Runaway

Mono Lake, eastern Sierras. Taken from U.S. 395, north of Lee Vining CA.

I have tried to run away, only to learn that there is no escape. It took some life experience to learn that you will always be outrun by whatever is chasing you, even if the pursuer is none other than your own shadow. (See Proverbs 28:1). It’s true that you can’t run away from yourself.

In my lifetime, I have thrice made the run from sea to shining sea. I couldn’t have done it without the support of my family, and I sometimes wonder where I’d be today without their help.

First time: I was living paycheck to paycheck and, had I not suddenly decamped from Connecticut to the Bay Area, would have eventually run out of money, if not from an automotive crisis, then certainly when my employer closed up shop. That is, unless the abusive relationship I was in killed me first.

Second time: It’s true what they say about not being able to go home again. My eight months in California were disastrous, leaving me to choose between moving in with my parents or homelessness. I saw running away as a viable third option, but high-tailing it back to New England got me nowhere fast. I couldn’t land a stable job in Hartford, went broke and moved in with family in Boston. My first day there, my car disappeared from in front of the laundromat where I was washing clothes. Turned out the cops hauled it away because I couldn’t afford to update my registration and insurance. Back to California I go.

Third time: I was fortunate to have parents who took me in, as I had run out of emotional capital with everyone else. I figured it was better than homelessness. After four and a half months of emotional misery, much of it brought on by myself, a stroke of good fortune led me to a stable paycheck that was just enough to secure a rented apartment six months later.

Twenty years have gone by since then. I have visited the east coast twice without incident. While the sight of New England continues to engender incipient longings, I have come to the understanding that California is my home, now and forever. I was one of those hardheaded dumbells who had to learn the hard way that running away gets you nowhere.

That isn’t to minimize the setbacks that I have experienced here in the Golden State. It took me decades to learn the life lesson that resolve, perseverance, and plain old staying the course can get you far.

Come October, I’ll probably still gawk at the online photos of the amazing Crayola leaf show, coming to you live from Vermont and New Hampshire.

And then I’ll log off, step out into the California sunshine, and laugh.

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The Jim

My parents are visiting us this weekend. Mom and Dad are 85 years old and have been married to each other for 66 years. That kind of longevity boggles my mind. Then again, my boss at work tells me that her parents are ages 90 and 94 and also have been married forever.

When we visited my parents at their home in the Central Valley a few weeks ago, Dad opined that it’s really silly for people to refer to the rest room as “the John.” He’s renamed it the Jim, he tells me. That way, he can impress people by proudly announcing that the first thing he does when he gets up every morning is go to the Jim.

Mom says she’s depressed because she’s always alone. Dad is there, of course, but he can’t hear too well anymore, and besides, he prefers to sit by himself either in the shade of the patio awning or in his recliner in the living room. Lost in his own thoughts, he will soon be snoring.

Dad watches TV with the volume turned up to deafening levels, so he does so in the office with the door closed. Meanwhile, Mom stretches out on the couch and watches TV alone in the family room. Being out in the boondocks without a satellite dish, my parents are stuck with limited choices available on over-the-air stations. Mom gravitates toward old westerns, while Dad enjoys his crime and murder shows, as well as the news and the opera that airs at noon on weekdays.

A few months ago, my parents decided to visit their daughter at her new home in Boston. It was to be a nine-day trip. Their grandson from here in California would travel with them, helping them in the airport, with the luggage, with the rental car. Then, a couple of weeks ago, they decided it was all too much and canceled their plans. I think they made the right decision.

For one thing, ascending and descending a big flight of stairs in an old 19th century house would be asking for trouble. Plus, their host is a dedicated vegetarian while my parents are of a more carnivorous persuasion. Also, I don’t think they have the energy to traipse around Beantown with the tourists. When their daughter asked my mother what she wanted to do during her visit, Mom reportedly replied “sit on the porch.”

Finally, the simple fact is that my parents are most comfortable in their own home. Even this weekend, they are staying over with us for one night only. Dad is rather attached to sleeping in his own bed.

With the amount of traveling I do for work, I can relate.

The Commuter Life: Ready, Set, Go!

Tessie, my sister’s new toy, er, commuter car.

My sister recently texted me a photo of her newest acquisition, a shiny black Tesla. “This is Tessie. Pretty no?” she asked by way of introduction. “She’s sitting in the garage sipping electricity.”

