Double the Pleasure

For many years I always had two cats at a time in my life. It started out when I was convinced to adopt a second cat by a sister-in-law. My cat Zonker was getting older and she thought I should have a second cat in the household. I adopted a kitten I named Sasha. When Zonker passed on I adopted my pure white cat named Casper. After I lost Casper, Merlin came into my life. When Sasha died I decided to go back to having just the one cat, Merlin. He has always been a very clingy mama’s boy. Fate is a funny thing. It doesn’t care what you have decided. Fate decreed that a little black cat was going to allow us to adopt her. Pixie was Mom’s cat and with Mom’s passing Pixie has informed me that I am now back to being Mommy to a two cat household.

After six years of being a caregiver to my mother I am trying to adapt to that part of my life being over. Family and friends are pushing me to start thinking about myself and what I want to do. It is harder to do then I thought it would be. When your life has been wrapped up in caring for someone else it is hard to figure out what you want for yourself. We will be getting Mom’s ashes on Tuesday and burying them on Dad’s grave as she wanted. We still need to go through her clothes and decide what I want to keep and what we are giving to Goodwill. I have a couple of cabinets that I need to clean out. We have her papers to sort and the financial things to finish and then that is it. Mom’s affairs will be done and after six years I start over again.

Now Pixie and Merlin are going to have to figure out how to get along and share me. I am adapting quite well to having two cats demanding attention. I was holding Pixie this morning with one hand and petting Merlin with the other. I need to watch my step because Pixie will zip between your legs and trip you up. She sent me crashing into the doors separating the dining room and kitchen this morning. She loves to try and tackle people.

One thing I have come to realize that I will have to do is chronicle the family stories. There were things that I was telling my niece this weekend about both Mom and Dad that she never knew. Some of them had her laughing and some of them were Wow! moments.

Dad graduated high school at the age of sixteen. He was extremely intelligent and skipped grades. He could not stand his stepmother and took off on his own. During the depression he found work in the government run CCC camps and other odd jobs. He was working on the farm of John Dillinger’s father when the FBI came to inform him that his son was killed. The father didn’t say anything to the people working for him until after the day’s work was done. That was a wow story for my niece. Some of the Dad stories I still need to relate to her are the nitroglycerine and the boxing stories.

As part of a CCC project Dad and another man were driving trucks to a site where the nitroglycerine was needed for clearing rocks for a road being built. The roads they were driving on were unpaved trails really and difficult to maneuver and dangerous at the best of times. Driving a truck full of high explosives was definitely not the best of times. Dad was in the lead truck. Dad heard the explosion when the second truck failed to clear either a hole in the road or some rocks. Dad had reached his destination. He stopped his truck and handed the keys to the foreman and walked away. He would not be driving again.

Dad was not a very big man. He was around 5’8” but he was broadly built especially around the shoulders and chest. While working in the CCC camps friends realized that with his build Dad had the makings of a boxer. In spite of the fact that he had zero experience Dad agreed to learn how to box. He went on the be the welterweight champion among the camps and retained a love of the sport until he died. Dad was so excited when he found out that I had met Bobo Olson who was a friend of one of my bosses at the time. He framed the autographed picture that I had Bobo sign for my Dad. It was one of my Dad’s prized possessions.

My niece found one of my Mom’s scrapbooks with pictures of her as a young girl. It was the captions that cracked her up. Things like: “Mike between 2 and 3. Pick a number. I didn’t get the dates on them. So sue me!” or “Michele about 18 mos. or 2 years. Getting some hair at last. See the dimple? Just one. I don’t know where the other one went.” Or “Mom at the ripe old age of 16 or so. Ye gad, my hair is a mess. Oh well, it hasn’t gotten any better with age, sigh!” Her hair was in old fashioned curls and looked just fine.

Mom was a farm girl. My niece loves to hear the stories of the courtship of her grandparents. When Mom and Dad first met she was working at the soda fountain at the local drug store. She was so nervous she dropped the hot fudge sundae she was holding in my Dad’s lap. She was trying to compliment Dad by telling him she loved the name Jack and that it was the name of the dog she once owned. She loved her dog. She also told Dad that he had beautiful brown eyes just like a cow. Well from a farm girl that was a high compliment. Dad who was not a farm boy didn’t quite know how to take that one.

So now we come to a new phase of life. The stories that Mom and Dad told me will be written down and chronicled. The pictures Mom didn’t get around to putting into books will be put into albums to preserve them after scanning them into the computer of course. Pixie and Merlin will now compete with each other for attention. Pixie will “help” me as she jumps up and walks in front of the monitor and on the keyboard. Merlin will continue to remind me that he is here and needs attention. I will figure out where I want to live and what I am going to do with the rest of my life now that I am no longer a caregiver to Mom. Mom and Dad, who were married for 55 years, will rest together in peace. Life goes on.