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Saturday, March 17, 2018

cats to dogs: love stories


Going through old files and photos today, I came upon this essay written a decade ago. A colleague read it and thought it would be a great piece for the NY Times Modern Love column, and an editor I knew helped me to shape it expressly for that purpose. Sadly, along with many thousands of other entries it was rejected. Still, it's one of my favorite pieces (and I think, better than most of their columns).  It's also a reminder of a time and place far removed from what that swatch of New York has become, and of where my life is now. That's why it's important to share our stories, so we don't forget these things.
Anyone who has known me for the past 9 years or less only knows me as a dog person when the fact is I had far more years with its frequent nemesis.  Here's one of each: two special friends and how I met them.





Desperately Seeking Todd

We met only once for about ten minutes but I’ve thought of you often since then. I responded to a flyer you had posted on a telephone pole on 8th Avenue and 20th Street, a hand-scrawled note that said, Cat needs good home.  At the time I was living on West 14th Street in a studio apartment with my cat Ginger, just the two of us on a stretch of city street that the word gritty seems to have been invented to define: discount electronics and clothing stores lined the block, if you could see them behind the stream of shoppers and passengers disgorging from the subway stop on either corner.  

Still, at the time it was a perfect home, a place from which I could go out and explore the city right outside my window. The only problem was that Ginger was left alone a lot. So your sign spoke to me, seeming to offer a solution of companionship. I’d never answered an ad before, and I didn’t have the slightest idea of what I was supposed to ask you. 

“Umm, What’s he like? Is he nice? Handsome?”  

“He’s an excellent cat!” you assured me with such a strong and unwavering tone that with just that one word description I trusted you, a complete stranger, enough to come to your apartment. 

You told me his story and yours, a classic city tale of love and real estate: you were living in an apartment in Williamsburg, this scrawny alley cat appeared on your fire escape, quietly yet firmly returned day after day, insisting that you take him in. Being a nice guy, you gave him a home; being a jazz trumpeter, you named him Satchmo. Being completely unfamiliar with cats, you gave him baths, and being unschooled in these things or just so eager for a home, he agreed to take them.  You had a few idyllic years together, and then you fell in love with a girl with an apartment in Chelsea, and alas, an allergy to cats.

It was tough, but you chose the beautiful Russian filmmaker over the beautiful black and white cat. And while she went off to Moscow to make a documentary you promised to find him a home.  And that’s when I met you, for just a few brief minutes. I came into your tiny cramped apartment and you showed me Satchmo. He was an excellent cat, I could see right away: a gentle, friendly animal with a shiny coat and a regal  posture that made it seem like he was puffing out his chest to show off that one tuft of black in the white fur. With no hesitation I said yes, placed him in the carrier you provided, and the two of us made the short trip home.

Throughout the years I’ve thought of you, just fleeting moments of gratitude where I wished I could reach out and tell you what a loving and stabilizing presence Satchmo  has been in my life, from that apartment on 14th Street and back to Brooklyn, where he started his life and where mine expanded to include a cat-loving spouse and two children.  He contentedly sat at the bottom of the bed putting up with crying babies and then rambunctious little boys, retreating when he needed peace to a window perch with a great view of Manhattan.

And when we moved again, outside of the city where those boys could run around in a yard, he took it in stride.  Satchmo didn’t mind that the house was old and small; he just seemed appreciative of all the new spots he could call his own: window perches and creaking stairs, a nice damp basement and a screened-in porch.

Then this Spring, things changed. He started losing weight and looking haggard. By the time the veterinarian had taken enough tests to find out what was wrong, lesions had spread to several organs. We tried to treat him, but his condition only grew worse and the cat that had been so content all these years was hiding in corners and moaning. In May I stood holding him and crying as the vet put him to sleep.

I’ve never understood the attitude that you don’t have to be nice to strangers, or that people that make brief appearances in your life somehow don’t matter.  I’ve always felt the complete opposite:  that everyone leaves an impression in some way, and every encounter is precious and potentially life-changing.  

For years when that beautiful black and white cat came and sat beside me, purring, I thought of you. I wondered if you still lived in the city and played the trumpet, if you stayed with your girlfriend. I know it was only ten minutes, and you probably don’t remember me but you left an imprint far deeper than I could have imagined that fleeting moment when our lives crossed. So if you’re out there Todd, I just want to say thanks for the past 13 years of life with Satchmo. He really was an excellent cat.


