My cousin told me that at the newspaper where she works when everyone started groaning around Christmas time, she’d just hold up the photograph of Tin in his Santa suit and everyone would go awwwww and it would dispel the negative mood. Similarly, we only need to hear moo out of his little mouth and our day is brightened a thousand million times.
If ifs were skiffs we’d all ride for free – I was thinking about the power of positive thinking and how restorative nature can be. We went to do a family walk on the lakefront after Wolfie’s ceremony. And we let go of Tin’s white star balloon into the wind. Lake Ponchartrain is the second largest salt water lake in the United States, I thought it was the largest, but apparently the Great Salt Lake…
Today we held Wolfie’s ceremony on the levee, which was dog gone hard to get to as the New Orleans Ironman was in full thrust as we were trying to drive down Marconi, so we had to take a detour. Toby, savior of 600 German Shepherds, joined us and read Mary Morris’ Missing: A Dog’s Doggerel and brought poppies and roses from her garden, we brought Wolfie’s ashes, ten orange balloons in the shape of…
We went by my mother’s grave and there was an angel that a loved one put on the grave. It’s the Jewish tradition to wait one year after the burial and then dedicate the tombstone. In the meantime, someone felt she needed a marker. We brought her Gerbera daisies, favorites of my MawMaw (grandmother). My aunt had placed yellow roses on her grave recently. How perfect, the angel for my mother. I truly feel her…
We packed up Tin and headed to Franklinton and Pine to see my aunt and uncles and cousins galore, but the best part of the trip was Tin getting to experience all the farm animals first hand as my cousin has old McDonald’s farm in his backyard! We saw horses, cows, calves just born yesterday – Tin got to practice his mooing! sheep and lambs, chickens and roosters and rabbits – not to mention my…
Yesterday the WWL newstruck pulled up as we were all sitting on the porch ending our week with Tin having peanut butter and rice crackers for the first time, and us just starting to relax. CNN had just named New Orleans as one of the ten most dangerous cities in the world and they wanted to know what we thought about it. We gave them an earful – yes New Orleans has long had the…
Since adopting Tin everyone and their mother has great advice to offer us. I get this strange feeling that the older African American woman are positive I don’t know how to care for him and they stop to tell me, “He needs shoes; why is he crying; isn’t he cold?” Then there are the children who are always saying, “Ah, he’s sad, he’s crying.” No, I tell everyone, he has a blocked tear duct. Or…
I was picking out some moisturizer and the clerk whispered, “Well this one is for 50 or older.” “What?” I can’t hear you, I wanted to say, but instead I laughed and said, “Perfect, I’m older.” She looked at me as if I had just said I am a leper.
I keep ending each week either saying or hearing someone tell me “What a week!” – well let’s just sum it all up – What a life! And ain’t it grand? To think that five years ago this August, New Orleans was under putrid water, and now there is a show about it on HBO. Go figure. Or that last year at this time, our first adoption failed and I stood in the kitchen on…
Sometimes the world spins in one direction and you feel like you are shedding what and who you love – suddenly parents, pets, friends are dying and the world seems like a bleak place to be. Then the world spins the other way and you are accreting, suddenly a son, another dog, other things are coming to light up your life and you feel as if you and your heart are just growing to accommodate…