Monsters

I grew up on 10 acres of wooded land on a lake, ten miles outside of a small town. When Dad & Mom moved us there, we had lots of snakes---rattlers (We lost our collie Lassie to one of those), water moccasins, an occasional coral snake, and a wide variety of harmless (if scary) black snakes, rat snakes, garden snakes and an occasional scarlet king. So it's no leap at all to guess the monster of my childhood was a fear of snakes under the bed. I still remember when we were quite young, anytime my brother or I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, returning, we would dive back into our separate beds from as far away as we could be sure of landing on the bed, surely 2 feet away always, so we would be on the bed before the snakes could come out and strike/bite our bare feet.
When we got older--high school and college, now in our own separate bedrooms, I would still leap the last 12 or 15 inches to the bed out of habit or reminiscence or who knows... Though probably done with a bit of chagrin, it still seemed the right thing to do.
Mom and Dad are both gone now and none of us has lived there in more than 12 years; but I think probably if I were spending the night there again, I would still return to bed that way in the middle of the night. Then I'd lie there listening to the frogs and the tree toads and the crickets and the whippoorwills singing me to fear-free, snake-free dreams.

Monsters in my adult life--there are few, I'm happy to say. The worst of those is probably procrastination. But Hundred and One did such a superior job of writing that one up, there was very little left to say. Except, as I commented to her, that indeed it is a seductive monster about whom my most common response is the rationalization that I work best under crisis or deadline. But I like myself less for making the excuse and respect myself less because I have never learned to transcend its control over me.

My other deep frustration is the futility I, the original Pollyanna, feel about the direction our world seems to be headed with undivertable, lemming-like focus to somewhere unkind, irresponsible, and unwholesome that makes me want to cry.

Inner life of pets

The little man (LM) is just turned 5 but he's still active and occasionally rambunctuous. He wears a belled collar because when he was really young he used to pounce on his elderly siblings and we felt it was only fair that they were clued in to his presence before they were fully under attack. He also still occasionally attempts to escape on us for an outdoor "adventure," and since he is mostly black, after dark that makes him nearly impossible to locate. The bell helps us then.

Chubby lady (CL) is, as the epithet suggests, overweight. She's soft as a bunny and doesn't like to have her attention solicited, but if you are nearly asleep on the couch, she dearly loves to gallop silently up and propel her bulk into your solar plexis. If you handle that with aplomb, she will settle down on your chest and stay as long as you can endure the weight.

Grumpy old lady (GOL) is our oldest, but newest resident cat. Although she has been with us more than a year and a half, she doesn't "play well with others." I believe this has to do with the fact that at her previous residence, she was a spoiled only darling; and, I believe, was truly totally clueless to the fact that she was something other that a much smaller, much hairier human. Having to face felinity has not come easy to her at all, and although I think she has come to accept she is one of "those" instead of one of the humans, she still will not deign to have ANY positive interaction with them at all. She hardly leaves our back bedroom/bathroom area where she has her own litter box and her own food and water bowls. Because my husband's work schedule requires him to sleep in the daytime, that room remains dark most of the day, so we also sometimes refer to her as "Bat Girl" and she squints at real daylight.

CL (dancing with delight in the hall outside the master bedroom at 6:30 am)----Meow! Meow! Oh, joy, I hear Mom's alarm clock, it's breakfast time. I know she loves encouragement and welcome to the new day. Meow, Meow, Mom, it's breakfast time, breakfast time, breakfast time! Come on, Mom, we're starving, not sure how we made it through the night. Come on Mom, pick up the bowls, I'll show you the way to the kitchen. Do you really have to pee? Underpants now, Mom?? Really! Who cares?? The kitchen is this way, Mom! It's breakfast time! Oh,joy! Oh, joy! It's breakfast time! Come on, LM, help me hurry Mom. She just keeps getting side tracked. Doesn't she know this is one of the 2 best times of the day??

LM---Okay, Mom, I'm ready to come in off the porch. You're the best, Mom. It's so nice to see you (as he repeatedly rubs his face on my ankles). Sure, eating now seems like a good plan. It'll get CL to shut up and you can finish getting yourself ready for school. You're the best, Mom. Thanks.

