anthropomorphizing cats.

They are quite sedentary during the day. At night, they sometimes prowl. There’s the boy, all black and the girl, Baby. She is eleven pounds to his 16. They are litter mates. I call them the twins.

He has a favorite spot, the edge of my bed. She owns the house.

One is compelled to observe them. They do not deviate from their clearly defined set of rules. Do they negotiate when I am not home? Do they communicate telepathically? Is it only instinct? I think not. Two wise creatures rule my home.

The species has been around long enough to develop some brainpower! The Egyptians literally adored them and bowed to them: Had designated resting places for them. The Egyptian cemetery at Beni-Hassan yielded 300,000 embalmed corpses!

A prospective buyer looked at the house today. A twist of incredulity seized the woman’s face when we walked through my bedroom.

After she left, I returned to turn off the lights. There was a large lump under the duvet at the bed’s edge. Well, I knew it was the boy.

Some people are accused of anthropomorphizing cats.

That would be me!

Charles Darwin concluded that cats do indeed feel emotion. More recent research indicates that they experience fear, pleasure, terror, frustration, happiness, grief, stress and depression.

The reasons for the other’s rationalization/denial of this scientific proof are well known.

So, let them eat meat!

While sitting on the bed last night I was reviewing the ways I had rearranged this room during the years. Baby suddenly perked up and looked at the dark green floral-draped wall behind me.

“What, what,” I said. “What do you see?”

Not a flinch! Though her head remained still, she quickly rose on her haunches. Her staring intensified. Predictably, the boy hopped on the bed, stood motionless next to her, staring at the same thing. Apparently, it was just over my left shoulder but higher. They were looking at my eye level.

Cats have been credited with a gift for seeing ghosts. I figure if I can see ghosts, what's the big deal?

Their four eyes widened, then moved slowly up the drape and then to just above my head. Can cats exhibit intrigue?

In a flash, in unison, their heads swiftly went to the door to my right. “What?” I pleaded again. In an instant, their bodies melded into each other’s. Baby licked the left of his collarbone, they simultaneously sniffed each other and the night visitation ended.

We sleep here in my bedroom. On any given night my body is taken over. I have on occasion wakened with his front paws resting in my open left palm on the pillow near my head. He gently kneads. He purrs in utter contentment.

She is devious. She waits until she thinks I am sleeping, jumps into the valley of my waist, and rests her head on my hip. I allow her five minutes. She groks when her time is up, beats me to it and indignantly jumps down. I can hear her thump down the stairs to view the pitch of night on the bay windowsill.

The 17-foot wall behind the bed is draped. There is no headboard. I have a disdain for headboards as I have curtains. Artwork, paintings and prints cover the walls of the house. Curtains rob attention. I prefer that the windows remain in obscurity-just let the sunshine through. White, diaphanous shades and in some places blinds separate us from the world.

At some point in the evening, we retire to this room. He confiscates either the right or the left edge of the bed. She spreads out on the cable box. It’s warm. There is a TV about five feet from the foot of the bed. My jewelry armoire stands to the left of the dresser that holds the boob tube. It holds four generations of jewelry. I have two bracelets that I know were my maternal great-grandmother’s. A delicate Asian lamp brings the armoire's height to just above my head. It is a square porcelain block standing on a four-legged cherry wood platform and painted with the colorful wings of a male peacock.

To the left of the bed is my vanity. Several Chinese jars hold makeup brushes. Lipstick pencils. A crystal bowl holds silver dollars dating from 1885 to the JFK era. A black framed, gold Chinese filigree mirror hangs above the vanity. Two herons freely fly at the top within a sky reminiscent of a familiar Chinese scroll. Though the room is peach, it is a dark, cave-like room even on a sunny day, as I keep the bamboo shades down.

Sanctuary!

Three women grace the walls. Over the jewelry cabinet hangs, van der Weyden's, Portrait of a Lady ,next to the mirror hangs a print of a nude Japanese woman combing her lustrous black knee-length hair. The polished frame is the color of her bare skin.

Below her is a sad, elaborately dressed Chinese concubine whose thin, long tress falls to her side, her fingers are adorned with ancient gold talons, the razored tips of her right hand barely grasp the silk of her gown, the other hand, a beacon in the air, points to what might have been.

Her eyes are downcast.

These are my former selves.

I have an original cloth print, as the lamp, it is flooded with the glorious colors of the male peacock.It is of no value except to me. A friend in my undergraduate art class made it. She was pleased with it and our teacher thought it merited an A. On our last day, she held it up in mock humor, “Going for a buck.” She laughed. I gently took it from her hand.

