Nickerdoodle

Sir Nicholas Alexander of Brevard, aka Nicky or Nickerdoodle, is a blue mitted lynx Ragdoll. He and his sister, Lady Wilhelmina Abigail of Brevard (Willow or Willowbean), were Christmas gifts from my parents.

We were told that as a baby Nicky was usually too busy at mealtime; he was often lounging while his siblings ate. He would saunter up late to the table and sometimes mom was finished handing out the meals. He was smaller than his sister because of this. The first night at our house, Willow explored and ate and climbed up a rattan bookshelf in the middle of the night. Nicky hid under the bed, propped up against the baseboard. He wouldn't eat or drink water.

After a day and a half of this, I knew he would soon get in trouble and could die if he didn't start eating. So we bought some kitten formula and tried to feed him with a syringe. That was the magic pill! He lay on his back like a baby, both front paws around the syringe and sucked all the formula down in less than a minute. Then he started eating his dry food.

Today his is grown up, although still smaller at 14 pounds than most male Ragdoll cats. He is loving, sleeps on his back, snores, rolls over for tummy rubs and still things his main duty is to prop up the walls of the house. He knows he is gorgeous with his darkly outlined pink nose and his almond shaped blue eyes rimmed with white "eyeliner". He is in love with his "cousin" Maggie (another Ragdoll) and follows her around the house like a puppy dog. But, alas! She just hisses, spits, growls and runs away.
Submitted to Friday's Ark

Devotion

The cross on top of the altar at St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome. The sun was shining through a small round window over the entrance to the Cathedral. The rays of light illuminated the cross and nothing else. It didn't matter that I'm not Catholic; I am a Christian and for me this was God's house and at this shining point in time, He was there.

Submitted to Thursday Challenge.

Mohawk Max

This is Max. He came into our lives in May of 2003 about three months after the death of our dog Dixie. I didn't want another dog. But I have a tendency to pick up hopeless creatures. I went to pick up some of my daughter's things at the Math & Science school and this mop was sitting on the porch of her dorm. One of the girls was feeding him some bread. He was so furry it was hard to tell which end was which. I hadn't seen him hanging around before. The lady in charge of the dorm said that the college kids fed the strays, but when they left school for vacation or summer break the animals were left to fend for themselves. Since MSMS was still in session, they sought out the kids for food. I moved more stuff out and tried to ignore him but kept thinking about "the mop".

Finally, I said to myself "If he is still there this last trip down and if he follows us to the van, he can come home." He was still there. He came when called. He hopped up into the van and sat on an old beach towel. We took him home. He seemed used to people, not too scared and liked to have his head petted, but he wouldn't let his tummy be touched or his paws. He was matted terribly. I managed to cut three large ones off the top of his head but I could tell he had a huge matted area on his belly. So I knew it was the vet for him.

He was so badly matted and scared that they had to put him under anesthesia to cut away all the mats. His claws had grown so long they grew around and into his paw pads. No wonder he wouldn't dig, his paws were sore. After the shaving, they bathed him. He had a skin infection with huge patches of hair missing. They checked him and he had heart worms as well. So, he stayed another two nights for the treatment. Our vet said that he was about five years old and had been someone's pet because he had been neutered. No collar, no tags. He came through his treatment fine and is now heartworm free.

He looks like a blonde cocker, with a lighter and finer blond patch of hair on the top of his head that stands straight up, like a mohawk. We named him Maxwell. He doesn't like to get wet, probably because he had to be out in the weather so much, the wet fur mats causing his skin irritation. He still won't dig. He loves to show off, play with toys, chew on rawhide chews, and sleep. Now he has an insulated dog house with a covered front porch, a dog door, a linoleum floor, a light for heat in winter and a fan for summer. (The dog house he had in Mississippi had an air conditioner.) He loves to sleep in the sun on his big dog mattress and his hammock.

Max is possessive of his food and his toys. He still doesn't let you rub his tummy or touch his paws. He's hard to work with if you have to put eye drops or ear drops in and he will snap and growl at the vet. Grooming has to be done under anesthesia, he gets so hysterical. Something about the sound of fire engines sets him off and he yowls and howls like he is dying. We still love him. He is the funniest dog I have ever known. He's smart and loves to be the center of attention. Hopefully he will someday learn to relax and know that he won't have to be out in the cold and wet, or sleep on the hard ground, or walk on infected paw pads, or scrounge for his next meal. I want him to know that he's safe now; he's home.

Transitions

Transition- a change from one place or state or subject or stage to another.

