Look! I pointed at the shadow image nestled by a broken branch, but Blake couldn’t spot its dark fat body in the waning light.

I whispered, Wait. And the barred owl took flight again, its remarkable wingspan throwing shade at me.

Blake said, “I expect you’ll be seeing more of this.”

And I pulled his words into a list I am archiving:

Kristy said: I knew something special would happen here.
Forrest said: This is a once in a lifetime home.
James said: This is a good place.

I came home eager to research the meaning of seeing the barred owl at Calle Cinco. Then was stopped in my tracks by happenstance while I listened to a Maria Popova interview where she dismissed seeing other as meaningful instead stating other deserves only observation.

As coincidences with the owl and dodging meaning continue, in came a surprise gift from my friend Susie – Popova’s divination cards because she knows I keenly observe the glory of birds in my coastal town.

I ruminated on the owl who crossed my path, who exists independent of me.

I exist as an observer of its beauty, its magic, the shadow it cast as it flew, and the shade it threw in the thinning light with my thoughts of me as the center of its universe.

Coincidentally, I pulled the barred owl card from the divination deck this morning – “for in the glare of/how they appear and/how you imagine them to be/you cannot see their shadow. And I observed myself, in the habit of asking why, and not able to close a door, a tomb if you would, because I have steadily waited for this answer to find me.

I have looked so long in that rearview mirror trying to pull meaning into the present and have failed with one particular encounter. I don’t know why I let La Bruja in, it perplexes me, I gave her access, wove her into my fabric, when I could clearly see the warning signs from the get-go. I gave up on love because I didn’t trust myself again. I didn’t believe this could be a one-off outlier.

The question plagued my thoughts for years – why why why – did I let La Bruja in? Tin’s therapist said I had an image of her as a latch-key six year old, when I wasn’t seeing the 50-year-old bitch standing in front of me. That seemed harsh but he said as long as she has breath, you will do battle. I like to think I could not see her shadow because I made up a biography about her, that she woulda, coulda embodied. My fretting and gnashing comes from knowing I did see her shadow early on and kept going with my story anyway.

This stubbornness in me defies expectations.

As I embark on a new and my best chapter, I am closing doors – I attract glittery radiant magic and welcome the open-hearted enchantment that comes with wise knowing. I rest in my clarity: when I encounter “other” there will always be me, in my own story, independent as observer. Time granted me the grace to see La Bruja’s shadow for what it truly was – hers, not mine – I was blessed to know to walk away, and I regret it has taken so much time to learn how to not look back.

Viva Calle Cinco! Viva the next chapter! Viva!

Note: Calle Cinco is a not street where I will live the next chapter as I play my highlight reel and create anew.

Yesterday, a priest asked if he could stay in the Tin Shed to write because he needed to get away from his home to do it. I said, I know, I have to leave too. Three weeks ago, I flew to Mexico City to write, to work on a book that has been rummaging in my brain seeking air, breath, flight.

In my studio apartment overlooking the Palacio del Bellas Artes, I lay in my king-sized bed and looked at the moon through the glass doors, the full Flower Moon, and wondered about my writing.

I wrote dispatches to anchor the moments in time:

I woke up today and said Buenos Días, Mexico! You charm all my senses – the warmth of your people, the ancient architecture, colorful art, lively music, and yummy food across every square inch. I followed my GPS yesterday to the Soumaya Museum and to a restaurant in Polanco. The GPS kept recalibrating, and I was getting further away from my destination with every step. I walked for nearly two hours and although this was annoying, I looked down once in a crowd and noticed a woman wearing duck shoes.

I walked and walked till I got to Avenida President Masaryk (the Rodeo Drive of Mexico City) and began passing high-end shops looking for this restaurant I wanted to try, I was 650 feet away according to GPS. The luxury stores each had a topiary display and with throngs of camera phones snapping shots of loved ones as they positioned themselves as part of the display.

I weaved in and around the crowds, and looked down at my GPS and the restaurant was now 950 feet away – impossible to map. The heat and hunger grew louder. A man was walking towards me with two large golden retrievers on leashes, he smiled, I smiled, I glanced at the building with large metal numbers – 111 – and made a note. Robin from The Enchanted Fox in Boston had clocked the time when she was telling my future – “1:11” she remarked, “make a note.” Robin encouraged me to go where I felt most alive, Mexico City. She wanted me to wear a skirt like those worn in the Ballet Folklorico performed at the Palacio across the street from my apartment. She wanted me to go find love. “What is stopping you?” she asked.

The more I listened to what I needed, the more I pushed away my plans. My body needed rest. I continued daily visits to the Fountain of Venus in Alameda Square across from my apartment. Venus always wends herself into any conversation about me, my future, and my spirit. She is the Goddess of Love after all. One morning, I took the two red string bracelets I had been wearing – one from the indigenous Shaman I met in Mexico City last September who blew smoke all over me from a large conch shell, and one placed on my wrist with a prayer by my friend, Marian. Both bracelets had come off a few days before my trip – I dropped them in the fountain and whispered to her, do your magic.

