A Poem For Emma Lou

 A Poem For Emma Lou


It was always going to be
 impossible to lose you.
Nine decades in this life
more than you had asked,
more than most receive,
and yet my heart pleads
not yet, oh, not yet.

You spread your light
and warmth over so many,
telling us we were marvelous
and strong,
extraordinary and brave,
and we believed you.

And now, set free,
to run and dance
and ride at a gallop,
I hear you laugh
and know you are not lost,
not far, not gone,
just a little bit ahead,
slightly out of sight.

–Cynthia Sillitoe, December 2014

An Apple A Day Really Bites

So this story begins with me and and iPod and a computer. We all got along great. Whatever song I downloaded from iTunes showed up on my computer and then I'd pug in my iPod and it showed up there, too. I could even make playlists on the computer, synch my iPod, and there they were. It was fabulous.

But my humble little iPod didn't have a lot of space on it and filled up, so I got a new one. I don't know which iPod it is. It's black and silver and says iPod on the back. And it has white earbuds and lots of memory. When I got the new iPod, I had one problem. My computer didn't have as much memory as the iPod, so I got around that by unchecking a box or something, and the computer, new iPod and I got along great....no synching problems. I'd download music, it would be on my computer, I plugged in the iPod, and it was now on the iPod. We were so happy.

I finally upgraded my PC and that's when the trouble started. Not right away, of course. Right away, everything was fine. The iPod synched with iTunes on my computer (which is also black and runs some kind of Windows software) and I thought cool. Until I tried to buy new songs or U2 gave me a free album (which was sweet of them) and....it showed up on my computer, and on my iPad, but not on my iPod. Now, why this music will show up on my iPad, which I have not synched with my new computer....I don't know. I mean, I figure it's that it has the same Apple log-in and password, so it's kind of automatic. It would be kind of nice if it would show up on my iPod, especially as I prefer to play music from my iPod, which is why I got the damn thing.

But it didn't just show up on my iPod and thus began my quest of synching and re-synching and swearing. And I exported and imported and I imported and exported and spent way too much time reading various "how do I make my Apple products all get along" forums. And I watched some videos.

One very bad day, I thought I'd figured out the secret and I checked (or unchecked) something and half my music went away. I said bad words and shrieked and ran around and found my old PC, lugged it upstairs, preformed electronic CPR on it and restored my iPod. Except, of course, for the new music.

Today, I thought I had it again. I would give up hope of getting iPod playlists to the computer and create new playlists on the computer and export them to the iPod. That didn't work, either.

Someone told me that what I really needed to do was buy a Macbook and everything would synch fine. And I said, "Uh, yeah, you want me to buy another piece of expensive Apple technology just so I can use the ones I have now? Do you have a bridge you want me to buy, too?"

I keep reminding myself that I can listen to all of my music somehow, just not all on the iPod. (And I haven't even tried adding my iPhone into the equation.) And I remind myself that this is a first world problem and that all suffering is transitory and maybe in my next life all my gadgets will work together. Or, maybe in my next life, I'll get to be the one who invents cool technology everyone wants to buy.....and then as they try to use it, I'll just laugh.

Four Years And Five Months

       Four Years And Five Months


Each year shapes me
like the wind against a cliff
taking with it what
I am done with and
what I long to keep.

Half-dreaming
but wide-awake,
you warn me
of unseen costs and
battles best not fought

(as if I learned
this rebelliousness
not from you.)

and, as I step
to the edge
of a darkness
you sought,
you tell me to find
my own abyss.

Of all the times
I thought you’d died,
the final time
surprised me most.
And yet, I wavered,
between knowing and numbness,
but never hope,
for it had flown.

Now, when I long to sleep,
I tally months and years.
I throw away the elixers
of the decades past
with a ruthlessness
I only now possess

and I ask you,
“what did you expect?”

–Cynthia Sillitoe, September 2014

You-See-Timmy....Never Trust A Church

When Bill Clinton ran for president the first time, his campaign strategist, James Carville, fell for his opponent's strategist, Mary Matalin. Naturally, Hollywood couldn't resist the story and put out a movie called "Speechless." Even though it starred Michael Keaton and Geena Davis, for me, it fell short of its mark and I would have forgotten it (and I had forgotten the title) if not for one memorable scene where Michael Keaton verbalized something I had witnessed, but never had a term for: the "You-See-Timmy" moment.

