The Bering Blog

Ode to a Thong

Thong underwear takes a little getting used to. My cheeks feel strange pressed right against my pants and I keep wanting to pick my seat.

These were a gift from my friend, Kristin, who, among others, has tried to break me of my granny-panty habit. I thought I was doing well when I bought bikini panties from Victoria’s Secret a few months ago, but according to Kristin, that wasn’t enough. She swears by thongs, says they never let her down, and so I’m giving her little (and I mean little) gift a try.

I admit they feel kind of sexy. I don’t have “love handles” anymore so they sit comfortably on my hips. Hmmm. These have possibilities.

Now if I can just stop wiggling in my seat long enough to write this blog entry.

Today’s topic was going to be about how I’ve lost my sense of humor in all this winter yuck, but I’m finding it hard to be in a serious mood when my underwear feels this good. Freezing rain, gray skies, snow on the way, who cares? I’ve got on pink lace and, hey look, there’s a little bow in the front! Neat!

Now, back to my sense of humor. It’s seriously…

Hey, do you think I could work out with a thong under my gym clothes? Are they spandex friendly? I didn’t ask Kristin that.

OK, Lynn, concentrate. My AWOL sense of humor. Personally, I think the middle east needs a sense of humor worse than I do. No, I take that back. The middle east needs pink thong underwear. Who wouldn’t be happy in a pink thong? Well, except for my husband and maybe a few Muslim clerics. But really. I think I need to write to Condoleezza Rice with this tip. I’m betting she’s a granny-panty kind of gal.

Can thongs and Republicans co-exist? 

We all know Bill Clinton wears briefs, but I wonder what kind of underwear Hillary wears? Will Rock the Vote ask if she wears granny panties or thongs? I hope so. It might sway my vote. Clearly someone who wears a thong is a happy person with a good sense of humor.

I totally forgot where I was going with this blog. My mind is focused south of my equator at the moment. My cheeks are happy, I don’t feel like picking anymore, these just might work out to be my underwear style of choice.

I think I’ll go ask my husband what he thinks.

The More Things Change...

I wrote the following column in August 2001 just before my oldest daughter, who is now 23, went to college in a town three hours east of Clarion. I was organizing my portfolio yesterday when I came across it and after I read it again, I realized how little my feelings have changed in 5½ years. I’m still wondering what I want to do when I grow up, I still worry about my children, even though they are adults and living on their own, and I still look upon life with a mix of skeptisicm and optimism. I guess the more things change the more they truly do stay the same.

Anticipation

I can tell you what a biting north wind feels like when you stand in the middle of a frozen lake, and how it finds your skin through every gap of your layers of coats and clothing.

I can tell you what it feels like to ride a horse, bareback, down a dusty country road, the inside of your thighs sweating against the horse’s still-shedding winter coat and your feet bouncing against his sides.

I can tell you how soft the top of a baby’s head feels against your cheek and how the beating of her heart pulsates at the soft spot just above her forehead.

But until you stand on a frozen lake or grab the mane and swing yourself up on the back of a horse or pick up a baby and hold her against your cheek, it’s all just a picture in your mind.

The experience of my oldest daughter leaving home and going to college was all just a picture in my mind until last week. This summer I stared into space a lot, zoned out of conversations, and cried a little more than usual.

I talked to parents who had a child grow up and move away because I wanted to know in advance what I would feel when I said goodbye to her. But of course, like standing freezing on a lake or riding a horse on a warm spring day, I couldn’t know what it felt like until I did it.

After I said goodbye to her at her dorm, I can tell you that goodbye was a lot of things I wasn’t expecting. I expected to cry, but I didn’t, not until a few hours later when I got home and I was alone. I thought I’d be the last parent on campus, but I left before her roommate moved in. I really thought the emptiness I felt for a few days after she left would stick around until at least Thanksgiving, but even that has waned a bit.

I felt pride as I watched my daughter fade into the crowd of people walking into the dorm. I was proud of myself for having raised such a thoughtful and inquisitive girl. I was proud of her for making the decisions it took to get her to a school outside of her hometown and for trusting herself to let go.