The thing costs almost as much as I earn in an entire year. But then again, the garage in which Tessie imbibes electrons is part of my sister’s million dollar plus home on a mountain overlooking San Francisco Bay. Tessie is now her commuter car.

Someone needs to tell Sis that she is doing things backwards. Thousands of Bay Area employees cannot afford to live there and endure hellish daily commutes from the exurbs just to keep their jobs. Sis, who has always been a bit of a firebrand, has decided to buck the trend. While she has been unable to escape the fate of the supercommuter who spends hours behind the wheel, she at least gets to do it in reverse, and on a nontraditional work schedule, to boot. She commutes from her fancy home in the East Bay against traffic to two jobs in the Central Valley. She mitigates the distance by working both weekend days and by staying over with my parents two nights per week.

I feel sorry for my parents.

Mom and Dad are well in their eighties, but that doesn’t stop Sis from upending their routine on a weekly basis. My sister leaves her junk all over the place at my parents’ house, then disappears for a week. If my parents try to clean up, when Sis returns she throws a fit about not being able to find anything. Oh, and she brings my parents food and expects them to cook it for her.

Granted, I would not enjoy living the type of commuter lifestyle that my sister has fallen into. And so, the vagaries of fate being such as they are, the commuter lifestyle went out and found me instead. It’s about to bite me on the nose.

At the improbable age of 60, my wife and I have just purchased our first home. On the salary of a public servant, we cannot begin to afford the hyperinflated prices of houses near my workplace in Sacramento. We ended up buying a newly-constructed home in a bland subdivision in an exurb requiring a commute that nearly rivals my sister’s.

I’ll have a better idea of how this odyssey will play out when I embark on this new challenge next week. What I do know at this point is that I must leave our new home no later than 5 a.m. for the 45-minute drive downtown if I am to be assured of a parking space. Coming home, however, will be far worse. The outbound commuter traffic on Interstate 5 during the afternoon rush is reminiscent of the parking lot known as the Long Island Expressway. Not that I would even attempt it. I panic at the very thought of merging into freeway traffic from the downtown streets at rush hour. I am not prepared to take my life in my hands. So I figured out an alternate route through surface streets that is likely to take me at least an hour and a half. I know, I should count my blessings when thousands sit in their cars for four to six hours each day. It’s just that it will take me some time to get used to the commuter life.

My chief concerns are the cost of filling up my gas tank every day ($4/gallon out here), the fact that my already aging vehicle will surely give up the ghost on Highway 99 one fine morning, and that I already struggle to fight off sleep on a relatively short 30-minute commute. My plan is to pull into a fast food parking lot about halfway home and take a nap in my car before hitting the freeway. This, of course, will extend my commute to encompass even more of my day.

I am fortunate that my very generous wife has agreed to drive me in and home two days per week. On those days, I can put my seat back and saw logs while in transport. As for the other three days, I’ve made contingency plans for those inevitable times when there are simply no parking spaces to be found anywhere near my place of employment. I will simply drive another half hour to a suburban shopping center and will wait there for Uber to pick me up and transport me downtown. After work, I’ll have to pay for another Uber to take me back to my car. On the bright side, my drive home will be shorter on such days.

All in all, I anticipate that the commuter life will turn out to be an expensive time suck that I’ll never really get used to. And then there’s the whole fossil fuels/carbon footprint/destruction of the planet thing. Perhaps it’s time to follow my sister’s lead and buy a Tesla. Not that I can begin to afford one now that, in my old age, I have finally become a real adult with mortgage payments.

Clearly, there is only one solution to the problem of getting back and forth to work. Beam me up, Scotty!

The Mom and Dad Roller Coaster Thrill Ride

I generally speak with my octogenarian mother on the phone about once per week, and the call reminds me a bit of an amusement park thrill ride.  When we drive down to the Central Valley to visit, it’s not much better.  I never know when I am going to be turned upside down or have the bottom drop out, allowing gravity to take me into free fall.

Perhaps I am being too dramatic, but the fact remains that every call leaves me with new concerns that trouble my mind and inhabit my dreams.

You may wonder why I rarely speak with my father on the phone, and it’s because he is a Silent Sam.  By his own admission, he hates talking on the phone.  I think he’d be perfect for text conversations, but my parents refuse to do that.  So I tell him what’s going on at work, but it’s a decidedly one-sided conversation.  I can’t generally get him to talk about himself.  If I start out with what I consider an open-ended question, such as “How are you doing?,” my poetry-loving father is likely to provide me with his standard comeback, “bloody but unbowed.”  I try to give him an easy out, as I know that he is grateful to make his escape at the earliest possible opportunity.