I never did get to that restaurant, I passed Klein’s, a busy deli in Polanco, an historic Jewish neighborhood. I passed other eateries, focused on the very restaurant I was seeking because it had vegetarian fare, but the restaurant continued to elude me on GPS, and I was sagging under the weight of the past noon sun and an empty stomach. I doubled back and went into a place that looked like I could sit and people watch.

I ordered ribeye tacos and was amused to see the paper thin slices of aged roast beef in tortillas. The tonic or aqua quina, in my glass, the guacamole with circular chips sticking out to my right, the large opened windows looking out to the tree-lined street offered me the repose I desired.

It didn’t matter what I was seeking, I had found what I had come to Mexico City for – every day I woke up in this place, I fell more in love with my life, past, present and future. As corny as this sounds, this is true for me, I found L.O.V.E.:

Because the greatest love of all
Is happening to me
I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all

I don’t know why that characteristic was suspect to me, but I do know I’ve spent the better part of the last years exploring trauma and how it has affected my son and myself. The culmination of this investigation has been a real distrust of behavior deemed relentless.

In the following definition of relentless, I see why the adjective makes me bristle:

Relentless describes something that is harsh, unforgiving, and persistently unyielding. Whether you are fighting to survive, chasing an ambitious goal, or dealing with an unending barrage of stress, being relentless means you never stop, let up, or take “no” for an answer.

I was watching an Instagram reel of a girl who stumbled during a track race. She was all limbs in that awkward way young teens have of looking like jellyfish floating through water, limbs going this way and that. She quickly recovered and went on to win the race. Watching her fierce determination as she ran to catch up, surpassed the front runners, then circled round and round at break neck speed to win – I wondered why? What was inside of this young stick figure that was driving her so madly to finish first? My heart hurt for her.

Earlier this month, I arrived in Mexico City to reflect and write; I found after a day alone, away from my madding life, I was inclined to do neither. I met myself, fully present without any fear of missing out if I didn’t do something or of missing anything really that would be needed to enjoy my day.

I wasn’t even curious as to why it was this way – although I have spent an entire lifetime running at breakneck speed like the young track star chasing an ambitious goal, dealing with an unending barrage of stress … never taking no for an answer, and now I have a lot of compassion for her and me. Slow down I want to advise her — want to warn me.

I jotted down notes in Mexico City, memories that snaked in during the presence of the day, scenes from my childhood, teen years, and now in adulthood which is edging quickly over the hill – these were chapters in my life – some notes where not even chapters, only scenes.

Flight from GPT to DFW on way to CDMX – an under three foot tall young girl with large hazel eyes gazed at me and I smiled down at her. Often, I forget I am bald and children are fascinated at the sight of me, and they remind me with their sneaky stares. This young girl smiled big back at me. How did she know I was smiling? I had a germ mask on. I reckoned it was my eyes.

I was eight years old when my mother pulled up to the theater near our house and let my sister and I out to see The Graduate. We lived in Brooklyn and she gave us sticky salty popcorn balls mixed with caramel. The grey-haired woman at the box office, whose face was a map of spider veins, asked if our mother knew we were going to this movie, and we both pointed to the car where my mom was parked watching us go in. My mom flicked her golden hair out of her face and waved back, smiling. My sister, then nine years old, and I walked through the lobby into the dark theater. It was after Dustin Hoffman asked, “Mrs. Robinson are you trying to seduce me?” that I wondered if we should be watching this movie alone, or at all. 

When I was in my 50s, I walked into the office of Ruby Slipper Restaurant Group to apply for their marketing director position. The man who interviewed me was at least 30 years my junior. The other employees I noticed scattered through the small office space were junior to him. The interview got underway with the young man asking me about my experience – a solid forty years of marketing and development – as I recounted my history, I watched his gaze dart from computer screen to me, from me to computer screen, and back again, over again – and I had a sinking feeling I shouldn’t be interviewing anywhere given the weight of my need versus the superficial interest I was clocking.

Recently, I was on a Google meet with a young woman who had founded the BlackAmericana Fest in New Orleans. The Fest is in its third year and a friend had connected us to see if there was any overlap between what we are doing at 100 Men Hall and their mission. The young woman had a power point deck presentation with statistics ranging from how many visitors, how many visitors said they would return, many statistics, many questions answered, and she named the roll out into year-round programming that they envisioned as an adjunct to the Fest. Grantors and funders always ask for this information about the Hall’s events. I absorbed all of her presentation sitting in the Hall’s bar area surrounded by original works of art that help us tell our story, and I felt equally impressed and tired. I wondered if I should be leaving this place sooner, rather than wait one more minute.  

Soy una criatura que vive debajo del nivel del mar y la altitud de aquí me afecta muchísimo. I wrote this down to remember. I had been telling Mexicans I am a person who lives below the sea. I looked up a better translation and thought dummy, I’m not a mermaid ffs! I am a creature who lives below sea level and the altitude here affects me quite a bit.

