Annaboo Came to Stay

 

 

 

 

Today is the anniversary of introducing a certain white cat to a new and glorious life.  It is the 3rd anniversary of Annaboo becoming that most revered of animals...the "Bookstore Kitty". 

 

Of course, she's gone now.  She's moved on to that big bookstore in the sky where every day is a new chapter and she welcomes our kitty friends who have crossed the bridge as well (way too often this year it seems) but even with all of THAT excitement going on up there, she watches down on us here on earth and is making sure that all who knew her, never forget her. 

 

She has brought more people into my life than I ever thought would be possible.  We have Annaboo as the common link and in most cases...it's holding.

 

On that Monday morning 3 years ago I was tired yet excited.  Nervous but so happy.  Boo's arrival was a couple of months in the making.  The bookstore was not 'kitty-proofed' prior to her arrival and I worked for 2 months cleaning and sorting and making it a safe place for a kitty who would live there 24/7.  Boxes towered in what was to become 'her room' and what I most wanted was a safe place for this little girl who had suffered a pretty tough life up until October 10th.  Surrender, animal shelter, rescue, foster homes, ringworm, eye-infections, a cut on the pad of her foot...the fact that I fell off a ladder preparing the bookstore for her and tore open my arm leaving a permanent scar is nothing compared to what Annaboo went through in her life.  When she returned to the rescue the last time with eyes practically swollen shut from infection I realized that I knew a place where she would be at peace.  People during the day to visit with and a quiet respite at night where she could rest and relax and regroup.  I often wish I had thought of it sooner, bringing Annaboo to the bookstore.  But, that would have changed the whole situation and being a firm believer that everything happens for a reason, she came to be with me at the exact time that I needed her.  I tell myself that anyway so that I am not saddened that I didn't bring her home when I first saw her.

 

I walked into her realm on her last Monday morning at Orphan Animal Rescue and Sanctuary and within 10 minutes Chuck & Suzy had Boo's bag packed and she was in a crate for the 1 minute drive to her new home.  It was bittersweet, as my thinking for so long had been that the place for Annaboo WAS at the rescue, making use of that last word on their name, "sanctuary".  We were all pretty used to her being there, even off and on as it was.  But two of her biggest supporters and caregivers were Chuck and Suzy (Suzy cared for 'BooAnne" when she was at the shelter) and I know absolutely that they were happy for her but yes, bittersweet is the word I would use.  Even for myself, knowing in the next few weeks that I would walk into OARS adoption center and Annaboo would not be there it was strangely odd.  She arrived a couple of months after I did as a volunteer.  She was just "always there" if she wasn't in a foster home or within a failed adoption attempt.

 

 

 

Off we went for the ride to the bookstore.  I unlocked the backdoor and set the crate down on the floor then opened the latch to watch the proceedings.  Boo did not dash out of the crate and run.  She calmly and regally stepped out, and began a walk around the entire bookstore.  I followed, some distance behind, and watched her absorb her new surroundings.  She was not scared.  She was not nervous, she didn't appear to want to leave, she didn't appear to dislike anything.  She sat at the front door looking out the glass at the traffic rushing by and then she made her rounds again. 

 

And she stayed.

 

 

 

For almost 3 years she stayed.  Why I hadn't had a bookstore kitty years and years before I will never know.  It changed my life having her there.  It changed the life of a white kitty who had gone through so much and was finally where she needed to be for what time she had left.  The fact that cancer took her way too early is the ironic fact that I will never understand.  Boo was finally happy and healthy and so enormously loved by so many that it just seemed impossible that something could grow inside of her and take her away when I still needed her by me there at the bookstore.  You can question and ask for the reasons why things happen and you just don't always get answers, but I do know that I had two and a half years with a little white kitty that I will never, ever forget.  She taught me things I didn't know I needed to learn.  I became someone I had always hoped to become but wondered if I ever would.  I am a better person, a more peaceful person, a more understanding person because of this white kitty named Annaboo. 