When I’m on the phone with my mother and she has to attend to something else in the house mid-conversation, she will set down the receiver of their kitchen wall phone, summarily state “here, talk to your father” and yell for him.  Often as not, he doesn’t hear her.

At the age of 85, my father is going deaf.  It drives my mother crazy that he can’t hear her when she calls for him, whether it’s some little thing that she wants him to do or whether she has been locked out of the house in the pitch black night out there on the lonely rangeland.  Despite my mother’s dunning, Dad refuses to get fitted for a hearing aid.  I believe it’s his right to decide what he wants to do with his body, but my mother feels that it’s extremely unfair to her.  She feels as if she lives alone, she tells me.  She points out that they can’t even watch television together, as he has to sit in front of the TV in the office and blast the volume in order to hear it, while my mother watches the big screen TV in the family room at a more normal volume.  Not that they watch many of the same shows anyway.  I don’t think Mom would care too much for my father’s opera broadcasts and gory murder shows.  And I don’t think Dad would care too much for my mother’s westerns and travelogues.  That’s beside the point, my mother would say.

My parents, who have been married for more than 66 years, have for decades honed marital arguing to the level of a fine art.  Their long experience has made them true experts at this pastime.  When we were kids, their hoopin’ and hollerin’ scared the crap out of my sisters and myself.  I’m glad I don’t have to hear it anymore, but anytime we visit, there it is.

About two weeks ago, my wife and I stopped by my parents’ house for a one-night visit on our way down to southern California (one of my regular work-related trips).  While we weren’t there long, our visit was just long enough for us to serve as an audience.  Mom started yelling about how she is tired of feeling like she lives alone and that Dad is going to get a hearing aid or she is going to kick his butt out and see if he can find someone else.  I called her bluff by telling her that she’s full of baloney.  She can blow like a gale, but I am 100% certain that my mother would never try anything of the kind.  Her late deafened husband isn’t going anywhere.  And I’m sure Dad knows it.

Two weeks earlier, my parents were here visiting.  Imagine my surprise when Dad stepped out of the car with a large bandage on his head.  The story was that he had incurred his injury by performing a bit of amateur plumbing.  Apparently, my sister, who has been staying over with my folks a couple nights a week while she does work in the Central Valley, had managed to pull the shower faucet out of the wall.  Standing in the tub with his tools to repair it, my father soon finished the job, stepped out of the wrong side of the tub, and proceeded to gash his head on the protruding knickknack shelf.  Well, you know how a head wound bleeds, so it’s no surprise that the bathroom looked like a murder scene.  My stubborn father refused to go to the emergency room and was quite content to have Mom patch him up.

Then I heard about some of the phone calls my parents have been receiving.  I recently read in the newspaper how there are miscreants and malefactors out there who prey on senior citizens by pretending to be family members in need of money.  I read about one couple who was bilked out of a quarter of a million dollars via such a scam.  My parents, however, are a bit more savvy than that.  They are AARP members and have read all the warnings printed in that organization’s magazine.

I guess it had to happen:  It was Dad’s turn to get “the call.”  The young man on the other end of the line began by whining a plaintive “Grandpa??  I’ve been arrested!  I’m in jail!”

“Who is this?!” my father replied gruffly.

“Your grandson,” came back the still whiny reply.

“Which grandson?  I have three.”

“Your youngest grandson,” intoned whiny-butt.

“Kevin?? Is that you??” came back my father’s reply.

“Yes, Grandpa, it’s me, Kevin!”

“I don’t have a grandson named Kevin!” my father thundered, slamming down the phone.

Good for him, I thought.  Score:  Dad 1, Scammers 0!

Then it happened again.

“Hello!” Dad answered the ringing phone, annoyed that someone in Asia was probably trying to sell him goods and services that he didn’t need.

“Grandpa??  I’m in the hospital!” came the plaintive reply.

Dad slammed down the receiver, fuming.

He had no idea that it was my sister, who had just come out of surgery.

Hahaha! Serves her right for habitually calling her father “Grandpa!”

 

 

The Notebook

My wife and I visited my parents shortly before Thanksgiving.  “I don’t want to make you sad,” was how my mother opened a conversation at breakfast one morning.  I knew what was coming.

