A Little Girl and a Pod of Dolphins – Chapter One

It's a tropical tale. It concerns a lush, green chain of tiny islands tucked under the long, narrow peninsula that is Florida. These islands are known as keys, large, small and tiny pearls strung along the highway known as US1. Originally, this highway was built on top of Henry Morrison Flagler's "Railroad that went to sea." The magnificent railroad didn't last very long, due to the deadly unnamed hurricane of 1935. The crude “highway” was so narrow that fishermen heading for the Fishing Mecca of the South often held their breath when passing cars on its two lanes.

 The first road was built along the shell rock pad dredged from each key and out of the ocean that held iron railroad track set on top of wood railroad ties. Although adventurous sorts found their way down to the Keys all during the time of the first road, eventually, a wider highway replaced the rapidly built extension of US1 and the quiet, sleepy Florida Keys were really open for business!

The inhabitants of these tiny islands are an interesting sort. They have come from everywhere else to the end of the southeastern tip of the USA. Many decided to stay and make it their own. Called Conchs, they are your waiters, servers, cooks, maids, receptionists, massage therapists, retail salespeople, restaurant and art gallery owners, artists, singers, boat captains, fishing guides and all the kinds of inhabitants that make these islands run smoothly as the tourists visit. 

But back to this tropical tale. There is a special little girl who loves water and swims better than she walks at three years of age. Each summer she and her parents and grandparents migrate to Tavernier, on Key Largo, to spend time with their friends at Key Haven, a tiny collection of mismatched cottages on the Gulf side of the island that offers accommodations, a sandy beach, boat docks, and Audubon bird-watching tours by boat. 

The child is excited the entire way down to her favorite place in the whole world and her "Are we there yet?" is a constant refrain on the long car ride. Her mother feels the same about Key Haven, so she doesn't mind saying, "Nope, just a little longer," over and over.

When they finally arrive, the little girl is eagerly picked up and hugged by Helen and Herb, husband and wife as well as owners of the cottages and docks. Helen is the ultimate hostess. Herb is a nature buff who discovered the southernmost nesting grounds of the elusive and gloriously pink Roseate Spoonbills. He makes a respectable living taking fellow Audubon bird watchers out into the Gulf's mangrove islands see the famous birds in his tired but sturdy boat, appropriately named The Spoonbill.

As the family talks and catches up, the little girl slips away. The water calls to her and she heads toward the water. The old dock is worn, with cracked wooden planks so burnt by the sun that they have separated from each other. The little girl is only afraid she might fall between the cracks as she avoids them by putting one sandaled foot after the other, squarely on each board. Her grandparents have arrived earlier that week in their boat, a 32-foot Chris Craft cabin cruiser. None of the excited friends at the house notice she is gone and her grandparents have not returned from their day of fishing so no one is at the boat slip to greet her. One step carefully placed after the other, she edges toward the far end of the dock. Built high above the water, it is deep at the end. She's been warned not to go too close to the edge. Although a very good swimmer for her age, her mother often worries that she would jump off anything to go in for a swim.

There is a loud splashing sound that lures the little girl closer to the edge. It's something she knows she's not supposed to do, but the sound is too enticing. She must see what is making that noise. Peering over the edge, she is blissfully surprised by eight giggling dolphins playing with a school of finger mullet. 

She giggles too and lays flat on her tummy on the dock to watch them. She is thinking how much fun it would be to have friends like them to swim with all the time. The dolphins hear her laughter and stand upright in the water looking at her. They make tiny squealing sounds and bob their heads up and down.

Charmed by their attention, the little girl makes a squealing sound too, as she pushes her body toward the edge to see them more clearly, but she miscalculates. She leans too far over the scary end of the dock and launches herself out over the dolphins' heads. Making a tiny splash, she lands in the middle of the dolphins' circle, chasing all the mullet away.

Carefully, the dolphins move closer to the dock creature and hold her upright with their fins. She takes a deep breath and giggles again. She looks around at each of the dolphins, smiling. She smiles back and thinks, "Thank you!" 

Again, the dolphins nod their heads at her. Somehow, in this magical moment, they all understand each other. This unintentional introduction is the beginning of what will become an incredible friendship.

A shrill scream rips through the air as the little girl's mother sees her daughter fall off the far end of the dock. Her worst nightmare has come true. She races down the dock, calling her daughter's name.

"Kiki! Kiki!"

And... Begin Again!

I keep forgetting to write. I'm a writer, so how does that happen? I may be too busy living life. I always have been. There's just too much to do. Recently, (over a year ago) I retired. It is so wonderful to NOT work! I love it. But it's taken a year+ to get around to try to write regularly again. So glad that Google didn't delete my blog for its lack of publishing anything at all since 2018!
It is not because I haven't wanted to write. I write all the time in my head. I write in my iPhone Notes app as much as I can remember about any great idea that runs through my brain. I've been carrying around many stories that are percolating and bouncing around those web-covered synapses. But getting right down to the real work, or the hard part, is what is so difficult.
I've come to the realization that telling people I am a writer for my entire life is going to turn out to be a lie unless I get started. At the far end of the 6th decade of my life, there's finite time to publish that book I've started so many years ago. There are stories to write, poems to rhyme (or not). I have to get to work.

Princess Punkie Poo, Basenji/Chihuahua

About PunkiePoo and Hannah Banana

So many stories! My pup, Punkie Poo (Pumpkin), needs to have her tale put down on paper. It has been nine months since she drowned off Islamorada Key in the Florida Keys. I miss her every day and it breaks my heart that her time on this earth was so short. The car crash I had that resulted in her death and damaged my body and brain has caused a lot of internal struggle and recovery. I have to tell her supernatural story and how she saved my life by giving up her own and how, although she drowned on the oceanside of Lower Matecumbe and floated out to sea, a beautiful woman named Marissa found her remains and helped return her to me after almost a month of searching for her, not believing she was dead.
I was so lonely after losing my little soul dog, I searched for a rescue dog, another Basenji type pup to come live with us. From a photograph, I found a young, year-old female Basenji mix who needed a home. The problem? She lived in Texarkana, TX. Her king foster mother, Cindy Goldberg agreed to drive to Alabama to meet us at a Bass Pro Store. That is how Hanna Banana came to live with us!

