“Big wheel keeps on turnin’,
Proud Mary keeps on burnin’…”
- John Fogerty
It's was little after seven pm...you know the time...those special
moments when the sun slips into the horizon bringing with it dusk like the tail
of a cosmic python pulling itself West...I mean where does the tail really
begin and end? Wisps of clouds remaining
in the sky turned from white, to bright red, to light pink and then grayish
specters in the approaching evening sky.
The four of us were sitting in the small back yard that makes up
the area behind each home in the 1950s 'legacy' neighborhood in which we live.
“Legacy” meaning ‘…these houses have been here for 50 years or so, and most of
the people living in them are related to the original owners.
Our little home faces south, so when I sit on the small concrete
slab that slips out into our backyard like the deck of a moderate sized
swimming pool, I am pointed west. That
means as the light imperceptibly slips away to the horizon on my left, the sky
to my right slowly deepens its shade from blue to gray in perfect harmony with
the changing colors of the clouds. The evening melody becomes muted and in a
thoughtful minor key…
Cats are
different…
The girls and I have odd relationships – each in a quite different
way. While I know they love, er...like,
ah...tolerate me, it is only occasionally we find comfort in communal proximity
– for the most part, they are Molly’s cats.
Sitting in the backyard as dusk arrives ‘…stage right…’ is one of those
times. For an unknown reason, that I am
confident even t.s. Elliot, to the music of Andrew Lloyd Weber, would not
understand..they arrived silently, each taking a post not far from my chair - their
collective presence an enigma to me.
Leah has been my early morning and late night companion for a good
part of 12 years of her life. In recent
months, maybe because of the development of slowly encroaching arthritic hips,
she has been a little less loving on the edges of the day. Oh, she still comes to wake me with a purring
engine even the neighbors could hear, but she seems less inclined to lie on my
tummy as much. In fact, I miss that when
it doesn’t happen.
Sarah has made it a mission to conscientiously ignore and/or
disrespect me. If she is on the bed when
I slip in, she turns her head away or gives me the “…excuse me, do you still
live here?? look…” before leaping away
with disgust. If I walk in a room where
she is, I get ‘…the look…’ and off she trots; if I am making my way down the
hall, she makes sure I walk around her before continuing on her way. Anyone who thinks cats don't have facial
expressions, clearly does not own a Sarah!
Hannah is the largest, by far, of our feline family. She is the whiner, and talker. Often it seems she chatters simply to hear
her own voice. In spite of being the
biggest of the girls, she is the most skittish.
She is one of those cats that seems to be in a constant state of
agitation. She will sit beside you on
the couch… then to the shallow rectangular box on the floor by the bookcase…then
to the door asking to go out. She seems
full of nervous glances checking the room to see what dangers might be lurking
just around the corner.
A little darker…
The backyard was now slipping into that special time when the
sharp edges of the trees, bird feeder and cactus begin to soften…that magic
time when sounds of the day become quiet and the evening critters tune their instruments looking for dinner and the possibility of an insect
date or two.
This is also the time when imagination begins to exert its special
pull. It is easy to see the yard
becoming a mysterious and secret world...a place that can be anything I want it
to be…a time when I can clear my mind and slip into the soft and isolated
darkness...l like that.
The cats also seem to change as their senses sharpen in the
nightfall. Our little yard becomes a
primal hunting ground. They sit, crouch
and listen, occasionally moving across the grass, like ‘big cat’ ancestors on
the expansive savannahs of the African or Indian continents. They become the
hunters! To me this is entertaining...to
them deadly serious.
This evening, a neighborhood stray made the mistake of mounting
the fence in the back northeast corner of the yard. As darkness increased, pushing away the fading
light of day, Hannah suddenly went on alert.
Gone her apparent insecurities as her muscles tightened, tail doubled in
size, her eyes with deliberate focus. With the stealth of a python slithering
through the grass, she advanced on her prey…a few steps and pause – frozen in
space…the cycle repeated several times.
Watching a domesticated cat on the prowl is kind of awesome. The whiney timid cat evaporated with a low
growl and quiet hiss, like a drop of water at high noon on a hot rock, in the
Arizona desert …as Leah, Sarah and I watched, the lioness approached her prey!
Just as she disappeared into the melting dusk of fading and
colorless light, she pounced! There was
a brief tussle, a fair amount of growling, indistinct screeching noises, and
then silence. While I couldn’t quite see
into the darkened corner of the yard, she reemerged, trotting back to where we
were sitting to reassure us, the yard was once again safe.
It was darker now, just a hint to pinkish light at the base of the
horizon in the western sky. As the
cosmic dial continued to turn, another light began to slowly appear. As I stared upward, I saw one star, then a
few – eventually the black sky filled with twinkling lights…too many to count.
They came quietly, without fanfare and caused me to wonder once again about the
magnitude of life…how our minds could at once consider both the micro and macro
things of the universe, how this happens every single day, and yet is uniquely
different each time.
The day was done…
These are the moments I relish and make me glad that I am alive…when
I at once feel both a part of the living universe and at the same time utterly
insignificant. I was reminded of David’s
words in the Psalms “…what is man that thou art mindful of him…” Who are we and why are we so privileged in this
way?
When I slow my mind down and let it get quiet, I know with
certainty there is more to life than meets the eye…there is something that God
gives...to see the world for what it is – or at least ‘what it is to each of us.’
- ted
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