A long story about the name Eva

Published June 1, 2010

This is a story. I have no idea if it’s true. I doubt anyone does at this point, because it happened 98 years ago and everyone involved is dead.

My mother told me this story when I was little, and I loved it. 

I love family history, family heritage and family lore. My mother couldn’t stand her actual life in the present tense, and so she told stories about the past, where everything was happy and wonderful.

I listened to a lot of stories about people I’d never met and would never know, but over the years, as I visited cemeteries and heard more pieces of stories, and got to know cousins who were so-and-so’s grandchildren, I was hooked.

At one point, my mother could name all 11 (or 12?) of Aunt Hazel’s siblings, and what happened to each of them. It made it much more interesting to visit Aunt Hazel, who was in her late 80s when I was a teenager. Visiting Aunt Polly was a lot more fun when I realized she was the one who stole the blueberries, or swam across Lake Champlain because she didn’t want to pay the dollar for the toll bridge.

 So my mother and aunts might quibble with this version. It’s all sort of jumbled together in my head. I never met my great-grandparents, and I don’t know if I spelled their names right. I don’t know if they met here, or in Poland. I don’t know if my great-grandmother was born here or in Poland. I guess I’ll have to start asking questions and actually writing it down -- I used to know some of this, but it’s been forgotten.

And so, since this a story, there might be poetic license involved. And it might be 100 percent true.

My grandmother's name was Eva Golembesky, daughter of Waclawa and Wladyslaw Golembiewski, who were of course known as Nellie and Walter.

Nellie and Walter lived in Mineville, New York, deep in the heart of the Adirondack Mountains, across Lake Champlain from Vermont. They call it the North Country, or God's Country. They still hunt bear up there. It's one of the most beautiful places I've ever been, in the summer and fall. In the winter, the average high temperature is 26 degrees. The average low is 7.

And Walter went to work for the Witherbee iron mine.

I don't know how they got from Poland to Mineville, and I don't know if they met in New York or in Poland.

But by 1912, they were married and lived in a tiny house in Mineville, rented from Mr. Witherbee, who owned everything. 

He owned the mine, and the houses in town, and the mining equipment you needed to go get ore. If you wanted to be a miner, you had to buy your equipment at the company store, and then they'd take the cost out of your paycheck.

Next door to Walter and Nellie lived Margaret and Victor Smith. Victor Smith was also a miner. Everyone was. But they were born and raised in the Adirondacks. 

By 1912, their families had been here 200 years and had fought in the American Revolution, and the Civil War. It must have been interesting living and working next to newly immigrated Poles.

It's 1912. Victor and Maggie have settled in to mining life, and they have a bunch of children. Next door, Nellie and Walter settle in, too, and have a baby. Within a month, the baby has died.

And then another baby is born, less than a year later. And two weeks later, she, too, is dead.

At Victor and Maggie's house, they end up with four living children, and three more who die young, but they can't feel anything but sorry for the Polish couple next door. No living children yet. They try again, and this time the baby lives three months.

Meanwhile, Maggie takes in boarders. They have a tiny house, just three bedrooms and less than 900 sq. feet, but they pack the miners in like sardines. Every night before she goes to bed, Maggie makes the dough for 20 or 30 pot pies for the miners to take for their lunch. She bakes them in the morning, wraps each one tightly to keep them warm until lunch, then makes breakfast for at least ten men. Pancakes, sausage, biscuits. She sends them off with two or three pies each, then spends the rest of the day making beds, cleaning and making dinner for ten very hungry men.

 Victor goes to the mines every day with them. He asks every few months if Mr. Witherbee will let him buy his house instead of rent, but is turned down.

The Polish couple have another baby, their fourth. Within a month, this baby is gone, too.

Desperate, they finally consult with a doctor. It takes all of their savings, but this is what savings are for. The doctor does an examination and tells Nellie to come back when she's pregnant again.

She does, and he says, "There is a reason for this, and God has given us a way to make sure that you will have a baby that lives, as long as you honor him and the Bible. When this baby is born, if it's a boy, name him Adam. If it's a girl, name her Eve. This will please God, and the baby will live."