Our Hannah Banana, Basenji/Terrier Girl

Thank You, Mr. Jobs

In 1985, I was at THAT Super Bowl. I WON tickets to it on a local West Palm Beach radio station. I saw the Ridley Scott Apple commercial at that Super Bowl and I still have my Apple seat cushion.

In 1987, two years later, I owned my first Mac, an SE. It still boots up and greets me today! I published three magazines on that little Macintosh and never ever looked at an ordinary, boring PC.

Since 1987, I’ve earned my living as a graphic designer, writer, and publisher on Steve Jobs' products. Through the years, Apple has kept me young and thirsty for the next world-transforming objet d technologie, the next new operating system, and the next ground-breaking software. Finally, I had an Apple Store in my backyard.

I've owned a Performa, 8100, G3, G4, and G5, an iPod, several iPhones, two MacBook Airs, and Apple TV. This original message was emailed wirelessly in 2011 from my almost one-year-old MacBook Pro 17, the one I'm editing this six-year-old message on. Apple products were not only intuitive to use and master, they were works of art while being state-of-the-art.

I wrote this tribute on Oct. 6, 2011. Steve Jobs died in Palo Alto on October 5, 2011, after battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a decade. He was 56 years old.

Thank you, Steve, for your vision, your uncanny ability to read the future, and change the world. You impacted my life and, in the process, you became one of the best friends I never met.

You prospered, but did not live long enough. You should have had a very long life. The Universe must have decided It needed a Master Imaginator to translate Its secrets.

As Buzz Lightyear said, "To Infinity and Beyond." The world will miss your light.

Godspeed!

Write I AM worthy and begin –

Write I AM worthy. And begin. Again. This is The Truth of the Truth.
Thank you, Dele Slaughter. You inspire me just sitting on my page.
Why is this so hard? Voice in my head: "If it was easy, everyone would do it."
Why can't I be present for the people in my head
who have lived there long enough and are eager to start their lives?
Have I kept them close too long? Are they prisoners in my mind?
Will I ever let them go?
That's a question without an answer. But my mind wants to get on with it.
Here it is February again. I started this project in February 2010.
It has been eight long years.
There are 46 stories of all kinds here.
Still, I am not really working hard to get those people out of my head.
I'm stuck. I'm in limbo ... Cue the joke: I'm stuck in The Gumbo Limbo!
I've made a promise that I will do better. I will begin, again!          © 2018

Happy Birthday, Stella! March 17, 2016

My Corgi mix, Stella, just had a milestone birthday. She is sixteen-years-old and still as beautiful as ever! We estimated that she was born on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, in 2000. She was a tiny ball of tri-colored fur and I fell in love with her at second-sight, as soon as I discovered her brother, Riley, was taken. Her two aunts, Stacey and Adele (Stella is a combination of their names) had found Riley and Stella, two give-aways at a feed store, and brought them home. They knew I would take her and Stacey's son, Chase was already madly in love with Riley. I had lost my second Corgi, the twin brother of my first Corgi mix recently and was feeling very sad.

I wasn't really that excited, and tried hard to be practical, knowing I would soon have major surgery due to a recurrence of breast cancer. I wasn't sure that caring for a puppy and dealing with a second mastectomy was a great mix.

I was told by the Stella's aunties that this was a very special nurse Corgi, and she would take care of me and guard me while I was recovering. I spent two hours driving home to Jupiter from Ocala figuring out what to tell Dan. I arrived home with a pretty good story. Stella would be staying with us because she needed to go to the vet's and be wormed and checked over and the aunties didn't have enough money between them to get Riley and Stella an exam. My story was true. I was doing them a favor and would bring Stella back up to Ocala for our annual SEDRA awards banquet the following month. Once a year, our regional riding organization dressed up, went somewhere nice for a dinner and gave out a boatload of awards for a long distance riding competition season. It was always a blast!

So Dan breathed easily for three weeks, playing with the puppy and getting to know her. Shortly before I left to go back for the banquet, he said a little tentatively, "You are sure you are taking her back up with you?"

Yes, I told him. I was taking her back to Ocala. What I didn't tell him was that she was coming back home with me because, of course, I'd fallen in love with her, and she was my new Corgi mix, nurse puppy. She was the best! Dan seemed a little sad when he asked me that question.

And that is how Stella came to live with us!

Our House

Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. They were together again. I was together with someone so special, we spent the night together. It was the first of many, but didn't outlive our teenage dreams about forever. Parents, time, and hormones took care of that.
But for that first night, it was the song, Our House, that played over and over on the phonograph, yes, one of those antiquated vinyl-playing wonders that could play an album, yes, that's what they were called, over and over again, until it was imprinted on my memory forever.
1971. It was a very very very good year. In love, happy, innocent campus love affair, with all the mysteries of companionship, friendship, new love, painful separations and finally, the ultimate end of forever.
Everyone has that "first" remembrance. Mine was just one of those. But it is mine. To this day, I will remember that night forever. And that song.
Today, fast-forwarding 44 years, it is as clear as the blue ocean water off Green Turtle Cay in the Bahamas. One of my favorite places in all the world. It is as outstanding as seeing La Boheme for the very first time in a dark, dank movie theatre in downtown West Palm Beach. As searingly memorable as where I was on November 22, 1962.
Life's avenues and journeys are never imaginable at 19 years of age. No one really knows what will happen 10, 25, or 50 years from that age. It is simply unimaginable. It is the future and has nothing to do with the in-the-moment zen world where we live in that  "almost adult/still child-like" state of mind.
It is almost an out-of-body experience to remember those magical times, the almost dates of two people with hardly any money, and a good friend who would loan them a car occasionally so they could drive around North Miami and pick up hamburgers at Bob's, charging it to their account there, religiouslypaid at the end of the semester.
Trips to Haulover Beach to watch the moon rise, and other pastimes that have no monetary cost, but will make for priceless memories when we are old. Older than now? Yes, that is now the frightening Godzilla monster that haunts our dreams, and how did we get here, to this 60-something time zone where everything speeds up and tumbles down a rickety time road to the end. And the end is what? But I digress.
This morning, even though I don't work on Friday, but have until just recently, my musical alarm goes off even though I protest and try to curl myself in a tighter, sheet-covered mummy form to disregard it. Still, it cuts through the spider webs of sleep and wakes me. The same song. Our House. It even applies to me now. Two cats in the yard, (check– actually three), life used to be so hard (yep! cancer and heart disease have haunted this house), now everything is easy cause of you (that's true too), except it is with someone else, someone who has shared 43 years of my life with me. Not that first one but, ironically someone I knew before that "first" someone. We were childhood frenemies from the ages of eight and nine-years old.
Those unimaginable avenues and journeys have led me to places I never thought possible and my song has stayed with me for the entire trip.
Memories can only be made. They can only be remembered. They can never be remade and they ultimately can be forgotten. And that someone so special? He is one of my oldest, dearest friends and always will be. He knows who he is.
Paul Simon said, "Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you."
I have started to follow those instructions.