My father just turned 85 and my mother will be doing likewise about three months from now.  Dad is nonchalant about getting older; his philosophy has always been that “it’s better than the alternative.”  My mother, on the other hand, seems a bit obsessed about her funeral arrangements.

Mom has a notebook detailing her last wishes, and on this occasion, she wished to inform me that she has updated it.  And also that she’s made a second copy in case something happens to the first.  It’s starting to feel a little creepy.

Now, I know that many will find my mother’s initiative admirable.  I would tend to agree if her instructions had something to do with, say, disposition of her assets (she says she doesn’t have a will) or even what type of casket to use or what music to play at her funeral.

No such luck.

My mother doesn’t care about any of that stuff.  She says that no one but immediate family would attend her funeral anyway, so there’s no sense in spending money for a lot of worthless nonsense.

Mom’s funeral notebooks are primarily devoted to the minutia of how to have her body transported from California to her family burial plot in New York City.  I’m talking about which airline to use, which funeral home to call on this end, which funeral home to call in New York, how to contact the cemetery to have them open a gravesite.

Sigh.

When I try to make sense of this, I remind myself that there is plenty of precedent going back millennia.  After all, the Children of Israel honored Joseph’s wishes to bring his bones up from Egypt to be buried in the Promised Land.  And that involved forty years of wandering in the desert, not making a reservation with United.  But still.  Is this really necessary, parents of mine?  Yes, I know, Mom, you want to be buried next to your mother.  I get it.  Um, I think.  Uh, why exactly do you insist on staying in California if you wish to spend eternity in New York?

I’m glad that my parents no longer have to deal with the winter weather that they so dislike, but really, why would an octogenarian elect to reside nearly 3,000 miles away from his or her final resting place of choice?  To me, it’s simple.  I have resided in California for nearly a quarter of a century, and here I will be buried.  If California is good enough for me to live in, it’s certainly a good enough location for my headstone.  I doubt that I will ever move anywhere else, but if I do, then just bury my carcass there in the local cemetery, please.  Don’t even think of transporting my decomposing corpse on a final plane ride to a location thousands of miles away.  That’s both insane and insulting.

As for my parents, they made New York their home for the first sixty years of their lives.  In my opinion, if they want to spend eternity there, then they had no business moving to California.  I think my uncle got it right.  He lived down the street from us in New York, and at the age of 92, he’s still there.

What’s even crazier is that Mom has mentioned more than once that, were she terminally ill, she would attempt to travel to New York City so that she could breathe her last in close proximity to the cemetery.

There just isn’t a lot I can say when Mom starts in with this kind of talk and her notebooks.  Yes, I assure her, I’ll honor your final wishes.  Yes, I know it’s paid for.  Yes, I’m glad that you have informed my sisters (since they will likely be doing most of the heavy lifting anyway).

Arguably, my father goes to the opposite extreme.  When Dad is asked about his final wishes, he often says something about stuffing his body into a sack and throwing it in the river.

Maybe he’s on to something.

 

My Uncle, Age 91 and Still Fighting

I’m back!  Big thanks to WordPress happiness engineer Megan, who managed to solve the seemingly intractable technical problems that have left me locked out of this space for months.  Merci, grazie, danke schöen!

I usually speak to my mother on the phone about once a week.  I feel like a terrible son when I tell the truth, which is that it’s more of an obligation than anything else.

To be honest with myself, I must admit that, as an adult, I remain stuck in childhood patterns of behavior when it comes to my parents.  If I don’t call for a couple of weeks, Mom will call and start the conversation with a sarcastic comment such as “Did you forget that you have a mother?”  Now, if I were my sister, who operates with no filter whatsoever, I’d likely respond with “I guess you reminded me, huh?”

As for my father, he hates to talk on the phone.  He’ll answer if my mother happens to be outside or in the shower, or if my parents are sitting on the driveway in folding chairs, enjoying the evening breeze, and he runs into the garage to pick up the ringing 1980 baby blue rotary dial phone.  He will pass the phone to my mother as soon as possible.  “Here, talk to your Mommy,” he will say and rush off the phone.  If my mother answers, she may, at some point in the conversation, cajole him into coming to the phone.  “Talk to your son!”

