All she wrote

It wasn’t exactly like I said in “Someday Summer”; it was far better, and yet much more difficult.  

All of a sudden one day it was 7/7 and I came home from visiting Abuela and the lovely nieces, and there were two Early Girl tomatoes red on the vine and I picked one and ate it right there in my yard.  And I picked the second one and chopped it up with some cucumbers still warm from the sun and served them with olive oil and lemon to Analuz and Mikha.  And we hung around my beautiful house, and yes, the fart jokes did fly. 

On this hot July day, I was not 'cured of the relentless urge to re-mate', but it was more like a blessing than a curse, as I flirted with cute girls via the Internet, and spent plenty of time cleaning the house, loving my friends, caring for my garden, and riding my bike.  I wished I was ready to fly solo, or I wished I had found my other half, and neither of those were true, and that was what I had to work with.

In Piera's leaving, there was a lesson – or probably more than one – but the one I deeply felt was the need to HEAR the other person in what they said.  Not to just listen, or answer, or say “yeah I got it”, or try to fix it... but to still and quiet my whole self, all the thoughts and needs, and HEAR.  Truly HEAR.  So I worked on that, and worked, and will continue to work some more.  And I worked on all kinds of other stuff, managing my emotions, my self, my teeth, my life.  Yes, there was a lot of work involved.

Yet on this July day of First Tomatoes, my new cat-boy, Grizzly, jumped the fence to see what was on the other side.  He came back in all good time, and was amazingly patient with Mikha as she stroked his dense, soft Siamese fur.  “Gentle with Grizzly.” I said.  “I’m very good with pets.” she answered, knowledgeably.  He will never be Georgia.  Georgia’s place is claimed and unchanged, first and last, and ever-only cat-son.  But Grizzly is a dear, my new companion, my rescued angel, so interesting and quixotic, comforting and lovely.  The Leopard hates him, is hissy-pissy in her old-tabby way, but I hold high hopes that she will some day come around, and I’ll get home at night to see them cuddled together – or at least not hissing – on the couch.  Her health is holding strong and I make sure to brush her and tell her she is my special girl.  And she purrs, and drools and falls asleep in my arms.

This summer day, I wasn’t so chunky as I had been, but I definitely had a tummy.  Even the shadow of gauntness was gone.  My face had filled out, and was tan, and I had added some laugh lines that weren’t there during the awful winter before.

My house was everything I could have hoped for and more.  It was light and bright and lovely.  I kept it clean and filled with fresh flowers.  It had heard love echo from the bedroom, and some tears from the couch where I liked to drink and read and look at old photos; and laughter, I think, from every single room.  It was still new to me, and I to it.  There was some art on the walls, and not too much clutter on the table.  There had been one huge party, with hopefully more to come.  The little wind chimes from the previous owners harmonized beautifully with the big ones that my Realtor had given me, a soft counterpart to daily living.

Really what happened, is that I didn’t live happily ever after, but I mostly lived well.  I went to choir, sometimes, and Salsa, sometimes.  Sometimes I was so tired I came straight home and cracked open a beer.  Sometimes I dreaded work and other times I came home all revved up.  I gardened.  I slept.  I was a good cat-mom.  I wrote the occasional blog post, cut flowers for my friends, tried to keep best practices in my dating life and created the highest quality day-to-day that I could.  I worked on HEARING. I kept on, and then I kept on keeping on.

And that, for now, is all she wrote.