The World is My Oyster!

May is my favorite month. Five of my oldest (length of time, not age), dearest friends in the whole world, my first lifelong, best guy friend, my first love, my dearest friend and college roommate, and my 20+years long-distance riding buddy were born in May. It's also the birthday of John F. Kennedy, a man I deeply respected as a young adult and still respect, even though he turned out to be just another human being, full of flaws.

May is a beautiful month in Florida. It promises 30 days of sunshine and the beginning of an intense heat that swells toward full-on, white-hot summer. I am indoors, enjoying that magnificent modern invention of air-conditioning and thinking about history, I've been watching a documentary on Anita Hill's testimony on Capital Hill and how it changed the trajectory of her life and women's protection from sexual harassment in the workplace across the nation.

It's a funny thing about history – the people who actually live through it don't really understand that it's something historic. Even if it's all over television and the newspapers (at least back then people read the papers. Now, in-the-moment, breaking news lives happens, around the clock, on the internet.

It's May, and the reason I always celebrate my friends' birthdays is because, between the four of them, they sum up the soundtrack of my early years. I remember exactly what I was doing when I found out John F. Kennedy cheated regularly on his beautiful wife, Jackie. I never recovered from that knowledge. When I discovered that my first husband had been cheating on me since a few months after we were married, I thought again about Jack and Jackie. I understood how she must have felt. The anger I felt was a different kind of heat. It burned through a brief period of my life diminishing and destroying everything to do with that marriage. It was as if it never existed.

This year, the heat isn't just meteorological, it's political. Perhaps, indirectly because of Anita Hill, a woman is running for president of the United States. It's not the first time, or the first time for this particular woman. However, potentially, it is the closest a woman – the same/only woman – has ever been to being successful.

Unfortunately, she is using the same old, tired mechanism for getting elected that men have been using for more than 200 years. For the women of this nation who believe a woman is very capable of running the country, she's not exactly an odds-on favorite. There are other women who should be running, and some feel there should be more than one woman running. Again, it's not the first time, this time. Not all women have the same political platform, background, or determination. It wouldn't be a bad thing for one woman to run against another. Fact: Men have also been doing that for over 200 years.

We've come a long way, baby! (Thanks to Gloria and Virginia.) It's heating up fast. But this is May. Politically, it will continue to get hotter. Thanks to women like Gloria Steinem, Lilly Leadbetter, and Anita Hill, we are acquiring a little bit more self-esteem, bravery in the workplace, and a few more pennies on the dollar every year.

As Baby Boomer babes begin to leave the workplace for retirement and the travel and fun dreamed about for a long time, those shoulders all of us stood on will continue to support the Gen Xs and Gen Ys we leave behind. I hope they will remember these women's stories and acknowledge the shoulders they stand on as they climb through the jagged opening of that shattered glass ceiling to take their place as women leaders of our nation. I hope they tell Anita, Gloria, and Lilly's stories to their daughters and granddaughters. And when the question of who was the best president ever has to be broken down into a three-part question: Who was the greatest male president, the greatest female president, and greatest ever over-all president, some of them can claim those women as their inspiration.

What did the good witch, Glenda say? There's no place like home? One woman who has lived in the White House as her home intends to move back in 2017. Where are the other women, smart enough, sharp enough, and politically-astute enough to run for and win the office of president of the United States? It's time they started stepping up to the plate.

The world is your oyster, eat it! With some fresh horseradish, red spicy sauce, and a squeeze of lime. Then have another! The planet is changing. Be part of that change. Happy Birthday to all of my dear friends, and to Jack, RIP.

I'm back!

It's been awhile. I've been busy. Three years at LRP as a copy editor and now with BHG as an editor/graphic designer. I love this job. I work at home in all my favorite programs, using the latest greatest versions of them and I'm learning like crazy about the programs and the company.

It's a new year, and I'm determined to write more and finish some unfinished business – my book(s). I have a lot of things to write and they will be published here first. 

Life is good. The animals are doing well and Dan is counting the days until he retires. Danzarr and Merlyn are happy as clams and need to be ridden more. I am determined to ride this year. A lot!

So Happy New Year. You'll be hearing more from me now. So stay tuned! C

What "Under the Gumbo Limbo" means

The Gumbo Limbo tree pictured in my blog design is actually a tree my mother grew from a cutting she brought back from the Bahamas. The tree is tall and magnificent. I have two trees that were cuttings grown from her Gumbo Limbo.

My mother's tree sits beside a stand of bamboo in the back yard of our family home. Before the bamboo, my childhood playhouse stood for many years. My father built it for me. It had louvre windows, vinyl flooring, a peaked roof and was painted yellow. The very back of the small rectangular one room structure had real glass windows that slid up to open.
The playhouse was a place my brother and I claimed as our own. We slept overnight in it and stored our bikes there. Behind the playhouse there was a huge Australian pine tree we would climb.

We loved that tree because it allowed us to see all our neighbors, including Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt who lived next door to us in a two story stucco house. Mr. Hoyt was very tall and strong. Mrs. Hoyt was very round and short. We could almost, but not quite, see into their bedroom window on the second floor. We would call out to them and Mr. Hoyt would come to the window and say good morning or good afternoon to us very politely. Neither of them ever yelled at us for disturbing their privacy or annoying them, although I'm sure we did. Our other neighbors could see us up in the tree but no one ever acknowledged our presence like the Hoyts. They were our favorites.

During a hurricane named Donna or Betsy, our playhouse was destroyed. The roof blew off, landing in the alley beside the Australian pine. I remember that hurricane very vividly, because the pouring rain and howling wind was very frightening, and because it blew down our playhouse and tree.

I wasn't living at home when the Gumbo Limbo tree was planted. I was in college then. When my mother died in 2009, the tree was 37 years old. It's peeling red skin, that gives it the nickname 'tourist' tree, is a deep russet and orange red and its leaves are dark green. The leaves are stiff and rustle against each other making a brushing noise with the slightest breeze.