I didn’t expect to think about myself and my future as much as I am. For 18 years, all of my adult life, I’ve been raising children. Sure, I went to college, worked, and met a lot of interesting people over the years, but everything I do, everywhere I go, every decision I make as an adult impacts my children. But that will all change soon. Now that one of the girls is an adult and the other one is close to it, I’ve been asking myself what do I want to be when I grow up? My options are more limited now than when I was 18, but then, I never was that serious about being an astronaut.

I’ll be 39 when the last one leaves the nest, an age when many of my friends are just starting their families. I don’t know what that will feel like or what my life will be like then, but sometimes I feel like I’m a senior in high school again, with all the world out there for me to conquer.

I want to be Ellen Goodman and Anna Quindlen, Molly Ivins and Leonard Pitts. Maybe I’ll write a novel and be on Oprah. I could run for congress and make a law banning bagpipes (at least within two miles of me).

When I was 25 I thought of the day my children would be grown and I decided I’d go to Jamaica for a month. Now I’m thinking Europe. I might even decide to live in England in a cottage on the moors, just me, my dogs and the Brontes.

I feel young, but I know the years have battered me a bit. I feel invincible, but I know I can fall. I feel safe here in Clarion, but I know one day I’ll leave.

I don’t know what the experiences of tomorrow or next week or next year will feel like, but until I’m there myself I can only anticipate. But I hope I will feel it like the cold wind, like a bareback ride, like a baby’s soft head, and like saying goodbye to people I love. The real thing is almost always better than the anticipation.

The Quiz

“Let’s take a compatibility quiz!” I said to my husband as I plopped down on the couch and tucked my legs under me, comfy, girly and all that.

I’m not 22 and pie-eyed in love thinking the secret to relationship success can be found in the pages of Cosmo. I’m 43 and know nothing stops communication with a man quite like a love quiz, especially since what most men over the age of 30 hear isn’t “Let’s take a quiz and have sex after” but “Let’s have a fight about where you’re lacking.” I seriously didn’t suggest a quiz as a circuitous way to point out my husband’s flaws. I just thought after 10 years it would be interesting to see if we had what it takes to stay together. Well, at least together according to a guy named Dan Carlinsky, writer of the quiz booklet in my lap. I bought it at Barnes & Noble last week while shopping with my daughter – the chip off the old block, the nut fallen not far from the tree – who is as much a pop psychologist as her mother.

“Do we have to?” dear husband answered, looking at me like he’d prefer to be tied naked to a red ant hill.

“It’ll be fun!” I replied and opened the booklet.

Hmmm. Fun is one word to use, I guess. One hundred questions later, we found out we’re as compatible as peanut butter and anchovies. We scored just inside the “If you’re young or especially flexible, you might make it together” zone, barely higher than the “Sorry, you two just don’t seem to be compatible” range.

A lot of the answers we already knew about each other: we both hate liver, put the cap back on the toothpaste, and we hang toilet paper so the paper rolls off the top. He’s a meat-eater; I dabble in chicken once in awhile but prefer veggies. Neither of us wants to spend a day in a nudist colony, but clearly we differ on the ballet, how fast or slow to drive, and what to say to someone who sneezes. I’m telling you, this booklet covered A LOT of ground.

My husband drops his clothes on the floor after undressing for the night. I hang mine in the closet and put them back in their proper drawers, which would seem in direct contrast to my pension for leaving drawers and cupboards open, something that’s always made my husband nuts.

I learned he believes in love at first sight. That one still surprises me. I’m more cynical since I chose the “sweet, but silly” option B. Lust at first sight, maybe. Love? I don’t think so. But his answer gave me hope for a moment, that perhaps this science guy actually had a bit of the romantic in him. Then we got to this one: (A) Love letters are a wonderful way to express affection; or (B) It’s safer not to put it in writing. Yep, Mr. Romance chose option B. Oh well. He brings me flowers once in awhile and he actually made reservations for dinner on Valentine’s Day this year. He’s 0 for 3 the last three years.

