I Told the Sky How Annoyed I Was

I just went through a freaky full moon. I just went through a week from hell. I just walked through the fires and tread the raging waters, carrying a balloon as I went, alternately angry and racked with laughter. Where to begin?

18 years ago, when my daughter was born? Life certainly changed then. And now she is informing me she is legally an adult and can drink in Canada, she can drink in Mexico, she can get a tattoo and work as a stripper. She can vote and go to war. Good for you, I think. But can you put your clothes away?

Her birthday was Tuesday. She has been so odd, so difficult to please all summer that I, veteran of abuse that I am, found myself with confidence whittled away to a bare shred of finest gossamer spider web nothing. Buy her a gift? And watch her lip subtly curl in a sneer? No. Not up for that. Gave her money and took her out for a meal. The rain poured as we went, though the western sky was sunny and clear and so we walked beneath the arch of a great rainbow. She thought it was there for her, and I thought it was there for me. Mothers remember their children's birthdays in a slightly different light.

We got through the meal and she didn't sneer or roll her eyes. A good thing. It has been a summer of such. She is off to college in 2 weeks. She is living more in the then than in the now. It's how she deals with it. This change, massive, like a continent altered by earthquake or hurricane.

The next day, with steamy condescension in her voice, she lectured me on perceived realities ahead. Her tone clearly said, You are stupid, and I don't need your help. And so I very calmly told her how her summer long sneers and sighs and nothing is good enough for this princess affected me, chipping away at my confidence until I did not even know what to give her for her birthday. I had given other gifts this summer that were met with 'So what'. And I told her that. All very matter-of-factly I told her that, and I told her more, and then I took myself off to my room, to read and be very far away from ungrateful changeling children becoming women, gawky chicks becoming regal swans and yet not as graceful as they will be once they have had more practice.

That night I dreamt of a beautiful silvery city, shining by a misty white and softly blue ocean. The edge of the world. I was driving her there. And I knew then, I was ready to let her go.

That was Wednesday. By Thursday, she was making an effort to be pleasant. I made an effort to be appreciative. Throughout this time, the rain fell while the sun shone, thunder boomed out of a blue sky, and the moon grew fuller, lighting up the midnight sky.

Friday morning, 5:45am. I open the back door and hook the tie-out to Little Bear's collar. I shut the door, attend to the morning tasks, hear him lunge at a cat, most likely, and then his woof, farther away. I opened the door, went down the porch steps and found his collar, broken, attached to the lead, the one I got special, the one that can take 1700 pounds worth of lunge. The lead held; the collar failed--the second he had broken this year.

When Little Bear runs away, it is an opportunity for panic. He kills cats, given the opportunity. He plays smart ass with the cars. He will not let me catch him. He rolls in stink and he eats nasty unnameable objects. But that morning, I felt a true sense of God's peace within me, and I was not worried--I thought I would first have my tea and my devotions, my Scripture reading, and my prayers. Then I would take out Bumby on a lead and try to find him.

And so we went. And Little Bear, intrigued, followed us. He came close enough for me to catch him, but Bumby leapt at him, and so, he skittered off. That pissed me off. I dragged Bumby back to the house, and made her go in. She barked, she yipped, I heard her through the window. I saw Little Bear up the hill. I set off after him. I kept going up, looking for him, and when I got nearly to the top, I happened to look back down the hill, and I see Little Bear crossing the road back into our driveway. Which meant I had to hoof it all the way back down to try to get him. As I walked back, I looked up at the sky, and I said to God, in an angry tone, "I really do not need this." If I were in a movie I would have shaken my fist at the sky too.

I must say here, that despite all this drama, I had wakened with a sense of calm. And that calm was still inside me, but it was eroding fast. My sense, my faith, that all would be well was slipping away from me.

So here comes Little Bear, back up the hill towards me, but over across the way. I live on a fairly busy road by small town standards. He had already lunged out at a passing truck and made me scream his name. I kept talking to him as he came up nearer to me. I had angled completely across the road by this time.

Little Bear is wild and wily for a domesticated dog. He will not ever come to me. What he will do is he will stop long enough to let me come to him. And so he did, under the ruse of sniffing at a tuft of grass. He let me approach him and praise him and stroke him and put the leash around his neck. Then we went back to the house and got Bumby and had our walk.

All this to say, God was testing me. God was waiting to see if I lost my cool and panicked. I almost did. God wasn't through with me either.

I got home and discovered the phone line was dead. I already did not have a working computer, and now no phone either. I called it in to the phone company and the computer voice told me it would be fixed by 5pm, Monday. 3 days away. Yippee.

The rest of the day was the usual crap. Work. Walking. I drove a borrowed car with a cracked windshield to get Little Bear a new collar. My daughter went with her Fuckhead Father (FF) for the weekend. I went to bed when it got dark, reading a thick novel, eloquent, beautiful, tragic and cruel.

Around 1am I heard a tremendous cat fight. It sounded awfully close, like maybe it was even inside. I got up to go out and look. The screen in the kitchen window was gone! I did a quick head count of the cats and discovered one was gone. I shut the window fast, and found flip flops and went outside, into the heavy dewey wet, into the silvery moonlight, like walking into water. I looked for the screen. It was nowhere I could see. I called the cat. I walked down into the yard, calling his name, softly. I went back inside and got Little Bear, wanting to see how he would react once he was outside. He acted as if nothing were amiss. I looked for the screen some more, I circled the house calling the cat. Finally I went back inside. And there was the cat standing in the kitchen. Where had he been? I wedged a wooden spoon in the window to make sure it stayed shut, for I was properly freaked out by then, thinking how easy it was for someone, any one, anything, to get into the house--and with the dead phone, I was utterly unable to call 911. I went back to bed and prayed prayers of thanksgiving to God while hearing another cat fight continuing on outside my window. I was so mindfully thankful we were all inside and safe. Thankful no cats had jumped out the window into the night, thankful no cats or rabid raccoons or whatevers had jumped in the window into the house!

I was grateful and mindful of all our blessings. But I was also slightly rattled out of my mind, as were the cats long into the next day. Even so, God had spoken to me yet again, in the deep of the night, lit by a silvery moon, God had called to me to respond, and I rose from my sleep and stepped into the darkness and I responded and never felt afraid, just saw what needed to be done, and did it. (Though as I did it, a part of my mind reminded me of how such scenes play out in movies, with the woman taken unawares by creepy men or space aliens hiding in the vines. A part of my mind was also thinking, as I walked through the cold wet grass calling the missing cat that actually I wouldn't mind having one cat less, that it'd be a bit of a relief.)

I had been having a crisis of faith all week. Exhausted, frustrated, discouraged. Saying to the Lord, "I believe; help my unbelief". He heard me. It was rough and rocky and potentially scary but I felt like I was being tested, tested to a deeper level of faith in the one God who loves and cares for us, who holds us in the palm of his hands, who shelters us under his great wings. Ragged and rattled, I had lost the feel of that assurance, but by the end of Friday into Saturday, I most securely had it back.

Until next time, I remain, your friend, Rozenkraai