Before I left my mother's house the final time, clean and sparkling inside, with its yard mowed and shrubbery trimmed, I took several photos of that tree. I wanted to remember it and how long it had stood there guarding my mother's house. It had traveled to the house as a twig, carried aboard the Irma Marie, a yacht named for my grandmother. It was planted lovingly, tended thoughtfully and grew to be almost 20 feet in height. I hope it will continue to live a very long life. 

Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt, my mother, who planted and loved the tree, and my father, who built our playhouse, and all the neighbors are gone now. Only the Gumbo Limbo and I know the stories about that house and the people who lived there. Only the two of us could write those tales. Eventually, we will.

The speed of life

Too fast. The speed of life is too fast. Life speeds up as we age. It seems that way to a lot of people. People who notice, as children, how endless summers soon end too fast, and finally become a mere blur as the school years flow by. Four years of college seem not long enough, and then we're out in the real world. Working, working, time slowing only during the five day work week and then speeding up once again for two brief days of freedom. Freedom to clean our home, wash our clothes, shop for food, and children? Well, not in my area of expertise, but I've been told that life with children equals a definite parallel universe of speeding time running alongside and competing with everything else.
Fast? What is fast? As opposed to slow, it's much faster. The speed of life, the speed of light, the difference? An endless, consecutive series of nows versus 186,000 miles a second or 700 million miles an hour. 
We exist in an ignored, unrealized vacuum of nows. Our nows can be yesterdays, todays or tomorrows but only our nows are constant. Instead of living in our nows, we dwell on our yesterdays and make plans for our tomorrows. Being in the present, by not wasting our nows, is something spiritual, semi-devine earthly beings have been instructing us to do for centuries.
Time flies. Nows fly faster and faster, at the ever increasing speed of life. Surely there is some algorithm somewhere that magically and Einsteinically [my word] explains why this phenomenon happens. There have to be prescribed sets and subsets of numbers and figures, with drawings and arrows, that show how we start as droplets from a faucet, fluidly falling downward, unaware we are simply forming ranks, as we hit bottom, with the already circling masses, speeding up exponentially, as the circles become smaller, until we finally flow down the drain.
Down to where? Is the journey just finding our way back to what we know, as Eliot promises? Is it Churchill's riddle, wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in mystery? Will this mystery be solved at the end (or beginning) of the trip? We share the trait of curiosity with our feline creatures and this is the greatest mystery we've never solved. Faster and faster, round and round, down and down. Curiouser and curiouser. Do we depart or do we commence? It could be the adventure hasn't even started yet.

My year of death and loss . . .

Loss was a way of life for a very long time. It seems as if, from 2007 to recently, there has been nothing but loss. It takes a toll that is physical, mental and metaphysical. Loss chipped away at my heart, not diminishing me, but hardening or honing my sensibilities. I have spent a long time this year wondering about this time of my life and the losses I heard my grandparents and my parents talk about. I remember them talking about their friends dying. How much they missed them. And then the loss of their parents and how that made them feel. I lost my father, then my mother. Each of these losses came with possessions to sort through and memories to lay to rest.
The loss of my pets hurt me deeply as well. Arthur and Lost, my two feline friends of advanced age. Lost, the outdoor cat who came inside and decided he liked it better sleeping on the bed. Arthur, a proud, wild Russian Blue who fell in love with me as quickly as I fell in love with him. They defined certain years of my life and I held Lost as he drifted from this world to the beyond, and cried when I came home to find my beloved Arthur had waited until I was away to leave me, curled up in a ball as if he was asleep outside under my bedroom window.
Ubo, my little Shepherd mix girl, found at a distance ride and rescued because no one else wanted to deal with the small, sad mangy puppy who sat as close as she dared to the ride officials because she was just trying to keep warm. She just decided one night, very late, that it was time to go and rested her head in my lap and looked up at me until her eyes closed that final time.
They all lived long, happy and healthy lives. But still, each loss diminished me in ways I can hardly describe.
When I said goodbye to my beautiful Astrolea, mother of my two beautiful Arab geldings, full brothers only two years apart, it was planned. Rather than find her in terrible pain at some not-so-distant point in time, I decided it was far kinder to give her an injection that would let her go painlessly. Orchestrating the planned death of a beloved horse is not an easy thing to do. But I was determined it would be her last best day, with carrots, treats, lots of hay and she would be surrounded by her sons and their real uncle, Gandolf, who was the love of her life. They made her last day special and then the vet and her assistant were there along with my friend Jim who hated burying horses but did it just for me. He told me it always made him cry and he hated to upset the owners of the horses any more than they already were.
He had dug a great sloping hole in the small paddock. The vet did the injection and she dropped to the ground and was gone very fast. Sometimes, it is not that easy but I was lucky that day and so was she. My riding friends, husband and the vet and her assistant and I all took hold of her and slid her down to her final rest. It was easy and beautiful and the humans, working together to ease her into that place filled my heart with a kind of pride. I had wanted it to be a graceful end, as graceful as this beautiful mare had always been to me. It was April and my lilies and narcissus were in bloom. I cut a stalk filled with four creamy white lilies, one for each of the horses, who would no longer be four, but three, and placed it on her neck. I wrapped her eyes with white vetwrap because I didn't want sand to get in them when she was covered. She faced east toward Mecca because she was a full-blooded Arabian horse. Her bloodlines traced back to the African desert and to the Bedouins whose horses slept beside their silken pallets at night inside their tents and acted as watchdogs, alerting them if their enemies dared to come too close.
Jim finished his job and as he did, I wiped my tears and wrote the vet a check so they could leave. My best friend and riding buddy of 20 years stood with me as Lealea was covered and we said our goodbyes and talked of our two gray mares, their first ride together and how one would surely be waiting for the other when it was her time.
The loss of Noche, my black cat family matriarch and her daughter, Big began what was, for me, my year of death. I knew it was going to be bad but had no idea I would lose my two oldest and best friends, Chaos, my wolfdog for 13 years and Gandolf, my last best riding horse, mentor, protector, and wise teacher.
From February 5 until November 17 of 2011, I was numb and continued to feel as if I too was going to fall off the earth into nothingness, just missing them so terribly. Even now, writing this down because I willed myself back to this blog I have abandoned for such a long time, I can feel the sadness tightening deep in my chest.
If it is inhuman to miss my nonhuman friends more than some humans, then that is what I am. I'm not contrite, or embarrassed, or less a person than anyone else. The animals have always drawn me to them and I have always drawn them to me. From the time I was two and my frantic mother found me standing in the middle of a herd of cows who were licking my face as I giggled, I have alway preferred the company of the four-legged creatures.
As hard as it is to lose each faithful, giving soul, for they do have souls, I know I will continue to be a lover of animals and seek their friendship until I die. The poem about a rainbow bridge always makes me cry. Sometimes I count the heads of those I expect to meet me there and it is a very large number of furry faces. I only hope the bridge is wide enough so we can all go across together.