The quiz also revealed that I’m a better tipper but that rather than go myself, I’ll send someone else (him) to the store for the Sunday paper or bread. We agree that we have friends we like more than family members, and that psychics are phony.

He turns out lights when he leaves a room while I’m an energy hog. He hates debt. I’m  in up to my neck. I was surprised he liked house plants, then I found out his only foray into green-thumbdom was a spider plant he had in grad school.

If we had a dishwasher, he’d put the silverware handles down for better cleaning. I’d put handles up for safety. I dog ear pages. He uses a bookmark. In my defense, I use a Post-It as a bookmark when I  think of it.

We both vote in every election and wear seatbelts. He’d rather bowl than dance and he’s not a procrastinator. I love to dance and put things off as long as I can.

On the back of the booklet is an advertisement for Carlinsky’s follow up quizzes: “Do You Know Your Wife” and “Do You Know Your Husband?” I think we’ll skip those. If we want to stay together for another 10 years, the less we know about each other the better.

Baby What a Big Surprise

OK, so the other night I was drinking some wine, listening to music and decided what the hell, I’d Google an old boyfriend’s name. After all, that’s how a different old boyfriend found me recently. Seemed easy enough. So I plugged in his name, this man who was a big wig at a large retail firm in Minneapolis when I knew him back in the mid 1990s. I figured he was still there, but I should’ve known better, given his all-out balls-to-the-wall mover and shaker attitude. Sure enough, I learned he landed the CEO position at a very large retail chain last February. I found video of him being interviewed by every major news and financial news network, photos, press releases, you name it. Obviously I hadn’t paid attention to the retail financial news this past year. Right, like I ever did.

It was fun and a punch in the gut all at the same time. Fun because I once intimately knew this man so many people clamber to talk to, who’s a major player in a Fortune 500 company. A punch in the gut because I remembered what our relationship really was – uneven, needy, desperate at times from both our sides.

An extremely competitive man, he thrived on being better than me while at the same time trying to turn me into a woman he could play with and manipulate. We pushed and pulled each other in opposite directions, each needing something from the other that we weren’t able to give, yet convinced each of us had it in ourselves to be the other’s better half. He smothered me in attention, never letting me stray far from him in public places, showing me off yet hiding me. In private, he was subtly cruel, acting as though my failure to read The Economist was a major character flaw. I, too, was cruel, stringing him along like a puppet when he was most vulnerable, which wasn’t often, but often enough that I learned how to play him. He was a narcissistic and demanding Henry Higgins and I was a stubborn and emotionally shrewd Eliza Doolittle. Oh yeah, we were healthy.

The last time I saw him, he came here to where I live. He was on a business trip to Pittsburgh and his brother had tickets to a Buffalo Bills game so he figured why not squeeze Lynn in between the two. I had moved away from Minnesota and had just started dating the man who is now my husband, but he was visiting family in Texas at the time and so it was just me and a big decision to make.

I met the man for dinner. I showed him where I worked. We talked for hours. A healthy, adult talk now that I think about it. In the months since we’d said goodbye and I was away from the negativity and manipulation that we were both guilty of, I’d grown some balls, learned that I was not a doll or some guy’s trophy. Maybe that’s why the conversation felt more even. But the night was waning and it was inevitable that he’d suggest I go with him back to his hotel. Sleeping with him again after all these months had its appeal, I don’t deny that. Surprisingly, well maybe not so surprisingly, we treated each other in bed the way we should have treated each other in all other aspects of our relationship. Great sex was the only thing that kept us together for as long as we were. But that evening in my little town, I told him no, and it remains one of the single best decisions I ever made in my life.

Sure, he’s got millions, but he had millions when I dated him, too. I loved his Corvette, but otherwise the money didn’t mean the same to me as it did to him. When I saw him in the videos, I heard the joy in his voice. He’s doing exactly what he loves and does well: eating up and spitting out the competition. I wish him well. I truly do. I’ve learned and accepted that individually we’re not bad people. Put us together and we were poison.

