Why Is Ramona So Unflappably Serene?

 

            I think that if you asked her, she would say that her mother told her, and she has told Cherry, that counting your blessings really works. Just that process has a way of diminishing the other stuff. It’s practically mystical.
            If I asked her, she would probably tell me that her greatest blessing is Ralph. Of course. She knows as well as she knows that the sky is up, that she can rest in his constant good humor, and absolute good intentions. She orbits him like a planet does the sun, and that sun is always facing her with a smile.
            Wisdom is its own reward. She is wise, in that she understands her position in Creation. She doesn’t wish she was someone else. She doesn’t want more than she has. She does her best with what life has given her.
            This of course, comes back to a grateful heart. A grateful heart is so massively constructive that it’s hard to adequately express it.
            Ah, but like all of us, she’s human. She’s not some phony plaster saint.
            You remember the time she took a rock to the drone with a camera on it? The girl  has some spunk!
            Remember the time she wanted Thaga to make her a dress? She had to let that go, and it was hard for her.
            That’s all, just a thought for Catfurday. I wanted to take a minute to appreciate Ramona.
            Ralph didn’t put me up to this, but he agrees with every word! In fact, he told me so.

💌

I Know Your Name

 

            It was a high point in the breathless arc of a summer day in the Great Forest. Noon.
            Cherry had learned a thing or two from her friends, the Puma Bros. One of these things was to find a leafy spot underneath the local underbrush, where it is was cooler than the surrounding forest, and to rest there, in seclusion. Many times they had all three shared such a retreat. The cats crouched as cats do, golden eyes closed, panting.
            Cherry sat alone this time, on the forest floor, legs crossed in what they used to call Indian Style. On this particular summer day, she held court among the small creatures of the forest. She had the gift of speaking to the animals. Sometimes a few mice would come to  her with a tiny dispute, and she would help then sort it out for she had their confidence. Even insects would fly near her, and they would speak together about their lives, hers and theirs. She had the heartfelt respect of the dragon flies, other flies, mosquitoes even, and if truth be told, even fleas respected her. No flea had the temerity to bite Cherry!
            Many times small brown rabbits and their children stopped by, mostly to pay their respects. Rabbits are very adept at living their own lives successfully.
            So, once again, it was a typical day hidden away in the leafy undergrowth where enough sunlight reaches the ground to encourage bushy growth. A fisher cat had come and gone, staying just long enough to announce the progress of her kits.
            Cherry could hear an unfamiliar sound. A sort of low sad squeaking. She hadn’t heard anything like that before. It came closer as the moments went on and she listened silently. She heard light footsteps, and a sort of dragging sound maybe, like there were two creatures coming, but one of them wasn’t walking correctly.
            She waited, hands on knees, icy blue eyes looking in the direction of the strange whimpering cries and the footsteps.
            At last, a yellowish doglike animal appeared. He was not alone. He was accompanied by a much smaller version of himself. The small one didn’t really seem to walk along, he had to be nudged and dragged too, and his eyes were closed. The whimpering sound came from the small one.
            “Cherry!” said the father, for such he was. “I know your name!”
            “I know your name too, Jumpstart,” said Cherry in return greeting.
            “Have you brought me one of your children, Jumpstart?” she asked, formally.
            “My son, Cherry,” answered Jumpstart.
            “Tell me his name?” said she.
            “His mother called him Darkness, because he neither sees, nor speaks, or walks either, and yet as you see, he lives, but in darkness,” said Jumpstart, with his son huddled between his forelegs.
            “Yes. I think I will give him a new name. Are you willing to let me name him,” said Cherry. “That would be a good start.”
            “I know you, and yes, I trust you. Name my son,” said Jumpstart with a Coyote tear on his cheek.
            Cherry looked deeply into the young thing’s heart. She waited and listened for an answer. At last a name came to her.
            “His name shall be Sky, Jumpstart. Do you agree?” said Cherry.
            “I agree, yes,” said Jumpstart, and from that moment his son became Sky.
            “Sky” said Cherry, “open your eyes.”
            For the first time in his life, Sky opened his small brown eyes.
            “What do you see?” said Cherry.
            “I see my father. And I see you, Lady,” said the child, who had left off whimpering, in order to speak. “I see the forest all around me!”
            “Will you walk to me?” Cherry asked him, and he willingly trotted right over to where she sat. Then he sat as all canids do, looking all around himself, panting with his little pink tongue lolling as all canid tongues do.
            “Sky, will you do as your father does? Will you obey your mother? Will you do all things as a Coyote should from today?” Cherry asked Sky, formally.
            “I will do all as my father does,” Sky said. “I will obey my mother, yes. I will do all things as a Coyote should!”
            “I know you will,” said Cherry. She couldn’t help smiling.
            “Take him to his Mama, Jumpstart,” said Cherry. “I was very pleased to meet him!”
            “Yes, Lady Cherry, I will,” said Jumpstart. And with that, Jumpstart and Sky trotted away home.
            As Cherry rested her eyes for a little while, a small wind came from playing over the Silver River, to toss the leaves surrounding her. He stayed as long as she rested, then went on his way.
            When her eyes opened again, she thought of her mother, Ramona, and went to find her. Like every other day, she lived under Ramona’s teaching, desiring to be like her in every way.
            When she found her mother, Ramona said, “I think we should all go play in the river. Today is extra warm!”
            Ralph, who had been kind of snoozing in the heat agreed, so they all went over to the river to play until the sun had nearly set. While they were there, he gathered some fish, for an easy, quick dinner.