Satchmo, adored cat, 1995-2008


-----



je ne sais quoi

From Frenchje ne sais quoi, literally ‘I know not what’,
an intangible quality that makes something distinctive or attractive.
ex: She has a certain je ne sais quoi about her.
It’s been a momentous Thanksgiving week, in a quiet sort of way.  On Sunday, we took a drive up Rt 80 West (if you keep going, you’ll get to California, but we only made it to Warren County, NJ)) to visit Aunt Mary’s Doghouse, a wonderful shelter,for homeless dogs, to check out a possible addition to the family.  It’s something we’ve been talking about for a while, but in a vague “someday that would be nice” sort of way. Then B had a bonding experience with a miniature dachshund in August, and it  became a more regular topic of conversation.   As an 11-year-old boy going on 17, I think it became especially appealing to have someone in the house who wasn’t always asking him to do something (or in his case, not do something, like leave his shoes in the middle of the floor or bounce a ball in the house) , but who could be more of an unconditional friend. 
Earlier in the year I had been researching specially trained “autism dogs”, but like most services for kids on the spectrum there was a long waiting list and prohibitive costs that kept it out of reach.  I also had come to appreciate how important it was to get a dog that would be a companion for both boys, not just a service dog for V.   And the fact is that with the right disposition and intelligence,  any dog could be therapeutic, just by not talking or expecting conversation. (None of that “How was school today?  Anything new or interesting to share?” when you walk in the door.) The more I thought about it, or maybe the less I thought about it and the more I followed my instincts, it just seemed like the right time. 
So late at night when everyone was asleep I’d get on my laptop and troll the Petfinders site,  looking longingly at golden retrievers and beagles in need of homes. It was like a doggy online-dating service, a long series of flattering photos and upbeat profiles  (“I love long walks in the woods, but also enjoy the bustle of city sidewalks.”) and maybe a wee bit of exaggeration in the description: the 1 year old who was probably pushing 3, the svelte looking hound who in reality hadn’t seen 35 lbs for a while. But they were all utterly sincere in their intentions to find that special someone, a forever family with whom they could settle down.  And so we went up to Aunt Mary’s to meet a few eligible adoptees in the fur, with all their imperfections and quirks on display. 
When we arrived they were all standing anxiously at the fence, vying for our attention. Pick me! pick me!   It was charming and yet a bit heartbreaking  how they all sensed that this was their moment to shine, to persuade you of their special gift.
Look at me! I’m young and frisky, and my coat just gleams.
No, look at me! I am a bit older, but I’m still energetic, just in a quieter, more centered way.
I will make you feel loved and content.
I will make you feel loved, content, and I’ll make you laugh! Watch me play with this shoe, it’s a riot!
I will be the most loyal friend, I will sleep at the foot of your bed every night.
I will sleep at your feet every night and I’ll even make the bed in the morning, if you just train me. I’m a very smart breed!
It was hard not to fall in love with all of them, all these wonderful creatures  just aching for a home.  It was equally challenging to determine which would be best suited for us, or to let go of preconceived ideas: that no dog could ever be as sweet as a beagle (my beloved childhood dog Daisy), or as smart as a standard poodle, or as loyal and tolerant as a golden retriever.  
But that’s one of the wonderful and humbling things about doing rather than just thinking about doing something.  You think you know what you are looking for and then get thrown for a loop.  Someone puts her nose on your lap and sweetly gazes into your eyes.   She has a scar on her nose from some past altercation and a bit of a sag in the middle from a litter of puppies; not as young or small and cute as you had imagined. But she has this beautiful brindle coat and face, and an expression that’s both alert and calm. She just has, I don’t know, that je ne sais quoi…
I know it can sound pretentious,  especially coming from someone who doesn’t speak the language, but I’ve always liked that phrase, the way it acknowledges the limitations of words.  I know not what.  Uncharacteristically vague for the French, who place such value on precise use of language.  That thing I cannot describe.  But that’s the point. There are no words, just the knowing.
And so we rode back home with Ruby the Plott Hound in the back seat;  and her nose  is on my lap as I write this, as comfortable as if she’d been here forever.
Ruby, beloved dog, 2009-present.


Wednesday, March 14, 2018

some kitchen table policy for Pi Day

Happy Pi Day!

Yup, it's 3.14, or Pi day, also the birthday of Albert Einstein, and the deathday of Stephen Hawking, two of our greatest and most beloved thinkers.  As a cook and policy wonk I love pie, pie charts, bar graphs and any other visual aid that helps to make complex issues easy to understand. Or as Einstein said, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."