Listening for Whippoorwills

The first time I can remember listening for whippoorwills was when Mary Kern died. When we decided we wanted to live in Jupiter Farms, Mary was our realtor and helped us purchase two of the three adjoining properties we own. Her husband, Richard, was a contractor and he built our home for us.

In 1991, both Mary and I were diagnosed with cancer. I survived but Mary was not as fortunate. A short time before she died, I went to visit her in the hospital. She was serene and at peace with the fact that she was not going to beat her cancer. She told me I was lucky and should live my life as if every moment mattered, because it did. We cried a lot and hugged goodbye. It was the last time I saw her.

Around the middle of February, Mary died. After hearing the news, I walked outside. It was cold. My horses nickered for me in the dusk. That time of evening, for them, only meant one thing, dinner. I mixed their feed and loaded it into the wheelbarrow with heavy pads of hay. As I made the rounds, dumping their food into buckets and dropping hay in their racks, I was waiting for something.

I grieved for a friend, wife and mother whose life had been too short. The crescent moon glowed dimly through the trees, lighting up the western sky. Then I heard the whippoorwill. Its cry is its name — whipp-oor-will, a distinct and lonely trill. In the darkness, I was waiting for a sound to match my sadness.

Visiting South Florida briefly on their way to who knows where, the whippoorwill's cry reminds me of those I've loved and will never see again in this life. Each year, my mother used to tell me, there will be more of them.

When I hear the cry of the first whippoorwill, I speak their names as a litany, believing they will hear me and know they haven't been forgotten.

Twenty years later, it is Valentine's night, and I have started listening for whippoorwills.

* * * * * * * * *

For Cindy, Topsy, Misty, Daisy, Danny Boy, Pop, Gran, Betsy, Fred, Sam, Mary Ella, Kathijean, Lump, Chari, Dump, Speedo, Sandi, Skipper, Sasha, W Baron Gairloch, Rusty, BH Bay Flag, Crescent Moon, Lea, CC Baron Gandolf, Big, Chaos, Dad, Mom, Lacey, Char, Rocky, Tweety, Snowball, Samantha, Willie, Tammeer, Mariah, Miska, Ferrere, Gigi, GiGi, Margaret, Mike, Pauline, Lloyd, Ed, Mary, Dave, Daryl, Dolly, Noodle, April, Abby, Lynn, George, Betty, Dal, Suwa, and anyone I've forgotten. I love you all.

* * * * * * * * *

Whippoorwill by John James Audubon

The Horseless Rider

CC Baron Gandolf
1983 - 2011

There are statues of riderless horses, significant in that they represent a rider fallen, deceased, lost in battle.

But what of the horseless rider?

For me, there is only air and silence. My horse lost his battle, has fallen, and now gone.

The air around me is not still; it is the wake of clouds as they touch the trees, and brush across my face, whooshing past as my invisible horse races past for the last time, winging his way onward, upward.

 My silence is weighted with memories, miles, and moments I can never forget. My silence is loud as the champion of my heart nickers, then rides on to the edge of the night wind.

I will bide my loneliness until the horseless rider and the riderless horse meet again.

In memory of the Good Horse, Gandolf, CC Baron Gandolf, of Baron's Moon Arabians, who still lives on in my heart and in my dreams where we still ride together.

 Me, in front, riding Danzarr Moon, Gandolf's nephew and Beth Carlson Lewis riding CC Baron Gandolf. This is the most perfect photo I have of my two horses who delighted in being with each other as much as my dear friend Beth and I loved riding them together.

(Thank you to Becky Siler who was the photographer

responsible for most of these photographs.)

End of an Era - Steve Jobs Resigns as Apple CEO

I was at THAT SuperBowl. I had WON tickets to the Superbowl on a local radio station. I still have my Apple seat cushion and two years later I owned my first Mac, an SE. I published three magazines on that SE, and have never looked back. 


I have followed Apple, Macs and the i-Family to the present day and am sending this message on my almost 1 yr old MacBook Pro 17. I’ve earned my living as a graphic designer on Macs and still do.


I just turned 60 this past May and am proud of it. Apple kept me young, thirsty for the next great thing, the next new technology, software, platform and an Apple Store in my backyard. 


Thanks, Steve, for your vision, your ability to change the world. You changed mine, and in the process you became one of the best friends I never met. You’ve prospered. So all that’s left for me to wish you is “Live long!”

Life with Chaos

In 1997, our first wolf hybrid, Chari, died. She was thirteen years old and had aged suddenly and seriously during the previous year. We were suddenly without our "Big Good Wolf". We missed her terribly. Dan and I didn't discuss getting another wolf dog right away. But I knew eventually we would.

In 1998, I took my oldest competitive horse, Gandolf, and competed in North Georgia in the National Arabian Horse Association's National Competitive Trail Championship. The location was Pigeon Mountain, a state forest filled with rocky, high hills and mountains, things I am the most scared of and intended to confront my fears.

The group I caravanned up realized we were very close to the border between Georgia and Tennessee, close to Chattanooga, the great battleground. Since we had arrived a few days early to acclimate our horses to the height and the rocky terrain, we all had breakfast at a tiny gas station just down the road. It was the sole sign of life on that side of the mountain.

The closest we were to what was going on in the outside world was the daily newspaper we usually read second hand every morning with our scrambled eggs, sausage and wonderful, hot coffee.

One morning, I noticed an ad for "wolf hybrid puppies for sale". We tried for several days to  call from my cell phone to see if the puppies were available to see. Finally I got through and made an appointment.

I was given complicated instructions on the directions but they were good directions and Kat and I found our way there late one afternoon. The owner, a real Southern lady, was hospitable and very loving toward her pack of wolf dogs. She showed me two of the three pups who were cute and inquisitive. Then she went into the garage to extract the shy pup who had gone inside and burrowed under a woodpile hiding from these invasive strangers who had ventured into her world.