I don’t have much contact with family members other than my parents, and I like it that way.  I upset my mother when I tell her that I was forced to deal with them while growing up and that I’m happy that I no longer have to do so.  I have two sisters, one in Boston and the other in the Bay Area.  I typically visit or speak on the phone with Boston sister once every year or two or five.  Bay Area sister is much closer at hand and so is more difficult to avoid.  Boston sister will leave me alone, but Bay Area sister doesn’t grant me quite as wide a berth.  I guess I can’t complain, however.  I can expect her to text or call once every two or three months.  Fair enough.

This is not to say that I’m unaware of what is going on in my family.  Far from it.  My mother regularly gives me the low down and the skinny on everyone we know, from our relatives to the neighbors to her dentist.  There is really no news that my sisters could possibly share with me, as I’ve already heard it from Mom.

Occasionally, what I hear from my mother is disconcerting.  Like all families, ours has its dark spots, and the passing decades don’t seem to have caused them to go away.  On last week’s call, my mother was filling me in on the latest regarding my uncle, her late sister’s husband.  Apparently, his second wife, who is not in good health, has suffered a long series of falls.  I’m told she has many bruises on different parts of her body.  My mother mused aloud about whether my uncle hits his wife.  This doesn’t surprise me at all, as throughout my childhood, he and my aunt had a turbulent relationship during which they would batter one another.  My uncle is a little guy, maybe five feet tall, weighing about 95 pounds soaking wet.  My aunt weighed about 300 pounds until she developed cancer.  Despite their physical mismatch, my uncle was able to defend himself amply.  With his diminutive physical profile, he claims to have gained his pugilistic skills early.  And yet, from what I can tell, he was usually the aggressor.

My uncle was constantly getting into fights.  Unconfirmed rumors, whispered or spoken of in code so the children wouldn’t understand, involved arrests and scrapes with the law.  My uncle’s modus operandi involved throwing a punch at the slightest perceived threat, real or imagined.  As this wasn’t discussed openly while I was growing up, I sometimes wondered whether I was imagining it.  That all changed a few years after I graduated from college, when I attended the first wedding of my aunt and uncle’s only son (he is now on his third marriage).  As we were enjoying our salmon en papillote at the reception, my uncle downed a few too many vodkas and took to the floor to perform his signature Russian dance, the kazatsky.  A few minutes later, I observed him starting a fistfight with the father of the bride, right there on the dance floor.  At this point, someone called the cops and my entire family stood up and walked out.  The valet brought the cars before the police showed up (if they ever did).

So I guess I wasn’t imagining things after all.  Throughout my childhood, he and my aunt would engage in horrific screaming matches that would terrify my sisters and myself.  My aunt would yell at full volume to call the police, and my mother would try to calm her down.  These are some memories that I wish I could forget, but these scenes are, unfortunately, etched into my brain.

The thought that my uncle may be repeating this ugly behavior with his second wife, ill as she is, is both sickening and disgusting.  The kicker is that he is 91 years old!  And he is not in the best of health himself.

My uncle and his wife continue to reside in our old neighborhood in New York, although they purchased a home in south Florida several years ago for the purpose of avoiding the icy Northeast winters.  Mom tells me that they have now sold the Florida home because it has become too difficult to make the trip back and forth.  I am guessing that there are health issues that make flying problematic.  For a number of years, they would drive to Virginia in the fall, whereupon they put the car on the auto train and rode in comfort to Orlando.  The last time they did this, however, my uncle took sick on the train, which had to make an unscheduled stop for an ambulance to transport him to a hospital.  I am told that he had a minor heart attack and that a pacemaker had to be installed.  So now they’re done with Florida.

Mom informed me that, instead of selling off the furnishings in their Florida home, or simply selling the home fully furnished, they paid a mover to pack everything up and truck it back to New York.  Now they have two households full of furniture in one house.  What was unloaded by the movers remains in shipping containers, filling their garage, their spare bedroom, and every other room in their house.  My uncle says that his son, who resides in North Carolina, couldn’t come visit even if he were so inclined, as there would be no place for him to stay.

As for my uncle’s wife, she’s back in a convalescent facility again, for what I believe is her fourth or fifth stay.  She is engaged in physical therapy and recovering from her latest “fall.”

I wish there were some way I could tell my mother, without being unbearably rude, that I don’t want to hear the family gossip.  Tell me about your appointments at Kaiser, your trips to the dentist in San José, the trees and flowers you are planting, your latest experience at Red Lobster or the ongoing problems with your multiple lawn mowers.  But I can do without hearing about the bad behavior of my nieces, my sister’s hysterics and my uncle’s domestic violence.

