TooMuchInformation

Labor Day weekend and I was standing on the platform of the train station in Ronkonkoma, a box of cinnabons in my hand as I looked up and down the tracks.   Halfway between Brooklyn and Greenport, I was heading to the vacation home of friends Kelly and Kevin.  A group of seven were already there, me and two unknown others taking the train from NYC. 

The day before I compared the schedules of the Long Island Rail Road and the Hampton Jitney buslines.  The bus looked complicated.  It had multiple points of departure in Manhattan and multiple drop points on Long Island.  The train, with one departure in the morning and one in the afternoon, seemed the easier choice: Go to Penn Station, buy ticket, get on train, read magazine, transfer trains in Ronkonkoma, arrive in Greenport.  A simple series of steps for a relaxing weekend.

And so, in Ronkonkoma, I waited for my next train.  And waited.  The station was not large.  Two tracks, one heading into the city, the other out to the North Fork.  A train sat on the westbound track under a sign announcing it’s departure for Manhattan in 20 minutes.  The eastbound track was empty.  I climbed the stairs to the walkway straddling the tracks and went into the staion house.  The schedule hanging on the wall informed me that the train for Greenport had left (without me) and I would have to wait 5 hours for the next one. 

Cursed weekend schedules.

A quick phone call to Luswin that was passed off to Kelly, I had to answer the damning question ‘how?’  “I don’t know,” I said. ”I got off the train and then I didn’t see another one.”  Her other friends, brothers visiting from Indiana, managed to find the train.   

I sat down on a bench and contemplated the train heading back into the city and the taxi dispatcher sitting in his office, stubbing out a cigarette as he gleefully eyed me.  I was his prey, the fool who couldn’t maneuver through a two tracked train station.

I opened the box of cinnabons and ate one.  ‘If I head back home I can get my laundry done, move the shelves, help Marcos organize his comic books, catch up with Turtle, go shoe shopping.’   I picked up another cinnabon (they were minis).  ‘Or,’ I thought, ‘if I pay for a cab the rest of the way I can endure being teased for the rest of the weekend, eat and drink too much, play with the dogs, and sleep in the next day.’

Two weekends prior, I had been in Ohio for my niece’s baptism.  It was a quick trip, into Columbus on Friday, meet my niece, borrow a friend’s car to drive up to the island, catch up with family, drive back to Columbus, baptize the baby, play with my nephews, fly back to New York. 

Going home only once a year, you see the toll of the seasons.  My father has a new cell phone he doesn’t know how to use.  “Can you send text messages?” I asked him. “Huh?” he responded, cocking his head to a degree, his mouth open and eyes squinted behind dark glasses. “Well, I don’t know.”  My mother sat in a recliner, her broken leg elevated.  She’d been in a car accident travelling with a cousin between the wedding and reception of another cousin.  “Are you guys talking about me?” she asked, her pitch hurt.  “No!” my impatient sister called across the room.  She’d been taking care of Mom for almost a month and had had her fill. “We were discussing an episode of the Jeffersons!”  “Well, I think you’re talking about me,” Mom muttered as she fidgeted in her seat and prison. 

A week before that I had decided that I would no longer call home while walking down 8th Avenue.   Traffic noises,  my hesitation to be one of those people who yell into cell phones, and my mom’s aging eardrums made the conversations experiments in repetition.

On Sunday, after the baptism, my sister asked me a question that I didn’t fully hear.  “Huh?” I asked, cocking my head to a degree and my mouth open, eyes squinted.  She burst into laughter.  “You look just like Dad!”   “Are you talking about me?!” I was horrified.  In the matter of a weekend I’d become not one, but both of my parents.

Back in Ronkonkoma, I contemplated the cinnabons.  ‘If I go home,’ I reasoned, ‘I’ll have to eat the whole box anyway.’  I started a third.  And decided to shell out the money for the cab to Riverhead, where hopefully someone would be willing to drive the hour each way to retrieve me.

Last weekend I went to the post office to pick up a package.  I enjoy going to the post office.  It reminds me of the island where home delivery isn’t part of life.  A daily trip to the post office to clean out the junk mail in the PO Box and catch up on gossip with everyone you run into is a big part of the island’s social fabric.  Without that trip to the post office widows would be isolated, new islanders would remain strangers, and everyone would forget how old their neighbor’s children are.  Not to mention who’s cheating, who’s stealing, who’s dying, and the occassional who’s happy.