As she was gently pulling the puppy out from the woodpile, she said the female was the most beautifully marked and would have a lot of black, gray and brown highlights on her adult coat, based on her dam's previous litters.

The lady handed the little girl to me and she pulled away slightly for a second. Then she looked at me. The gorgeous markings on her face looked like someone had taken a wet brush and expertly applied mascara under each of her eyes. She was perfect! I never handed her back. When we discussed price, the pup stayed in my arms and I pulled my wallet from my purse and gave her $250, an discounted, agreed-upon price, down from her original $400. She also saw that the puppy and I were meant for each other and we had already bonded.

There will be more, much more to this long overdue story about my beloved Chaos soon.

The Scent of Carnations

Each year on Valentine’s Day, I drive across the north bridge to Palm Beach and purchase dozens of carnations from a tiny floral shop on South County Road. The delicate, early spring buds fill my home with fragrance and remembrance. 

Surrounded by the scent of carnations and impressionistic childhood memories of the Royal Poinciana Playhouse, The Breakers and Whitehall, I sift through a lifetime of Florida seasons to that one particular sunlit winter when I was nine years old.

In January of 1960, the brilliantly sunlit Palm Beach winter season was fast-forwarding into the new decade. The glittering island’s sensuous allure always attracted suntanned, well-dressed gentlemen. They were often accompanied by tall, elegant women wearing thick, lustrous furs and restraining small, fluffy dogs tethered by jeweled collars.

Under clear, azure skies, they shopped Worth Avenue, gently buffeted by gulf stream breezes while their liveried chauffeurs jockeyed for coveted parking places on A1A, above the beach.

Along with the rest of the world, my mother and I lived in a small house on the opposite side of the Intracoastal Waterway, a thin ribbon of inland water that permanently separated the wishful window shoppers from the wealthy power buyers.

Devastated from the last sputtering embers of a failed marriage, my mother relocated to West Palm Beach from Detroit where, she told me, she intended to restart her life. With her lean, model’s figure, she quickly found seasonal work as a model for Saks Fifth Avenue, conveniently located next to the famous Everglades Club at the west end of Worth Avenue. Three days a week, she worked the lunch crowd as they sipped martinis and lounged the afternoons away on the patio overlooking the golf course.

My mother quickly became obsessed with everything about Palm Beach. On her days off, we frequented the premiere shopping district of the rich and famous, eagerly exploring the narrow “vias” and “avenidas” just north of the island’s main social and retail sales artery. Together, we discovered the sacred burial grounds of pet monkeys and beloved dogs and other hidden treasures.

After her divorce was final, my mother turned from winter modeling to a more boring but steady annual income. She unenthusiastically spent eight hours a day in a tiny office at one of West Palm Beach’s most prominent downtown legal firms, producing an almost adequate weekly paycheck. 

Believing she was destined for something greater, she blamed her failed marriage for her current state of despair. Dating only occasionally, she never brought anyone home. When Don appeared at the front door in January, I began paying attention. 

Over the next few days, through overheard phone conversations, I became aware that he was wealthy, married and separated by hundreds of miles from his wife’s hostile indifference.

My brief existence involved my mother and the exclusive world she created for us. Don’s sudden presence in our lives caused a strong sense of alarm, a feeling I had never experienced.

My mother had been introduced to Don at a New Year’s Eve celebration and they began seeing each other almost every night. For eight weeks, he swept my mother out of her middle class nonexistence and into crisp, velvet evenings filled with jazz, late dinners, expensive champagne and laughter.

Don was tall. At 5 foot, 8 inches, my mother was a statuesque, willowy woman but beside him she looked like a tiny porcelain doll. Atlanta was his home and the source of his soft, drawling accent. With a touch of distinguishing gray in his dark hair and a deep, tropic tan, he was almost handsome; a well-mannered, Southern gentleman.

Fighting a life-threatening disease, he had come south to convalesce in the cool, showy brilliance that was mid-season in Palm Beach. At the invitation of a long-time friend and French aristocrat, a suite of rooms had been reserved for him at the Brazilian Court. This quiet, elegant, off the main thoroughfare hotel was nestled in a residential neighborhood on the west side of the island, within walking distance of the Intracoastal and Worth Avenue. His friend, the Count, also provided him with transportation. A white Rolls Royce and driver were available to him on call.

Overnight, my mother became an elegant, voluptuous creature with an unique sense of self. Her modeling career had given her the tools she needed to transform herself into a vision of infinite possibilities. She was in love.

Each evening during that brief, bittersweet season, glowing with once set-aside aspirations, she kissed me goodbye over distractedly prepared dinners, gave misguided directions to the babysitter du jour and rushed out the front door.

Inexorably drawn to the parallel Palm Beach universe across the Intracoastal like an innocent moth to a sinister flame, she was unaware of and unprepared for the emotional abyss that loomed ahead of her.

That winter is still an incomplete canvas of an imagined, surreal event to me. It never was and always would be the consummate, fairy tale moment of my mother’s entire, otherwise ordinary life. 

Constantly left at home on the other side of the Intracoastal, I felt lonely and abandoned. Don’s presence sliced through our now tenuous bond. She was bewitched; I was bereft.

One evening, while Don waited in our living room for my mother to finish putting on her makeup, I was angry and rude to him, indifferent and hostile. When that did not achieve my intended effect, I surprised myself by running out the front door and down the street. Running away was something I had only seen children do in movies, usually with much higher motives. I didn’t go far and hid openly where I knew I would be found. I was a rehearsed prodigal, hoping my behavior would make my mother come to her senses, realize the error of her desertion and restore our world to the way it was before him.

When she finally found me, I was walking home defeated. I told her I didn’t want to be forgotten because of him. She suddenly understood my rebellion, showing surprise and remorse at my tears. My punishment was to apologize for being rude.

I remember standing very still after saying I was sorry. From his considerable height, he looked down at me seriously for a long time. Then he put his arms out and pulled me close to him. I saw there were tears in his eyes. In a quiet voice, he whispered in my ear,

“I understand. I’m so sorry we’ve neglected you.”

I hugged him back, drinking in the scent of his exotic cologne. When I stepped back and looked up at him I knew we were reconciled; we were friends. 

