She wouldn't be able to pick me out of a line up. She might have feigned remembrance of a Sunday Night Extra at Houston's First Baptist with her friend Marge Caldwell as they talked about friendship, more specifically theirs. Before they spoke, Peggy and I had the supreme delight of doing a parody of their friendship with some exaggerations, which is what parody is all about. But this wasn't the first time I met her in person. Years, many years before, my friend Mary Madeline took me to her weekly Bible study that met in a home in Tanglewood. An aside, the house where she taught belonged to my first tennis partner from The Met as I would discover when Cris and I became friends off and on the court. The particular study was out of the book of Exodus and Moses came alive to me through that study. She made him so human and made him so understandable, more than just a Bible character but so relate-able to a nineteen year old who had fallen in love with God's Word. She played the part of Corrie Ten Boom in the movie, The Hiding Place. I'm writing about Jeanette Clift George. Jeanette went to be with the Lord not too long ago and today in between mopping floors and vacuuming, I watched her recorded memorial service on Facebook. One of those services that truly spoke of Jeanette and who she was. She had the best laugh and whenever I heard her speak throughout the years, I looked forward to hearing that distinct and rememberable laugh. It was a delight to go to the crowded Grace Theater where the A D Players performed play after play with the result of happy moments and profound truths presented in a way that wasn't cheesy or smacked of coyness or cuteness or as Homer Simpson might call it, churchy la femme. Like I wrote in the first sentence, she wouldn't have any reason to remember me but oh how thankful that I remember her and her love of studying the scripture...oh and the joy that seemed to ooze from her and everyone so wanted to be around her...I am so glad I had a seat in the production to her life. Like so many have said who were much closer to her and most probably like me, those of us who were in no way involved but for those few times...she changed my life.
Over the past few days I cannot tell you how many times I have looked out the back window hoping to see the Feral Fam coming into the clearing from the overgrown part of the gravel road. I still hope but with an enormous sense of loss. Those cats brought such joy in their play, really their whole sense of living. I'm keeping the tent of meeting up and the picnic blanket in the yard just in case they return. You can tell Buddy misses them too. When the dogs next door begin barking, I look out back because many times the dogs announced the Feral Fam arrival. What a b.eautiful picture it would be, it is dusk, with a few snowflakes gently falling to see those little cuties and Mama Cat. As it grows dark I will change my hope to a morning arrival.
Today I am doing those things that I have put off like mopping and polishing the hardwood floors downstairs and mopping the upstairs bathrooms. In between is laundry and putting things up from the Target trip yesterday. One of the things I need to check on is if we have another set of flannel sheets for our bed. Right now we have a lovely set of flannel sheets with the decorative design of a brown bird on a blue limb. Doesn't that sound charming? There is a problem though, first Roy wants to put the bottom sheet on sideways...no, no, the birds go up and down not side to side. My problem is more in the blurriness of sleepy eyes. The brown birds kind of smudge together and can look like, oh like, maybe an accident by Buddy by mouth or by....uh, the other end. Remember I once thought the AC/heating vent was a bat...not baseball but belfry type bat. Then there is the time I awoke and thought the brown bird was blood from a nosebleed. And my favorite is when Buddy brushing her tail across my arm awoke me and the brown bird was mistaken for some kind of vermin and I lit out of that bed screaming, grabbing for my glasses and turning on the light, all at the same time. That twelve year old Buddy made moves like she was a kitten trying to get out of that bed and room with my banshee cries as background leaving music. Only I discovered once again, it was the brown bird on the blue limb. Ain't nothing charming in the middle of the night with these scenarios.
Without the Feral Fam the squirrels have returned to steal from and dominate the bird feeder. Only thing sometime yesterday, they broke the feeder. In my mind's eye I see myself telling the squirrels, you see this is why we can't have anything nice!" So I went outside trudging through the 1/8 of an inch snow, picked up the broken feeder and then returned with one of those squirrel resistant feeders that neither the birds nor the squirrels like. This made me think of those parent sayings we hear growing up that we never quite forget and probably never respected. My father was the parental saying parent and some of his most memorable sayings were, "my best is not good enough!" I remember a few times responding back, "well, I don't know about that, we've never seen your best." I had to be able to have a quick exit with that response and the first few times I responded that way, it was a sincere not a smart alec response. He also would say, "complain, complain, complain...do, do, do." My brother's response was one of those ummmm....he said do do! A couple of other statements were, "don't play near the thermostat!" and "use good judgement." I don't know about Doug but many times this from my report card would be read back to me in a most dramatic voice, "does not use time nor materials wisely." Even into adulthood, he would say that to me. I might have said that to myself today when I could find all kinds of excuses for not using my time wisely....the material part was fine. After watching the memorial service today maybe that is what I should have put on the ol' headstone....She did not use her time and materials wisely. For goodness sake people, she could distinguish between a brown bird on flannel sheets and blood or bats or vomit or poop or vermin. Well, that's a wrap.
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