Know what the opposite of relentless is? Antonyms: intermittent, relenting, surrendering, yielding, WEAK. 

Wow, it feels like weakness, but I don’t want a pejorative alternative to relentless – I want to describe a quality not relentless and not weak, a quality of being that takes it all in, slows the reaction to find the response that feels right at the time, which allows for getting it wrong without fearing wrong has no unwinding characteristic to unlock, for not buying into every damn destination needs to be arrived at within breakneck speed philosophy … perhaps some things work better on slow burn, with a savoring, a pleasure passage to the unknowing.

More will be revealed (Jerri – my dearly departed friend, I’ve kept this saying of yours and will take it to my grave.)

In this tired state of mind, I went to Mexico City for my birthday. There were many cogent reasons for going: a psychic had told me to go, I had felt “alive” the last time I was there, and I had purchased a pendant from Sweet Bird that said on the back: Go Where You Feel Most Alive, and so I did.

Mexico City is not a logical choice for me – it is 7,350 feet above sea level, and I am prone to altitude sickness. I already have intermittent asthma and shallow breathing, and was already fatigued before I climbed above sea level for this trip. The altitude there cost me a lot in terms of needing to rest often and drink copious amounts of fluids of which magically never seemed to leave my body or quench my thirst.

The ambience is what called me back. In Mexico City, the ambience is in Spanish and that’s what endears me. The people in the streets are shouting and speaking in Spanish. The traffic sounds like Spanish – the staccato honk honk, beep beep, ay ay ay, whoosh whoosh. The music from boomboxes is Spanish-inflected English covers of American pop songs. The pace of Mexico City moves so fast on first blush, but it’s a false positive, because speed is not reflected on the faces of Mexicans, who all seem to smile warmly while they move lackadaisically through the streets or behind the wheel of an Uber in maddening traffic.

I had gone on this trip to get away and to write. I discovered after a couple of days that I had no desire to write. I couldn’t come up with one good reason why I should be writing. Every day, I woke slowly, had my coffee near, not on, the balcony that overlooked the Palacio de Bellas Artes. I’m not a balcony person, or any high iffy architectural surface that has the potential to fall hundreds of feet because a structural engineer was not on their A-game when it was built. So I sat balcony adjacent and safely sipped my Nespresso.

Here’s what I did not do: I did not stand on the balcony either. I did not listen to a meditation. I did not read. I did not write. I did not text anybody. I did not death scroll social media. I did not wish to be anywhere else.

Here’s what I did do: I stared at the Palacio de Bellas Artes and fondly remembered the Tiffany glass curtain I had seen last time I was there. I watched the endless parade of people gathering in the square in front and on the sidewalks below. I looked at the sky. I thought about what outfit I would wear that day.

I had no agenda but a loose idea of some places I had not seen before and wanted to see. I had other places I wanted to discover like a great coffee shop for people watching. I wanted to maybe hear live music at a club.

Each day, I would wake with the same ambition, to sip my coffee and look at the Palacio and think of what I would wear and which one of the places I might decide to go that day. I felt free. I can’t remember when the last time or if ever that I have lived on my own terms – my own agenda – with no judgment about productivity or decisions I made. When you have one goal and that is to go out into the city looking cute, everything else pales in comparison.

Each day greeted me back with tremendous joy, I found myself curiously sporting a wide Mexican smile and whether we blame the altitude or my lack of productivity, I was tired enough every day to move lackadaisically. One of my Uber drivers pontificated on the Decline of the Imperialist United States, and he told me “Mexicans have the same problems as Americans, the same economic issues, the same cultural problems, the same political disappointments, but we are happy. We live our life every day. Everyone asks me why are Mexicans so happy? We just are.”

Each game, before they went on the field, he would huddle and tell them to play the highlight reel.

I was thinking of the nonbelievers I have met recently as I created my highlight reel – the ones who don’t believe in this woo woo technology. Everything has an explanation. There is no mystery, no agency in what happens next.

I’ve been in a real dilemma lately – I thought I had found my anchor into my Judaism, keeping the traditions that still move me, while creating my own traditions to include a more expansive view of my spirituality and Judaism. This is what I was discussing with Adam, my therapist, who is also Jewish. He is one of the few people I am able to speak to and say things like, “It really bothers me that there are so many Jewish names on this Epstein list.” To which he responds, “Yes, we have spoken about that in my congregation.”

I also say things to Adam about the conflict of having an orthodox upbringing and yet not being able to reach back into it for the wisdom I desire right now, I want to speak to someone I respect, who respects our beliefs, about not being able to abide what is happening in Israel (no more than I can abide by what is happening Russia or here in the U.S. of A). I want the Israeli government to change, to change profoundly, to espouse the Jewish traditions I uphold – tikkun olam – to show the world the beauty in Judaism, not this ugliness that is so broken, it is nameless – a chasm into the soul.