From that day until the end of their relationship, I was included as much as possible in their evenings and their lives. If I close my eyes, I can still feel his big bear hugs and the tone of his deep voice during our many conversations.

He was an educated man. We spoke about his travels and the places he had seen. He brought me books and patiently answered all my childish questions. Even after all these years, I still wish I could sit and talk with him one more time. So many things were left unsaid.

Palm Beach's winter social season rushed head on through January and suddenly it was Valentine’s Day. The Rolls delivered Don to our front doorstep, his arms filled with dozens of multi-colored carnations. Our home overflowed with the heavy scent of blossoming flowers. I wandered from room to room, burying my nose in each bouquet, entranced by the fragrance of each colorful, opening bud.

The scent of carnations lasted for almost two weeks. My mother lovingly arranged and rearranged them until only a few spent blooms were left. For me, the scent and remembrance of those Valentine’s Day carnations was my single, lifelong reminder of their impossible, romantic interlude. Like those colorful spring buds, their affair lasted only a few days after the last carnation had faded and died. As adults, they must have instinctively known their idyll would be brief. Toward the end, I sensed a deep sadness in the two of them. 

Although his convalescence was incomplete, his angry wife had phoned and insisted he return to Atlanta. In the space of an evening, my mother devolved into her former self. As suddenly as it had begun, their time was over. Don was gone.

In the desolate March evenings immediately following his departure, from my bedroom window, I watched as my mother sat alone on our front porch. She faced east, gazing across the Intracoastal at the illusive, emerald isle beyond it; the source of her greatest joy and her current, desolate sorrow. Her desperate attempt at a happily-ever-after ending had eluded her grasp.

One still night in late April, the phone rang. It was Don’s mother. She was a kind woman who knew her son’s heart. She told my mother Don had gone back into the hospital after his return to Atlanta. His unrelenting wife denied him any solace prior to his death. Aware he would never again see the woman he had loved and left in Florida, he asked his mother to let her know when he died.

After her tears stopped, my mother sat alone in the darkness holding the only photograph she had of him. The next morning, I watched as she tore the picture into tiny pieces and threw them away.

For the remainder of her life, he was rarely mentioned. To an indifferent world, it seemed as if her haunting memories of Don had been relegated to a seldom visited corner of her fractured heart. I was the only one who knew this wasn’t true.

Each year, on Valentine’s Day, my mother would drive across the north bridge to Palm Beach and buy dozens of multi-colored carnations from the tiny floral shop on South County Road. For as long as they lasted, the fragrant scent from those spring flowers seemed to briefly lift the silent stillness of her heart.

Her brief love affair has remained the most extraordinarily tragic yet beautiful fairy tale in my otherwise ordinary life. Until now, my years of constant editing have kept her story from being told.

After my mother’s death, I continued her unique Valentine’s Day tradition, filling my home with early spring multi-colored buds every year. In my wishful hope that heaven is a particular place we create from the most memorable moments of our lives, dozens of her favorite flowers are also placed upon her grave.

I want to be sure the scent of carnations reaches them wherever they are.

[Author's note: For those of you who knew my mother, understand this is a work of fiction. There is some truth and a lot of story. It all comes together and turns out to be, as Jimmy Buffett would say, "a semi-true story". Enjoy! 1/19/11]

Big

When she was born she was the largest kitten. No white at all except under her tummy, she was black as night. As she and her three sisters grew, she maintained her status as the biggest. Not being great at sexing tiny kittens, I simply assumed she was a he. She was so big. So we called her Big. But still thought she was a he until we took the three kittens to be spayed and neutered. It was then we learned she was a she.

But the name stuck. She was still the biggest and she was still Big. She was also the wildest, bravest and the most aloof although she was still very affectionate. It's just that the other two kittens, Spot and Angel, were better in that department than she was although she had the biggest purr to go with her large frame.

Probably the first out the doggie door unto the back screened porch, she led the way as the 8 month old kittens played and explored their new, uncharted territory. Probably, she was the first out the last doggie door and into the great outdoors. She led the way as the kittens frolicked in the small yard, climbing the trees, running and finally, walking on the top of the board fence.

It was just a hop down into the big yard, an acre, at least. And then off to the east property, in its natural state. They played and played, always coming home when I called to spend each night in their kitty kondo.

Until Saturday night. With Spot and Angel tucked in, I called and called for Big. She didn't come. I walked the yard, and down to the gate. I waited in the house and went out again. No Big. She had never spent a night anywhere but with her sisters, safe in their beds.

The windows were open and I went to bed listening for her little meow, asking to come in the front door but there was nothing and I fell asleep.

Dan went to work early on Sunday and I got up, asking if he'd seen her. He said he thought she had come in but it wasn't her, it was her mom. I searched the yard, the east property, drove around the two blocks and called and called all morning. Big never come and I knew in my heart something had happened to her.

Speaking to a friend on the phone, telling her I was devastated that I had lost one of the kittens, I looked out the front window at the horse trailer. Under the trailer I saw the familiar shape of a cat. Hanging up, I ran outside to the trailer calling her name.

She didn't move and I knew the worst. The trailer is very low to the ground and crawling underneath was not easy. I made it far enough to reach her back leg. She lay on her side. She looked asleep but her cold body told me what I had known in my heart. My Big was dead.

There were no marks on her where she had been bitten by a dog or hit by a car, there was nothing to indicate how she had died. I cried for a long time. I had known something bad had happened and the tiny kitten I had helped deliver ten months ago was gone.

When Dan came home, we buried her near where I had buried her two stillborn sisters. I sat for a long time with Spot, Angel and Noche, their mom. They stayed close to me that day and I feel certain they knew she was gone long before I found her.

Dan mentioned that Sophie, our Standard Poodle, hadn't wanted to come in the house that night. She seemed concerned. She knew where Big was and didn't want to come in because she was guarding her.

I will miss her so, the brave one, the wild one. I was only able to share ten months with her but they were such wonderful months and I will never forget my biggest kitten, my Big.

My Grandparents' Anniversary

This evening, my husband Dan and I went to dinner. We ran into a business friend who was dining with her husband and his parents who were celebrating their 59th wedding anniversary. They were an adorable couple, he with a twinkle in his eye and she with a broad, friendly smile on her face. They reminded me of my grandparents.

