How to feed a cat.

I’ve told you about J—. He’s my crotchety old man customer with a heart of gold…

He came in about an hour ago and he wasn’t looking good. Not to mention when he walked in the door he didn’t call me one racial slur or another. Something was up. I questioned him about it. There were a couple of customers sitting on the couch and he looked at them, grabbed my elbow, yanked me near him and whispered in my ear, “Go grab your cigarettes and meet me out front.”

I did as I was told. I head outside and I light a cigarette for him, and one for me. I ask him what the hell is wrong. He tells me that the last few days he hasn’t felt right. He’s worried that his cancer is back. And if it isn’t the cancer it’s the thirteen other things that he listed off. I yell at him, tell him give me his doctor’s number and I’ll schedule the appointment and get Angie in here and I’ll take him up there myself.

His response: “Shari, I can’t do that. What about my fuckin’ cat? Who will feed my fuckin’ cat? And it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. I can’t get in this late. And if I go to the hospital I’ll have to worry about my cat not eating for days.”

Naturally, I yelled at him. Told him I’d take care of everything and that he needs to get his ass to the doctor now. I told him he wasn’t going to die this way (because he kept stating that he was), and surely not in a blizzard. I fixed him some tea, told him to go home and schedule an appointment as soon as he could. I said I’d drive through the snow (in his car) and make sure everything at his house was taken care of. Told him that there was no need for excuses, that he just had to do the scheduling.

He looked at me then, and I swear I almost saw a tear. He shook his head and said, “You know, it’s just hard when the only family you’ve got is a couple of states away.” I put my arm on his shoulder and told him that I knew it was hard and that’s why he’s lucky to have us. That we take care of our own.

Promptly after all that emotional stuff I shoved him into his car and said he’d see the wrath of an Italian woman if he didn’t do as he was told.

He called ten minutes ago and said he had an appointment for tomorrow at 11.

Sprouting bridges.

Those who are in constant transition are the most exhausted of species. You have to maintain constant connections and the ability to build something with nothing. You must know how to connect and build two passages together with a blink of an eye. Those who have been at this for a long time are amazingly audacious with absolutely no trace of insolence.

By the end of your year, your wanderings, your life, you’ll have such an amalgam that you can do nothing but speak in vowels and sit back and stare.

Be my wake up.

I wake promptly at 6 am without alarm on a day off. After previous days of a sickly stomach, things feel back to normal within my body. The Celebes Kalossi brews strongly in a coffee maker that is not my own.

I notice a hush, a hush that is uncustomary for a Monday morning in our community. I climb on counter tops to see out of windows and check for new snow. There is none, which leaves me with no explanation for this silence.

I pour the coffee and pace the house, 6 am on a day off. I walk into the dining room and notice her leaning up against the dark wooded buffet. She’s slanted from Tuesday afternoon. Slanted from new tunes.

I look to the ceiling, as if I have x-ray vision, hoping for there to not be signs of life up there.

I unzip her, softly, as if not to wake. I find this funny with what’s to come. I don’t want the zipper to be loud, but her strings could wake the block.

And away we go, 6 am on a day off.

It’s amazing what happens internally through this process. How I feel I’m able to speak. A dream from the night before pops into my head as I strain my fingers. Of meeting my third (newest) instructor. The previous two I couldn’t properly tell what I wanted from this instrument. They didn’t understand my language and filtered their incorrect one in instead. I left them, the tryst terminated, feeling defiled.

But in this dream the old man (new instructor) sat on a spinning stool older than him. It reminded me of the one in my grandfather’s den. How I used to brace myself with one hand and use the other to push myself in circles. My long, long hair leaving tracers behind me. My grandfather would always catch me as I was about to teeter off. His deep chuckle a warm vibration. I knew that the man now perched on the old wooden spinning stool would be the one. If I can connect you to my grandfather there is no greater glory.

He asked me, “What do you want to learn?” A question that I’ve come accustomed to since the beginning of my education of this instrument. I felt that nervousness wash over me again. I know I’m going to say the wrong words and not convey my thoughts and ideals accurately. I looked down to my shoes and took a deep breath. Before I knew it the perfect words came out and his eyes twinkled.

“Yes. I see. We will do this.”

I felt so warm and I knew that this man and I would be friends for the rest of his life.

I woke with the perfectly constructed sentences still swimming in my head. I repeated them again and again hoping I would not forget.

At 6 am, on a day off, this is what goes through my head.

It’s funny that some of my warmest and most favorite memories all have a deep vibration. One that matches she who slants into my heart.

Of course, I think. Of course.
It took long enough to figure out.