And so Nellie had a girl, and they named her Eva, and they waited. She made it to the six-month mark, and they started to breathe a little easier. And then, for the first time, they had a baby make it to one year old. And then two. And then another baby came along, and she lived, too.

And they had four babies in a row who lived and thrived.

When Eva was 12, her father, Walter, went into the mines one day with his pies wrapped up warmly. Finally, Mr. Witherbee was putting electricity into the mines, so there would light, and clean air would be pumped into the shafts. This was an exciting time for the mine.

Walter reached back behind him into his sack to get his pie and touched a live wire. He was dead when they brought him to the surface. Eva went to work cleaning houses. Now they had no income, but four children to feed.

Less than a year later, Mr. Witherbee offered to sell all of the houses to the miners. He'd give them a mortgage himself, and offered to take the payments right out of their checks. About half the miners in town took him up on it, and were amazed at the possibly of owning a home on a miner's salary. They figured that perhaps Mr. Witherbee had finally made enough money that he would make some changes to safety in the mine, and wanted to build the town up by having everyone own their own home.

This is where Mr. Witherbee lived:

http://www.century21adirondacks.net/listings/13100-sq-ft-Mansion-on-over-5-Acres.html

My grandfather, Bernard Smith, Maggie and Victor's oldest son, was 14, and had grown up next to Nellie and Walter and was already in love with Eva. He knew he'd have to support her, fatherless as she was, but he had a bout of polio which crippled and deformed his foot. He tried to work in the mine, but he lasted two days and had enough.  

He knew someone who knew someone who'd gone to sea, and that was good enough for him. He went and became a Merchant Marine, and shipped out by the time he was 18, taking his new bride, Eva, with him, away from mining, away from the Adirondacks.  

His parents and her mother, though, stayed in Mineville.

They'd bought their houses, you see. And three months after Mr. Witherbee sold everyone their new homes, he closed the mine and put everyone out of work, and the homes were now worthless. 

So Eva and Bernie sent money home, and their parents lived out their lives in the tiny red wooden houses in Mineville.

My grandparents did come back, though, to visit, and every summer my mother played in the yards of the tiny red houses where her parents had grown up.

I have stories in my head of Tongue Mountain, and of wild blueberries, and grandma’s house where you took a bath in the living room once a week in an iron tub because there was no plumbing. And of dogs living under the front porch, and a train trip that came to an end when the conductor yelled, “Next stop, TI-CON-DER-OGA!”

There are stories about Leo’s wife, Larry, who was beautiful, and stories of the Smith brothers and the trouble they got into, and a story about Uncle Hank getting hit by a train when he was a baby and living through it. Those days are very real to me, stories or not.

The houses are still there, more than 100 years old, and still have families living in them.

And while all of Eva's siblings left the Adirondacks for warmer climates, most ending up in San Diego, Bernie's family still lives there, running hotels, working in restaurants, hunting and trapping and getting by as they have for the past 300 years.

And that, in a very long-winded way, is why my grandmother was named Eva. And why, in some fashion or form, I’m going to give my daughter that name.

When she’s born, it will be 98 years since her great-granmother was born, and 72 years since her grandmother was born. But in some way, she’ll be connected to those memories, and to those people, and will know where she came from, this little Eve or Evie or Eva or Evangeline. And I’ll feel good about having a daughter who knows the stories. 

On being pregnant and 40

November 15, 2009

When the Gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers. Or so says an old adage.

And here I am, with the teenager I raised off to the Navy and about to turn 20, my oldest son turning 10 next summer, and newly-five-year-old son.

And, apparently, if all goes well, a new baby in June.

Oy.

Yes, I wanted another baby. Specifically, a girl.

But I had just gotten to the point where I was accepting, slowly, that it just wasn’t going to happen.

We’ve had two babies and two miscarriages. As Mark said, we’re two for two. Let’s appreciate what we have, that we have two beautiful boys, and that we’ve figured out how to keep them healthy and happy.

And, frankly, the first three years of Sander’s life nearly killed us. If we had another baby with autism, it would pretty much finish us off.