I want the kernel of my Judaism to grow and stretch beyond dogma and embrace the best of what my culture has taught me. But I suffer from this image that is being played out on the international stage, bereft of humanity. Warmongers. Avarice.

I went to Israel as a young woman, with a group of other teenagers, and there at the wailing wall, I opened my prayer book, stepped towards the wall and crammed the paper prayers for my loved ones into the crevices of the ancient cracks, and right as I began to step back to pray, a bird shit on the open pages of the sacred text. Here’s where my woo woo comes in – if you are a nonbeliever, you would think I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I beg to differ, because I’m fully into woo woo and subscribe to the superstition that getting pooped on by a bird is a sign of good luck, fortune, and a positive omen that I have been chosen and blessed. I don’t make this stuff up – this is a superstition across many cultures and I inherited many ancient ones in my DNA.

In Italy, they believe it is good luck to step in dogshit.

You could say well there is so much on the streets there in Italy, but I would tell you this: if you step in dogshit and think instead, this has ruined your day – that’s on you, pal.

The other night in ACA, another member told of a dream that led to a connection with her dead grandmother. She had a nightmare calling for her grandmother to help, and then the next day, she helped a woman, her grandmother’s age, who was wearing a necklace with her grandmother’s name on it.

All this to say, I’m going to play the highlight reel, the one I have now created – it is a success story of where I am now – and the now could be anytime, present or future – and my reel asks: have I written that book, put down my pen, met a lover, transitioned the Hall, moved away? – and answers: more will be revealed, know this, wherever you find me now, there is love.

I have spent the last days wondering. I was in an enmeshed family until I was 18, and then I was married nearly 99% of the years between 20 and 50 years old. I entered a live-in relationship before my 50^th birthday, where I said to myself there are going to be no exit signs this time. I said I will stay in this relationship and work it out and so from the second day in, when I was being lied to by this person I call La Bruja, I kept the exits sealed shut, and when La Bruja glommed onto all the surfaces in my life – (the LaLa, my dream house on Bayou St. John, my favorite chair, my side of the bed, my journey to adoption, even my love of pelicans) – I didn’t listen to a close friend who warned me she was no good, I didn’t listen to my gut that told me to get out, I stayed without looking at the exits and did not even glance for a way out. 

Two years later, I was beyond done with this ill-conceived plan and the exit signs burned in my vision. During those two years, I had been lied to, manipulated, pinched, slapped, gaslighted, used, overwhelmed, taken advantage of – I’d seen my young son shaken, pinched, yelled at for having nightmares, abandoned over and over again – and I had had ENOUGH. Those exit signs – what was I thinking? I was thinking about all those times I had left and wondered if I should have stayed. I’d wondered for too long about the loving men I might have stayed with but didn’t. I did not trust myself enough then to know that all those times I had left – I had my reasons. And they were good enough.

Lord Today!

It’s a pattern of always leaving, even places where I call home, albeit I do not blame my parents as much as their proclivity to move constantly for why staying in one place also seems elusive. I have lived all over the place, in and out of the country growing up, and the leaving had always been sudden, so much so that when I first lived in a flat in San Francisco for five years – which had been my longest residency – I freaked when my husband and I moved. In 2018, I came to Bay Saint Louis as a landing place, I had to get out of New Orleans, I had to get my son out, and now I’ve been here almost eight years, a record breaker. 

I never knew how to ask for my solitude when I was paired up, until it was robbed from me during my stint with La Bruja. I learned from trying to stay that I should listen to myself and not ideas like no exits – something I had read in someone else’s self-help book. In my imaginings, I’m staying and finding connection, but I know enough now to follow my spirit and not my plans.

I seek company so carefully, selectively, and still not a lot. Even when settling in, I’ve dreamed of where I might go next, and so far, nothing has revealed itself. I love my small community of friends and this small town and maybe my fantasies of travel and moving to far-away places is only that, a fantasy for right now. Then again, I’m okay with being true to who I am, to being someone who is always leaving. 

What is vivid for me was the walk to school with my brother and sister, where my brother usually had a ball he was playing with and sometimes it would land inside the overgrown fields and one time I went to get it and I saw an iguana crawling out from the grasses. This has been my memory for as long as I could remember. 

Scratch that memory, I spoke with my brother, Rafael this morning and it turns out we lived in Villa Caparra Heights, and my sister and I went to Academia San José, but my brother went to Island School. This is all near Bayamón but not in Bayamón. And he said he remembered mom drove us to school but he walked. Anyway, my memories sometimes come pouring in, in phrases, not full sentences. We did walk down the street – Calle Genóva – our street and there were fields of wild grass and iguanas – but these are pieces parts of the narrative that will never be complete as I remember it. 

In 2008, I traveled to Puerto Rico for a business perk trip, it was three years after Katrina, it was two years since I divorced, it was one year after I had moved into the LaLa on Bayou St. John. It was on a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend, and I had asked my friend Lisa to join me – she lives in California. I didn’t recognize the island, so many tall buildings had been erected, it looked as if the city had had a population and building explosion. It was a very different place from the one of my childhood memory. 

