Sandy Slaga

The inoperable big black ball took Maggie swiftly.

My beautiful girl of the rich chocolate coat and soft, tender eyes. Set free from the big black ball by Dr. Ann’s gentle hands while my husband and I cradled her in our arms.

Maggie.

She of unconditional love and no demands. No expectations.

Only love.

Loving me every damn day of her life. Regardless of my mood. Regardless of how much attention I had paid to her the day before. Or the moment before.

She forgave my bitchy moods and the times when I was too wrapped up in stuff to take her for a walk or throw her tennis ball.

She forgave and forgot at the moment of my infraction. And eagerly and willingly accepted anything I gave. No matter how small the gesture or fleeting the moment.

Always there. Living in the moment. Ready to love me. To be with me. Just be. For no other reason than the sheer joy of being.

Unconditional love. Simple joy. Life for life’s sake. Untouched by worry or resentment or envy.

Thank you, Maggie. Thank for teaching me how to love and how to live.

If eyes are a window to the soul, then my chocolate Lab’s eyes must be a window to her heart.

Two nights ago, during our ritual bedtime hugs and petting, I felt a lump on her right front elbow. Correction. This was no lump. This was a damn softball.

Shocked at its size and perplexed at Maggie’s obvious indifference, I did what any menopausal married female in crisis does. I screamed for my husband.

My mind was already in the car with Maggie, cuddled in my down comforter, rushing to the emergency vet and demanding the best of everything and NOW.

My husband, being of the Y chromosome, calmly observed that there was no need for panic. Certainly, when I’m at Defcon 1, that’s what I want to hear. Relax! That yes-the-house-is-burning-but-calm-down attitude.

I shot him a look expressing how special I felt about him at that moment.

Then I looked at Maggie. “Let it go,” her eyes said.

Maggie slept like a baby that night. I tossed, turned, paced and fought urges to devour the entire contents of my kitchen.

Yesterday morning we were first in line at the vet. Long history. Over the last ten years, our yellow Lab and Doberman both got their angel wings while under Dr. Ann’s loving care.

So when it wasn’t Dr. Ann who attended Maggie, my eyes flared while my teeth held my tongue and mouth in place.

Then I glanced at Maggie. “Give her a chance,” her eyes said.

The softball came with a high fever. And I’ll be damned if that softball didn’t turn out to be a black ball. A big, black, inoperable ball.

While Dr. Ann’s colleague tested and biopsied, I bit my lip to stop the tears and so that I could listen carefully. As if what anyone had to say mattered.

And then I looked at Maggie. “Ok. Ok. But when are we going home?” her eyes asked.

So home we came. One blubbering menopausal female. One there’s-no-need-to-panic male. And one feverish canine with a bright red gauze and ace bandage-wrapped right front leg.

Blubbering and wailing, while cathartic, are a bit of a hinderance to good nursing care. And so while Maggie hobbled, I followed. While I held her, my husband got the pills down her.

This morning she was worse. This morning, I was on a mission. Eight o’clock. Vet’s office. Maniacal, menopausal and now mustering every last hormone in my body, I looked at Dr. Ann’s colleague, prepared to launch a tirade.

But before I spoke, I looked at Maggie. “It’s ok,” her eyes said. “Just get rid of this damn fever so I can feel better. And then take me home.”

Kids, work and life kept me blissfully ignorant of Anna Nicole Smith until her legal battles with her 90-year-old late husband’s estate hit the front pages.

Never short on self-righteousness, I skimmed the “facts” and slam-dunked my conclusions about her and her life.

And on with my life. You know. Real life.

But she kept showing up. And then one evening, there she was. Her own reality show. Oh, for god’s sake. What won’t they use as fodder for a tv show?

That damn tv show reached out, grabbed me and held on. Or maybe it was this young woman with a sadness beneath the candy apple lip gloss.

And so I kept watching. Week after week. Embarrassed to admit I was a closet watcher.

And in this woman with the candy apple lip gloss, I sensed compassion and genuineness, masked by a search for acceptance at any cost.