🐟

Wishing You A Grand June Purrsday

 

Somewhere in Montana, June 30, 2016.

My girl took the shot, I am sure, as my hands were on the wheel.

Such glory!

And I know, from personal experience, that most of the country

is open and wild!

I find that comforting.

A lovely day to you!

💮

The Conversation, A Sketch of A Dream

 

 

            Marcus sat alone at table. The Mediterranean morning light flooded the large quiet room. There was a second chair at the table, empty now. Until a moment before his wife, Julia, had been seated there. This was not a breakfast seating; it had been a difficult conversation.
            He sighed.
            Julia had gone to sit in the garden, out of the direct sunlight, with some of her women. He could hear women’s voices like birdcalls through the open window.
            He was no longer young. His hair was graying, and he bore the scars of battle. If authority wore a face, it might have looked much like Marcus.
            Marcus shifted uncomfortably in his chair, and thought about the slave. He had purchased her when she was a middling child. She came with some outlandish foreign name. Marcus called her Melum, a small sweet thing.
            Melum had grown up under his roof, serving Julia and himself in the house. If one of them wanted something from the kitchen, she ran for it. Her work was the many small things required in a great house, the little jobs of running and fetching. She waited at their table evenings, and brought things to the bedroom if one of them woke and was thirsty, or the light had gone out. Melum was always about like a pet bird. She was beautiful, adding to the dignity of the house she served.
            Marcus was fond of Melum. Now she had a child. He had watched her as her body changed and said nothing. Julia watched her too, and said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.
            He had no other children. But he hadn’t made his mind up about the fate of this one. A boy. A son. It rang in his mind like thunder.
            He had sent one of the house boys to her room. He wanted to see the infant before he decided whether to acknowledge his paternity, or to merely raise the child as a slave among many slaves.
            Silently, on small bare feet, carrying her son, Melum entered the brightly lit room, such a rich and beautiful room, with colorful frescoes on the walls, and mosaics exhibiting exotic marine motifs under her little feet. Her hair was a light wheaten color, her eyes were blue, and she wore the simple gown of a female slave. She wore no adornments.
            She walked to her usual spot beside the table and stood waiting, silently.
            “No. Sit down, Melum,” he said.
            Carefully she lowered herself into Julia’s chair.
            “Is he well? Is he strong?” said Marcus. “Are you well?”
            “He is well, as am I,” said Melum in a voice like the embodiment of fragrance.
            “If I say he is mine, he will become a great man in my name,” said Marcus.
            “Yes,” and she trembled.
            “Bring him to me,” he said finally.
            Carefully, she rose and walked around to the other side of the table. Marcus held out his hands to receive the newborn boy.
            Melum passed her son over. Marcus took him in his hands, as a man does who is not accustomed to infants. His left hand was under the child’s head, and his right hand supported the body.
            “Does he wake and cry out much?” he asked her.
            “Not much, Sir, only when he is hungry,” she said.
            “Well, he is a manchild,” said Marcus.
            Then the child opened his eyes and focused on his father’s eyes. A long moment passed between them. Marcus began thinking of a name for this child.
            “Melum, take my son, go and raise him well! Be at peace,” said Marcus.
            She left him then, on lighter steps, carrying the newborn son of the house back to her own room.
            Marcus had a lot of things to arrange, and he needed his lawyer for all of that.