In Honor of Molly Ivins

Just a quick entry to encourage you to read Anthony Zurcher’s lovely tribute to one of America’s best columnists, Molly Ivins, who passed away earlier this week: 'Goodbye, Molly I’. Molly Ivins made me laugh and think more than any other political columnist. If you haven’t read her before or lately, check out this website and for a good read: http://www.alternet.org/columnists/1406/.

Excuse me while I organize my life

I cleaned the stovetop today. And the countertops. I washed the sheet I use to cover the couch to protect it from my dogs’ muddy paws. I planned meals through Sunday, put together a grocery list, and answered emails I received last week. I’ve been busy since Sunday, off doing other things – visiting daughters and doctors and covering a murder trial – and I needed to put the small pieces of my household together to help me think better.

When I was in college, I couldn’t write a paper or study if something in the room was askew. The lighting had to be just right. When I write something on deadline, I need to sit in my favorite chair, be in complete silence and have some type of simple food near me to munch on. It used to be M&Ms, but now it’s mostly melba toast.

I’m not sure when I became so anal or structured. I envy people who go with the flow, who can think and work in chaos. Maybe it’s because when I write, my thoughts are everywhere and so I need my physical surroundings to be in order. Whatever the reason, I’m 43 and get cranky when I don’t get my way with myself, so I pretty much stick to my instincts.

My brother and I had an interesting email conversation today about how we find order in our lives and what we need to satisfy those outlying needs. Not deep things like love or sex or companionship or career, but small inanimate things that accompany our everyday lives and make us feel whole or organized or complete.

For instance, my brother wrote: “I have a tendency to collect pens, pencils, notebooks, notepads, and briefcases…Clocks and watches have always caught my attention, too. Particularly watches. I never seem to be satisfied with the one I have.  I’m always looking for that “perfect” watch. Rather odd, wouldn’t you say?” Not at all, my brother! Sounds perfectly normal to me.

I wrote back: “I am, as you know, very picky about what I write with. I prefer pencils when I’m conducting interviews because they are lighter weight than pens, but I like pens for everything else – journaling, taking notes. I also love a nice clock. Old ones, particularly. I have a clock in every room except the bathroom. But I guess what catches my eyes most, superficially, are handbags. I love purses. I love being organized and so I’m always looking for the ultimate organizer. Then I need one for every occasion – small, medium and large.”

When the inside of me feels the most jumbled up is when I need order in my kitchen and living room, within my purse and desk, and especially with the people I care about the most. I don’t like to leave conversations unspoken or fights half argued. I like resolution and hope. I like knowing things are smooth, or most likely will be once I’ve cleaned up the mess – metaphorically and otherwise.

I love writing on deadline and making things messy. I thrive on the very chaos that drives me to organize and clean. I’m massaging both sides of my brain, using all the energy I have to see the whole picture of my life and not ostracize one for the other.

I see the television screen is dirty and a candle is almost burned out. I have a trial to write about, but not until that dust is gone. Pardon me while I organize.

Bad Wrists and a Car Wreck = A Helluva Day

I started this day thinking of all the things I’d rather do than have an MRI of my wrist and subsequently a consult with my hand doctor (see my blog from earlier for more info). But my friends were right, as always, when they said that knowledge is power and that I’d feel better when I knew and confronted the truth. So here’s what happened.

Being the freak of nature I tend to be, I do NOT have Kienbock’s Disease in my wrists. Rather, I have an even more strange degenerative joint disease caused by arthritis.

Basically this is nothing fancy, just straight up arthritis. But my doc (a fabulous guy) said that in his 30 years of practice he’s only treated 10 people with my particular type of degeneration and, lucky me, I'm the worst case he’s seen. I feel so special. Maybe I WILL have a disease named for after me after all. A girl can always dream.