 

There will not be another bookstore kitty for me.  I was blessed with the one I was supposed to have and I have moved on now.  Life without a bookstore cat is not the same, that goes without saying.  The daily questions of "Where's the kitty?" have stopped and it's down to weekly questions now.  Once, maybe twice a week, I'm asked what happened to Annaboo, did I take her home?  Is she in her room?  And usually now I can tell them without tears but now and then when you see how much she meant to the person you are explaining things to, and how happy they were to walk in and find Boo watching over her bookstore domain from the countertop...I'll get tissues for both of us.   Man or woman Annaboo touched many and to say she is missed does not even BEGIN to cut it.

 

So 3 years ago this morning I left the house and my life changed.  I became the student of a small white creature who was wise beyond her years and more comforting than a warm blanket and a cup of cocoa after days out in a snowstorm.  I spent two and a half years in the presence of a little being who listened without judging, loved without conditions, and spread peace and friendship while she had the chance. 

 

Annaboo cannot be replaced.  I'm sure anyone who has ever had a pet and lost a pet will say the same thing so I am being selfish in saying that but if anyone reading this knew Boo then you will know what I mean and most likely agree.  She was one of a kind.  I still look at the door when I get to the bookstore each morning and remember her sitting there waiting for me.  Every morning.  I probably always will. 

 

 

But I will not bring in another bookstore kitty.  For several reasons, but mainly because the bookstore was Annaboo's and there is not another kitty in the world who can fill her shoes in that place.  She will be remembered and she will be missed.   And if you ask me how long I had Annaboo there with me I would have to really stop and think if I didn't have it written on the calendar hanging next to the counter because if I didn't stop and think, count back, and come up with 3 years today I would have said "Always".  She was always there somehow and she always will be.  Always.  And she will never, ever, be forgotten.

 

 

 

A Neenah icon came down several years ago.  It wasn't a place that I regularly hung out at, but it was always THERE.  So one evening when I was leaving the bookstore at 5 I was stopped at the light in front of the semi-demolished bowling alley and noticed a man next to my car watching the removal of Lake Road Lanes.  Soon after, I wrote this poem.  When this photo came across in my Facebook newsfeed this morning...I remembered that I had written this poem at the time.

Through His Eyes

To me it was just an old bowling alley
 until the wrecking ball turned it
 into a pile of rubble
 a couple of weeks ago.
I didn't think much of it, aside from wondering
 what would appear in its place
 in the months to come.

Today I drove by the flattened war-zone
 stopping for a light,
 and noticed an old man
 watching from across the street.
Dump trucks were loading up
 and driving off
 with the remains of his Saturday night hang-out.

It never occurred to me
 that forty some years ago
 he had maybe met Alice there amidst the smoke
 and the noise of falling pins.
She probably watched him bowl a perfect game,
 twice in one evening,
 as she sat with Bea sipping Pabst Blue Ribbons
 with an ice cube,
 whispering about how handsome he looked
 in those gray flannel trousers.

I waited for the light to change,
 discreetly watching the old man,
 and I think I saw his eyes fill up a bit
 as he gazed sadly across at the destruction.

It wasn't a heart-wrenching loss to me
 to see this particular building go.
Not like some.
Bu all of a sudden
I missed the sight of that bowling alley.
It made me sad to think
 that Alice was maybe being buried for that old man
 all over again
 every time the dump truck hauled away another load.

The light turned green
 and I had to leave him behind
 with his gathering tears and his memories.

an·ni·ver·sa·ry

/ˌænəˈvɜrsəri/ Show Spelled 

noun,

1. the yearly recurrence of the date of a past event.

2. the celebration or commemoration of such a date.

 

 

 

 

The anniversary of a death, any death, but in my case the death of my mom, does not get much easier as the years go by.  I remember the last Thanksgiving, the last Christmas, the weeks at my parents home in what almost seemed like a movie set, all the hospital gear in the bedroom, with my mom's pretty knick knacks and window treatments looking on.  I think back on those weeks in the nursing home and then the hospital, the building she didn't leave once she returned there unexpectedly after the holidays.  The building that saw me break down into sobs before even making it to the elevator 6 months later when going to visit a friend.