Plus, he said, I’m always sick and miserable and unable to function for the first four or five months of pregnancy, and he doesn’t know if he can pick up the slack.

And yet, here we are.

When I told Mark, he was quite literally stunned. You could see him doing the math in his head -- “I’ll be 47 when the baby is born, and I’ll be HOW OLD with a teenager???!”
Yeah.

Well, it’s too late now.

And I’m sick and miserable and unable to function. And Mark has to pick up the slack.

When I was young, at least 100 years ago, I was a true feminist. I believed that women are the same as men, can do anything that men can do, and that I would never need a man in my life.

Why would I? I remember having to answer questions about my future career in college. One guy in the class asked how I’d be an archeologist if I had kids -- what would I do with them?

I almost laughed, the question was so foreign. Kids? Me? Right. I don’t think so. And if I did have kids, I’d put them in a backpack and take them with me -- they’d get a great education on the dig site.

I guess I knew that I’d homeschool even then, at least.

Kids were portable, and easy, right? You just make them adapt to your lifestyle -- it’s not like they have any choice in the matter.

Well.

I’m working on baby number three. Pregnancy number five. And this will be the fourth kid I’m raising.

I am still a feminist. I still believe women deserve equal rights. I do not believe men and women are the same. I don’t believe they can do anything men can do, and I don’t believe men can do anything women can do. And frankly, if you’re going to have sex and get pregnant, you’re going to need a man in your life.

I think the choices now are: Skip men altogether, including sex, or accept that fact that if you get pregnant, you’re going to need help. Lots of it. Moral support, emotional support, physical support, monetary support. Pregnancy is not for sissies.

The first thing I learned, with the first pregnancy, is that we’re animals, whether we like it or not. Once the pregnancy hits, you’re part of a larger biological process than just you. Unless you step in with modern technology to halt the process, which is an option our grandmothers didn’t have, then you’re in for a ride. There’s no turning back, no other options. 

If you get pregnant, you will have a baby, want one or not. Ready or not. In love with the father or not. Rich or not. Single or not.

You are no longer in control of your body at all. Your boobs start to hurt. You slobber all the time. You snore when you sleep. You’re grumpy and mean. 

And, at least for me, there’s vomit involved. Lots of it.

Currently, it’s at 7 every evening. Whether I have dinner plans, or a movie to watch, or someone to impress. Off I go, out to the back porch, heaving away. And there’s nothing ladylike about it -- I’m barfing so hard that my eyeballs hurt and start to tear up, the retching noise is so loud that the kids and the dog run away from me, and, I’m sorry to say, the heaving is so strong that I pee my pants every time. Lovely image, isn’t it?

And it’s not just the barfing. There’s also the fact that I FEEL like I’m going to throw up every minute of every day, unless I’m horizontal. 

And the exhaustion, which conveniently can be taken care of by lying down.

Currently, I’m sleeping 10 hours at night and still need a two-hour nap.

Sander informed me yesterday that I’m going to win a prize for world champion sleeper. Apparently, I’m NOT up for mother of the year this time.

And then, at the end of this whole miserable process, there’s a birth involved. And that’s when I first realized the usefulness of a man.

When I was pregnant with Sander, very far along and already wobbling, Mark and I took Matthew and Sawyer to the mountains of Virginia for a weekend. We stayed in a cute cabin and went for a walk in the woods. Matthew was 14 and wanted to do the “extreme trail” hike; since Sawyer was four and I was about as mobile as a beached Orca, we opted for the “stroller/wheelchair friendly” trail.

It was a beautiful fall day, and the place was empty.

We walked about a quarter of a mile, and then, right in front of us, a baby bear crossed the trail. It was gorgeous, and we all stood in awe, watching it. 

And then saw the mother bear, on the other side of the trail, and realized we were in between the baby and the mother.

So. Matthew, smart boy that he is, walked backward about twenty feet, slowly, and took off running. The mother bear came a little closer, probably 15 feet away by this point.

Mark picked up Sawyer. And tried to put Sawyer on his head, as high up as possible.

And then I saw him look at me, waddling backwards, and saw him trying to decide whether to go and bring Sawyer to safety or stay with me.

