Our newest little person made his debut very, very early this morning. After going to the hospital around midnight and being sent home, Cheshire and Justin headed back only a few hours later. Alfie Ray Borick was born at 4:15 a.m. weighing in at 7 pounds, 14 ounces.
I got to visit around lunch time and hold Alfie and watch his face and hands move. He is such a sweet bundle. He is an old soul.
I don’t have pictures of mama or daddy — what was I thinking? But just look at that face!
Muta died last night right after Julia left for the movies. I was glad that she wasn’t home. It wasn’t a bad death but it happened right in front of me. I don’t know how Julia would have handled it.
Muta hadn’t eat at all yesterday. In the last week, even on appetite enhancers, anti-nausea meds and steroids, his eating has been sporadic and he has thrown up nearly everything I’ve given him. There was nothing more the vet could do for him. He had slept on my bed just three nights ago, jumping up as always. The last two days, he stayed mostly in the bathroom on the rug which he liked and under the kitchen table.
Julia left for the movies around 5:20; I was cutting tomatoes to roast. Muta threw up under the kitchen table. He laid back down and some of his fur was in the vomit although by this point, vomit was mostly a clear liquid. I wanted to get the tomatoes in the oven and so didn’t immediately clean up the floor. A few minutes later, Muta got up and walked to the back door. He meowed very loudly. He usually asked to go outside but not in this voice which had a strident sound. Since he has been sick, I’ve kept him inside but during this last week, I had been letting him out. Sometimes he went into the backyard, but mostly he kept to the porch, finding a bit of sun and stretching out.
Muta is spending the night at the hospital. All the tests have been inconclusive and there is no exact diagnosis yet. His liver and spleen are enlarged although it is not clear whether it is for the same reason. Right now, the vet thinks that it is either lymphoma or a cholangiohepatitis. Lymphoma would mean palliative care; the hepatitis might be controlled with medication. The mass the docs felt in his abdomen and the reason that we went for the ultrasound was his enlarged liver.
For the night, Muta will get hydrated, something to encourage his appetite, an antibiotic in case it is a hepatitis infection that can be treated and something else I’ve forgotten.
We will see how he is tomorrow.
It has been a rough weekend and I don’t really hold out much hope for an easy outcome; however, we’ve experienced a good deal of kindness at the animal hospitals for which I am grateful. The vet, Dr. Greg Krane, from PetMedic (Cambridge) who took care of Muta yesterday, made sure that Muta’s test results were sent to the ER this morning. There is one test we were still waiting for and even though Greg told us the result would probably not be returned until tomorrow, he called the lab this evening in case the results would finished at the very end of the work day. Greg also called me twice during the day to find out how Muta was doing. He urged me to ask him any questions and gave me complete, unvarnished answers. The vet and staff at the ER were also kind and patient with both myself and Julia. It was a long and hard day for her but I am proud of her patience and willingness to be present the whole day.
Sitting in an ER waiting room for Muta, the cat, to get an ultrasound on his belly. The ER is in Weymouth, about a half hour from our house and “half way to the Cape” according to Ed. There must be a thousand dogs here . . . okay, maybe 15. Muta would normally be making a lot of noise because of all those dogs. Today, he is sitting quietly in his crate. He hardly made any noise at all on the drive down in his crate. A sure sign he is feeling really awful.
And I am sad.
Muta is twelve years old. Other than the time when we moved five years ago and he stopped eating, and then last year’s puncture wound, he has been big and strong and healthy. He is the smartest cat that has ever been part of my family. He goes for walks with us and makes friends in every neighborhood we’ve lived in. He is vocal and pushy at times. He loves sleeping on our back porch in the warm weather and napping on the wide sill in the living room on sunny mornings.
I am a gardener.