So it goes til all 3 are fed and shut in their separate eating rooms. Each also has his/her own sandbox, but those (as you know if you have cats)are not exclusive. As a matter of fact, it seems to be some accepted form of sibling rivalry to befoul each other's sand boxes. Little Man usually finishes eating first, and depending on his mood, goes back out on the porch or strolls off down the hallway to wait to go in to CL's bedroom when she comes out, to see if she has left any breakfast (FAT chance!) or to use her sandbox. While he is checking out her space, she runs, belly swaying from side to side, to the laundry room to see if Mom has been careful enough to pick his bowl up and put it on the washing machine where she can't reach it, becaus LM almost always leaves just a little bit in his bowl for a mid-morning snack later. But if CL gets to that bowl before Mom does, the snack is gone, Hoovered up, as it were. It's hard to speculate on CL's inner life. We have serious doubts about whether she has one beyond the 2 high spots of every day: breakfast and dinner, except the spectacular thrill she has when she is able to "score" an extra ration from one of her siblings. Sometimes Dad carelessly leaves the master bedroom door open without thinking about GOL's full food dish and sometimes Mom doesn't get it fully latched and one gentle head butt will get it open. OH, Joy!! Extra chow!

GOL is a picky eater and a snarky sibling. She wants to graze all day, or turn up her nose at what's offered all day. But whether the bowl is empty or hardly touched, when it's time for the next meal, she wants it to be her own decision; and if she catches one of the other two trying to eat her food--whether she plans to eat it or not--the sounds coming from the back bedroom indicate the wisdom of approaching with a whip and a chair. She puts up with Mom, cuz Mom's the feeder, but Dad is "the Man." She waits up for him to get home from work, then climbs on his chest and snuggles under his chin, rubbing her face on his beard; then stares lovingly into his eyes (which revives him with a start because it causes her wiskers to go up inside his nose). Living in the dark bedroom and sleeping "swing shift" hours has her eyes permanently dialated, so when she does venture into the rest of the house or, very infrenquently, out into the normally-considered-delightful screened porch, she squints, which makes her look grumpier than usual.

LM, altho the youngest and neutered, is the alpha cat. He, pretty much goes where he wants, in spite of slow and grumpy siblings. He spends most of his days on the porch, watching squirrels and birds, especially occasional cattle egrets, in his back yard. He still plays with toys and loses his finishing school manners about occasional "people food" treats. But he is about as good natured as a bored little boy in a house of "old lady" siblings can be; and when he does occasionally stalk or jump one of them, it's just because "I was just bored, Mom, and they need the exercise. They are just NO fun!"

Who else can I still be....

I keep wanting to try poetry on one of these Sunday Scribblings, but my brain just isn't cooperating. The closest I managed this time resulted from my thinking just how many of my goals I have actually reached in this life. I ended up with a couple of lines from Frank Sinatra's "That's Life."
"I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king.
I've been up and down and over and out, and I know one thing:
Each time I find myself, flat on my face, I just pick myself up
And get back in the race."
I haven't been all those things he mentions, but I don't think those are really things I have wanted to be. However, all in all, that's a terrific philosophy of life. We all have been a few things (like a pauper and probably a puppet) that we really wouldn't have chosen to be....but the truth is, it's hard to properly appreciate the "ups" in our life if there aren't "downs" to create contrast. Yet, through it all, we learn and benefit most if we just "pick [ourselves] up and get back in the race."

Please feel free to skip this next paragraph, because now that I have written it out it seems offensively saccharine and immodest; but I needed to list goals reached in order to arrive at what else I would still like to be and do.

Dreams reached---Roles held:
I am a wife and a mother and a Christian. These perhaps have enriched me most. I was a loving and I believe good daughter and sibling. I have had at least five deep, long, true friendships and those are treasures beyond price. I have had a long and fulfilling career. I have been, on a limited scale, a musical and theatrical performer. I've learned to play the piano (after I was an adult), although I never reached the level of success at it that I'd hoped for. I have drawn true delight and enlightenment from travel abroad, a dream of my girlhood, because I loved Mother's fabulous stories of her one trip to Paris. This was a dream I had almost given up hope of ever realizing when an unexpected window opened for me and I was able to go not once but about 11 times, taking students and sharing the experience with them. I have touched the lives of young people, predominantly, I pray, in a positive way; have shared my knowledge, my love of and enthusiasm for literature, music and theater, and, I believe, in some way have shared my faith, as well. In many areas I have had the good fortune to be appreciated; and, realizing how great that feels, I've tried to make others feel loved and appreciated too.
As I review the goals of my life that I have reached, I am awed by how blessed my life has been. And, I fear I am probably naseauating with my litany those of you kind enough to read this post.


If you skipped, you can start again here:
What else can I still be??

