona danced beautifully and really put herself into the role of Daisy, the youngest girl at the party.  When all the guests were leaving, Daisy went to sit in a chair by the fire, all by herself.  It was a sight beautiful as any painting.  When her "mother" called, Daisy sleepily got up, hugged the teddy bear she had gotten as a gift, and ran to her mom.

In Act Two, Fiona was a clown who led the circus bear (an enlarged version of the one Daisy received at the party) back under the dress of Mother Ginger.  Fee was very cute in her black and white costume, complete with a pointed, European style clown hat.  When we picked her up after the performance, we told her how proud we were of her.  It seemed to us that she hadn't just played the role, but had actually become Daisy and the clown.  Seeing Fiona dance on stage has become one of my fondest memories, one that I can take out of the album of my mind and admire anytime.

Three Little Kittens

My eighteen-year-old daughter Fiona came home for Thanksgiving and brought with her three kittens that she had rescued.  They are about three months old and unbelievably cute.  They are all gray tabbies with varying degrees of white fur.  Each one has four white mittens for paws and beautiful hazel eyes.  My husband and I have a big orange tabby cat and a coon hound mix.  We weren't sure how they would react to the kittens, but I have to say that they were real troopers.  When the kitties first came in the house, Mona the dog lay down, as if to say that she was cool.  Zach, the orange tabby, hissed a little but soon got used to their rambunctious ways.  The kittens were little dickens, but the two older animals took it all in stride.

When they would sleep, the kittens piled all together in one big mass.  They loved to be held, and would purr like crazy while cuddling in a willing lap.  Their names seemed to suit them well: Harley is kind of an instigator and independent spirit; Bentley is very proper; and Rover is all over the place.  Meal time was a feeding frenzy, and they had to be sequestered in Fiona's room  to prevent Mona and Zach from eating their food.  They have no manners yet and constantly had to be removed by hand from the dining table and kitchen counters.  It felt like being a grandparent, just with four-legged grandkids.  Fiona drove back to Los Angeles yesterday so we were kittenless last night.  This morning, waking up without the kittens there to pester us and without Fiona to hug, felt kind of lonely.  Oh well, Christmas is just around the corner, and we'll be able to host Fiona and the kids again.

O The Humanity

It was last Monday afternoon and I boarded the 4:46 PM BART  for my Writers' Class in Berkeley.  I got on the train in Millbrae with just a few other people and easily got a seat.  By the time we reached the Embarcadero Station, my car was filled to capacity.  O the smell of humanity--especially in tight quarters!  The man sitting next to me had some peculiar metallic odor emanating from his person.  A young woman standing in front of me suddenly sat down on the floor and asked, "Am I OK here?"

"You're fine," I answered.  Her skirt, slit to the hip, was riding up, exposing legs in tights and trendy suede boots.  Fancy perfume wafted over from her direction, mixing with the odors of the other passengers.  Just then, I remembered a TV commercial from my childhood:  "Aren't you glad you use Dial?  Don't you wish everybody did?"  Yes, I am glad I do use Dial and would love it it everybody bathed daily and used deodorant.  But I am wondering if, nonetheless, my own particular odor was being noticed by other passengers.  Soon my North Berkeley stop arrived and I disembarked with the washed and unwashed masses and headed off to class.

Agility: Dog or God?

Since Mona (my coon hound mix) and I completed  beginning and intermediate agility classes on Sunday mornings at the Peninsula Humane Society, I felt it was time to up the ante a little.  Rachel, our teacher, was no longer going to make the hour drive from her home up to Burlingame.  She was, however, going to teach a more advanced class down in San Martin (about an hour's drive for me).  The class was going to be on Sunday mornings (again).  I have no conflicts during that time except for singing in a friend's church choir.  But because I cannot make very many of the rehearsals since they are on Thursday evenings, my choice between God and Dog is easy: Dog wins out.

When Rachel said this would be a more advanced class, she really wasn't kidding.  Held in a competition size field, it has all the equipment set up.  Rachel makes different courses by placing yellow plastic numbers by each element (hurdle, A-frame, tunnel, etc.) and the people run their dogs--RUN being the operative word.  The other folks in the class have dogs who are way more advanced.  The dogs are able to whisk through the weave poles like lightening and go to each jump with a point of the finger or verbal command.  It's really inspiring and at the same time, frustrating.  Mona, who is 11 years old, is still learning a few of the elements, i.e. the weave poles.  I ordered some poles of my own, and now have them set up in our living room for easy access.  It looks silly, but allows us to practice when ever the mood hits.  As far as the teeter-totter goes, we will just have to learn it during class time.  Because of Mona's advanced age (though she is still very agile, leaping over the fence at the local dog park to chase rabbits) she jumps hurdles that are only 16 inches high.  The other dogs her size jump 22 inches, some with room to spare.  One mini-Australian shepherd soars over the jumps, obviously really enjoying it.  Mona is doing very well, especially when I know the drill.  And isn't that the way most things go?  For examples of dog agility, simply go to You Tube and type in Dog Agility.

News Flash:  This just in.  Rachel and her dog Kubby got 3rd place at the national competition in Tennessee they attended last week.  Congratulations!