Life is transition, from the beginning to the end. Bob Dylan said "He who is not busy being born is busy dying." When you really think about it, every second of every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year of our lives is transition and change. Some transitions are more dramatic than others yet all are important in developing who we are. The reactions to and the emotions associated with transition are individual; every person sees the change in a different way. Transitions difficult for some are easier for others.

When I was growing up as a preacher's kid, we moved a lot. Not every year but often enough. The first major move I remember was from Roanoke, VA to Gary, Indiana. I was nine and my brother was only nine months old. We had lived in Roanoke for seven years. My mother's parents lived there until they temporarily moved to Pennsylvania for their work. I had just started the fifth grade, one week in to be exact. It wasn't the change of school, teachers, house, town, or other people that made it so painful; it was the loss of one person and one person only...Mary, my best friend. She was two months older than me and we had been best friends since we were three. I went home with her after church on Sunday most weeks and if not, she came home with me. We didn't live near enough to each other to play each day and we didn't go to the same school, but she was the closest childhood friend I ever had.

The last evening there we ate at her house before we left town. I remember sitting in the back seat of the car looking out the back window, sobbing, tears flowing freely, trying to wave good-bye. I thought I would die. I cried until we stopped for the night. I cried softly through the night and all the next day. I cried all the way to Indiana. We promised to write, but we were so young, we didn't. We've seen each other occasionally through the years but we both transitioned. We have the fond memories and both of us cherish them, but we have never had the opportunity to revive the close relationship. Perhaps the pain of that first move caused me to build a small shell, transparent but always present because the moves after that were not as heart wrenching for me. Of course I never had another friend like Mary.

If you don't count the year my folks spent as evangelists and we lived in an Air Stream trailer and changed locations every two weeks, I moved five times in nine years. Nyssa on the other hand lived in Mississippi for fifteen years, from the time she was three until last year. She doesn't remember her move from Oklahoma so this has been her "I'm leaving all my friends" moment. Everyone has them. It's hard. She will probably feel that Mississippi is her "home" but she will survive, just like I did.

Death is a also transition. Dealing with death is difficult for everyone, but the death of someone young with their entire life ahead of them is hard to understand. Last week marked the fourth anniversary of Scoop Sunderworth's death. He was a sophomore in high school, an athlete, good-looking, popular, and although he lived at Palmer Children's Home he had a support group there of kids and house parents that adored him. On April 1st of 2001 he hanged himself. There was no sign of depression, none of the changes anyone would look for. It was April Fool's Day and Scoop was a jokester, so I can only think and hope that this was somehow an April Fool's prank gone terribly wrong.

If he could have known or seen the aftermath of his death, perhaps he would have decided on a different course or a safer prank. His classmates and friends were devastated and the smaller kids in his cottage and his house parents were crushed. Everyone wondered if there was something they could have done or said to make a difference. Those who knew him best put together a picture video of their memories; in this way they grieved and tried to make sense of a senseless loss. In this life there will be no answer, but for his friends, for my Nyssa the memories of Scoop will remain and the first of April is now forever changed.

Asphodel

From the Latin - asphodelus (asphodel): Middle English - affodil: Modern - daffodil. In the Language of Flowers, daffodil means respect, regard, unrequited love, and deceit. Asphodel is linked with the saying, "My regrets follow you to the grave." I noticed in the thesaurus that "daffodil" is a synonym for axiom, proverb and aphorism although I have never heard it used in this manner.

The yellow flower of spring with many varieties; frilly flowers, plain petals, varying shades of yellow to yellow orange and my personal favorite...the cream colored petal with the pinkish orange trumpet. Some grow only where planted and others spread to cover a hillside. How these came to grow on the eroding bank of a drainage ditch in Virginia Beach I will never know, but while all the surrounding brush and debris are still bare and dead from winter, they have pushed their heads through the cold earth to reach the sun and in turn brighten my day.

I looked for sites about asphodel and daffodils and these were my favorites.

Quotes:

From Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone - Professor Snape: "For your information, Potter, asphodel and wormwood make a sleeping potion so powerful it is known as the Draught of Living Death.

Oscar Wilde in The Burden of Stys - There is a tiny yellow daffodil. The butterfly can see it from afar, although one summer evening's dew could fill its little cup twice over, ere the star had called the lazy shepherd to his fold, and be no prodigal.

Agnes Repplier - Sleep sweetly in the fields of asphodel, and waken, as of old, to stretch thy languid length, and purr thy soft contentment to the skies.

I also found this site about "The Daffodil Garden" in California. Great story. Amazing.