Going to the post office in Brooklyn to pick up a package is a particularly joyful experience because it beats the give and take grudge match one has to endure when trying to get a package out of UPS’s custody.  Twice since moving to 250 I’ve sent nasty emails to the CEO of UPS complaining about their lack of service.  Their system consists of sending my package by the house, leaving a post-it note on the door three days in a row to tell me I wasn’t home, and then an address in Queens where I can find my package. 

After the first of these I did my research and learned that the Queens detention center is located far from any subway line and open from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday.  Being that I work 9 to 6 Monday through Friday and rely on public transit I called UPS and asked them to relocate my package to a detention center in Manhattan that is open until 9pm and located up the street from my office.  UPS informed me that this would be impossible.  Odd coming from a company whose primary function is the transfer of objects from one location to another.  Both of us unwilling to bend, I called the sender and asked them to recall the package and give me a credit.  I’d buy that raincoat from a brick and mortar store, thank you.

The post office that I adore so much, is open on Saturdays and located in my zip code.  And so, last weekend, I walked up Flushing Avenue to get my mail.  On the way is a low income housing project.  The yard is frequently full of the project’s less than functional residents, sitting on the wrought iron fencing, holding their brown paper wrapped bottles and shouting or laughing or both at one another.  It’s possible to cut diagonally through the project’s lawn as a short cut to the post office.  Being daylight I thought ‘what the hell?’ and entered the gate, trying not to draw attention to myself.  The groundkeeping crew was at work and I figured if any trouble came my way they’d have quick access to the NYPD.  Then I thought ‘Unless the crew is made up of criminals fulfilling their public service requirements’  followed by the thought ‘if that’s the case maybe I’ll see some celebrities.’

At the center of the project is a swimming pool.  Who knew?  Being that it was 100+ degrees that day the pool was logically closed.

I also witnessed an aged Chinese woman performing some sort of ancient (I guess) martial art with a child’s toy sword.  She was graceful going through her motions, slowly slicing the air with the sword, delicately lunging and reaching.  The courtyard had trees and paths and a small playground.  Birds chirped.  It was much more pleasant on the inside than on the street. 

Coming out the other side, I crossed to the post office and waited in the long line with my neighbors, most cursing in one language or another at the slow pace, angrily eyeing the overly made up woman who was trying to flirt her way to the front of the line, critical of the obese postal worker who refused to search for more than one package at a time, and bonding with each other over the shared burden of having to wait.

I wondered if any of these people would become familiar to me.  Would I live in the neighborhood long enough to know their faces, their names, their stories?  Probably not, I don’t get that many packages.  But, a week later, I’ve forgotten about the heat of that day and the worry of crossing the projects.  Instead, I’m left with the memory of the post office.

Before moving to
France, my mom and her sister drove out to Boston and helped Douglas and I move furniture back to the island.  The four of us rode in my aunt and uncle’s truck across the Eastern Time Zone, taking turns behind the wheel.  My aunt cleverly made an X out of the white sticker strips from a book of stamps and stuck it on the inside of the tailgate.  This X was visible in the side view mirror and told us, at a quick glance, if the tailgate was still up or if it had burst open and all of my possessions flung across the highway.

Long road trips are a great way to know your fellow passengers better, build friendships, test boundaries.  In the week that Mom and her sister spent in Boston prior to our leaving and the two days on the road I never grew sick of their company.  The time was spent learning about each other.  We ate together, joked over shared characteristics, and explored different perspectives on common memories.  The departure is high among my favorite memories of living in Boston.

At one point on the trip, with Douglas and Mom in the back seat navigating, me driving, and my aunt riding shotgun, she told me a story about her early married years.  She and her husband were working around the clock.  He was employed full time as a ferry captain and she was busy creating Island Bike Rental.  In addition they raised three kids.  They saw little of each other during the day and “only had time to argue at night, and by then the boats weren’t running so I couldn’t leave him.”  She laughed as she said this, so I took it that she didn’t mean it. 

But I did appreciate learning that they argued so early in their marriage.  Being the youngest of three in my household growing up, I mostly saw my parent’s marriage unraveling.  The tender moments were few and my aunt and uncle in the little yellow house were my young example of how happy life with someone can be.  Her joking disclosure that even they had stressful moments was cheering.