In honor of Pi Day and National School Walkout Day, an event organized by students to protest gun violence a month after 17 were killed at a high school in Florida, the latest in a continuing series of mass shootings, I made some key lime pie charts to explain a few of the major issues





At 4.4 percent, America has barely a sliver of the world's population. 









But we have nearly half (around 42%) of the civilian-owned guns around the world. 



We have more than 300 million guns, more than one per person!   Why? Largely because our gun control policies are weaker than in most other countries, and the NRA and its allies have emphasized gun ownership as an American right, and our central means of self-defense.









Other countries have experienced mass shootings, but they've taken action to curtail them. In 1996, a young man in Australia opened fire on a crowd, killing 35 people. Soon after, Australia instituted a flat-out ban on automatic and semi-automatic rifles and shotguns, and introduced a mandatory buyback, in which they paid guns' owners a fair price for every gun that had just been declared illegal.

Here are the number of deaths by mass shootings in Australia since the law took effect:

,



In 2012, a gunman killed 27: 20  children between the ages of 6 and 7 years old, 6 adults and himself - at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, CT.  Despite the extraordinary activism of families of the victims since then, no significant change occurred at the federal level and most states. Since Sandy Hook, there have been more than 1,800 deaths as a result of mass shootings.


(each strawberry slice = 100 people!)



Research shows that most of us are not motivated to actively fight for change unless something affects us or someone we know. That's why we have car safety laws and so much money poured into cancer research; it's why there's national movements to address the dramatic increase in opioid addiction and flooding disasters. Most of us fortunately don't know anyone effected by mass shootings, but at this rate we eventually will...

Anyway you slice it, gun violence is a major issue and will continue to be one until we implement and enforce legislation to regulate, limit and ban weapons. So bravo to the students, the families, the millions of others demanding change so that next year or some year soon Pi Day can be the quirky and pun-filled celebration it's meant to be.






Thursday, March 8, 2018

===== blessings all around =====

Fridays are a good day to get things done at a Jewish organization, because the office closes at 4 PM, and most of the staff works from home. I only discovered this recently as my grant-funded position was coming to an end and I used every remaining day to try to wrap up my last project and clear out my files and desk. 

I've known since the beginning of the year that my position was ending but it didn't sink in until I brought in my wheely cart and started loading it up with the typical accumulation of worker bee stuff: shoes to change into from the practical Doc Martens I wore for my walk from the train, a few photos and pictures to hang up and try to make it homey, or at least filled with things that made me smile because except for the occasional colleague who helped me with my spreadsheets and metrics, people rarely visited me or sat in the two chairs that lay in wait for the co-workers I initially hoped would stop by.

The last few weeks it took more and more effort to quiet my mind and the increasing anxiety about an unknown future. I've been trying to get back on track for years now, but it's been a slow and spotty process since I was completely derailed over a decade ago, watching from the  passenger seat as my promising, multi-faceted professional and creative life went careening off the rails.


I’ve always loved riding on trains and the imagery and imagination of railroads, but there are many more terms and metaphors in my life since becoming a parent. First, there's having two boys in the age of Thomas the Tank Engine, that ubiquitous cartoon originating as a series of stories (and later, books)  Reverend Wilbert Awdry invented in 1943 as a way to entertain his son Christopher during a bout of measles.  It’s mix of oligarchy – the railroad is run by Sir Topham Hat, aka the Fat Comptroller, who is like an English Trump: an arrogant paunchy guy who likes to take revenge on those who displease him - and European Socialism – the trains always run on time and are accessible to everyone who lives on the island of Sodor.  

When I had postpartum depression after V was born, just thinking of Sodor could make me cry: a combination of despair at its dystopia, its humorless hum of productivity, and a longing to live within its perfection, with those utterly reliable trains providing easy access to its entire topography, from the valley to the sea.  We will all die, I’d think, but the stations, the well-traveled routes and tracks will remain.===========

Both boys loved Thomas and his friends, and each episode was just long enough to read an article from the island of Manhattan so I learned to tolerate the repetition. There was a brief time when B & V knew the names of every single train. But then B got older, moving on to more age-appropriate shows, and V regressed and lost all his language and the two of us languished in Sodor for years, with those same insipid tunes and stories and my tolerance was tested. Henry stuck in the tunnel again?! When will Thomas stop being so cheeky? Why aren't there more female trains in positions of power? How can I get voted off the island for eternity?