"You-See-Timmy" is the moment where a parent or other authority figure pulls aside a child on the show and explains to him or her the life lesson he/she--not to mention the kids watching--should have learned from that particular episode. Though it's a t.v. classic still used today, especially on shows deemed family-friendly, the actual Timmy character is from the show "Lassie." (Only when I did a little impromptu research did I realize that Timmy didn't join "Lassie" until the fourth season, which is amazing to me because every "Lassie" rerun I ever saw had Timmy in it. But I digress.) For those who have missed this classic series, Timmy was always doing stupid things like falling into wells and Lassie, an adorable collie, would then have to rescue him and/or bring help. At the end of every episode, a parent/cop/judge/minister/doctor would say something, "You see, Timmy, it's dangerous to play with dynamite." And Timmy's eyes would widen a bit as this bit of knowledge sank in and he'd say something like "Aw, shucks. Well, I'll never do it again" and everyone would smile (including Lassie, who might also bark for emphasis) and the theme music and credits would come on. And the world was safe again, at least until the next episode when you could count on Timmy to do something else stupid.

Tonight, I had a "You-See-Timmy" moment with my cat. Yeah, I know, sounds strange, but she's the closest thing I'll ever have to a daughter and it was time for me to impart a little wisdom I learned from my mother.

When the news came on, I discovered that a prominent Mormon feminist was now facing possible excommunication from the Mormon church--which is deja vu because it happened to another prominent Mormon feminist about thirty-five years ago--and as it has happened to other men and women before and since who have been brave enough to say something church officials didn't like. You can read more about this particular case here.

And I pulled my cat aside and said, "You see, Gabby, this is why I don't trust churches. I trust God. I'm fine with Jesus and Buddha. The Dalai Lama is delightful and the Catholics even have a damn-fine pope. But I still don't trust churches...not any in general and not this one in particular. Churches are places where a congregation of kind, friendly, generous, well-intended souls gather and they will welcome you in. Until you say something they don't like and they stab you in the back. They almost never stab you in the front because that wouldn't be nice."

And Gabby's eyes widened as she pondered this morsel of wisdom and then she said, "Aw, shucks. Ok, I'll trust God, but never a church."

And I felt that maybe I'd done my job as a mother for one day.

For the record, this post is satire. Mostly.

On Being The Rat

We all have different beliefs about life. My favorite mantra is that life is an act of faith. And I don't necessarily even mean a religious faith. Don't get me wrong. God and religion are fine if they work for you, but there's also faith in yourself, or in others, or in karma, or logic, or the force, or compassion, or knowledge.....the bottom line is the people I know who do the best at waking up each morning and living their life have faith in something.

One time, an acquaintance said to me, "I have kind of a strange metaphor about life and the universe. People think it's weird, but it works for me."

And I said, "Try me. I love weird."

And she said, "Well, have you ever seen lab rats in a maze? That's us. I don't know if there is a greater being in charge of this experiment or if it just came about through a chemical process. It doesn't matter. It's just what life is."

"Rats approach mazes differently," she continued. "Some seem to move out of instinct. Others look like they're thinking it through and moving based on reason. And then there are the rats who don't move at all, but sit quivering with indecision and trying to understand something that is really probably beyond them. And I try my best not to be that rat."

This metaphor is much more logical and scientific than my own belief system, but I've learned to, at times, embrace it.

And I say to myself: "You're just a rat in a maze. Don't grapple with a reality beyond your understanding. Don't overthink each decision. Whether it's by instinct or reason, just move. It's all you have to do."

The Lesson of the Itsy-Bitsy Spider Song

For sixteen years, I have loved a cat named Perchance, but called Percie. An orange tabby with spots and stripes, eyes that began amber and turned green, a being more joyful and more stubborn than possibly any others I have known. Throughout that time, the sun was her drug of her choice. Okay, she dabbled in catnip, but her true vice was the light and heat of the sun. She never could get enough of it, even when we lived in Phoenix and for three weeks, the temperature was over 120 degrees every day, and it was miserable. Percie, though, loved it. She would have slept on sun-cooked cement for 24 hours a day if we had just stopped worrying about things like dehydration and let her do what she wanted.