Anna Nicole was used and manipulated, and, many will say, did her share of using and manipulating. But she never lost her soul, as if any of us can. She never lost the core of who she was.

For all her mistakes - Lord knows we make a few from time to time - she was always a little girl from Texas with dreams and a heart just as big.

And she wanted what we all long for - to love and to be loved not for what we’ve done or what we have - but simply for who we are.

Christmas came early this year. And just when I needed it.

The PDA or Parental Display of Affection is uncommon in the Parent-Teen world. Even rarer is the TRPDA. Teen Request for Parental Display of Affection.

And so it was that I hit pay dirt very early this morning.

I was awakened around 5 a.m. to the sound of my seventeen-year-old daughter’s voice, timid, frightened. “Mo-mmy? I had a bad dream.”

The far right will be relieved to know that the hard wiring installed in me somewhere between conception, labor and delivery is still intact. Between the “Mo-” and the “-mmy” I was conscious, vertical and capable of brain surgery if called upon.

She stood at the side of my bed, hands clasped together against her chest, shivering.

Instinctively I reached out. Tentative yet aching. Afraid that she’d tighten and recoil as had become our custom.

My palms gingerly cupped her shoulders as I pulled her in. Before either of us knew what had happened, she yielded. And I was holding her, rocking back and forth, back and forth.

Cradling her, we walked to her room. As she lay in bed, murmuring how she didn’t like bad dreams, I stroked her forehead, her cheeks. Like touching the face of God herself.

And then, the rhythmic breathing telling me all was well.

The break of dawn brought a cup of hot coffee and dreary, low 40s rain. But I’m unaware. My heart is afire.

‘Twas a night in December, and all through the house
not a body was stirring, not even my spouse.
School uniforms were lost in the house without care
in hopes that Christmas break soon would be there.

The Teenagers were grudgingly prone in their beds
while visions of homework invaded their heads.
And hub in his boxers and I with my wine
had just settled in and were feeling just fine.

When down in the kitchen there came such commotion,
the mom in me bolted with a single swift motion.
On down the stairs I flew in a blaze
then stopped - half-asleep, still in a daze.

The bulb on the stove shed just enough light
to illuminate the setting now clearly in sight.
When what to my misty eyes did appear?
Two toddlers in pjs, grins ear to ear!

With sippy cups of oj and blankies in hand
they whispered and giggled, then away they both ran.
But sure like the sunrise the bickering appeared
and they whined and they shouted, then taunted and jeered:

“No, Hannah! No, Caleb!” Now push, shove and pinch -
“Stop, Caleb! Mine, Hannah!” Neither one gave an inch.
To the top of the couch, to the top of the chair!
More shouting, more whining! And pulling of hair!

Then almost as quickly as the bick’ring had commenced
the chaos subsided, their voices less tense.
As I peered ‘round the corner to take just a peek,
they were cuddled and quiet, peaceful and meek.

The alarm broke the silence, the coffee is on,
All the noise in the kitchen soon will be gone.
My son now a senior, off to college next year,
His sister, a junior; It’s becoming quite clear.

In Christmases future we may be apart,
and those Christmases past take a piece of my heart,
So I’ll live in the moments we’re given this year
And cherish the gift of my babes being near.

Hey God. It’s me. How you doin’?

How you doin’, Sandy?

Eh, okay today, god. Whoops. Missed the capital there, God. Sorry.

No problem. It doesn’t matter. It’s dressing. It’s not who I am.

Oh. I thought you’d be offended.

Why?

Well. It’s due you. After all, you’re God.

I don’t care how you spell my name. Or what you call me for that matter. Just talk to me. That’s all.

Yea, I know. Not done too good a job with that lately, have I?

I understand.

Why? Don’t you get pissed at me for ditching you so much?

No. Sad. But not angry.

Why sad?

Because I miss you. I miss our talks.

Yea. Me, too.

Uh, same time tomorrow?

I’ll be here.

Some people and places just stick with you.

Sister Jean Clare is one of those people.

She was the principal and I a pupil at St. John’s Catholic School in Spring Green, Wisconsin, in the early 1960s.