Yeah. There was no way I could fight the bear, unless I could manage to sit on it. And I couldn’t outrun a sloth.

That was when I realized why men as partners are useful. Mark has an interest in protecting me, and Sawyer, and the baby. And he’s physically able to do it when I’m nine months pregnant. All I’m able to do is obsess about nursery colors and baby names.

Thankfully, after we backed up, the bear had enough room to cross the trail after her cub, and after glaring at us, she lumbered off and away from us.

With all my self-reliance ideas shattered, I was still unprepared for childbirth. Sawyer had been a C-section. No big deal -- just a minor surgery. You’re out of commission for an hour or two, tops, and you could still hobble away later if you had to, baby in tow.

Sander was a natural birth. And was nine and a half pounds. And was two weeks late. And the epidural didn’t work.

Nothing, but nothing, ever, in my life, prepared me for labor.

I thought it would hurt. I took a delightful class on hypnobirthing, that taught me to ride the waves. I was ready for anything, and figured if it was THAT big a deal, no one would ever have two kids.

Wrong.

Perhaps my problem is that I wasn’t abused enough as a child. I’ve never been hit. Never been in a fist fight. Never been beaten, or had a black eye. Never broke a bone. I’ve really never had to deal with physical pain.

Until the day Sander was born.

I had a fantasy of walking the halls, breathing deeply, riding the waves. I asked not to be hooked up to a monitor, so I could walk around and take a shower. No catheters or bed pans for me, thanks -- I was going to be fully mobile.

And the first labor pain hit. The doctor had come in and said we had to start things moving, so he broke my water and said to see if that did the trick.

Within about ten minutes, I was convinced I was dying. There had to be something wrong. No one, ever, could have ever felt this way.

And then, crawled up in bed in the best fetal position I could manage, I screamed, and moaned, and yelled, for eight hours. You know it hurts when you have a sliver under your fingernail? Yeah. That kind of pain.

The kind of cramps you had when you had the worst flu of your life, and you were shaky and sweaty on the toilet from the pain? Double that.

And then, imagine having the worst flu possible, vomiting and shitting all over the place, unable to speak because of the pain, and someone comes up to ask you to make important, potentially life-altering decisions.

Do you want ice chips? Do you want a monitor? Are you sure you don’t want a C-section? Do you want to try the epidural again? Can you hold completely still for five minutes?

And then, at the end, the baby wouldn’t come out.

And so, the flipping begins. The midwives turned me like a pancake. On my back. On my knees. On all fours. Over a giant rubber ball, ass end up, almost naked. All done with monitor wires and an oxygen mask and an IV and a fetal probe attached.

I have vague memories of the worst of it -- I was quite literally unable to think. I was panting and gasping and completely unaware of what was going on around me.

If I had been a cavewoman, unattended by my mate, or perhaps a peasant girl who’d been thrown out of the house because she was pregnant, I would have had no protection. None.

Lions, come get me. Bears, have at it. Bad guys, take what you can get. I’m not going anywhere.

But there is a beauty in the whole thing, knowing that your mother did this. And her mother, did, too. And her mother did, and without painkillers. And her mother, probably at home. And knowing that many of them lost children because they didn’t have the resources we do.

It’s a wild, savage beauty, though. It’s not pretty. Neither are babies.

I’ve never talked about poop and vomit and blood and snot more in my life than the first month after Sawyer was born.

In my twenties, picking up cat vomit made me sick.

Now I can wipe a nose, a bottom, clean up barf and a dog mess before breakfast without batting an eye.

And here I am, again.

Hoping this baby is healthy. I’m only eight weeks along. A lot could go wrong. I’m optimistic, though -- the two pregnancies I lost were both times of immense stress in my life, and both times I never felt sick. This time, I’m making up for those -- I’m sicker than I’ve ever been. Although Mark swears I say that every time, and I was just as sick and tired with Sander and Sawyer.

Which is why he was hesitant.

Humph.

Oh, and the worst bit? I’m trying to avoid food issues with this kid. We’ve already got one with celiac disease and one recovered from autism, so I’m being careful and following suggestions from great doctors. 