There aren't a lot of goals I still have on my list, and they sound quite selfish and not specifically noble and humanitarian, like I think was intended by the prompt of the week.
1. I'd like to see my child(ren)happily married.
2. I want to share Europe with my husband and help us both stay healthy enough to enjoy our retirement years.
3. Because of my love of reading and sharing literature with others, I'd like to pick up retirement spending money by reading "books on tape."

What else will I still be? I guess I really can say, "The Lord only knows."

Because I am really not very proud of this as a writing, I think I shan't post it to Sunday Scribblings. But, because I made a commitment to myself to write something every week for the SS prompt; because I worked hard on it, and find it, in a way, deeply satisfying; and because this is, after all, MY Blog, I shall leave it here at my published blogspot for anyone who wants to come and find it.

Who I might have been....

I met the love of my life in college many long years ago. After we actually admitted that we were more than a simple infatuation--all we allowed ourselves to say for the first six months or so was "I'm crazy about you" or "I adore you"---for each other, and that we probably were NOT going to go our separate ways just because we were from separate states and his parents were not willing to pay out-of-state tuition another year, and we decided that we were not only going to find some way to be in school together for another year but were also probably going to have some kind of a future together, my love said to me, "Y'know, Cynce, if you get out of here with a degree in English literature, you're going to be an educated unemployable." Sorta sounded like a social disease.

I had never really worried about that. In truth, I went to college because at my house it was a given. Dad had his PhD and Mother, although she was one of 11 children, like 7 others of the 11, had worked (and paid) her own way through the university and had a Bachelor's degree. Where I went to school was my own choice as was what I studied, but that I would go to and finish college was "writ rite thare" in an invisible contract somewhere. Oh, I had played with a number of ideas. I loved English--reading and writing, music, and drama. However, I was honest enough to admit I was probably not talented enough at any of my beloved interests to make a living as a performing artist in any of them. I also knew the true committed calling in my life was to be a wife and mother---boy, does that make me sound "Donna Reed" and "Harriet Nelson." Also, I really understood that performer's lives and even business women's (I played in my head with being an interior decorator or a fashion designer, too) were not the kind of careers that could really be put on hold just any time to have children and raise them and then picked up again at will. So teaching had always played in the back of my mind because teachers of music and acting and writing have to be able to DO in order to teach how, and there would always be a need for teachers, and you could slip out and have kids and slip back in. But I always ended these verbal meanderings with a firm and often vociferous declaration that I'd never be a teacher because there was just too much paper work! I knew I wanted to travel--travel all over the world---so becoming an airline hostess was another of the things I considered. Dental hygeniest (good thing I didn't chose that since I don't seem to be able to spell it correctly) was my back-up possibility.

But at this point, with this wonderful man in my sights and the life of my dreams beginning to gel, his suggestion that I pick up the block of classes needed to be certified to teach which would give me a double minor sounded perfectly plausable and more that a little wise. I actually enjoyed the classes I had to take; and when I went into the classroom to do my intern teaching, I KNEW I was doing what I was supposed to be doing!!

Who might I have been if things had been different? I don't have any idea because, altho my life has not been perfect--nobody's is--there are NO major aspects of it that I would want changed. He came into my psych class late, after the professor had already made the seating chart. I had kept an empty seat beside me to put my books in. He was gorgeous---divers often are; and I decided I would rather put my books on the floor and have him sitting next to me all quarter. He helped me decide to become a teacher, and that and marrying him have surely been the determining decisions in where my life has gone.

For his own reasons, he chose to enter the Army before we married. We married on a military base while he finished Special Forces training. When we'd been married only 6 months he was deployed to Vietnam. What if he hadn't come back at all? What if hadn't come home whole both physically or mentally? Those things would have changed my life completely. But they didn't. It wasn't easy when he first came back, but between diligent effort and circumstances,we got through that. What if we hadn't? I would be different, perhaps I would not be around, it was the only time in my life I even mused on that awful option. But we worked through it and are still together and in love, so many years down the road.

What I guess I am trying to say is that altho predestination is not actually a part of the religious faith I have been a part of all my life, I believe it is part of my deep individual faith, that the Lord is involved in my personal life; that I don't want to play around with who I might have been because I am who I am supposed to be. Things happened and people came into my life that I might have the life and be the person I have become. I have certainly screwed up some of the minor decisions, but in the larger "flannel board" of life, I am who I am, doing what I do, living THIS life, because it is where God has led me to be. And, I like my life.