 

I remember the day before mom died.  I sat in that hospital room, mending her favorite dark blue sweater.  I knew she would not need that sweater again but I had promised her I'd fix the little hole in it and I was damn sure not going to go back on my word.  I was doing one of the last things I could do for my mom in quietly stitching back and forth with blue thread to repair the sweater I had bought her prior to Thanksgiving.  She was always cold at Peabody Manor.  She loved that sweater. 

 

The evening before my mom died I was in the room alone when her doctor came in and told me her death would come within 24 hours.  As I type this line I feel that bottomless hole again in my stomach, realizing that my hope that a miracle would occur and my mom would somehow leave those walls to live life again was not going to happen.  A minister came in as well.  We talked and he recommended a book "Turn My Mourning Into Dancing" by Henri Nouwen.  He said it helped him and I wrote down the title, eventually buying the book along with one that maybe gave me more comfort than any other book could, "In Memoriam" also by Nouwen.  I relived those last days of my mom's life as I read of Nouwen's last days with his own mother in a heartbreakingly similar scenario.

 

The night before my mom died my brother came and stayed.  We sat and talked.  We sat and absorbed the silence behind the beeping of machines and my mom's forced breaths.  We dozed but didn't really sleep as between us was the promise that we would be there at the end. We knew though my mom couldn't speak, she could hear us, having squeezed our hand that afternoon as the family gathered, last rights were given, and we each said our goodbye.  We kept the small cd player next to her hospital bed going.  We played her favorite Gaither cd's and the Randy Travis & Charlie Pride hymms that she loved and that would still be playing when she did finally leave us.  The rose hanging on the door let passersby know that the patient in that room was going to pass.  Every time I went out for air, a look out of another window, a cup of hospital coffee, I saw that rose and I would walk back in with more sadness than I had gone out.

 

The morning that my mom died I was more weary and sad than I can ever remember being.  As I looked at my brother and finished the sentence "I don't know how much longer I can do this" my brother said "Tina, I think she's gone."  I turned my head and yes.  The air held the sound of the incessant medical machine beeping but my mom was peacefully silent and no longer floating in any pain or discomfort.

 

The day after my mom died I met one of my sisters for a coffee at Barnes & Noble and we sat and talked and cried a little and I found the copy of "In Memoriam" which I treasure for the gift it gave me, that I was not the only one who saw a parents death through till the end while wishing I could do anything but that. 

 

Four days after my mom died was the funeral.  An event so surreal that even now I can't believe that it was happening.  My mind wove in and out of the past week's events while sitting in that front row, holding a rose, missing my mom so completely.  She was not coming back and I was now a daughter without a mother and always would be from that day on.

 

A week after my mom died Clay and I were heading north for my birthday.  A cabin in upper Michigan, one of my favorite spots on earth.  I didn't feel like celebrating and I don't think I did actually.  It was more of a somber and shell-shocked birthday than any I can remember to be honest.  I have tried in the years since to remember one anniversary, celebrating the life and memories of my mom one week, and honoring the day she gave birth to me in the next.  I've never been one to celebrate my birthday but I am finding the older I get that I should.  I am here.  I am blessed in many ways.  There are many reasons to celebrate.

 

Four years after the death of my mom I still have moments when I want to pick up the phone and call her and I do think I always will have that urge.  I have my mom's love of jewelry, antiques, handbags & artwork...and many times after finding something wonderful at a thrift shop I wish so badly that I could show it to her but I think she knows what I've acquired since she left this earth.  Knowing how many boxes of things she collected and stacked in the basement I think she knows full well how much stuff I have.  It's in the genes.

 

There are moments when I speak that the voice I hear is mine...but too...it's my mom's.  It's startling when it happens but that, along with looking in the mirror now and sometimes seeing her face looking back at me are comforts.  Proof that I am my mother's daughter and she will not be forgotten.