I was there with colleagues and had met up with new friends, Ivette, Nancy and Olga, who I had met through a new neighbor and friend back home on Bayou St. John, Jeri Young. My friend Jeri died during a knee operation – it was one of the saddest pieces of news I’ve ever received. Her ex-girlfriend, Ivette, who is from Puerto Rico, and I still lament together her passing. 

I give this all as background as to why I named the cat I recently adopted Benito. Bad Bunny’s full name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio and he was born in Bayamón. And I have fallen in love with Bad Bunny because of his great love for Puerto Rico and because of his Superbowl half-time performance and because I believed that I had lived in Bayamón. I’ve also been falling back in love with my heritage and my culture and although I ran from anything that smacked of my complex ancestry, I now look at all of it as a tremendous gift. 

In 2016, my dog’s veterinarian posted on Facebook a beautiful Siamese kitten that she said was going to be euthanized because the mother had feline leukemia and had already been euthanized. I immediately googled Feline Leukemia and learned it was possible the test could read positive with only a trace of it in the kitten’s system because of the mother’s milk. It also said there was a possibility for a cat to live a few years even if they did positively have Feline Leukemia. 

Tin and I discussed this for a minute – we both had cat attachment issues – my brother Bill has a cat name Little, who never comes out of his room when anyone is over, and Tin had fallen very much in love with Little the times we had visited, and cried when we left both cat and family – and so we decided we would adopt this kitten, and name it Little, and give it the best life possible no matter how long it had to live. I had already become accustomed to adopting geriatric dogs and knew that even a few years meant the world to them (and to me). 

Sadly, Little did have feline leukemia – for real, not just traces of it – and he lived for only fourteen months. Enough time to fall madly in love him. During his time with us, he would sit in the window and Tin’s school was next door, and all of the school children and parents would pass and say hi to Little on the daily. As Little grew sicker (unbeknownst to us he was so sick) he became more affectionate, more limp, more malleable, he became more like an accessory and he basically lived in the bathroom sink – when not in the sink, he would drape himself on my neck, on my lap, and even draped himself on a fellow writer’s head in a writer’s group. When Little died – I cried and sobbed. Tin cried. And the entire school inquired about what happened to the cat in the window. We taped a sign up with a photo of Little that said he had passed away. Everyone stopped to read the sign, and they all walked away sad. 

Not too many weeks later, there appeared two kittens near my front stoop. I began putting food out for them and water. One kitten disappeared so I was feeding the sole kitten who remained. I was hoping to make friends with him, but I couldn’t get close. One day, I came home, and the kitten was dead in the street having been hit by a car. I sat on the curb and cried so hard I couldn’t get up. My neighbor came out, a big burly guy, and I pointed to the kitten, ugly crying, and asked him to please help me get his body out of the street.  

It was then I decided to never, ever adopt a cat again in my life. I think cats and their lives bring out all the grief you have not processed and all the love you have not given and it is too much (for me). So a few weeks later, when there was a hard freeze over a couple of days in New Orleans, and a woman posted a tabby looking cat who had been left out in the freeze – I told myself I’m not caring about that cat and kept scrolling. Then I was haunted by the cat as it got colder outside while we were in a 100-year-old house that could barely keep a temperature of 60 degrees going. 

I went back and commented on her post to let me know if the owners didn’t turn up. She posted that she had made a bed with a heating pad on her porch because she had other cats inside that would not get along with this stranger. I couldn’t stop thinking about the poor cat and why he would be outside since he was such a handsome cat. I told her we would “foster” this cat. But by then, she had taken him to her vet, gotten his shots, and found the owner who said they didn’t want him. What? I said, okay I’ll take him. We were not in a financial position to have a cat or any pet or even have a conversation or even to pay her back for her expenses for having done all this for a stranger cat. 

She brought the cat over and that is how Lord Chill came to live with us. Oh, how we loved Lord Chill after saying we would never love a cat like we had loved Little. We loved Lord Chill so much, and when we moved to Mississippi later that same year, Lord Chill, Chilly, Chilly Willy Bang Bang, became a country cat, the Hall cat – roaming the area, boxing with foxes, and making friends with the neighborhood cats like Panther and Indie. Chilly became the 100 Men Hall mascot. He was everywhere and he was the PERFECT companion. 

Then before his 13^th birthday, Chilly was killed by either my neighbor’s pit bull or a coyote. My next door neighbor found him under her house and my friend, Terry, crawled under there and retrieved his body and we buried him. Oh, that was a sad day. That sad day became sad week and now months. And when I would go out of town and come home and there was no Chilly to greet me, I felt bereft of that certain kind of gentle love that Chilly provided. And I swore I would never have a cat again. 

I spoke to my therapist about Chilly. I said I just miss him so much. I really had a deep loss heart ache over Chilly. He was such a great cat. My friend, Michelle, created a plaque for Chilly to put in the Hall much like the sign we had made for Little in the window – because everyone loved Little, and everyone also loved Lord Chill. But no more, I was done with that kind of heart ache. No more cats!

