Thursday, January 18, 2024

Don't Forget to Call Your Mother If You Still Have One Here

This web site respectfully expresses our sympathy to our former and perhaps future First Lady, Melania Trump, who just released what I suspect is her longest public speech in English, a funeral tribute to her late mother. 

(Her voice is as pretty as her face, though her eyes looked understandably puffy.)

About the time Melania Trump was reading the Bible verses, in real life, I was dozing on the little bench in my office where I do just about everything--write, read, knit, and as often as not sleep. 

I was having a delightful dream. The mood was just blissful. My dear departed mother was in the office. I hadn't heard her walk in and asked, "Did you come in the window?" We giggled, hugged, chatted. She mentioned going to the "park" a neighbor had maintained. I said, "Did you know he'd died? When I was in his neighborhood people were saying what a shame it was that nobody's maintained his 'park.'" More chatter, and we were going somewhere. After the deep freeze, the room felt soooo light and warm...

Then I woke up. The room was indeed full of light during a brief flash of sunshine in this mostly cloudy week. And it was warm--the computer said the Weather Station had finally reached a temperature above freezing, though of course the Cat Sanctuary hadn't, and the heater was still blowing hot air up under the bench. And Serena-cat, who had come back in for a nap after breakfast, was clawing at things, nonverbally saying "I want to go out now." 

"Why, of course you do, but I wish you'd 'meow' instead of clawing at things," I said, opening the door. 

"Good human! You may rub behind my ears, first," said Serena. This is a special favor she occasionally grants. Usually if anyone tries to pet her, even I get the "no, let's play a rough game" slap. I've never blamed Serena for craving fast, rough games the way cats who grew up among siblings crave cuddling and "mothering." I just try to keep her away from people who don't understand this, and make time to run or throw things with her when I'm outside.

Then I went back to the computer and thought about this dream. Although the sunshine and thawing air felt nice...I'm not young. I'd slept well last night, yet there I was taking a nap in the daytime. Daytime dozing can be a symptom of kidney failure, which can be a complication of coronavirus, which I just had. (As usual, insufficient data is being provided for those who wonder whether kidney failure is caused by the virus or by a drug some doctors prescribed to treat symptoms--I took nothing but garlic and Vitamin C, any of the times I've had the virus.) I'd been dreaming about going with someone who is dead, to visit someone else who is dead. In bad fiction that sort of thing would mean that Serena had just called me back from a near-death experience.

I felt a great deal better than I'd felt earlier this morning, actually. I decided not to be superstitious about it. Probably I'd had a perfectly normal dream featuring memories from the past. The older people get, the more their memories are going to feature people who have either died, or changed a great deal, since those memories were formed. For about a week, which feels like all--winter--long, I've been feeling one or more virus trying to come back whenever I've noticed any kind of stress--cold weather, power outage, anything more strenuous than going out on the porch to dump out a ration of kibble--and then feeling better for a bit of bed rest. Yes, that is why this web site's getting back on track so slowly; how did you guess?

But you never know.

Enjoy your mothers' company while you can, Gentle Readers. Fathers too, of course. And aunts.

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