Aunt Florence

 

Aunt Florence, mid 1930s

At our most recent family reunion, Cousin Carol Jane told Catbird, "My goodness, I never noticed it before but you look so much like my mother."   Then Carol Jane unpacked a grocery bag of old photos many of us had never seen and the stories commenced.  When she showed Catbird the above picture of her mother, Catbird's Aunt Florence, Catbird was humbled, honored and impressed.  Aunt Florence had been a looker.

Of course, after Catbird thought about it, she realized that--except in photographs--Carol Jane had never seen her mother looking as young as the above picture.  Almost certainly Carol remembered her mother with gray curls, which, thanks to a good perm from Rudy, Catbird now sports.  Hence the sudden realization of the remarkable similarity between Catbird and Aunt Florence.

Well, Okay, so Catbird looks more like Aunt Florence at a certain age.  Catbird can live with that.

Because, despite our best efforts to ignore, hide or downright expunge some of our previous life experiences, aren't we still made up of the people we've been?  Whatever choices Catbird makes now, whatever she looks like now, Catbird is also still also a young mother, a nurse, a lover, an adolescent, a dreamer, a fool, an achiever, a drunk, a honeymooner, an ice skater, etc.  When Catbird gathers with her sisters or her old friends, we don't see just the current incarnation,  but a composite of all the years and bad haircuts and skinny knees and mini skirts and gogo boots and broken hearts and marriages layered like translucent pages over each other, shining as one.  So, while others may only see Catbird's top layer,  as a gray-haired and aging woman, they would be overlooking a lot. 

Now Catbird can look at Aunt Florence pictured below and see the layers below the quiet gray-haired woman whose rheumatic heart condition would take her out early. Catbird can see the depression-era adolescent, sassy sister, the young mother, and even the fiery young nursing student pictured above.  Catbird looks like Aunt Florence?  Catbird can live with that.  Yes.

 

Aunt Florence, 1961 

A Poem by Catbird

WHAT WE LEARN FROM DOGS

Where the dog park dips away

into the secluded section beyond the stand of mesquite,

Sam and I ran across a gray-muzzled Newfoundland

with a pink bandage around her front right leg,

her owner taking pictures with a cell phone.

“Daisy.” 

Sam made as if to play, and Daisy hopped

once, then stopped and wagged her tail

apologetically.  I could see movement was hard

 for her and asked,  How did she get injured?

A hesitation, then, She isn’t injured.

It’s an IV.

We are putting her down this afternoon.

The red-eyed husband stood apart from us

speaking solemnly into a cell phone of his own.

Sam trotted on.  Before I followed him,

 I put my hands behind Daisy’s ears,

scratching, massaging,  feeling the age

and bony frailty beneath her deep, deep coat.

Doesn’t she have the softest fur?

her owner said. 

Later, we saw them climb the hill:

the woman, keys in hand, followed by her husband,

Daisy in his arms, her enormous gray head

in absolute trust against his shoulder. 

If I formed a prayer before this solemn processional,

it might have been a plea for many more of these green and golden days; 

to come to the dog park long past my ability to run;

to die quickly and on a beautiful day;

to be carried out with tenderness and respect by someone who loves me.

Instead, in the language of dogs, and the Rinpoche,

Sam and I sniffed the sharp December air

as the gate clanged open, then closed.

And after a beat, we shook ourselves

and moved on.

 

Sam at the blessing of the animals, October 2010