Everybody called her Sister Jean Clare. Not Sister. Not Sister Jean.

Even in my first-graderness I knew that Sister Jean Clare was not like other nuns at St. John’s. Certainly not like spindly Sister Bernadine, whose skin always looked pasty and was the kind of nun whose habit you wanted to lift up or you wanted to aggravate just for the hell of it.

Sister Jean Clare could have been a soccer player or a CEO. A compact, olive-skinned beauty with fiery coffee bean eyes and hair, what we could see of it, the color of black licorice sticks. One look from her told you she knew exactly what you were up to and even what you were thinking about being up to.

And no habit lifting with Sister Jean Clare. I was afraid that she’d whoosh up her skirt in both hands and invite me to have a real look, saying something like, “Just like yours, only bigger!” Then I would have been stuck with not only having to go to confession for blasphemy against a nun, but the trauma of verbalizing the whole thing to Father Fellenz.

Sister Jean Clare also taught the eighth grade at St. John’s. She made the eighth graders buddy up with first graders for fire drills and to walk to morning Mass each school day. Something about modeling good behavior.

All that modeling would be lost on me until years later when Catholic school recall kicked in.

For the time being, I was too busy watching Sister Jean Clare’s coffee bean eyes.

Tithe. A simple, innocuous word.

A tithe is a tenth of something. It’s commonly used to refer to giving a tenth of one’s income to the church, as in, “I pledge to make good on my tithe this year.”

Evidently, there are those among my fellow Catholics who object to tithing. Oh, not to the concept. To the word. Yes, you read correctly. To the use of the word.

It’s too, well, you know. Too Protestant.

It’s so Protestant that the parish to which I belong has purged the word “tithe” from a parish publication and substituted “stewardship of treasure” in its place.

Upon reading of this crisis, I rejoiced. Surely the “tithe” crisis could only mean that the “tithe” police had run out of good works to perform. Faced with a dearth of hungry, naked and lonely brothers and sisters, the “tithe” police searched elsewhere and discovered a worthy cause.

A minor issue? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

Differences among religions are neither new nor insignificant. But instead of invoking our differences, something tells me that God would rather we spend our precious time on this earth taking care of business. You know. Loving our neighbors as ourselves, for example.

We shake our heads at the atrocities coming out of Iraq and Lebanon. We recall with a touch of American arrogance the violence in Northern Ireland. How can they, in the name of religion, spew such hate over minor issues? Don’t their religions teach them differently? How did they grow so intolerant?

Maybe from the seeds of tithing.

‘Twas the night before Sanity, and all through the house
not a person was stirring, not even my spouse.
School uniforms were lost in the house without care
the Teens’ thoughts of tomorrow too painful to bare.

The Teenagers were grudgingly prone in their beds
while visions of homework invaded their heads
And hub in his boxers and I with my wine
had just settled in and were feeling just fine.

When down in the kitchen there came such commotion
The mom in me bolted with a single swift motion.
On down the stairs I flew in a blaze
Then stopped - half-asleep, still in a daze.

The bulb on the stove shed just enough light
to illuminate the setting now clearly in sight.
When what to my misty eyes did appear
but two toddlers in pjs, grins ear to ear.

With tippy cups of oj and blankies in hand
they whispered and giggled, then away they both ran.
But sure like the sunrise the bickering appeared
and they shouted and whined, they taunted, they jeered:

“No, Hannah! Thomas Tank Engine!
Me first! It’s mine!”
“No, Cabe! Want Barney!”
More shouts, oh God, more whine.

Then almost as quickly as the bickering commenced
the chaos subsided, their voices less tense.
As I peered ‘round the corner to take just a peek
They were cuddled and quiet, peaceful and meek.

The alarm broke the silence, the coffee is on
The noise in the kitchen soon will be gone.
Sanity, while elusive, can wait with its start
Damn thought of tomorrow takes a piece of my heart.

If you move one grain of sand, the world will never be the same.

I ran across this anonymous quote today. The clamor of my vigilance to properly source the written word was almost deafening. And when I let go, I heard.