And then a friend posted a photo of an orange kitten; I had always been smitten with orange kittens, but never had one. In her post, she said someone come get this kitten. So I DM’d her, what’s wrong with the kitten? She said she had a small house, a large German Shepherd, a large cat, and kids and a husband and no room for another pet in their house. I said, I’ll come look at him to just have a look see. 

I walked up to her front door and when it opened, Benito strolled out, then a German Shepherd, then another cat followed. My friend said that the cat had just appeared out of nowhere, someone said it had been living in the barn by her, and no one claimed it but it was so loving and seemed like a cat that had belonged to someone. She had posted all around her neighborhood and no one claimed the cat. I had stopped at Walmart on the way and bought: food, bed, litter box, litter, treats, carrier and on the way home had called my vet to make an appointment to bring him in for shots. 

They had an appointment the next day. So we went home. I was going to separate the dogs from the kitten, so that they could smell each other through the doorway to get to know each other. I had put the dogs in the Hall and carried Benito inside in the carrier, but before I could get the door closed between them, Benito strolled out underneath the dogs like nothing. Wow, I stood back, trying to see if when the dogs poked their noses in his face if he would scratch them, hiss, react, but nothing. 

Then as I continued with my day, Benito followed me everywhere, draped himself on me, slept nonstop, and in a few hours of this kind of behavior, I began to freak out. I began to suspect that he too, had feline leukemia. And this opened the floodgates – I saw similar behavior to Little – the lethargy, draping of his body when you picked him up or he was near you, the lack of concern of the dogs. I even inspected his gums to see if they were pale and they were! I freaked out. My kitten had feline leukemia! I text my friend and asked if her cat was vaccinated because I suspected this kitten, who had played with her cat, had it. 

A friend had asked me to walk that morning but I said I was in Pass Christian doing something and because of the mysteriousness of my response, I later sent her a photo of Benito and said this was what I was doing. She planned to stop by and meet Benito. But soon enough I became convinced that Benito had feline leukemia and would need to be euthanized at some point and I didn’t want my friend to meet this beautiful orange kitten and know he was going to be gone soon. I even started trying not to care about the kitten anymore because I didn’t want to get my heart broken again. 

At one point, my critical parent (a term from my Adult Children of Alcoholic’s group) appeared and questioned my deserving a healthy orange cat’s love. Luckily, our last Tuesday ACA meeting was steeped in replacing the critical parent with a loving parent. So I was trying to say you don’t know. You don’t know. The next morning, I woke up and said I might be wrong. I might be wrong. I hope I am wrong. I called my vet and said before any vaccinations are administered, I want to have him tested because I suspected he has feline leukemia. Turns out my vet had run out of tests, they were on order, and they would have to send bloodwork out to a lab and it would take a few days to get results. So I cancelled the appointment and called the Hospital in Diamondhead – they did have tests and could see him at 3PM. 

By the time I brought him into the vet, 30 hours after meeting him, I knew he had feline leukemia, I hoped I was wrong, but he had been sleeping nonstop, he draped himself over my lap, foot, head, or any body part that was still, and he rarely opened his squinty eyes. I told the front desk person about my diagnosis. I told the vet tech about my diagnosis. So when the vet walked into the room 20 minutes later and told me the test was negative, I said, What? Wait, what? I was so confused and had already been crying because he would have to be euthanized maybe even that day.

I asked the vet how come Benito behaved the way he did. He weighs nine pounds, he is probably nine months old, he is healthy, and she said, he is an orange cat. A male orange cat. They are the most chill cats in the world. You have yourself a male orange cat, welcome to the club.  

I felt a flood of emotions but perhaps the singular feeling was overwhelming love I already had for this cat, this orange cat, this kitten who is now called Benito, or bad kitty, or bonito Benito, who is a ginger like I was when I had hair, who has already claimed my home as his place and we are all good with this updated version of the story. Not necessarily happily ever after, but happily in a better place than 29 hours ago. 

Also, one more thing, my brother Rafael said in our rambling memory lane conversation this morning, something not about Puerto Rico, it was that he thinks what attracted my mother to my father was one part my dad’s intellect and the other part was his music.

My father’s music is a topic we will explore at another time because this has indeed followed me into my now life. 

Today, I woke anxious. I was thinking about walking into my next chapter, since I’ve been giving it a lot of thought and energy. And even starting to write down scenarios. And discuss with a select few my options. I wanted to call my friend who I call when I go in-depth on things that I’m mulling over to talk about all the options, the outline, the memo, the ideas, the vision, the dream, and instead of calling – after I read my Affirmations for adult children of alcoholics, Courage to Change (AlAnon) and Tending Dandelions (Tending Dandelions: Honest Meditations for Mothers …) – all of which have become my morning devotionals, I noticed that I was being asked to do something else with this day. Each page I read encouraged my presence and asked that I focus on now-ness today.

Today, is my day to be present.