 Trains were constantly getting uncoupled, but in the English version there was always someone to come to the rescue and save the day, albeit often after some chiding at the childish and irresponsible behavior that caused each mishap. 
Meanwhile on this side of the pond real-life derailment was far more unsettling and isolating, although I found an ever-expanding cadre of compatriots in similar circumstances: other parents and partners of those requiring full-time care; people in rehab or recovery; anyone facing an illness or condition that required constant vigilance to the point that other priorities beyond survival slipped away.

We'd offer support and empathy at our often thwarted attempts to get back on track, to retrace our steps or reconstitute our former selves.  Often as not there would be a setback, regression or relapse and we would find ourselves in entry level jobs after years of working, or we would need a second mortgage or face foreclosure after being comfortably middle class. I once saw a woman in her sixties sob as she spoke about giving up her car because she could no longer make the payments.  I heard mothers mourn the careers they once had, losing touch with colleagues with enviable achievements; I spoke to other writers who slipped from days to hours of work each week, trying without success to 'follow their bliss' amidst mounds of laundry and medical treatments    Being derailed was our private struggle we rarely shared with the rest of the world, not wanting to face their pity or discomfort at not knowing what to say, when all we wanted was to be seen, to be acknowledged for the person that still shone under the surface of the duties and difficulties of daily life.  We're all in this together, they'd remind me, and it was enough to keep me going. 


I'm woefully sentimental, as I always am when things end: this is the last time I'll use my security badge, this is the last cup of coffee I'll make from a pod, this is the last time I'll sit in this windowless room, as I remove the items that had traces of who I was and who I remain. 


 I say goodbye to the few co-workers in the office. I've said thank you many times but I don't know that they realize how much I mean it, how grateful I am for colleagues - other people who care about the same things and can laugh at the same absurdities, sharing small pleasures or challenges:  apps to download for a free coffee or sandwich;  sharing when the guy that sells really cheap produce from a  truck outside of the CVS sets up shop; the prognosis of a sick cat, the cold that won’t go away, or the train that broke down - the type of minor derailments it's okay to discuss.


My overstuffed bag and I walk out of the office, out of the building and onto city streets in that mid-afternoon moment when the happy hour signs are just going up.  I pass so many every day, you'd think that all people do in Manhattan is drink from 4-7, if they aren't at 12-step meetings held in churches tucked between the bars. The universe provides all, but often not in the way you'd expect.===  ===



Near Penn Station I walk into Jack's, a mainstay of my life through thick and thin, sugar buzz to gluten-free, Jack's welcomes the world as only a bargain store can.  Last week it was a 99-cent belt (to hold up my $19 jeans from Costco), today challah for a dollah (now a dollah and a half), some bagels, another pair of $2 readers so I can drown my sorrow in the news on the way home.  My cart, really a backpack with wheels, is a bit unwieldy but narrow enough to go in and out of aisles.  

The sight of the challah, the strain of the bag, I feel my normal Friday melancholy magnified. Tonight we’ll light candles,  with challah and some wine for us, soy milk for V, a lonely Shabbos as a start to a lonely weekend.  But I don't let myself go down that road, instead remembering that Saturday will be our monthly service by, for, and with others with disabilities and their families.  I love every part of it: my fellow daveners, our funny and wise leader with her brief and timely parsha, the singing, the accessible Siddur (prayer book).

Dear God [or goddess or higher power or whatever you believe in]
I have been given so many blessings:
food to eat, clothes to wear, people who love me.
Thank you, God, for all my wonderful blessings.
Can you make that enough? That simple prayer gets me every time and I silently let it sink in until I can answer Yes.



I get in line, then notice a man holding a bag of pretzels, hovering at the end of a long row of customers. 'Are you in line?' I ask. 'Yes,' he says, 'thanks for asking. It's hard to stay in line and keep track of my stuff.' and he motions to his bags, also a wheely cart with another bag attached on top.  'People often butt in front of me, they pretend they don’t see me.'  I nod and smile, in a way that I hope conveys the empathy I am feeling.  He's not carting his stuff home, he's carting his stuff period: to a shelter,  a friend's sofa, hopefully a warm and safe place somewhere, but it's a whole other level of insecurity, an entirely other degree of derailment.  =====     ===  =

We chat for a few minutes and I focus all my attention on him, because the most I can do right now is to see him, to notice and treat him with respect.  



In the week since, with snow days interrupting any progress I had hoped to make,  I stop and take in my blessings  (I'm warm and safe) and then I think of the nice man in line at Jack's and send them his way: that he too has clothes to wear and food to eat and people that love him.   May we all see and be seen, because we're all in this together.