Her husband was born on the island.  His grandfather was a lighthouse keeper and in his career tended the Fresnel lenses on a few of the lake’s islands.  His father had white hair in his youth and was called Cotton.  By the time I knew him he’d lost the hair, but kept the nickname.  Skip’s mother wore horn rimmed glasses and a Mamie Eisenhower dress in my parent’s wedding pictures.  They were of the island and uniquely typical of the characters who inhabit it.  In this vein was my uncle.

The holiday season on the island is a marathon of parties, open houses, potlucks, and other reasons to be merry.   Every Christmas Eve at St. Paul’s church starts at 10:30 and stretches until midnight.  After the bells have rung and the anthem sung and the choir has marched up to the altar the late comers would sneak into a pew.  One teenaged year, my uncle was among the sneakers.  He and a friend ended up seated directly in front of me and my sisters.   They swayed when we stood to sing.  But not in rhythm with “Joy to the World”.  Their tipsy swaying brought an eye roll and giggle from my aunt’s face. 

Another Christmas, I came home with a boyfriend who was also an island boy, but of a different type.  My uncle lent us his snowmobile and we spent the night in borrowed winter gear and my mom’s 1970s electric blue disco motorcycle helmet racing through the snow covered field of wild flowers near the cemetery.   Twenty years earlier, in that same field, I was riding with my uncle on his snowmobile.  My sister and a cousin were in a dog sled behind us.  He let me steer, I pulled too hard to the left, and everyone tumbled.  I pulled my helmet off to hear him laughing the loudest.

Last month my uncle passed away after a long fight with cancer.  And it was a long fight.  When I made the road trip with my aunt and mother and Douglas, we knew he was fighting.  My aunt wore a necklace with two figures embraced in a dance.  It was a gift from him to remind her that he always wanted to be with her sharing a dance. 

In August my cousin told me that she was introduced to coffee drinking by her dad.  He would bring a cup to her in the morning as a way to encourage her to get out of bed.  When she became a property owner he would visit on winter mornings and they’d share a pot of coffee.  And talk.  He was a good talker. 

But now, another member of the old guard has moved on.  Symbolically, my uncle’s death is significant to the island.   Prohibition, the Depression, the War, and the automobile took their toll on the island’s thriving turn of the century economy.  He was of the post-war generation that was raised there and built their livelihoods and prospered there. 

Tangibly, my uncle’s life was more significant to the island.  In the 40 years since their businesses were created and expanded, he and my aunt have employed thousands and generated millions in revenue.  The impact is hard to measure.  Ferries from both of the boat lines cruised alongside each other as his casket was carried home for his funeral, which filled both island churches. 

Each year that I spent away from home it was on my mind that I was missing another Christmas Eve of witnessing him sneak into church and laughing the loudest.  And I kept thinking back to a blessing from the French Protestant minister Henri Amiel:

Life is short;

And we do not have too much time

To gladden the hearts of those

Who travel the way with us.

So be swift to love

And make haste to be kind.

Because it sums up my uncle so well.  In addition to all the hard work, he loved so easily. 

Katherine’s Memories

Crosser Funeral Home obituary

Fremont News Messenger article

“Candy in the morning?”  It was the first thing Luswin said to me today.  Shortly after 6am, I was woken by the coffee grinder instead of my jetlag for the first time since arriving home last week.  I climbed out of bed and had my hand in a bowl of Hershey’s Kisses on the dining room table.  Already the night before I had to hide a bowl of red and green M&Ms to stop myself.

Being back has been a junk food tour de force.  I arrived in Washington on Tuesday night and gorged on pecan pie, mini-brownies and some raspberry pastries in George’s kitchen.   And again Wednesday morning.  Then an egg and bacon (hmmm, bacon!) croissant at a buffet downtown DC.  Dinner that night was a taco salad with college friends Rachel and Bryce.  Craig joined us too. 

Thursday morning was round three with the mini-brownies.  Some secret ingredient was keeping them fresh.  I flew to the dedication of the Asia Trail in the National Zoo and afterwards grabbed a Blimpie sandwich.  After the memorial service at the National Cathedral I continued my diet regimen with rocky road fudge, assorted cheeses, and tarts.  And an herbal tea.  That night at the second reception I nibbled on beef satay and a carrot stick.

Back in George’s kitchen I had another mini-brownie.  They’re so small, you know?  Friday morning I made waffles, and managed to eat three throughout the day.  George wisely stuck with one before heading to work.

