Squirrels of the Future

 I've never really liked squirrels. When I was a kid we had a next-door neighbor who fed the squirrels in her yard. She fed them Dubuque, Iowa's very fine Betty Jane candies. I can see her out there in her flowered housecoat with a box of chocolates, a squirrel eating out her hand. It seemed like things could take a turn at any moment, and I didn't want to witness it. 

My very first house in L.A. had a pecan tree. We never harvested a single pecan. My daughters, however did enjoy watching the squirrels strip it bare. They'd sit at our kitchen table and laugh out loud at the squirrels' ridiculous gymnastics. I was less than thrilled. I wanted to make something with those homegrown pecans.

Post divorce, the very first place I ever owned by myself, I had an apricot tree. That first apricot I harvested was the best apricot I've ever eaten. It was the last apricot I enjoyed from that tree. The squirrels also ate my lovely ruffled pink hibiscus. 

I tried everything. Bird netting. Cayenne. Nothing worked.

When it came time to move my mother in with me, I sold that place and bought a house that fit her needs. There were no squirrels there by the ocean. Until after DJT was elected. Then things changed. I gave those interlopers names--Evil Bannon and Kelly Ann. They pigged out on the bird seed and destroyed my geraniums.

Minneapolis is overrun with squirrels. Last year I saw a pure white one. On my walk the other day I watched the fat one at the top of this post for quite awhile. Do you know why he/she is fat? Because they're planning for the future. That's right. The future. That squirrel knows it's going to get cold. There'll be less to eat in our snowy landscape. Calories will harder to find. So the squirrels are chowing down. So they'll survive. Because they think there will be a future to survive for. I love that squirrel and all of their fat friends. I love the idea of planning for the future.

The Mystery of the Wine Thief, Some Wisdom from Ancient Rome, and the Rabbit in the Moon.

The Last Senate of Julius Caesar :: Raffaele Giannetti

The lovely M was in Margaritaville (her presence alone is enough to transform this place from Pillville to Margaritaville) this weekend. She arrived with plans to take me off to the theatre today, so from the moment I awoke, I began working toward our 11:30 departure time so that we could drive back to the L.A. area with plenty of time to make the matinee. One of my first tasks was to take last night's nearly full bottle of wine upstairs (I forgot to do this last night.) But the bottle of wine was gone. This discovery fell into place with the fact that I found my mom roaming around the kitchen and laundry room last night at 1:00 a.m. Aha, I thought, she's swiped the wine and hidden it somewhere in the laundry room. M looked for it. I looked for it. All the while, I wondered if I hadn't put it somewhere for safekeeping downstairs instead of juggling it up the steps with my glass of water, my phone, my book, my laptop. Maybe I tucked away somewhere. But where? All through this self-doubt though, my mom is my prime suspect. But off we go to the theatre.

The play we are going to see is Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar (probably the definitive play on power, politics, and war.) M, with her knowledge of the classics, plays podcasts about Julius Ceasar for us as I drive. We hear about Ceasar's return to Rome after his conquests in Gaul and over the Germanic tribes. So there Ceasar is, riding in his triumphal chariot with a slave standing behind him. It's the slave's job to remind Ceasar to look behind you because the future comes from behind. I insisted we hit the pause button right there. M told me about the Roman god Janus who has two faces, one looking forward, the other back, and we drove in silence for a bit before we went on to finish the podcasts.

M as Julius Ceasar at age 11
We happened to have dug out this photo album because of the visit from relatives last week.

 It was a fabulous production. Completely riveting, our brains swirling with past and present wars and political intrigues.

Then I drove back to attend my Sunday night dance class. I had a hard time focusing at first, but eventually my feet and my brain got together. The dance partner was entirely good humored. He's just happy to dance.

Afterwards when we walked out to the parking lot, the moon was a big yellow disk hanging low in the sky. He asked me if I knew about the rabbit in the moon. I did not. I'm 62 years old and I've never heard about the rabbit in the moon. I have, however, always felt that the future comes from behind. So, I tonight I saw the rabbit in the moon. And my dance partner gave me some beautiful homegrown lemons.

When I arrived back home, I was famished. And I wanted some wine. And there it was. On the dining room table just where we'd left it, untouched.

Pillville: Population 2 (and an elderly cat)

Today went by in a whirl--the last few hours with my son and his family. It was too windy here to be outside so we went into an arcade and shoved $5 bills into token machines, held out our hands and let the children pluck them at will.

Arcades might be among my least favorite entertainments in the world usually, but I tossed that attitude to the wind.

I feel a little like these places are training kids for Vegas, but what the hell....today I might have even bought them candy if they'd asked...

...just kidding. But the time was sweet. And Zoltar says our futures look sweet, too.

But really, we have no idea. Though I do hold somewhat to the idea that we can choose sweetness.

At lunch, my 10-year-old granddaughter wanted to know where she was during the time my son and I were on a trip to Europe in the 90s. You weren't anywhere, I told her. She asked the question again. I told her she wasn't on the planet Earth yet. That she hadn't yet been born. She furrowed her brow and laughed. I love how kids always have trouble imagining their parents before the beginnings of their own lives. Our pasts are to them as mysterious as the future.

And sometimes my own past is mysterious to me, too.

But here I am right here, right now in Pillville with my mom talking to herself as she crochets in her room. Piper the ancient cat has not ventured out yet from her respite under the laundry room sink. I just had a long talk on the phone with my friend Paula about the mysteries of dating. I have to decide if I'm serving leftover spaghetti for dinner again. What does the future hold? And why did the past roll out the way it did? How much control do we have over any of it?

Love, Money, and Mink

I recently took my mother back to the apartment where she used to live with her sister until health problems forced them both to move a couple of years ago. Because the place is in the basement of my cousin's house a lot of their things are still there, time-capsuled as if they might someday return and resume where they left off.

"Do you suppose this gin is still good?" my aunt might ask as she leans down from her wheelchair and peers into the cabinet.

"Of course it's good," my mother would respond, opening the fridge. "But I don't know about these olives." They'd discuss the pros and cons of a martini without olives then, but they'd make the drinks anyway and sit at their table, a cumulous cloud of smoke forming under the low ceiling. They'd sip. And talk about how good it was to be back. 

Could happen. But probably not. My aunt lives in a nursing home now, both legs lost and her memory chasing after them.

What did happen was that my mother opened every drawer and each of her  little wooden boxes (many of which most likely came from thrift store or trash picking treasure hunts.) She looked through her closet and her jewelry box and stood in front of her bookshelves . "Take this," she'd say when I exclaimed over something. "It needs fixing, but..." We found earrings that have been in her jewelry box ever since I can remember. She still had the little golden expandable chignon-style hair clasps that I used to set on top of my head as crowns when I played dress up, her father's watch chain, and the crystal rosary in the pouch personalized with her name in gold across the white leather that her mother presented to her as a wedding gift.

I thought I was familiar with each and every one of my mother's treasures, but there was a surprise. "Is that mink?" I asked. The fur was soft as a kitten's, not marred at all by time, although the satin rose was maybe a bit faded with a hint of fray.

"Your father gave that to me for Christmas the year I asked for a mink coat," she said.  

My parents never had any money. The way I remember it, the only thing they ever fought about was money, and that was because there wasn't  any. I was touched by the story because my father heard what his young, poor-all-her-life wife wanted, and with, I imagine, a rather stylish sense of humor, he delivered mink.

And now the mink and satin rose is with my mother at my brother's house where she lives with him and his girlfriend.  My father has been dead for almost thirty years, and my mother looks back almost as much as she looks forward. Tucked-away treasures bring the past and the present together. I like that.