This is all good, though. I knew surgery was inevitable, but now that I know what’s what, it’s easier to deal with. I get a choice between partial fusion and full fusion. Doc thinks full fusion is my best option since it would basically strip me of a joint and therefore no arthritis could return. Ergo, no more pain. I’m tired of dropping things and feeling weak. Of course, being the workout nut I am, I asked if any of this would affect my workout and he, thankfully, said no. Yes! I can still do Nautilus and now I can add weight training to my routine. Well, once I have no wrist left to speak of. Hey, I have my priorities.

I’m not taking any of this lightly, but I’m not going to overthink it, either. People every day live with fused wrist bones and adapt just fine. Personal hygiene will take some adjustments, as will petting my dogs, chopping onions, dressing myself, driving a car, performing certain sexual acts, and opening pickle jars and wine bottles. Getting from point A (pain and weakness) to point B (signing my name in a new and interesting ways) will suck a little. In the end, I’ll set off alarms at every security check point I pass through which will amuse me and I’ll sport a macho scar.

I won’t be dead. Which leads me to part two of my day.

Driving home from da ‘burgh today on I-80, I witnessed a one-car accident in which the guy driving should have been all kinds of dead. Yet he walked away shaken but unscathed.

p>He was driving about 70 mph in the left lane of the freeway when his car just left the road and hit the median. POOF! Straight into the snow which slowed him down, but not much. His car sailed between a guard rail and cement support of an overpass and continued sliding on a 45+-degree angle before resting 50 yards from where he originally left the road.

I saw the whole thing in morbid amazement with all my basic first-aid knowledge flooding back to me in a few seconds. I slowed down and drove to the right shoulder because I knew if he veered to the right and ended up back on the freeway he was going to be hit by a semi or if he rolled he’d end up back on the freeway and, again, hit by a semi. I couldn’t believe that he landed straight up in the ditch. All I could think was that he had performed a few good deeds in his past and Karma was paying him back.

I took out my phone and promptly dialed 4-1-1. Oops. I hung up and dialed 9-1-1 and was connected to the emergency operator. I explained the situation and she hooked me up with the state police. They dispatched Officer McDreamy which I’m convinced was Karma’s little way of rewarding me for stopping to help. Not that I do the right thing for the rewards. It was just a nice little perk.

In the meantime, I went over to make sure the driver was OK. “Holy shit, are you ok?!” is the only thing I could think to say. Hey, the adrenaline was flowing big time. It was obviously clear to him he understood he should be all kinds of dead, too, because he was sweating like he’d just done an hour in the ring with Ali.

He was traveling in tandem with another fellow in an SUV who stopped ahead of me. After he assisted his friend, he just stood on the shoulder, not sure what to do. I got out of my car and invited him into my car to get warm (it was only 20 degrees with a 1-degree wind chill) as his friend gathered things in his own car to put in the his friend’s car. John was in his late 60s, stunned and grateful that his friend was alive. He just kept shaking his head and saying how convinced he was that his friend was going to hit the guard rail. His friends, Ron, who should be dead, joined us a few minutes later, also stunned and grateful. I learned they were driving a car that they’d purchased for a dealer from Pittsburgh back to Albany, where their trip began at 5 a.m. We didn’t talk about much since Officer McDreamy showed up a few minutes later, but I’m betting they’re still tripping on the adrenaline six hours later and doing a whole lot of contemplating.

I’m serious. This guy was on a date with death. Thank god death stood him up. It all made my hand shit seem very small in comparison.

Youth, Depression and Middle Age: A Blog in 3 Acts

Like a play, this blog comes to you in three acts. I’m not sure why, but that’s where my mind and fingers took me today. Not that I meant to, but when I finished writing I realized I’d lit on three stages of my life so far: youth, the depressed years, and this middle age I’m living. Ever the English major, I dissect all writing, even my own simple little blogs. 

EINS

It’s mornings like this one, when I’m tugging my snow boots on over three pairs of wool socks, when I remember the bread bags. My mother used to save bread bags. She’d turn them inside out, shake loose the crumbs, and stuff them in a kitchen drawer. Then, on days like this, she’d hand a pair of them to me and my brother and make us put them on over our socks to help our boots slip on easier. As a mom, I totally understand the logic. As a kid, though, is there anything more embarrassing than wearing Wonder Bread bags to school?