The real fun began Friday night when I relocated to Karen’s home in Alexandria.  The piece de resistance was a bag of Cheetos.  It called to me from on top of the refrigerator (sorry Rachel, they weren’t the baked kind).  And then some potato chips and French onion dip.  Karen and I went to a bar on Capitol Hill where we found Tommy Yost.  He’s in the process of moving to DC and she let me know that he isn’t in the habit of eating everything in sight when he stays with her. 

We lamented the fact that Kristin couldn’t join us, but deduced that having just the three of us in the same room was the equivalent of 16% of the PIBHS 1989-1990.  Math is hard and took a little bit to figure it out.  The biggest laugh came after we counted everyone in HS that year using only fingers and toes. 

In the morning the eating continued when I discovered a secret stash of rice krispy treats in the laundry room and Karen made a bowl of popcorn.  I put my foot down at lunch time and had a salad.  Which I then smothered in creamy Italian dressing.  Tangy!

Dinner was at Alper and Jeremy’s house where they were having a holiday party.  The first thing on my plate was a chocolate chip cookie made by Gerry Altoff.  (He wasn’t there but Kristin and Cyndee were.) 

For breakfast on Sunday I discovered a packet of apple and brown sugar oatmeal next to the bag of cheetos (which I finished).  Karen’s roommate Leeana made me two sausage links too, even though I only asked for one.   But I ate both. 

On the drive up to NJ with Nate and Naomi we stopped twice for gas and bathroom breaks.  Somehow I just wasn’t interested in the honey roasted peanuts Nate was pushing.  Not the trail mix Naomi offered either.

But there were the bowls of candy at Luswin and Fritz’s.  And the grilled steak and mashed potatoes.  And the cheese and crackers. 

It’s good to be home.  Even if I get tsk-tsked for my morning food habits.

 

I remember when my mom turned 40.  When an islander reaches 40 s/he is rewarded with an obnoxious trophy most appropriate for bowling or cheese making tournaments.  The recipient’s name is etched on a brass plaque and attached to any available surface, joining the names of those pioneers who’ve gone before.  Mom was officially old in my 12 year old mind.  And like her contemporary Tina Turner she was rocking - albeit to a slower, more country-western beat.  She held onto the trophy until the next islander crashed into old age.  In this case it was my 7th grade science teacher. 

This is what I like about island life.  The small town flavor is compounded by isolation in the winter.  The population drops to 400 and everyone has at least three relationships with each other.  Your teacher will also be your neighbor and mother’s best friend.  Your cousin is your boss and volleyball team captain.  The church organist is also your aunt’s arch-nemesis and the favored toilet papering target of your older sister.  There’s no avoiding anyone.

Just before turning 40, when Mom was a newly minted divorcee, she and three other island women formed a club. Demographically they had a lot in common: in their 30s, raised on the islands, divorced, children at home.  Reliving their 20s, misspent on organizing PTA fundraisers, they became the Midnight Ladies.   They committed alcohol induced activities a son prefers not to theorize. 

One of their adventures I do recall vaguely.  Or rather, I have a memory of a mother nursing a hangover, saying to me “Don’t drink too much when you’re older.”  And then later that same day driving with her to the home of a neighbor around the corner.  I witnessed her apologize to him while he mourned the carcass of a 1929 Ford Model A Roadster. 

This neighbor was a good friend of my father.  My sisters and I regularly climbed the tree in his front yard.  One of my earliest memories is sitting on my father’s lap in his home and tasting the foam of a just opened can of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

But on this particular day I stood silently observing my contrite mother and him shaking his head sorrowfully.  When we left I asked her “What was that about?”  The night before, assisted by a fair dose of spirits, the Midnight Ladies “bought” the vintage car with an envelope of Monopoly money.  On their late night adventures with the car they managed to break an axel, rendering the car immobile.

Fast forward 20+ years, when my own sister is on the edge of 40, while visiting the island this summer I saw my dad’s latest project.  He and my cousin Michael are reconstructing a Model A.  They’re reconstructing the engine and frame but keeping the car’s rusted body.  It’ll have the appearance of a clunker but the Conshafter/Burgess talent beneath.  The first part to be replaced will be an axel, broken years ago, by a crew playing a midnight prank. 

 

My first week back home I shared a bedroom with my nephew Kaveh, the five year old prodigy. I’d stay up late at the Round House Bar, drinking with cousins and high school friends. He’d stay up late reading a geometry book he found at the library. I’d sneak into my old bedroom around 1am. He’d be up reading and would say to me “Did you know pi is an irrational number?”

