Monthly Archives: December 2022

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This too two

This too two I want to remember.
Disagreeing. Respectful nearly always.
You say, “You argue with everything.”
“I think about both sides.” I say.
“And if I am alone I discuss both with myself.”
You roll your eyes and I grin and continue.
This too two I want to remember.

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Small cat

The kittens were new in 2021 and are so much bigger now. Elwha is the biggest cat I’ve ever had. Tiger face and shoulders. They were a bit malnourished when I got them and Elwha grow out rather than up at first. He was also very worried about food and ate very fast. It took a while for him to trust that more food would come. So far so good and he is much more mellow now.

And they both love to go outside on harness and leash. I have to take them one at a time, because I can’t effectively carry both if one of them freaks out. Elwha is much more likely to freak out than Sol Duc. The recycling truck is particularly scary. Also people, dogs and SUVs.

Early on, when everything was new, Elwha jumped into the bathtub and howled, because he landed in water. He had previously found it empty. I had to rescue him and he was very upset. He spent a full thirty minutes cleaning himself.

Very happy New Year’s Eve. Be careful out there and I hope the New Year brings joys. I am hoping that this will be our last really bad Covid-19 winter, though we may need to do yearly vaccines.

Here is a tea-cat, Hot Kitty, in a teapot that Helen Burling Ottaway made. She was my mother and the poem on the teapot is mine. You can read it here. We drank a lot of tea growing up.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: new.

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This too

This too I want to remember.
Discussions of the world together.
The mysteries of science and sweatpants strings.
String theory and medicine, cabbages and kings.
Why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.
This too I want to remember.

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Small miracle

Notice the coat. What is missing? Here is a cropped earlier photograph:

We go for a lovely walk in Rockcreek Park in Maryland. It is very cold and the creek is half frozen. My son goes down to the creek and throws rocks on the ice.

The ice makes wonderful sounds and the rocks mostly do not go through the ice. It is in beautiful patterns.

We get cold and are ready to head back. My son realizes that he has lost the button. We spend some time looking for a brown button in brown leaves. No button. We are colder.

When I look at the photographs later, they confirm that the button was lost on that walk!

The next day my ex-husband’s father’s second spouse comes to brunch. She is the last of the six grandparents. We have a lovely brunch. She is a potter and a landscape architect and is helping my son and daughter in law with their garden and yard. After brunch we walk back to the creek, keeping our eyes peeled for the button. She has a button collection but not that button. He might find one on the internet. Or he could contact Pendleton, since it is a Pendleton coat. Very handsome.

At the creek we search in the leaves and along the water, all of us. No button. I cross the little bridge, seeing a lump on the ice the right size and color. I clamber down the bank. “No,” I say, “Oh! Yes! Found it!” The brown button is sitting on the ice. It must have shot across the ice when he bent down to pick up a rock! “Hooray!” we all say. A small miracle for the season. Happy winter holidays and prayers for those lost.

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Songs to raise girls: lullaby

Just you wait: new stories. We visited my Aunt Pat, Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Joan, all in their 80s. I want more stories!

My Aunt Pat and Uncle Jim were married for two weeks and then took a newborn home: me. My mother was in a tuberculosis hospital for active tuberculosis and could not be around me. I would be infected and die. So I went with my father, my aunt and uncle, my paternal grandparents and my great grandfather Malcolm Kenyon Ottaway and Florence Henderson Ottaway, who were visiting from Lincoln, England for two weeks. My father, aunt and uncle were all in college at the University of Tennessee. My aunt says it was rather chaos.

My great grandfather Mal would walk up and down singing this lullaby: “With her head tucked underneath her arm.” It’s about Anne Boleyn as a ghost after being beheaded, haunting the Tower of London. So this was one of my lullabies. Some of the songs to raise me were fairly peculiar choices. This might explain some things about me. My Aunt Pat says that Great Grandfather Mal said “‘ead tucked underneath ‘er arm”.

Here are the lyrics: https://genius.com/Stanley-holloway-with-her-head-tucked-under-her-arm-lyrics.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: just.

The photograph is Aunt Pat and Aunt Joan playing four hands Christmas songs. YouTube sometimes does not approve of my music choices. After finding these four versions of “With Her Head Tucked Underneath Her Arm”, it plays this to try to mellow me out. Just stop that, YouTube.