ZWEI

Once in awhile someone writes something with such clarity I could cry, laying out in plain English the thoughts so jumbled in my head that I have no words to organize them.

Chris Rose is that mirror. He is a columnist for The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. Over the years, particularly those spent in the depths of depression, I’ve read what seems like millions of words people have written to describe depression and anxiety. As a writer, I’ve tried to describe it myself to little avail.

Rose lived and wrote Hurricane Katrina, month after month after month, which drove him to a darkness he always thought was nonsense: “For all of my adult life, when I gave it thought – which wasn’t very often – I regarded the concepts of depression and anxiety as pretty much a load of hooey.

I never accorded any credibility to the idea that such conditions were medical in nature. Nothing scientific about it. You get sick, get fired, fall in love, get laid, buy a new pair of shoes, join a gym, get religion, seasons change – whatever. You go with the flow, dust yourself off, get back in the game. I thought anti-depressants were for desperate housewives and fragile poets.”

It’s a fabulous piece, a truly raw and wrenching column. Here’s the link: http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/16045901.htm.

And here’s a little more of what he wrote, the stuff that really got my attention: “My case might be more extreme than some because I immersed myself fully in the horror and became a full-time chronicler of sorrowful tales. I live it every day, and there is no such thing as leaving it behind at the office when a whole city takes the dive.

Then again, my case is less extreme than the first responders, the doctors and nurses and EMTs, and certainly anyone who got trapped in the Dome or the Convention Center -- or worse, in the water, in the attic, on the roof, up a tree.

I've got nothing on them. How the hell do they sleep at night…

Early this summer, with the darkness clinging to me like my own personal humidity, my stories in the newspaper moved from gray to brown to black.”

Good stuff, my friends.

DREI

And finally, I decided it was time for a new photo. The old one, while kinda cute, was me 40 pounds ago. So here’s the new one, debuted on the left. Think of it what you will, but it’s me with all my age and laugh lines. It’s me at 43. Not young. Not old. Just ordinary with an ordinary face. And I like it like that.

So on that note, I share with you parts of a Maya Angelou poem, one she wrote on aging.  What I look like now does not make me who I am now and what I will look like tomorrow won’t reveal what’s in my heart. The photo of the physical me is what it is. Who I am is left to action.

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights…

I’ve learned that making a living is not the same thing as making a life. I’ve learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance…

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back…

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Telling Stories

Last week I wrote about the Common Ties website, the site where people are invited to tell the stories of their lives – not their entire lives, but things that happen in those small moments of time. It’s well worth a few minutes of your time to browse.

Well I found another site this week that is on the same lines as Common Ties, but with a bit more bite – www.smithmag.net. Its taglines are: “Everyone has a story to tell. Tell yours here” and “SMITH explores storytelling in all its forms. We're personal and participatory. Read a story. Write a story. Come in.”

My favorite feature of the site is the popuLIST. Every week they ask a question based on something from the week’s news and people submit their answer in 100 words or less. This week’s question is: “What three minutes of your life would you like to upload and watch again and again?” I find myself thinking about that question frequently during the day. Coming up with one three-minute event from the past 43 years is tough. There are moments of looking into someone’s eyes and kissing them for the first time, that I wouldn’t mind watching over and over again or the time I drank my first beer. That was pretty fun.

I’d really like to watch me holding my children for the first time, right after they’d popped out all wet and fresh and new. I was a little busy being overwhelmed that I missed absorbing those moments.

I’d even consider the three-minutes at the cemetery just before they buried Bruce. I was standing near the casket. It was snowing and ironically a train was passing by, blowing its whistle (Bruce was killed by a train). The pastor was praying and everyone had their heads bowed. I looked up and scanned the crowd. My friend Todd was looking up, too, and he caught my eye and gave me a look so full of love and concern that I can still feel its effects deep in my heart. Nothing in our lives prepared us for a moment like that and yet he conveyed to me in one look what all the flowers and hugs and money from everyone else couldn’t begin to express. Yes, I think that’s the three minutes I’d want to watch again and again. 

