Blog

Overheard

It is Thursday morning, 11 a.m. Colleyville, Texas. Four people sit down at a coffee shop table, with scones, and hot drinks. They are dressed up. One, an older woman in a maroon pantsuit, carries a gift in a pretty bag. Two others, middle aged with page boy haircuts, have cards. The man, the youngest of the four, has nothing. They look sullen. They are silent. The man stares straight ahead, out the window. He has a purple pocket square in his suit jacket. I presume they are a family, having a little coffee to celebrate something. No one speaks for a while.

Then, the man rubs his forehead. “This is the third person I’ve buried on my birthday,” he says. “Joey was the first one. He was 40. Charlie Williams, Charles.”

“That’s the one I couldn’t think of,” his mom says.

“And then, today, John,” he finishes.

After a bit, they give him the cards and he opens them.

 

 

Objects of Affection

“Do you want the tablecloths?” my mom asks. “What about the pink one, with the ecru trim, from Belgium?”

She calls hourly.

“What about cookbooks? I have many wonderful cookbooks.”

There is a subtle unease in her voice. I wouldn’t say anxiousness, or panic. But unease.

“And the coat. What am I going to do with the coat? I won’t need it, it’s so heavy, and it takes up so much room.”

“Hmmm, the coat.”

“I wore it to Central Park, three years ago, I think, to see the billowing orange sculptures.”

Mom is moving. Not far, just a few floors down, for half the year. The other half, she’ll be in the sunny south. But the things, the things in the armoire, the things in the kitchen cabinets, in the hall closet, the things have got her dizzy.

“I’m going to send you the trays,” she says, making my phone ring on my desk while I am teaching a class. “I have so many trays. Who am I serving?”

Who am I serving, I think. 

Trays are thin, I tell her on my way home, in the car. You can stand them on their sides. “What about those amethyst plates?”

“Oh, God, I forgot about them. Do you want them? I can’t use them. They can be chargers, or plates. Just put them in the  back house. For now.”

I convince her to give them to my brother. They are moderne. My brother and sister-in-law are moderne. They will love them. Mom can see them when she visits.

My mom has lived in her apartment for something like fifteen years. Before that, she sold the house. That was big, selling the house, with all that it contained. Feelings, mostly. This is not a thing, that way. This is logistical. I don’t want it to be a thing for my mom, since she already had one, a big one. So, I am encouraging her to keep as many objects as she can, to divvy them up between her two new abodes.

I will take a tray, if I have to, but that is it.

Charlie The Food Thief

Last night, Charlie stole a piece of pizza. When we discussed with him that we needed to take it away, or at least some of it, he told us in no uncertain terms that that would not be possible. Charlie growled. Charlie glared. Charlie would have done anything to keep the pizza. 

Charles Nelson Riley Kripke is a one-and-a-half year old terrier/schnauzer with human eyes and a fourteen-word vocabulary. Fourteen words that we know. My daughter spotted him on a doggie-finding website last fall. His left foot was bandaged up to his knee. He had been on the streets for some time, and was picked up by Animal Control when he was found injured. The best guess is, his foot got stuck in something, a gate, a fence, a hole of some kind, and when he pulled it out, the outside layer of skin was ripped off. They call it “de-gloving,” the way a glove or sock turns inside out when it’s removed. 

Charlie had the good fortune to be discovered by a man who knew a woman who runs a foster care organization. He called her and told her that he had a puppy, about four months old, who was really adorable. But no one would adopt him with his injury, so he was scheduled to be put to sleep. The woman, Trish, had just a few hours to get to the city shelter. Immediately, she took Charlie to a veterinarian who would take care of him for a month, at no charge. They called him Conor. By the time my daughter saw him on the computer, his skin had grown back and his hair was just about coming through. He was ready to find a family. 

We met him at an indoor dog park, where he and other dogs had come to be adopted. We saw him in a cage at the end of a row. He picked us, the moment he came out. Trish let us take him home that day, instead of waiting the customary 48 hours. We changed his name to Charlie in the car.

It took a while for him to come to us when we called him, or to sit on our laps, or to realize that we human people were just like him. He seems to know that he is staying here, in this house with all sorts of soft cushions and toys and love. And pizza. We give him the pizza whenever he wants it.