Later, I remembered today was my grandparents' anniversary too. I vividly remember their 50th anniversary. It was a big, dressy affair with all their friends and our family. I was nineteen and in college. Fifty years with one person was unfathomable to me at the time, but I had been around them for nineteen of those years and they had a pretty special thing going between the two of them. Although they are both gone now, I can't imagine their heaven being anywhere but together.

It made me smile to know I had just met two people who shared that special date with my Gran and Pop.

It's Crazy Out There!

By out there, I mean the highways, the malls, the restaurants, the entire world, it seems! I'm not going back out there until after Christmas. At least not unless I absolutely have to venture out to forage or gather food for my tribe. Nope, not going to get caught up in this insanity.

The parking lots at the malls are so full it is impossible to find a space. The amount of gas that is being expended by desperate shoppers trying to park their cars is probably twice the amount they will spend in the stores buying the multitude of presents they believe they must have for all the lucky individuals on their lists.

The highways are clogged (at least in Florida) with all the tourists escaping their inclement weather up north (boy did we fool them this week with temperatures in the 20's!). The tourists, being tourists, don't know where they are going and, because they are on vacation, are in no immediate hurry to get anywhere, unlike the rest of us who are on the clock and living in the real world.

The restaurants, well, don't get me started on them. I happen to live in Paradise. South Florida is so beautiful this time of year and the people who actually live here all the time are appreciative of the tourism for our state but hate to stand in line for hours at a time because of tourists.

My husband had an idea. All the people who live here all the time would have "I live here" cards that would take them to the front of the line in the restaurants they frequent during the lean times of the year when there are no tourists. The "I live here" cards would be given out during those summer months to patrons of restaurants who are steady customers. I thought it was a great idea. Much better than a "groupon" or some similar fish sounding coupon.

Perhaps at this time of year, going crazy is a normal thing to do. For those in business, crazy equals money spent, a good thing for them. For those still in economic distress (a lot of people), it is probably not a good thing. Credit cards come out and money is spent that shouldn't be spent.

The crazy world is doing what it does every single year at this time. It reminds me of lemmings. Those were unusual looking animals (rodents?) who followed each other off cliffs because that was where everyone else was going.

Perhaps if we all stayed home more, planned our ventures out to malls and restaurants better and more importantly, put on our very best behavior and were kind and polite to each other, maybe it wouldn't be so crazy out there and maybe it would be a bit more Merry!

Anyway, that's my plan and I'm sticking to it. Home is where the heart is and it's where I am until after Santa's big retail day. The "reason for the season" they say is because of a great gift given to mankind. Buying presents in stores to obsession is not exactly how this great gift was supposed to be translated. But then, that's just my own personal opinion, me, the person who's staying home. This is where my gifts are, the furry ones, who love unconditionally and the husband who only asks for a hug, a kiss and a hot meal at the end of his long day. In all this craziness, I think we've forgotten we already have all the gifts we really need.

Christmas, Climbing Trees and Cold Weather

It's almost Christmas. You can't open a website online without being informed of the day, hour and minute until the biggest holiday of the year. I'm not a big fan of the commercial side of Christmas. Unless there are children involved, who needs to go out and spend a huge amount of money, cash or credit, on presents.

If I give a gift, it has to be something I know the person wants, needs or would love to have.  But to do that for a huge list of people because you have to is a lot of psychological pressure that is not needed at this time of year. I try to stay clear of the hoards of people pushing and shoving in the local shopping malls. Buying online is a much better, saner idea if you have to buy at all. The less, the better is my motto.

But I did buy myself a Christmas present this year. It's looking at me as I write this post. It arrived from Shanghai yesterday. I ordered it on Monday afternoon at the Apple store and it arrived on Friday. It's beautiful, shiny new and a joy to write on. This is my first blog post written on my new Apple MacBook Pro 17" laptop.

All day yesterday, after taking the new laptop out of the box and setting it on my living room table where I work, I walked back and forth by it, waiting to actually open it for a long time. I knew it was the beginning of a new era for me. As a long time Mac user, (can you say Macintosh SE?) I have evolved along with Apple since 1986. I was actually at the Superbowl in California where the famous Apple commercial aired. I still have the Macintosh Apple seat cushion everyone there received. The Miami Dolphins played the Raiders I think. It was rather overwhelming to be there and my first exposure to Apple is my most memorable moment.

Today I finally opened the MacBook Pro and started it up. Wow. I was so impressed. Wirelessly, I streamed items from my tiny 13" Macbook to the new Jumbotron Pro. I set my computer up within minutes all by myself (don't try this at home, I'm a professional!)
and seamlessly transferred to using the sleek, ergonomic computer. I love it!

So I wanted this blog post to be about the growth of my animal menagerie and their interactions with each other. In this tiny herd microcosm known as my household, everyone gets along with everyone. It's rather unsettling to know that so many disparate breeds and mixed breeds as well as different species can cohabit so easily.

My kittens are now adults. Very large, with glossy black coats, they slink around, acting smug about how they have all taught themselves (with no assistance from me) how to go in and out of both doggie doors. Now I have to refer to these doors ad dog & cat doors. I have one that goes from the house to the porch and another that goes from the porch into the small yard around the back of the house. This gives everyone a safe place to go when I am not here. All my animals are very proud of their doors and how they can go in and out of them at will, with no help from their humans. It makes them very superior animals!

Now that the kittens (I suppose I will always refer to them as kittens because they are my babies) are going in and out of the dog & cat doors, they have become quite brave, running here and there around the small yard and Spot (of course it was Spot!) even managed to end up somehow on the other side of the fence. She was quite upset about that and cried and cried until I finally heard her and let her in the gate. She was very relieved to come back into the house and go to bed in her kitty condo with her sisters.

Cold weather makes all the animals frisky. I think they, like we humans, appreciate the cool air and crispy days and nights as a bit of a relief from the humidity and heat of our very long summers. The horse don't walk from here to there in their pastures, they run, snorting and cavorting. The kittens are now climbing the Maple trees in the small yard. They think they are quite important looking down at me from the firsst branches of the largest of four trees.

I planted these trees when they were little saplings and it's hard to believe that these huge trees are now a virtual playground for three kittens I helped give birth to last March. But now I must close because Spot has decided that she needs attention (of course) and is trying very hard to add her two cents by rubbing her butt across my keyboard. Since this is my shiny new computer, this won't due and so I'm going to finish and give her the attention she feels is due right this very moment.

As she is now fast asleep and purring across both my arms, it seems the wisest thing to do!