Unfortunately, those suggestions are:

No gluten

No dairy

No sugar

No caffeine

No alcohol, obviously

No meat with hormones or antibiotics (so no eating out, unless it’s vegetarian.)

No produce with chemicals or pesticides (so all organic, at least at home.)

Yeah.

Doesn’t leave much that I like.

And it means that my newest craving, for a turkey and bacon foot-long sub from Subway with lots of hot peppers and Italian dressing, just isn’t going to happen.

Sigh.

So, wish me luck the next four weeks. I have an ultrasound on Nov. 23, and we’ll see then if everything looks good. If we see a heartbeat and baby’s the right size, I’ll be a lot happier.

If not, I’ve been doing a LOT of puking for nothing!

My dreams come true

Published September 2, 2009

Anyone who has known me for a while knows that I have a rich imagination (some would say alternate reality,) and that I live in a dreamland, in the future, in what ifs and somedays.

My all-time favorite fantasy, though, and the one which I really thought would come true, is this one: I marry a tall, dark, handsome man. He adores me and would do anything for me. One of the conditions of marriage, for in my fantasy I have many suitors, is that we live in Europe, at least for a little while.

I live in an ancient walled village, in a tiny apartment, or maybe a house. I have a little red-haired girl, and while my husband works, we explore Europe. 

We go to the farmer’s market, and make friends with the dogs and cats in the neighborhood. We know the butcher’s name, and the lady at the farmer’s market gives the little girl a strawberry or a piece of bread when she sees her. We have a lush garden, full of grapes and good things to eat, and we cook in our old house on an ancient stove.

On weekends, we go to Paris, or to Brussels, and explore.

My girl grows up learning two or maybe three languages, and then we come back to the states, which is about as far as the fantasy gets.

In reality, I got as far as the first sentence. 

I did marry a tall, dark, handsome man, and he said we’d try to live in Europe. We’ve been working on it for the twelve years we’ve been married. And it hasn’t happened, and now we’re settled in to Austin. With two boys, and not a hint of pink in sight.

I’m sort of resigned to this. My latest version of the fantasy is to figure out a way to get to Europe when they’re older -- I’m thinking if I just write a best-selling novel, when Sawyer’s 14 and Sander’s 10, in five years, we’ll live in Italy for a year. 

Sawyer would love Rome. And Paris. And the food! Sander would love the subways, and the bustle and life.

Mark wouldn’t do well there. He would try, but language is not his strong suit. He speaks one language well, and it’s engineering. 

English is a second language for him, and he struggles to convert the pictures in his head into English. 

Asking him to pick up Italian or French to go live in Europe is akin to asking me to go speak calculus so I can live in Cosin Land, where the Tangents and Square Roots live.

And so, I’m slowly learning to love Austin, and trying to adapt.

I adore Mark. I adore my boys. I’m trying to accept that this really is who I am. That Europe can wait.

And that I can learn to be happy here -- after all, I’m not in a freakin’ refugee camp, and it’s not like there aren’t people literally dying to get into the U.S!

And then...

For eighteen years, my best friend Christy and I have been over this fantasy so much it’s become our mantra. This is what we talk about -- how we love Target. How we love huge bookstores. How nice it is to go to Whole Foods.

And yet: We’d happily give it all up to have a farmer’s market in a town square in a walled village. Instantly. Goodbye, outlet malls. Hello, fishmonger.

No more freeways, or ice cubes, cold beer or baseball. 

Instead there are old gardens and ancient traditions and old ladies with babushkas and baskets of cabbage. Yes, there are discos and night life in Europe, but that’s not what Christy and I talk about. We talk about the slow pace, the wine with dinner, the good food, the lack of cars in tiny villages and the feel of community.

It might be all a fantasy, of course -- who knows if life would really be like that?

And two months ago, Christy moved to Germany. With her tall, dark, handsome husband, and her little red-headed girl.

To a tiny village, with no freeways or ice cubes.

There’s a grinding wheel in the courtyard of her house. And an ancient pressure cooker down in the scary basement, next to the chimney that you use to smoke meats.