Perhaps ignorance really is bliss.  I realize that pretending that the family drama is not occurring is not going to change anything.  It’s just that I don’t want to hear about it, Mom.

That is, if you want me to keep calling you.

 

Siamese, If You Please

I am not a pet person. (I’ve mentioned this fact on a number of previous occasions in this space — here and here, for example).  Today, however, I almost wish I were.  You see, our county animal shelter is full.

I’m not exaggerating here.  The Bradshaw Road facility out near Highway 50 is usually pretty close to capacity (they chalk it up to a combination of overpopulation due to a failure to spay/neuter and the general public attitude that cats and dogs are disposable).  But this is different.  They are full.  No vacancy.  No room at the inn.  Can’t take any more no matter how desperate the situation.  Nowhere to put any kitty or puppy that shows up at the door.

How can I adequately explain how desperate the situation is?  At the beginning of December, the shelter’s occupancy level was labeled “extremely full.”  This week, however, the Sacramento Bee reported that a local animal advocacy group posted the following on Facebook:  “The shelter is beyond capacity.  There is NO MORE ROOM!”

Because I am a hopelessly sappy sucker, I’d actually consider adopting one of these critters if I didn’t live in a place where no pets are allowed (except for the landlord’s pets — more about that later this weekend).  I’m lucky to have something to save me (and the poor dog or cat who got stuck with me) from my own folly.

   

Arthur and Ophia, two of the pit bulls currently available for adoption at the Sacramento County animal shelter.

I suspect that one of the reasons for the shelter being overflowing is that most of the dogs currently up for adoption are pit bulls.  Like German shepherds and labs, these dogs are big guys.  This means that they demand a lot of the shelter’s resources.  Also, they’re harder than a lot of breeds to adopt.  They eat a lot, they poop a lot, and they need a lot of space to run around in.  You probably shouldn’t have a pit bull if you live in a one-bedroom apartment.  Also, well, pits have a bad rep.  Some people are afraid to have them around babies and little kids. And every so often, you read a story in the news about some unfortunate who was mauled to death by his or her own pit bull.  There are plenty of people out there who love this breed, but pits are clearly not for everyone.

Then there are the cats.  This evening, I’m seeing 62 of them on the shelter’s website.  Six of those were recently adopted.  This is as opposed to 17 of the shelter’s 74 dogs having been recently adopted.  More than a few of the available felines are labeled as “barn cats,” which I suppose is an appeal to those who have mice to get rid of.  Then again, I suppose “barn cat” is a not-so-subtle hint that this is not a cute, cuddly kitty who is going to curl up in your lap and purr while you’re watching Netflix.

Oh, I should mention that there are also three rabbits and four chickens up for adoption at the shelter.  No goldfish, turtles, hamsters or snakes, apparently.

It’s no surprise that the adoptable chickens are not the egg-laying hens that everyone wants.  No siree, they’re loud, obnoxious, pugilistic roosters.  We’ve got plenty in our neighborhood, some of which have a predilection for crowing in the middle of the night.  My guess is that if these guys ever get adopted, they’ll go straight in the pot with a bunch of carrots and onions.  I see them for sale all the time in cages by the Mexican butcher shop at the corner of Main and Rio Linda Boulevard.  I can only hope that they don’t end up forced into illegal cockfighting, a fate arguably worse than being served up next to the mashed potatoes.  As for the rabbits, they need to hold on for another three months or so until they’re in demand as Easter gifts.  Otherwise, they may well meet the same fate as the roosters.

I have to wonder how many of the shelter dogs and cats will end up murdered — I mean “euthanized.”  As if I had to mention it.  You know what euthanized is a euphemism for.  Back in school, I learned that “euthanize” is from the Greek for “good death.”  But you know that half of what you learn in school is propaganda and lies.  I was well into adulthood before I learned that the correct translation of the Greek is “couldn’t get adopted.”

Some have registered surprise that an animal lover such as myself doesn’t have pets.  I mean, since I’m vegan and all.  And especially since I don’t have kids.  (As if pets can substitute for children.  People are so dumb.)

