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Flailing in the Shallows
Oh, there’s something between us, Mommy, I can’t get to you! her eyes tell me.
I try, but the waves keep coming to get me, and the sand grabs at my feet. But I love you too much not to be with you, so here I come!
Stepping, then jumping then paddling then splashing the water furiously. The look on her face is pure panic. Save me, Mommy. Save me. The water is everywhere, all around me. Save me.
Her huge brown eyes are pleading and frantic in fear. Her paws are frantically splashing, her extended claws are razor sharp, gashing my shoulders, my midsection, my arms.
Reaching, alluding, splashing, eyes averted, my hands grasp and finally hold fast to her front paws. I lift them to my shoulders and her to standing; her back paws now established on the firm sand at both our feet. We embrace.
I am gashed and bleeding, but she is safe. We are safe. I turn her and usher her safely back to shore.
I don’t ask why she panicked. I know this fear.
I don’t blame her for my injuries. I know this lashing out.
I am rescued daily from such romps in the surf.
I know these firm hands that grasp mine to help me stand.
What Lily Knows
Buddy the bad and Lily the Good
start out the day that way.
Bud scampers off to find something to chew
Lil stays put where I tell her to stay.
“It’s way too quiet,” I say to Lil,
Which means for sure that Bud’s up to no good.
A flop of Lil’s tail tells me she knows what I don’t,
Better find brother Bud; that’s understood.
No! I shout from two rooms away
Just before the laundry towel is in shreds.
No, not that! I shudder,
tugging paws, teeth and body from velour pillow
now christened where some have laid their heads.
No! I say sternly to Bud who looks back at me,
Without repentance for his latest bit of fun.
And there sits Lil as prim as can be,
“Mom, forgive him, for he knows not what he’s done.”
In the Name of the Father
“I hate that part,” my neighbor tells me. The end part. The part where you watch them slip deeper and deeper into the abyss, and you stand by, because you must. Someone must; they could not, should not, do this alone.
And you care for their physical needs. You attend to their mental faculties. You honor their emotional selves. You stand watch. And wait. Because waiting is all their is now. Well, except for love. That’s there. That’s the part that allows you to do these small meaningless things which don’t prevent the slipping. Love makes it possible.
Love possibles it.
Yes, I think I shall proclaim ‘possible’ a verb. An action taken always by love. Perhaps it is love’s alone to take.
A way made.
A door opened.
A breeze blowing.
This day, though it is yet young, I have cleaned, laundered, picked up, scrubbed, sprayed, carried, reeled, lifted – no, hoisted, and hugged, patted, stroked, smooched, cuddled, held. It’s what love does.
In us. To us. Through us. For us.
Love never dies.
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”~ Matthew 25:40