I’ve begun at least four memoir pieces with that sentence but honestly, I wondered if I would ever really feel like I was that declaration again. At the blue Victorian that we moved to from Madison and in which we spent the Covid years, I cultivated a small vegetable patch that was shaded part of the day by the houses around it. It is never a glorious garden but it gave us something to do that first summer of shut down and there were tomatoes and greens and peppers and a small pumpkin.
Early on in my tenancy at our present house, I asked the landlord if I could garden. The foundation planting was sparse and old. There must have been other shrubs and bushes at one time but what was left was four plants spread far apart and planted up close to the house.
My landlord said I could do what I wanted to do and even volunteered a bit of help—his landscapers trimmed bushes that needed the trimming and even took the grass up when I decided on the shape of the front garden bed.
I started planning the front bed while I was sick and unable to do much running around. As I began the planning, I wondered if it made sense to invest in a garden that would take a few years to develop and cultivate in a rental house but I came to the idea that I have made three gardens, each in a house that I owned. But that after planting and tending and loving those gardens, I sold the houses and left those gardens. And it wasn’t so much the beauty of the gardens that I was/am most attached to, it is the process of making a garden and making a garden in the front of this house that we live in would give me pleasure.
After what feels likes way too long being homebound and cut off from social activities, I’m venturing to HILR today and my last two classes of the semester. I would not even do this but I enjoyed the classes so much, the first three anyway, and want to catch up and also say good-bye for the summer. I also have a rehearsal for a very short play that will be/should be part of next week’s Black Box presentation. Yes, we are a bunch of old people doing plays for one another. I’ve miss a solid two weeks of rehearsals and missing today would have consequences. I know lines and been rehearsing with one other actor on zoom; however, the business of scenes is still lacking.
And I am not completely better. I am tired and rather weak. Especially my voice.
But willing to try.
I have spent a month sick, in one way or another—coughing, first and foremost. A chronic cough that I could not shake. From a flu. It was not so bad as to not go about my daily round, but bad enough not to be able to do anything without cough drops and my water bottle to keep the eruptions at bay.
But they were not really kept at bay. I sat through classes and choir practices vainly attempting to hold back my coughing. I was not, however, feeling ill enough to do more than use home remedies and rest a little bit. Just a little bit.
Finally, I was too long coughing and thought something funky was going on with my eyes, I visited the doctor, had an x-ray taken and sent home with the usual rest and fluids instructions. Oh, and medication for conjunctivitis.
At church in small group ministry, we are talking about transformation this month. And to a person, everyone in my group had a bit of trouble with this topic. We all wanted that Disney Cinderella transformation, the magic wand that turns a pumpkin into a coach and rags into ball gowns. And we could not think of any or many transformative moments in our lives that was quite like that.
Someone suggested that it is more evolution than magic wand, and this morning, I think that so much is in the eye of the beholder. The heart of the dreamer. What and when is that magic wand moment? And how? Therein lies a mystery.
Grandma cough. Mama cough. Dada cough.
Wilbur put nouns and a verb together. I don’t know if it is his first sentence but it is the first I heard.
It was Wilbur on FaceTime last week, on a Friday when I had planned to spend the day with him and his mother, but they are all sick from something that Justin brought home after a work trip. I didn’t need to catch it and so, I stayed home and got to spend some phone time with the precious boy.
And heard him practice a new acquisition.
Janus. The Roman god of beginnings, transitions, and endings. Often depicted as having two faces, one on either side of his head of usually flowing hair. He, giving him that pronoun because in my head I see depictions of Janus with beards on both faces, one looking to the future and the other to the past.
That is a good enough god for me this morning!
It is my birthday. I “should” sit down and write something. I have been having trouble doing that. Too many tasks get in the way. Too many distracting thoughts. I am monkey-mind personified.
I need to gently lead that monkey away from the myriad of distractions both within and without, the list of ways that I am not living up to my ideal, plus the list of how I can fix that former list.
And return again to that bust of Janus lodged in my head that I think I saw at the Vatican Museum forty years ago.
Chasing Joy 