It covers the night table to the right of the bed. My most current reading material is hidden there: My diary, a couple of meditation books, my current I Ching journal, the first vitamins of my day and three pennies.


They are lying on the green duvet. They face each other, their paws stretched directly in front of them. Their eyes are closed. His breathing is inaudible, she is wheezing slightly. They have commandeered the left side of the bed-that means I will sleep on the right tonight.

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar

The kids on our block.

As I drove up the street, I was struck with the barrenness. 3:30 on a Tuesday afternoon: no ball playing, no skateboards. The neighborhood had grown up. Looking to the east and then to the west, not one car, not one person.

In the front yard across the street, our flag was waving in the air with Ireland’s colors below it.

My friend lives there. Friends come to us in different ways, at different times in our lives.

I will miss her.

She cuts my hair, prays for me. Her husband shovels my snow if he can beat me to it. He seals my leaking pipes.

She was a child when I moved here in 72. She once purposefully threw a ball at my youngest daughter’s head. I saw her take aim. On a spring day in the 80’s she was terribly rude to me and her mother shouted, “Get in that house! You’re grounded for a week!”

She was going to grow up and be a tramp! I am psychic and I was sure.

She has four children and will soon be a grandma.

The house next to her parent’s became available around the time of her first marriage.

She has lived her entire life on this block.

She has had cancer twice. Her first husband abused her; this husband is a nice person.

A gust of wind from nowhere. The white stripes of our flag and the yellow and white of Irelands’ dance off the cloth as the sun pierces through.

I realize that there is food to get into the house.

I came here a mother of two. However, I was myself, a child.

The streets were daily filled with children playing and fighting and sneaking cigarettes while others watched out for the trusting adults.

The only child left is my friend’s thirteen year old, a daughter who is now walking up the street, her backpack laden with books, her blond hair swishing as she listens to her IPod.

Seventeen kids grew up on this block. There are now twenty-three grandchildren.

None of them mine.

Of the six boys-one has simply disappeared. There is a psychologist, bank manager, hotel manager, and newspaper editor and construction worker.

When the construction worker was 10, he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. By fifteen, he was cancer free and a notorious delinquent. He became a full-blown alcoholic and drug abuser and got sober only 15 years ago. He now lives quietly with a woman whom he met in AA. Every year his parents have an open house on his anniversary. No booze allowed.

When he was nineteen he also became addicted to me. A classic crush. He’d help me with my groceries. He would report seeing my cat three blocks away. “Should I go get him-that’s far.” He was my protector when the 12 year old next door started throwing garbage in my back yard after I huffed about him playing his drums with the windows open. I witnessed, “You better stop.” The boy stood in wide-eyed terror. “You better stop and if anything ever happens to her. I’ll just plain kill you!”

His mother and I spent a lot of time on the phone that summer.

The boy in the house next to him was quite brilliant-he‘s the editor. He was an abused child. During an exceptionally hot day, I asked him why he was wearing a long-sleeved shirt. I knew that little boys insisted upon dressing themselves.

“I, I am ok.” he responded, looking remorseful, rubbing his covered arms. I knew in that very second. I made a call. That family lived on the block for thirty more years. They never spoke to me again.

He got inebriated the night of his bachelor party and came pounding on our side door around 4am. My husband ran down. He returned and told me, that the now grown man, apologized for being drunk but for years had wanted to thank us. “He said that we had saved his life hon.”

The psychologist and bank manager are brothers. One is divorced and the other married a woman with two gravely disabled children. Never seemed to be anything remarkable about him when he was a kid.

Of the girls from our block eight are mothers. There are amongst them: an author, home health aide, a doctor, TV reporter, cosmetician, nurse, lawyer, social worker and English teacher.

There have been two grandchildren born out of wedlock, three abortions of which I was personally privy, and at least six miscarriages.

Two of the original seventeen live out of state. One in Seattle, the other in Florida. Only now do I see the extremes.

All of them are said to be financially stable.

I know nothing of their religious or spiritual practices except that one lived in an ashram for many years.

Must get into the house. It’s not all that warm out here.

There have been two divorces. And, I am aware of a marriage of convenience as both partners are said to be gay. I never had an inkling.

Of the original seventeen, three remain unmarried: two women and one of the guys.

We don’t know anything about the boy who disappeared however; there were early rumors that he committed suicide when he first went off to college.

