After the Storm

I encourage you to push play on the song below. It's one of the prettiest beauties in my mind lately. It's by Mumford & Sons, and it's called After The Storm.



"There will come a time ,you'll see, with no more tears
and love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill and see what you find there
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair."

For a day like today, it goes perfectly. For a strange sad month like this past March, it also goes perfectly. The sun has never felt so welcome in this Northern California world, all of my friends and family also praising it's glory.



Two days ago my beloved Abigail the kitty died. It was very sudden, which makes it difficult. She was my first cat. I got her at a feed store when I moved into my first apartment at age 19. It was a little studio apartment, it looked like it was in a warehouse, with a strange old wooden long porch outside next to a non-functioning ice machine. Next door there was a bar called "The Copper Rail". I lived there all alone and the place wasn't very close to town, so I wanted some kitten company. Abby used to jump all over me when I went to bed, playing with my feet as kittens do. I called her a "piece of popcorn" cause she would jump so high sporadically as I was trying to get to bed. So spunky and sweet was she. She was my first roommate.

A couple of pictures from that era...that long lost life before.



Abby used to get bone thin and long and lean every single summer, and in the winters she would get roly poly like a butter ball. This kind of seasonal transformation went on for years. But as she found herself more than a decade old, I think she settled somewhere in between, preferring our laps to her long days outside chasing the lizards and bluebirds. And once she began to truly prefer laps, it was there that she sought day in and day out. A lap was all she wanted, besides a wee bit of food and fresh water. I will miss her something awful.

Sometime circa 2001-02, Abby went missing for about three or four months. I didn't live at home with my parents where she lived at the time as I was really a rambler back in the day and didn't end up keeping Abby with me for more than a few months, so she became our "family cat". One afternoon I made a routine stop-off at my parents and was in the middle of a breakup with my boyfriend of over a couple years. I was on the phone with him in the backyard, having some kind of an argument and crying. I am sure I was pretty damn loud. But my emotional spat and sorrow quickly came to a halt when Abby, who no one had seen for months, came literally bounding right into my arms. I told Mike I would talk to him later and hung up immediately. I'll never forget how much that moment helped me at that time. I was so overjoyed that Abby had come back and forgot all about my silly heart woes for days. She was my sister. A sister soul. She must have known then, somewhere in her little cat heart, that her return would help me. She was always very devoted to me, I noticed, above all others. I felt like she would drop what she was doing the moment I came to my parents house or to Heather's house where she later lived, and she would come to me. I totally didn't deserve it because I was only a windswept, scatterbrain of a child when I got her, and wasn't a very good mama. Heather was always more of a mama to her than I was. But maybe Abby loved her life so. I like to think it is. And maybe she was always just showing her appreciation for being selected from the box at the feed store that day. I like to think of animals as completely aware and intelligent, and so I will just think it so.

My heart won't ever forget her. And I hope she is feeling the rays of sun that came out this lovely day.
As I wrote on Heather's sweet blog about her-
Oh universe, I suppose I couldn't bear to live if I did indeed believe it all just stopped, just went away for good, never to return or to come back to our hearts. It keeps me sane, in all this sweetness and sad wonderful beauty, to believe that somehow this whole damn thing goes on forever, and nothing, nothing at all, is ever lost in the mess.

Lately, despite all of the sadness and melancholy that has been about, my heart has still been soaring here and there. I don't know why exactly, but it does make the sorrow easy. I think perhaps I know more than ever what a damn miracle we are in the very midst of, every single moment. I don't know why it would be now that such knowledge would permeate my soul more than ever, or perhaps it is from the sadness itself that I am able to know so thoroughly my own privilege and gratefulness, but whatever the new tiny joy is that is peeking it's eyes out from under the snow and tears, I am excited for every day to begin, and to know all of you more and more and more.