“What’s that?” I’d ask. “You and Gramma made a cherry pie?”

Nonplussed he’ d continue. “Did you know that the square root of 2 is also an irrational number?”

“What’s an irrational number?” I’d ask, my toothbrush in my mouth. It was like coming back to the dorm room in college and finding your roommate studying for a calculus exam.

What tickled me most though was that less than a year ago I’d been given a child’s introductory book to Hindu gods. Each page included a small box with the headline “Did you know … ?” and would then go on to say something like “that Ganesh is one of the most beloved Hindu gods?” and then tell a story about Ganesh, or Vishnu or Shiva, etc.

Like the seasons cycling, here I was with the reincarnation of Marie Curie quizzing me on numbers in the same manner. “And did you know,” he’d go on, “that if you added up all the angles of a triangle it equals 180 degrees?”

“And I bet they could dance on the head of a pin,” I’d say. “Do you want the air conditioner on, or the windows open?”

Kaveh would shrivel up his nose and look at me. “I don’t care.”

Windows open and fan on, I’d crawl into my old bed, and he’d be in his across the room, light on the night stand illuminated, his small legs disturbing the blankets only slightly, the length of unused mattress spreading out in front of him like a workshop table with books and pens.

Half of the days on the island Kaveh made a To Do List for the next day. He’d list the games he was planning to play (Sorry and Monopoly and Old Maid), the relatives he was planning to visit, the meals he intended to eat. And at least one entry for his math book. Sometimes two. The next day he’d dutifully check each item as it was accomplished.

On the trip down to Columbus we stopped at the Thomas Edison Birthplace and Museum in Milan, Ohio. He wasn’t too interested in the old furniture and clothes in the cottage along the canal. In each room on the tour he’d sit on the floor with his math book and read. He was a little interested in the old phonographs and the ticker tape machines on display, but mostly he was trying to tackle how to calculate a cube root.

I watched him pay no attention to the tour guide as she informed us that Thomas Edison was home schooled by his mother because he was deemed “unruly” by his teachers. And that as an adult he was never far from his laboratory. Couldn’t even be bothered to come down to the sidewalk for a photo with his staff in Menlo Park, New Jersey. He just stuck his head out the third floor window.

Kaveh was happy to have his photo taken with his Ohio and Michigan cousins the week he was on the island. Big cheesy 5-year-old smile. Front row.

Family has always played a big part of my summers growing up. Heat and cousins were synonymous. Since that time, I’m closer and more comfortable with cousins than friends. Or rather, my closest friends are in my family tree. Even if it’s a grafted branch. Who better to commiserate about the absurdities of parents, but the people who probably experience the exact same idiosyncracies?

Within hours of being back in Ohio I was hugging both sisters, my mom, an aunt and uncle, and my two nephews. I don’t think my younger nephew Nema recognized me. His older bother Kaveh gave me a big hug and smile. Such a great feeling. But Nema held back behind his mother’s legs and gave a cautious smile.

He warmed up to me in a short time. Now he frequently jumps into my lap. My favorite is the first moment he’s awake each morning. I’ll be up eating breakfast or watching the news and he comes down stairs, all smiles and giggles. He’s very social.

When I was about 4 years old, my family took a trip to Toledo to visit Aunt Verna. I remember my sisters being very happy about the trip, and I caught some of their enthusiasm. But, after the 90 minute drive I grew cautious. Verna was my grandfather’s sister. In my young mind though, I had confused her with my grandmother’s sister Vera.

At 4, I knew and loved Vera. She had dark hair, wore Keds and glasses, drank wine and laughed. She was born on the island, but lived in Cincinnati. She said she didn’t like to be touched, but looked in your eyes when she spoke. Where my grandmother was crazy scary, Vera was crazy fun. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know Aunt Vera. She came up to the island multiple times every summer. She told stories about the islands and knew the histories of every home and family.

When we pulled up to the home in Toledo my sisters ran to a strange woman. She had thick red hair and wore a pant suit with a matching purse. She smelled of perfume and hugged us tightly. I didn’t know who she was. I was expecting Vera. I didn’t want to get out of the car.

Eventually my sisters and parents convinced me to meet this woman. She won me over with multiple hugs and ice cream. But the initial feelings of confusion and shyness I haven’t forgotten. For better, her hugs became more familair as the visits became annual.