We became conditioned to simply forget his existence when speaking with his family.

Managed to get my shopping into the kitchen. The blinds are drawn. It’s somewhat dark. It's also quite chilly I tend to put the heat down when I leave the house for extended periods of time.

Soon, I will leave it forever.

The eldest of the seventeen is a woman; still feels funny to call them women. She wanted to become a plastic surgeon but let go of her dream when her husband received a prestigious position at a renowned hospital. Ah! The ever-sacrificing wife. She’s a gerontologist and according to her mother her mood varies from depression to extreme glee.

The youngest of the seventeen has just given birth to her second set of twins. I see her on occasion when she visits her parents. Bobbing in and out, first the five year olds then the infants one after another.

I will leave this house, this country, by summer.

I will take them all with me.

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar

Oh Cap'n, My Cap'n

Waiting for the boiler man.

It's 7:30 Monday morning, cold, yet the sun is brightly shinning.

I expect the oil company guy. That’s why I’m sitting by the window, so I can see his truck and greet him before he gets to the door. It’s time to clean the boiler, which I hope will keep trucking until I move from this house.

I’ve made some instant coffee.

I‘m in here, it’s what we call the library. If you look on the floor you will see pennies. When we first moved in, mom threw pennies in each room. It’s a sign of prosperity.

There is no hesitation to pick up a penny from the street. It means that mom is around.

A small room perhaps twelve by ten. Mom liked to sketch here because of the intense sun. As you enter, the wall on the left is a built-in bookcase and holds a few hundred books including the white and blue vinyl of my high school yearbooks, my wedding album, and a sadly worn leather bound tome of The Poetical Works of Longfellow, circa 1851, my father’s prized possession. Dad signed it in 1931.

Small prints piled on top of each other. They’re not valuable-just fragile, flimsy. My kid's drawings, a couple of mom’s-but she mainly painted in oil, Life Magazine’s issue commemorating JFK's life. A newspaper from 1934 that my mother had saved. I have read and reread that paper a hundred times and have not been able to fathom why she kept it. It was dated June 7.

She died June 7, 2000.

There are about seventy three-subject spirals-journals of my daily explorations into the I Ching, which I started before 1972. When I peruse them, I see the questions that I asked the oracle and say aloud “idiot why no date on this one? Why no name?" Ah! Self-recrimination –the delicious lifeblood of an Italian upbringing!

The I Ching had hinted at her impending death.

There are many psych books, which I really don’t need, as I had devoured the material long ago. It’s been only four years since I threw out my college notes. When I divulged this to some friends, they laughed and said it also took them a zillion years.

Thick collected works on ethics and world religions remind me of my professor who taught virtually all of the courses that comprised my undergraduate minor. He was a pompous ass. Nevertheless, he was endearing because he knew it. If you watched him carefully, you could perceive his internal struggle. The battle was whether to just teach the subject matter or wax endlessly on his vast knowledge and astute understanding of all that existed in the universe. He tried.

He had a daughter named Wilma May.

He morphed, humanized when he spoke of her. He would say things like, “Wilma May doesn’t understand this yet, but.”

Mom once said, “That’s a strange name for an Irish child.”

I got an A in all of his courses. I knew my stuff-I deserved my marks. At semesters’ end he said, “You deserve straight A’s just for putting up with me this whole year.”

On the eye-level shelf of the bookcase stands a tall ice-cream soda glass filled with cemented pink pebbles, fake whipped cream and a permanent protruding straw.

As my mother lay dying, she requested an ice-cream soda. I couldn’t get one in the hospital but was thrilled when I saw this tasty curiosity in the gift shop. I was so happy to have found this for her but was immediately shattered, when, upon its presentation, she looked at me with pained and confused eyes. “Why would you do this to me?” She said.

As you enter the library, you see across the street through the bay window. In the middle of the wood windowsill stands her exquisite two foot high, hand painted vase, which though chipped around the opening, suffers no loss of beauty or dignity.

A few dried sprigs gently emerge from it's mouth. Anything more would thwart it's splendor.

My mother taught me how to see a things innate beauty and allow it to become its own vehicle.

Two director’s chairs sit at the window. They are at least thirty years old if not more. Yet, I have not had to replace the canvas. They used to be a deep blue and have been washed into a faint sky. She used to move a chair close to the window lean her left arm on the sill while she drew with her right hand. My husband and I used those chairs all over the house. In the backyard. I used them in my office for a while. One of the kids periodically used one while the other sat listlessly waiting for some attention-the chair not the kid! Unfold me at least –just for a little while for Pete’s sake. Give me some attention!