☀️

The Voice From Inside The Fridge

 

For display purposes only!

            “Why?” I said. He was in there again. Only takes a second’s lapse in vigilance. It was Sweetie, of course. Though, I have seen Booker follow him in before.
            “What’s the compelling attraction, Mr. Cat?” says I.
            The voice answers, “Prrrrrr..”
            “Not talking? Nobody, not even a young cat does things for no reason.” I urged.
            “You can’t see me now!” he said, with satisfaction. “Nothing will ever make me come out! I rule here, on the steaks.”
            “That’s called 'hubris,' Youngster,” says I. 
            “It will take more than name calling to get me to come out, Ma,” the voice continued.
            “Exaggerated pride, or self-confidence. IOW arrogance! How does that sound? Do you want to be like that?” I said, pedantically.
            “All hidey-holes are mine, by right of conquest,” said the voice.
            “You’re sitting on my steaks,” I said, “Good thing they’re shrink-wrapped, eh?”
            “Right of conquest!” he chortled.
            “Baloney!” I yelped.
            “Do you have some?” he asked, looking up through the shelves. There was a lot of purring and fidgeting around. (Shrink-wrap is really a good thing, you know?)
            “I hear your brother calling you!” I said.
            “Nuh-uh!” and he crept further back. “I’m making room for him.”
            What could I do, but get out the big guns, the sound no cat can withstand? Yes. The Temptations container. I rattled it.
            He popped right out. Booker came running. Mr. Baby swarmed aboard too. Soon we were having a great old time with cat treats. What do they put in that stuff, that is so desirable? It looks pretty much like cat kibble. (I need to look up the etymology of ‘kibble.’) Suzie doesn’t like Temptations. She says they make her rhumatize kick up. Doubtful.
            They all wish all the other cats a Merry Tootsday, most of all Toots, herself!

🐈‍⬛

kibble(n.)

"ground-up meat used as dog food, etc.," 1957, apparently from the verb meaning "to bruise or grind coarsely," which is attested from 1790, first in milling; a word of unknown origin. The same or an identical word was used in the coal trade in the late 19c. and in mining from the 1670s for "bucket used to haul up ore or waste."

A Message In The Great Forest

 

 