Honestly, I can understand why more people don’t adopt dogs and cats.  They’re a lot of work, they cost a lot of money, and then they die on you.  I had to laugh this week when I read an article about a dog that helped save a fat man’s life.  This guy weighed 340 pounds, was taking 15 different medications, and all efforts at weight loss had failed him.  He hurt all over and tried not to move any more than he had to.  (I weigh more than that.  You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.)  Apparently, he was spurred into action by an embarrassing moment when a plane he was on had to be delayed while they found a seatbelt extender large enough to fit him.  Haha!  I’ve got that one all figured out.  I don’t fly.  Oh, this guy had to travel for his job.  So do I.  Luckily for me, my employer insists on using the discount carrier Southwest, which has a rule that fat people have to buy two seats.  Score!  Now it’s cheaper for me to drive than to fly.  I’ll be laughing at my destination while the others are waiting hours to get through the TSA line.

So then this guy makes an appointment with a naturopathic doctor, who tells him to switch to a plant-based diet.  Again, haha!  Plant-based diets are certainly gaining popularity; even Kaiser encourages this now and has messages about it on their interminable “hold” recordings.  But after three years of being vegan, I can tell you firsthand that eating plants won’t by itself make you thin.  The article cited Bill Clinton’s diet, which I’ve read is not totally vegan despite his representations to the contrary.

Then the naturopathic doctor ordered this guy to go to the animal shelter and get a dog.  “Why a dog?” he said.  “Can I adopt a cat instead?”  The doctor responded:  “Have you ever walked a cat?”  Again, haha!  No, I have never walked a cat, nor a dog either.  As I see it, you have a nice fenced yard, you let the dog out, it does its business, it comes back in.  Or, like our landlord, you leave the dog in a large pen outside the house all day.  But going out in the dark of night (this time of year, I go to work and come home in the pitch blackness), freezing cold, wind and snow with a plastic bag and pooper scooper?  No how, no way.  Oh, and by the way, if I want to go walking for exercise, I don’t need a dog (or cat) to do that.

All of which brings me to my mother.  Her beloved Siamese cat, Taffy, left for kitty heaven a little over a year ago at the age of 18.  Taffy was originally my sister’s, but wasn’t doing well cooped up in Sis’s condo.  She drove Taffy and her meds down from the Bay Area to my parents’ house, in hope that the country air and space to roam about might improve her health.  It did.  Taffy took to her new life as an outdoor/indoor cat and throve with my parents for more than a decade and a half.  Now she’s buried out at the back edge of their property.

Mom’s Siamese, Taffy, back in 2015.

My sister from Boston, who came out to visit this past week on the occasion of my parents’ 65th wedding anniversary, decided that the time has come for Mom to get another cat.  I suppose I can understand this, as she’s nearly always had a cat (or two).  There were entirely too many for me to remember, but I do recall a gray one named Pussy Willow, an all-white one named Snowflake, an orange hellion named Mewcus (eww), another gray one named Schwantzy and a huge white one with black ears and paws with the unlikely name of Baby Baldrick (who ran away to become a Canadian chat when we attempted to retrieve him from a kennel at a campground in Québec).  Mom doesn’t believe in spay and neuter, so we had cats that would have as many as three litters per year.  I remember my sisters and I standing with a boxful of kittens on Saturdays, yelling “Free Kitten!” until we were hoarse in front of Pathmark on Route 59.

Nevertheless, I think Mom, who is well into her 80s, should decide when she’s ready for another cat, not my sister.  But Sis pushed the issue, taking Mom to Petco to look at the adoptable cats, then to the local animal shelter, where over 200 felines were available for adoption.  Mom was impressed by the way that the cats had free reign over the place, prowling in and out of cat doors to visit each other in various rooms and out of doors, as well.  But she couldn’t seem to find exactly the one she wanted.  She said she doesn’t wanted a little kitten, nor does she want an older, lazy fat cat.  So what exactly did Mom want?

A Siamese.  Mom’s favorite cat was a Siamese named Pouncy who was run over crossing the road in front of our house when I was two years old.  She lives on in my father’s reels of Super 8 home movies.  After my parents retired and moved to California, Mom’s first cat was a dusky blue-eyed Siamese beauty named Bonnebeau (supposedly because she was beautiful and good).  Of course she wasn’t spayed, so Bonnie, an indoor cat, went into heat and meowed piteously to be let out to have at it with the neighborhood toms.  Eventually, she did manage to get out and celebrated her newfound freedom by taking off for parts unknown.

Unfortunately, Mom and Sis did not see any Siamese at either Petco or the animal shelter.  So my sister got online and showed my Mom pictures of cats, including Siamese, available for adoption from the Cat House on the Kings, over in Fresno County.

Then my sister got on a plane and headed home, after which Mom admitted that she doesn’t really want to deal with another cat.