And so, it’s been two years since Nema last saw me. I don’t know if he’ll remember re-meeting me in Columbus, but I hope he’ll recall later the smiles he gave me each morning this week.

Like my own childhood, this week has been a juggernaut of family. In addition to the large group retrieving me from the airport, I’ve been lucky to reconnect with two more aunts, three more uncles, and 22 cousins (1st through 2nd-once removed), not to mention visits to two cemeteries. Like my own childhood we’ve caught lightening bugs, watched fireworks, played board games, gone on bike rides, boat rides, car rides. This time around though I’m one of the adults. Sort of.

I’m still at times that kid sitting in the car hoping there’s been a mistake and that the universe will follow expectations., but trying to muster the courage to accept that things might be better.

Two seconds after walking the first load of luggage into my mom’s house I noticed I had a mayfly on my chest. Silent and harmless, they cover everything at home. Right now I count seven clinging to the screens in the windows. One merely needs to exist to attract them.

I’m home for the summer, reacquainting myself with relatives and insects I haven’t seen in two years. And birds. Red winged black birds in particular are welcoming. They’re smaller than I remembered, but the red stripe on their shoulders is brighter. Sort of a ketchup red. But with a hint of orange.

Speaking of orange, last night I took a ride around the island with my dad and his dog in the dog hair mobile. With the harbor behind us, we rounded the curve towards East Point and I looked at the sun setting between Middle Bass and Gibraltar islands. Pink and orange filled the sky, and the sun melted into the flat lake. It was nice. I didn’t even mind the dog smell.

In Grenoble sunsets are impossible. The mountains block the colors. Sunbeams shoot over their crests until simply extinguishing. Beautiful in its own way, it’s not a Lake Erie sunset.

On the morning of day two, I woke up at 6:30. The house was quiet, but the birds outside were loud. I had a bowl of cereal in the kitchen. Watching me through the screen door was Mr. Jones, a stray cat my mother feeds. He was sitting patiently and blinked his eyes politely, waiting for something. I saw a bag of catfood and opened the door to the porch. He took a step back and watched as I filled a dish for him.

Mr. Jones is one of dozens of stray cats on the island. Living behind garages or in caves in the woods, eating at backdoors. There used to be a handful of cats behind my mom’s house that she passively cared for. All of them were caught, fixed by the vet, and taken to a barn on the West Shore to live. The process was the brainstorm of an island woman. Within 6 months though Mr. Jones came back. He must not have liked life on the kibbutz.

He finished the bowl I set for him, then silently indicated he’d like another. He purred while I poured. His fur was thick, full of burrs and nettles.

When I was a kid we had pet cats. Thomas, Harvey, and Henry were the first. Then Elizabeth. Then came kittens. Rapidly. Every cat we had for thirty years was descended from these first four. Mom would try to get them spayed or neutered before their first heat, but frequently misjudged the passing of time. One cat would get fixed and another would get pregnant. “Yay! Kittens!” we’d scream.

Sometimes though we’d come home from school to discover the kittens were gone. “Where’re the kittens?” we’d ask. “Drowned,” Mom would say, her voice cruel and dark, as if she’d follow with “now eat your gruel!”

When she was finally better able to get control of the kitten boom, the cats we kept (read: hadn’t pawned off on strangers or inhumanely euthenized) were finally fixed, guarenteeing no surprise generations.

Our last cat was Samantha. We named her Sam, until she got pregnant, then it was changed to Samantha. This misdiagnosis of gender was typical and played a major role in our situation. Samantha lived a long time, outliving her kittens and grandkittens. I attribute her longevity for a proclivity to the back yard. Most of our cats died after being hit by cars. Samantha lived long enough to see me enter kindergarten, graduate from high school, finish college, and start my first job in Cleveland.

In the cat’s waning years, Mom would curse her. ‘I can’t replace the carpet until that cat dies,’ she’d say. ‘As soon as that cat’s gone I can replace the scratched wallpaper by the back door.’ Frail and blind Samantha ceased to have a name, she merely represented a major roadblock to decorating achievements.

Eventually she died from cat leukemia and Mom got to update the house. The porch and back door Mr. Jones sits at wouldn’t be recognized by any of the cats who proceded him. But, in Mr. Jones my mom found a comfortable middle ground. She gets the joy of having a clean, fresh scented home and the daily company of a cat waiting patiently at her back door. Along with the mayflies.