            Cherry was getting to be a bigger girl. She was growing in wisdom and knowledge, and was a great observer of all about herself. She was taller than a human child, of course. and was still platinum blond all over with icy, pale blue eyes. When grown, she would be a beauty of the Forest Folk.
            Ramona had been doing a good job with her, helping her to remember the Firekeeper’s songs, which were essentially practical recipes set to a tune, to help memory. In fact, she had to have a very good memory, and she did. They don’t make books in the Great Forest. They remember, and pass it down.
            In addition, Cherry was very good with her hands. When she wasn’t assisting her mother, she was making things. Naturally, the materials she had to work with were natural things from her home environment. Sticks, rocks, vines, leaves, flowers, feathers, fur, even small bones, berries in season, that sort of stuff.
            This particular year she was making crowns or necklaces of vines, with flowers, woven and maybe some extra leaves to fill them out. She used salal a lot because it’s strong and doesn’t wilt. She liked fireweed when it was in season because it  had a good long stalk and was colorful. Later in the year there would be colored leaves, and she was looking forward to them.
            She made leafy crowns for her mother, and a big wreath for Ralph who obediently wore it around his neck. She wove them for Blue, and the Puma Bros, and wore one herself too. Hers had a big white daisy right in the middle above her eyes.
            She made a small house of sapling branches, and hoped the B’s would use it, but though some of the B’s good-naturedly visited it, just to make her happy, they couldn’t really use it.
            “It’s very pretty,” said a Bertha. “Thank you for thinking of us, Twigg’s Sister!”
            Then she gathered some small sticks about the size of pencils. She laid them out on the ground and looked at them, trying to think of something interesting to do with them. She began arranging them where they lay in various patterns. She was one of the Forest Folk, after all.
            Cherry kept coming back to a simple cross of two sticks. She wondered what could be done with that, even just to make it more stable. Maybe winding a vine through it, weaving around each of the four spokes, so to speak. So, that’s what she did, using a blackberry vine. The small thorns worked to keep it very sturdy. When she held it up, it was diamond shaped, which was surprising to her, she had sort of expected it to look square.
            Cherry was so pleased with her construction, that she took it to Ramona.
            “Look, Mama, I made this for you!” said Cherry.
            “Oh, Sweet Baby, it’s beautiful,” said Ramona. But it reminded her of something, something she had heard about long ago when she was a girl with her mother.
            “I’ve seen something like that a long time ago. But the winding was done with colored yarn. I’d like to show you, but we need Thaga’s help. Let’s just go see if she has some leftover yarn that we can use,” said Ramona.
            It was a pleasant summer stroll up and over the meadow and down the old path to the stone cabin, home of Thaga and Ooog. Ramona knocked, and Thaga asked them in, naturally.
            Ramona showed Thaga the interesting thing which Cherry had made.
            “Nice!” said Thaga.
            “I’ve seen something like this, but made with colored yarn. My mother had one. It was a gift passed down from her mother. I wonder if you have some bits of leftover yarn. The colors don’t matter except that we need some blue, for the eye!” said Ramona.
            Thaga went to her fabric closet and brought out her basket of leftover yarns.
            “Cherry, you may have them all!” said Thaga.
            There was a nice little ball of the blue that Thaga had used to knit her own blue sweater which she wore all the time. She put the leftover yarn in a cloth shopping bag, but kept her basket for when she had bits of leftover yarn again.
            Cherry said, “Thank you, Thaga. It’s all so pretty!”
            “It couldn’t go to a better person,” said Thaga happily.
            At home, near the Fire Circle, all during the afternoon, Ramona and Cherry worked. First Ramona showed her how to wind the yarn starting with the blue at the center, around each crossbar. Then she added other colors in stripes until most of the length of the crossbars was filled up with colored yarn in diamond shaped stripes.
            “My mother said that her mother said that the Native woman who gave to her said that the blue in the middle was supposed to make you think of the Maker of All and that he is watching all we do. This lady also said they put them in places where they would be seen, all along the paths that people walked on every day,” Ramona said to Cherry.
            “Now, you do one,” she said.
            Cherry did, and it was almost as tight and neat as Ramona’s. There was a lot of yarn in the bag, so she gathered more straight little sticks and over that day and evening and the next morning, Cherry made a couple dozen more of the Eyes. She made sure that there was a nice little loop on each one so that she could hang them on bushes at eye level.
            That next afternoon, Cherry hung them all over the area, near the Home Clearing, out on the meadow, and along the river.
            As she was finishing up, Maeve drifted down out of the sky, silently. She had noticed the unusual activity, and the colorful objects themselves.
            “Cherry, Sweetie, whatever are you up to?” said Maeve. She had plopped down beside Cherry on the riverbank.
            “These are reminders. I made them,” said the child.
            “They are very pretty. What should they remind us of,” said Maeve, though she had an idea.
            “They mean that the Maker of All is watching. Mama showed me how to do them, and Thaga gave me her yarn!” said Cherry.
            “Ah, very good, Little One. To be watched over by Love is a very fine thing!” said the wise old Raven.
            “Love?” said Cherry.
            “Yes, dear, Love,” said Maeve. “Now, let’s go on down to the Clearing. It’s time.”

💮

He Had Been A Little Evasive

 

On location.