 

Tomorrow, on the 4th anniversary of my mom's death I will bundle up for a winter snowstorm that they say is coming.  I will get in my car and drive to my bookstore and spend the day with a special white kitty who I have because of my mom's passing.  To deal with the grief I became a volunteer at a Neenah rescue and after 2 years adopted a kitty who has become more important to me than I can ever imagine.  As I now spend the last months with her as she battles cancer I am going to tell myself and believe, that my mom is waiting for the day Annaboo comes to meet her.  Annaboo absorbed my tears the year after my mom died.  I sat on the floor in the lobby of the rescue and held her and cried.  My mom and Boo will be watching for one another when the day comes.  But tomorrow, it will probably be a quiet day of bookselling.  I will sit and remember things, I will try to concentrate on a book, but mostly I will be holding Annaboo again, wearing that blue sweater that I mended for my mom the day before she died.  And I will probably cry.

I was gifted these 3 beautiful strawberries this week.  I put them in a little bowl and looked at them for some time...they smelled soooo good and were so pretty.  I started thinking about the William Carlos Williams poem, the one about the plums in which he apologizes for something that he really doesn't regret doing.  I came up with this poem...

 

 

 

The Strawberry Poem - In Homage to William Carlos Williams

I told you
I would cut the strawberries
  mingle them with yogurt
  but they were
  too red
       and
  juice-burdened
So I bit into them
 whole.

Forgive me.
I couldn't help myself.
 they were as sweet
   as candy
  and just as
    wonderful.


The original poem, if you don't know it, went like this:

This is Just to Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

There is a wonderful little book titled "Rose, where did you get that red?" in which the author, Kenneth Koch, took a well-known poem and read it to children and asked them to write something in the same style.  This is my favorite, after he read them "This is Just to Say":

This is just to say
I have taken the eggs
Of the bird's nest
But I didn't have
any sense that the
Mother bird is looking
For its children and
worried.  I am sorry
Mother bird and I shall
return them when they
Hatch.  I just couldn't see
Them out there in the
Cold Weather.

~Hector Figueroa

I am going to keep this little book with me for awhile and do some poetry exercises of my own.  I've been missing poetry lately and it's sort of like dipping a toe into the water after a long winter inside.  The older I get, the more I want to gather the things that I love around me.  Poetry is one of those things I put away for awhile but it's time to bring it out into the light again.  Bear with me.

Paying it Forward

I was getting home earlier than usual last night.  I was looking forward to it.  A light but steady snow was falling and the wind was picking up again.  I was a mile from home on the street where I live.

I looked to the right up ahead and saw a car had slid into the deep snow of the ditch.  No hazards, no lights at all, and I assumed it had happened earlier in the day and the car had been abandoned but as I got closer the driver's door opened and a young woman stepped into knee deep snow and flagged me down.

I'd been tailgated since turning onto this street and was frustrated with the person behind me and ready to be home, pouring a glass of wine.  But, I signaled to turn and pulled into the parking lot of the nearby park and got out to head back to the stranded young woman to see if she was ok.  Surprisingly, the tailgater too had pulled over...a man about my age.  He was heading back to the stranger as well.

She wasn't hurt, just stuck beyond a push out of the ditch and needed a tow.  I knew the man was able and willing to help her make necessary calls but I could see she was nervous and shaky and rather than leave them I stayed so she'd not feel alone with a man she didn't know.  We called friends about tows and when something was set up I could see the man wanted to be on his way.  I told him to go, that I didn't live far, and I'd make sure she was taken care of.  I felt guilty for mentally cursing the man for tailgating when he really was a decent person to stay for 10 minutes in the snow to help her.

I was thinking about leaving her to wait for the tow truck when a car pulled over and 2 young men got out.   They came and asked if we needed help.  I explained the situation and then a pick-up pulled up and said he had a tow rope he could pull her out of the ditch.  Still not wanting to leave her alone with 3 men she didn't know (and a bit surprised I was more concerned with her safety really than my own...although I didn't feel threatened nor did these guys LOOK threatening) I went to wait in my car where it was warm.  After 10 minutes, and failure at getting the car out of the ditch, the 2 vehicles left and I got out of my warm car and walked back to the woman who was sitting in her own vehicle now without benefit of it running to keep warm. 