Also at smithmag, I really liked the winners of the Six-Word Resolution contest. They include:

Run faster, fret less, kiss more (Mary Elizabeth Williams)

Stop whining. Keep Walking. Eat Chocolate (Rebecca Drooks)

Eat right, vote left, stay centered (Dave Zee)

Change the World, or my underwear (Scott Weaver)

I will make all new mistakes (Wesley Stewart)

Less Things, More Gratitude, Goodbye Mustache (Mr. Fancipants)

Maybe I’ll try Buddhism. Why not? (jbrown)

My favorite was “Kiss Jon Stewart on the mouth” by Martha Garvey, however, I’d probably change it to Jay Thomas. Just sayin’.

I tried my hand at six-word resolutions and came up with two that sounded doable. To address my miserly loner-like existence: “Get out there and meet people.” And to address my issues of self-doubt: “Believe in myself for five minutes.” Boring, yes, but more probable than kissing Jay Thomas (or Jon Stewart, I’m not picky) on the mouth.

So which three minutes of your life would you want to replay over and over again? What’s your six-word resolution? We all have stories to tell and share. At least think about it. It’s pretty fun and very cathartic.

Cat’s Got My Tongue

I’ve already broken one of my new year’s resolutions, the one in which I vowed to blog every other day. It’s been four days and for the last two, I’ve had the hardest time writing. But I think I’ve figured out why my thoughts are all muddled and confused and cluttered and make no sense in my head. I still feel guilty about something that happened four days ago and hopefully by writing about it, my mind will find a pathway to real thoughts again.

I was driving home from Pittsburgh the other day on a twisty mountainous road when I spied something just at the edge of my driving lane. I swerved to the left to avoid it and as I drove past I noticed it was a cat, huddled up in a ball. It was just looking to its left, watching traffic, his fur blowing in the direction of the car wake. He was white with black and gray markings, I think, and he could’ve been hurt; I couldn’t tell in just that second, but I’m sure he was scared. Hell, how could he not be?

I was driving 55 miles an hour, there were several cars behind me and several making their way, quickly, up the hill on the other side. Stopping there wasn’t an option, nor was turning around safely once I got down the hill. Or was it?

Enter the guilt.

I can tell myself it wouldn’t have been safe to turn around and go back to help him until I’m blue in the face, but the truth is, I was afraid to go back and help him because I was afraid he’d already been hit and killed or worse, badly hurt. I let my fear overrule my instincts and instead left that helpless cat on a mountaintop highway where he was most likely dumped by yet another spineless human.

I really disappoint myself sometimes. But instead of taking out the cilice from its thigh belt, I need to remember that from these mistakes come new opportunities to put love and care into action. I can’t help that cat now, but I can help a cat or a dog or a hamster or some other creature in the future.

I actually helped a turtle once. A big old snapping turtle. He was crossing a busy four-lane in the suburb I was living in outside Minneapolis. I stopped my car, which was in the left lane, just as he was stepping off the median berm and onto the road. I got out and stood in the right lane, stopping the car driving toward me. I then got behind the turtle and walked behind him until he was safely on the other side of the road. Of course it took him awhile and he kept looking back at me all pissed and snappy, but I told him to be grateful he was alive, that saving his life was penance for the time I ran over a small turtle in the middle of a rural highway. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t see him until I felt the crunch under my tires and saw his poor little body flip into the ditch. I felt bad about that until the day the snapping turtle walked out on the road.

In an ideal world I’d never encounter a cat who needed my help to pay back the cat I didn’t help the other day. But some people are more cruel than I am fearful and I’m sure there will be, unfortunately, many cats and dogs and turtles I will encounter who need help. I just hope I have the guts to do it or that I don’t accidentally run over them first.