To the right of the room is a captains’ bed covered with a duvet and a dozen throw pillows. It was my youngest daughters and has three draws below which house thousands of photos and small frames made from everything ranging from plastic to gold filigree. Things I have been planning to frame for years. There is a small desk with a useful lamp and one of her miniature oils.

I am afraid to move from here. I am afraid that I will forget the texture of the walls and the smell of the wood when it rains, the warmth of the radiators when I pass by the hall, the sound of the perpetual drip from the faucet.

I am afraid that if I trip that there will be no wall and the thing that I lost will not be miraculously retrievable from the back of the closet. I am afraid that I won’t be able to decorate a new home with the surety I did this one. In the past twenty years, I have painted the entire house three times.

When I look at new walls, will I be able to paint? Will I have pride in the fact that I have fixed toilet bowls, sanded door saddles, sealed window leaks, put down linoleum squares in the kitchen and had successfully found a way of greeting people without them ever knowing that the front doorbell has never worked: never-since I moved here?

And who will throw pennies on the floor?

The maintenance truck is coming up the driveway. That’s why I'am in this room, to greet him at the door.

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar

I deserve empathy!

With full awareness that I am being TOTALLY self indulgent, well, I need a pat on the head.
I know that everyone has their hands full, no one has an easy ride.
Yet, this is my blog and I reserve the right to bitch and moan.
So, here goes.
This is what I am doing these days.
Attempting to sell a house that I have occupied for 38 years.
Teaching a college course in the city. I am accustomed to teaching DOWN THE BLOCK.
Preparing my cats for our transition to Scotland. This deserves an entire blog.
Dealing with moving companies. I don't trust a SOUL!
Working on papers and finding family documents, dates etc. which will allow for my entrance into the UK.
Trying to eat responsibly-not working AT ALL.
Keeping the house in order 24/7 while I am trying to get all of this stuff together and attempting to be civil while strangers look at the papers on my desk and the jackets in my closets.

I need a vacation from all of this work!
And, once I get all of this going there is the REAL GOING. Bag and baggage and cats and books and 20 or 40 foot shipping containers.

I am writing this because I had to get this off my chest. I have no liquor in the house!

She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me!

Well it was Valentine's day. Reef was in transit SOMEWHERE between South Africa and Scotland. We had not spoken since Thursday. Friday came and went. Though I sent a text or two-no response.
I didn't know if I should be worried or angry.
I finally left the house Saturday afternoon. I had no idea where I was headed. Fresh air and the sun always does it for me.
As I backed out of my driveway an SUV drove slowly, suspiciously passed my house.
I slowed down. The SUV stopped. A rather husky man emerged from the driver's side.
He pointed to me and then pointed to the house. He shouted out, "Are you Ms. MM?"
"Who are you sir?" I enquired rather sternly. Frankly, I don't have patience for ANYONE these days.
If teeth were gold the guy would be wealthy. A brilliant smile, quite jolly, bridged his face as he approached my window.
"I have flowers for you." he said, pleased as punch with himself and then backed up with great enthusiasm signaling that I should stay put.
His personality transformed in a nanosecond. Well, maybe it was MY personality!
I drove back into the driveway and rummaged through my bag for a few dollars tip.
As I retrieved the money from the depths of my pocketbook I raised my eyes to his beaming smile and a beautiful Asian vase filled with roses, baby's breath and all sorts of other nature's gifts.
As soon as I brought my lovely gift in the house the phone rang.
I had not received her texts and she had not received mine.
She had managed to think about me and my girlish needs from six thousand miles away.

Thank you honey.

HE WON!!!!!!!!!

Feeling down? A little hopeless? Never give up!

HAPPY V DAY

Pavarotti

Watch it to the VERY end AFTER he is finished singing. You will see that even HE is amazed!

Beautiful animals together-watch it it will make you happy!

La Forza Del Destino

Clad in gold, the goddess of sovereignty takes to her steed.
A bird holds the ribbon of her veiled coif in it's beak. She looks, but, it cannot hold her back.

Ah! Memory of the folly of youth.

Self-conflict prevails, yet, as is her way, she firmly holds the reins.
She flies across the sea to new life. The lover on the distant shore stands at the seawall, waiting, peering through the fog.

Spouse of her destiny!

Copyright © 2009 by m.m.sugar