            “You know, the other day I didn’t quite tell the whole story,” said Ralph one day to his friend, counselor, and confidant, Maeve.
            “You surprise me, Boss!” said Maeve. “I’m sure you had a good reason.”
            “I like to think so, Black Leg," Ralph sighed.
            “What story was it?” said she.
            “Oh, you know, I was chatting with my biographer the other day, and she asked me a complicated question. She wanted to know if I really do that thing with bent and twisted branches and repositioned trees, like they show on the videos,” said he.
            “Why is it complicated?” asked Maeve, seated comfortably on his shoulder.
            “Because I, we Forest Keepers, do that, yes, but the investigators always get it wrong.”
            “I’ve seen you do it. You talked a bunch of alder trees into making a house of themselves,” said Maeve.
            “Yeah, but see, there was a good practical reason for that. It wasn’t woo in the slightest,” said Ralph.
            “Some of them do have woo on the brain. Some of them wouldn’t know a woo if it smacked them upside the head,” said Maeve. She was kind of sorting through her feathers at the same time. The talk of fleas had made her itch if she thought about them at all.
            “They don’t know a thing about the songs. That’s one of their weak spots. If you don’t sing those things into place, they just break or die,” continued Ralph. “So when I said it was like a kid’s game, or a competition, well it just wasn’t the whole story. It’s a language done in a song. The bending and twisting are only part of it.”
            A little breeze came through, pausing to listen to Ralph and Maeve for a moment. Then it blew on down toward the Sound.
            “That feels nice, on these hot days,” remarked Maeve, settling her feathers.
            They happened to be sitting by the silver river. Ralph was going to gather some fish for Ramona in a little while. He had her five gallon bucket handy.
            “See, in my case, it was a game, or maybe a prank. But to explain that prank would have turned the whole subject into a joke,” said Ralph.
            “What did you do!” said Maeve.
            “I’m sure you know that Bob and I are cousins, right? Our mothers were sisters. We were raised like brothers, in the same family. Pod, clan, whatever. Bob is younger, so he followed me around doing whatever I said to do.”
            “Ah,” said Maeve.
            “One day I got a grand idea. We were like maybe ten years old. Not babies, little kids, or quite young adults. An inventive age.
            “You wouldn’t be trying something out on the adults, of course,” said Maeve.
            “Actually, that’s exactly it,” said Ralph.
            “I got Bob to help me make about two hundred twig location glyphs. That’s the word the investigators use. I may as well use it. Then we went all through the forest installing these things where everyone would see them. We knew where the families lived of course. We covered valleys and mountain sides.
            “This is what they don’t know, we sang the song of You Must Come over them, with the added message You Must Bring Something Eat. That was a lot of singing, and it had to include when.”
            “Where was this party?” said Maeve.
            “It was more like a calling of the clans, serious business, except it wasn’t. It was monkey business. It did turn into a party, after nobody could figure out who was in charge,” giggled Ralph.
            “Where?” said Maeve.
            “Oso. On that hillside that slid into the river years later. Maeve, I think half the Forest Keepers, kids, moms, grampas and all, in Snohomish County showed up that night. Bob and I came with the rest of them, with our parents and sibs, just as good and sweet as little lambs,” said Ralph.             “No one ever knew, officially, who had called the meeting which turned out to be the biggest gathering of Forest Keepers ever known.
            “However, my father, who had no sense of humor in his whole body, caught up with me the next day. He said my fingerprints were all over this, and not to mock the people ever again. Well, ouch. I didn’t think of it that way, but it was kinda that way.”
            “Do you think Bob tattled on you?” said Maeve.
            “No. Bob wasn’t made that way. My father just untied the knot on his own,” sighed Ralph.
            “You were born to be a leader, Boss,” chuckled Maeve.
            “I guess so,” said Ralph.
            Then he waded out about waist deep into the river with the bucket. He held it down under the surface, so it was convenient for the trout to jump in the bucket. When a couple of dozen had shoved their way into the bucket, he waded back out of the river carrying it.
            “Let’s take these fish to Mona, Maeve,” he said.
            It was going to be a fish night.

🐟