My neighbor came over to help me change a lock, put my irrigation system back together after the freeze, move the standing heater, the picnic table, along with other to-do things this place requires. I was finishing up when another friend was driving by – one who has told me that something is wrong with my future plans which had caused me to doubt what I am doing – only this time, I was ready. Like a petulant child, I responded with, “No, that is your perspective, not mine!” Another friend stopped in with family to see the Hall and I was relieved from protecting my boundary duties.

I began sweeping all the dead leaves from my driveway, and I noticed something. The sun was shining. The birds were singing. The air was crisp. Every person near and far was at a Mardi Gras parade.

And I had three chairs right there. I rearranged their arrangement. Then I sat in the red one and put a leg up on each of the white ones and right then and there, I created now.

I don’t want to be a futures trader. I don’t want to be a day trader. I want to be here, now.

This is my training for my next chapter. How to immerse myself in now-ness. Today I got an A+.

Only there was a glitch, permits were delayed, bureaucracy, not Stonewater’s, but external local offices, and so Tin was in a holding pattern and it was suggested that a new program should be found, like now. The Carpenter Shed was put on the table. Reluctantly, I called them, and then excitedly, I engaged them – a six-month program that takes older teens like Tin and helps them navigate into the next steps on becoming an adult – helping them obtain driver’s license, academic degree, part-time job, checking account – teaching them how to launch into adulthood with the help of a life coach and a therapist who work together to help the individual teen pick out his own plan and acquire the tools to execute it.

My plan had been even more simple – pick Tin up from Stonewater, get to Monroe, LA where TCS is, stay in an Air BnB, and take him to the school on Monday. I would have some time with him for meals and talks. It was Friday, remember, the day before Icemaggedon was going to hit the area – and despite all the warnings – I stocked up on groceries at WalMart on an empty stomach, which means I really stocked up, and drove straight into the beast to get him. And we drove to Monroe, stopping first to make sure the car had a full tank of gas, just in case. I had brought a lantern,just in case. I had accidentally put two scented candles with my things by (lucky) accident.

Friday night, the temperatures began to drop, the rain fell, and insta presto ice formed, and Saturday by 2PM, the electricity was out across the region, water was dripping at a bare minimum stream, and the house went from pleasantly toasty to unbearably frigid with condensation showing our breath. Large tree branches were falling all around us – one fell inches behind our car – on each side of the house we heard sonic booms and saw a branch take down the electrical pole across the street with all its wires mangled into the icy branches, then another electrical wire had crossed the opposite corner blocking the path for vehicles. The ice was too much for these Southern trees unused to bearing the weight.

So it began, four pots of water filled to the brim and put to boil on the gas stove that luckily was still working. Once they were boiling, I heated frying pans on top and would place them where we were sitting. Both of my battery chargers for the phone were safely on my desk at home in Bay Saint Louis, and the only charger became the car, which sat under several tall trees, one with a branch, broken, and hanging onto another branch. Widow makers. The same tree had dropped the long thick gnarly branch directly behind our car blocking us from getting out of the driveway. Two cars were stuck in ice across the street. So our safety in the car, despite it’s delicious warmth and charging abilities, was precarious. To get in the car with its doors frozen shut, I warmed a dry blanket on one of the frying pans on one of the boiling water pots and when it was warm enough, I went and draped it across the driver’s door, and then laid my body back on the towel for body heat and with our gentle warmth, the door opened without breaking anything on the car.

There was no internet, so we could not tell the weather or what was happening around us. Updates were delivered by Ed, who would find places we could walk to if it got really bad – 2.5 miles there was a Waffle House open, 1.5 miles there was a Catholic Church possibly open. We had shut off all the rooms that were not necessary to get the kitchen warm and spread any of its heat to the dining and living room. Everything else in the house was ice cold. Condensation obscured the windows and two framed artworks slipped from the wall onto the floor even though the nails were still there.

At night, I warmed our beds with frying pans and we got under blankets and mattress protectors we found in a closet, fully dressed in our winter clothes times three, and were able to sleep on night one. Day two, the refrigerator started warming on the inside and so I took bags of lettuce and cheese into my room which was colder and put the freezer items outside on the icy back steps. Two trees had fallen in the back yard. I had washed three loads of laundry on Friday night that Tin brought with him from Stonewater and together with what I brought from home made piles on the sunroom (ha!) couch – tee shirts, long sleeved shirts, pants, shorts, hoodies, socks, underwear. All clean for possibly the first time since the last time I was able to get a hold of his clothes – and over the course of the three frigid and boring days, Tin pulled articles of clothing from its stack and tried it on and left it in a crumpled heap on the dark floor of his frigid bedroom.

Breathe in icy air, breathe out ice air. My new mantra.