It was a 30 minute wait for the tow truck and I told the young woman to get her things and we'd sit in my car and wait.  She was very surprised that I would offer this but I thought how I would feel if it were me, alone, and no family to call to come to my rescue.  Her hands were so shaky, I suppose a combination of the cold and nerves and just the unexpected event of her car slipping off the road as she pulled over a little too far.  She has an appointment today to look at the apartment next to the park and wanted to make sure she knew how to get there and went to look for it ahead of time.  She had slowed down and was pulling over when the front wheel went off the road into the ditch that you couldn't see as it was filled level to the road with snow. 

I told her my name and she said her name was Lucy.  She said she couldn't believe that I would stop and help her like this and wait with her until the tow truck came.  She said "You are an angel."  I thought back to that morning when I had said those exact words to someone who has offered ME help at a time when I need it and I guess it was a step in paying it forward to someone who at this moment needed a little help.  We talked a bit as strangers do and she checked her phone which was so old and broken that the power had gone off and she fumbled with the back to take the battery out to pop back in to get it to go.  She said sometimes that helped and yes, after I took the phone from her to get the back of it off since her hands were too shaky that old phone went on for her.

We watched as a police car drove by us, somehow not stopping at the sight of a car, hood deep in the ditch and my car curiously running, lights on, in the entry to a public park.  I briefly had wished he had seen the car so that he would come take over and I could go home to my warm house a mile away.  Then I thought...I can do this much for someone who needs company and I told Lucy the tow truck should be there any minute.

And yes, after 40 minutes the tow truck pulled up and she breathed a sigh and I made sure she had her phone and her keys and she opened the passenger door and said again, "You ARE an angel.  God bless you!  I wish I could do something to repay you."  I told her all she has to do is help someone else when they need it.  Do something nice for someone who isn't expecting it.  Lucy said she would...and I think she will.

It is the time of year when a little voice inside my head reminds me that this is the time of year that my mom passed away and I count back...one, two, and now three years ago.  You think of the time in the hospital, you think of the moment she was first gone from you, you think of the days leading up to the funeral and then the days when you realize all the things that left your life with her. 

 

I wrote this poem last year and pulled it back out this year.  It still applies:

 

Two Years Today

I could not call you
when the cat ran away
and I needed to hear you say
"Don't worry, she'll come home."

I could not call you
over the busy holidays
so I could hear you tell me
... "Don't worry, you'll be ready."

I could not call you
when life got a little rough
and I needed to be told
"Don't worry, it will get better."

I could not call you
any of the hundreds of times that I wanted to
Just to let you know-
it was a good day
the vet appointment went well
we are home from our trip
the snow is finally here.

I could not call you
but don't worry Mom,
I tell you all these things anyway
and I know that you hear me.

 

Because my mom died closely to my birthday I tend to link it together.  The first birthday card from my dad without "Mom" on it.  The trip my husband and I were taking that I knew I had to go on but had to struggle to enjoy.  And this year, on the verge of turning 50, I want to ask my mom how she herself felt turning 50.  But I can't ask her of course.  And I am dealing with that. 

I believe
  it is not spring
  that carries renewal,
    enlightenment or
    realization.

Nor is it the green of new shoots
   springing from the warm earth
   that prompt in me new beginnings,
    freshness and
    awakening.

Bring me the crisp curtain of cold
   to take my breath briskly away
   and cover everything that I see
   in a pristine blanket of white.

Place before me a deer,
   a cardinal,
   a white-tailed rabbit...
   or better yet our dog Lacey
     making snow angels as I
     watch and smile,
     fingers numb in the frigidness,
     nose red with cold and
     eyes watering from the winter wind.

It is not spring
   that speaks to me of renewal
   and awakening,
   new beginnings and
   realizations.

It is the snow and the cold.
Winter.
It is the deep blankets of white
   that will give me
   peace and hope.