Lorraine

Betty just has more get-up-and-go than...than...Aunt Lorraine, here! I blurted out, as I topped the hill. It had been a rainy few days and we grabbed the bikes with fenders and racks—the Long Haul Truckers—for our Saturday breakfast ride, and I forgot.

* sigh *

I forgot that I wasn’t riding Betty. Climbing? The LHT can’t be persuaded to get all excited about it. She’ll take me places and haul things that Betty won’t touch, but she won’t be something she’s not...and she’s just not racy.

You know an Aunt Lorraine. She can’t be hurried. Around her, life is relaxed and comfortable, but underneath all that deliberateness there’s potential for adventure.

Lorraine likes a good beer, three squares a day, and a gin tonic on summer nights during poker games. She’s a sturdy woman...not fat, mind you, but tall and solid. Fifty years ago she’d have been called a spinster. Now she’s simply a grown-up tomboy, independent as hell, who has her own way moving through the world.

Aunt Lorraine’s got a past, and when she’s in the right mood you’ll hear about some of it. She’ll trail off and smile, then offer you some more iced tea before the two of you head off in the truck...that old Sorrenson place just outside town is waiting to be explored.

Lorraine makes you see parts of yourself in a different way. Things that are neither good nor bad she simply paints in new colors, and you find yourself hmmmm-ing and nodding. She helps you realize there’s more to life than the block you live on, and there’s more about time than the here and now.

The way it’s always been?

There just may be another way.


- Old Bag learning new tricks

Oscar

2001-2010

Oscar was a kitty, abandoned and fending for himself, when he found my parents in early October, 2001. He came home with me about 2 weeks later and settled easily into the household.

He rid the backyard of bunnies, mice, bumblebees and a wayward bird or two just so you know, if you make a cat drop it! then YOU have to deal with the half-dead bunny...pretty amazing considering he was functionally blind. He could see movement, but would stumble over things in the house that were out of place. A telltale sneeze from the other room meant a diningroom chair had been left out and he'd just rapped his nose.

He was often moving, forever exploring, always finding the chink in the fence. He wasn't much for cuddling, but my lap was his lap...always. Through the years, Oscar taught me the value of sleeping deeply and waking up slowly; that more can be made of love than of hollering; and that in spite of shortcomings, life is best spent barreling ahead.

He was diagnosed with kidney disease about 16 months ago. I'd really counted on him to be an 18-year kitty (Barney set the bar awfully high), but tough beginnings can sometimes mean endings that come sooner.

We had nine years together that we wouldn't have had, had he not popped his face up through the autumn weeds.

I'm very lucky.

- tob with a very empty lap