I had moved from my bedroom to the sofa in the living room with three blankets, and I used four warming pots to get it warm under the covers and then drank copious amounts of hot tea and hot chocolate. We had food – which I cooked day in and day out on the stove with only a trickle of water to clean the dishes afterwards. We had our two candles – one in the bathroom, which was pitch black because the walls were painted black and the window panes were covered with mirrors. We had our lantern that had to be charged in the death car. So we used it sparingly. The other candle sat on the coffee table in the living room. Tin found 6 LED tea lights in a drawer and he put them in his bedroom. There had been a candelabra on the breakfront with tapered candles that we moved to the coffee table to light for night time.

All day and night, branches were falling out of the tree tops or entire trees came down in the backyard, side yard, front yard, and across the street, and down the street. The branches landed and sounded like sonic BOOMS. Infrequently, a large truck would drive by slowly. Once, we saw an Entergy truck but we had already gotten word from Ed who had sent what the Monroe Mayor had written that was it was too dangerous for the Entergy lineman to work and so they were holding off. Oxford – we heard – was in worse shape, though I don’t know who was judging Icemaggedon.

On day three, I asked the owner of the Air BnB – who told me her son had a four wheel drive – if she could get the branch behind our car moved or cut up or just out of the way. I just thought when the time came to leave, we couldn’t get out. And then someone knocked on the door – Tin’s soon-to-be life coach had come to check on us. He walked in and I was on the couch with four pots on me on top of three blankets and he said, “We could get you to Ruston, to an Air BnB with heat.”

I told him we’d think about it.

A friend of mine in California is a life coach. She once told me that everybody is born naturally resourceful, creative and whole. I had summoned all three to get through Icemageddon, and I felt I had finally cracked the nut – charge the lantern and phone while the car is running but we are not sitting in it, heat up the kitchen so that the warmth spreads to two more rooms, use the dripping faucet to refill the pots, freezer items outside, cold items in my now unused bedroom, found an espresso pot and was able to make coffee on the stove, heat flat pans on top of the boiling pots to warm places we were sitting, give Tin my phone for him to listen to music and dance for two hours at a time creating his own body warmth, and I would read. I was reading two books – Larry Brown’s memoir, On Fire and Neko Case’s memoir, The Harder I Fight the More I Love You. Tin and I had several off-scene conversations – those moments when he couldn’t get my phone and we were standing in the warmish kitchen and there was nothing left but connection. It was sorta nice.

We had talked about his treatment. Stonewater had been good the first time, the ranch was a “vacation” he said, the woods (as he called wilderness) was not good because the kids were really too much to handle, and Stonewater again was good with the staff but the kids were too far behind in what he had already learned in 16 months and he felt they were not compassionate. We talked about the future. Tin said he wants me to support him in his music and clothing business. We talked about our dogs. We talked about his friends, about what I knew was new with the ones I stayed in touch with. We developed a rhythm – connect and talk, separate and I would read and he would listen to music, come together to eat. We were whole.

When Stephen, his life coach, offered something different, my first instinct was to say no. Our stuff was all over the place, we knew what to do now, I didn’t want to leave my car behind. But as soon as Stephen walked out the door, Tin turned and said, “I want to be in a warm house.”

And I realized that I had jumped the MacGyver shark – yes, I could do it, but why?

We went into action packing all the things and cleaning what we could. Took the trash out. Then we got in the car and drove through the scary landscape of power lines down, snow and ice everywhere, and blocked roads. We got to the offices in downtown Monroe, parked, and carried our stuff to Stephen’s big truck where I took a spill on an ice patch that nearly had me doing a split – which is impossible. We drove backroads, and iced roads, and avoided the interstate that was piled up with stalled cars and snow and ice mounds, and got to a juncture, where Parker, the experiential director, pulled up in his mega truck and picked us up. We were going to Ruston, where Parker lives, courtesy of the CEO of the new school, to a house that had electricity and running water.

We pulled up the steep driveway that was covered with a sheet of ice, and went inside a brand new four bedroom house, in a brand new subdivision, with working internet, heat, and lights, and after I unpacked, I took a hot shower – my first bathing opportunity in three days. I didn’t want to get out but had to make dinner. It wasn’t until day six that we are able to walk outside, before it had been because of widow makers and now it was because of an ice slide to get to the snow deep street. We were finally able to walk through the grooves monster truck tires had created and it felt like freedom.

By day seven, I was stir crazy, the communication that had begun under duress had fractured with the presence of mod cons, and now Tin stayed in his room with the TV turned to YouTube underground rap going nonstop, I had a headache, and I stayed in the living room drinking cup after cup of hot tea or hot chocolate, and reading, writing, and watching TV myself. I finished Pernille, which I loved, then watched Free Bert, then watched Train Dreams that left me so melancholy about life’s passage that it made me go inside myself even more.

When I drove home Thursday, I felt like I had run through so many different emotions that it would take days, weeks, months to sort through all of what I had been feeling as well as not feeling. From my robotic can do-attitude about facing adverse conditions – something I must say I’ve become pro at, to my sense of isolation in a warm suburban house (one of my greatest fears), to the constant puzzle of how to parent Tin. I was returning home, but somehow even home didn’t sit right with me. I felt like there were still parts of me that had not thawed and perhaps never would.