For sixteen years, I knew every spot and stripe on her. I knew her moods and her personality. I could look at her and know what she was thinking. Sometimes it was "Oh, this is such a good nap!" and sometimes it was "If you rub my tummy, I will bite you." I would have told you I knew everything about her, but I didn't. I didn't know this cat I loved so much was riddled with cancer. Except, of course, that I did--if not the diagnosis, I knew that my time with her was slipping away. Of course, that's a reasonable thought when you have a cat who is sixteen. Hell, it's a reasonable thought at any point in any relationship. We are all here for a finite amount of time.

And, so, when I'd look out and see Percie sleeping in a sunbeam, and I would know "this is her last summer" or "not only is this her last summer, but she knows it, and she is determined not to miss a moment of it"--I squelched that knowing. I told myself I didn't know. I told myself to stop being morbid. And the more I pretended not to know, the more I could convince myself I didn't know other things, until I stopped knowing  altogether and missed it and wondered where it had gone.

As I struggled to find that knowing, especially as Percie became ill, I called upon my guides for strength and, well, for guidance. And all I would hear is Tai, my little Asian girl guide, singing "The itsy-bisty spider climbed up the water spout. Down came the rain and washed the spider out. Out came the sun and dried up all the rain. And the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again." 

And she would sing it over and over. I would hear it in my dreams. (So if you're now cursing me for getting these lyrics stuck in your head, imagine having them there, even in your dreams, for three months.) And so I'd ask for guidance and get a nursery song playing in my head incessantly until I figured out--which took longer than it should--what it meant. That itsy-bitsy spider is all about the impermanence of life. It's about beginnings and endings, about being washed away one moment and back in the sun again....back in the sun, knowing the next rain wasn't far away.

Maybe, I reasoned, the message was that we were going to keep doing the same things over and over--going to keep helping her battle infections and nausea and dehydration so that she would be well. Of course, I knew at some level that wasn't it. The rain was coming to take my sunshine-loving cat away. Another ending, another beginning. And there was nothing to do but accept it.

I let Percie go to the person she loved most, my mom, knowing she would find an afterlife of endless sun-napping and the occasional gecko chase.

And I found a new cat, Gabby, and brought her home and we settled in. The beginning was nice. Everything was new and so exciting to her. I got to slowly learn her language. We were having a great time. And then came today--only the fifth day of knowing her--and we butted heads. She wanted what she wanted. I wanted her to understand the natural patterns of my day and energy. Yes, I would start the morning with a play session, but then she needed to know that I would spend hours at the computer, pretty much ignoring her and she was supposed to amuse herself...which she did, by being impossible. Up on the kitchen counters, scratching the couch, into the Christmas tree. I stopped, I played with her, got her jumping and running and pouncing, all in the hopes that she'd settle down and I could go back to my computer. But as soon as I'd sneak away, she'd be causing trouble again, and I'd have to stop. I just kept getting crankier and so did she.

Finally, I called it a day, and had a hot bath. As she always does when I'm in the bathroom, Gabby settled on the other side of the door, waiting for me. (Not surprisingly, since she's a rescue cat, she has some separation anxiety.) But this time she waited quietly, not crying or scratching. When I came out, she was no longer cranky, but the loving kitty I adore and she was so glad to see me. I scratched her ears and praised her for waiting patiently. I pointed out that she had been brave and, just like I had promised, I had come back to her.

Today the rain had washed us out, I told her. I had forgotten she has only been here a few days and she is quite young. She needs more mothering and she can't be expected to know all of what a sixteen-year-old cat came to know. I need to be more patient with her and remember that this time is also finite. I will never get back these first few months before we settle into a routine. I need to make time for them.

Tomorrow, I promised her, the sun will come out and we will start over again.

reincarnation

reincarnation

explain to me
why we return
again and again
to this world
of never quite
what we need;

do we actually
turn to each other
and say
“you know
I’m headed back--
last time didn’t suck enough.”

–Cynthia Sillitoe, December 2013