Of course there’s a lush garden, where the red-haired girl picks grapes, and apples, and cucumbers and blackberries, so far. It’s only been eight weeks -- I’m sure there’s more to come.

They visit the old lady across the street, who wears a babushka, on their way to the bakery two doors down. The old lady, it turns out, has hay in her basket, not cabbages. Who knew?

They go through the dark forest behind their house down a path and into the walled village a half-mile away for the festivals that happen so often this time of year.

There’s wine with dinner, and good food, and everyone knows them and says hello.

And I’m not there.

I’m here, thousands of miles away, with a shriveled up, miserable pile of dirt that should have been a garden, with two amazing boys who are not red-headed, and not a grinding wheel or a walled village in sight.

And I miss her every day, and wish I could be a part of it.

After all, if someone’s living my fantasy, it would only be fair if I at least get to visit.

Damn.

What’s the old advice about learning to appreciate what you have?

Oh, but I do. I know I how lucky I am. I am truly thankful every day for the incredible places I’ve been and where I am right now.

But for someone who lives in the land of what if and someday, it’s hard to keep your mind in Austin when your dream’s in a tiny walled village half a world away.

A flat-out rotten day

Published May 9, 2010

Before you read this, I want you to imagine a little experiment. 

For those of you who have given birth, you already know this -- feel free to skip this part.  

For men and those few friends of mine who are women without children, imagine this: Take a nice, long, soft strip of fabric. Tie it around your waist. Then tuck a 14-pound bowling ball into the front of the fabric, as if you were pregnant. Sit down. Get back up.

Sit down again. Get back up.

Then kneel down. Try to get back up. It’s impossible without something to hold onto. The center of gravity is all wrong. You can’t get from a kneeling or squatting position with a heavy weight at the front of your body.

So. Here’s the story:

We’ve had a long couple of weeks and the boys have been cooped up in the house with a grumpy, tired mother. My pelvis has separated, not completely, but enough that both halves don’t work well together. I am not, shall we say, graceful. I would use words like flop, heave, hoist and flail when describing my movements.

Not pretty.

So I decided to cheer the boys up by letting them pick out some chicks. I was going to get three- or four-month-old hens, so we could have eggs sooner and they’d eat more bugs, but day-old chicks are $4 each, and laying hens are $10-12. Not a huge difference, but when you’re buying a dozen, it matters, and all children love chicks. Great big old pooping and pecking hens, not so much.

So I heaved my way to the car, shooing my old mean cat, George, out from under the van as we got in, and sat for a minute and made a list of errands we had to run, er, waddle, since we were out of the house anyway.

Then I noticed a bunch of cars stopped on the street in front of my house.

They were stopped because mean old George, who's 18, was lying in the street, half-dead. We had just shooed him out from under my van less than five minutes before, so either he got hit by a car in those five minutes and we didn't notice, or he had a heart attack or a stroke right there.

So I ran out to get him and got a blanket from the back of my van and scooped him up, and there was no blood, but it was obvious he was dying -- his mouth was open and he was gasping, and one pupil was bigger than the other. I was sick over it, and started waving the cars to go around me. He was so obviously in pain and miserable that I knew I had to get him to the vet as soon as I could -- I knew he was dying but thought maybe it was something like a seizure that could be fixed.

One of the girls who works in my back kitchen had seen the commotion and came out to help, and I told the boys to get in the van.

Then I handed George to Stacey, the girl who works in the kitchen, and I tried to get up. I was on my hands and knees, and got into a kneeling position. Nothing. Put one leg up, foot on the ground, and heaved. Nope. Got into a squat position. I could squat. I could crawl. I could kneel. Couldn’t stand up.

So I'm standing in the middle of the fucking road with this lady holding my half-dead cat, and I can't get off the ground to take him to the vet.

I felt like one of those poor upside-down turtles that you just know is going to get hit by a car by the time you pull over and rescue him.

Hello.... I need to take my cat to the vet. He’s dying. Legs, stand up please. Now!

We gave the cat to Sawyer, and Stacy tried to pull me up. She weighs 30 pounds. I almost pulled her on top of me.

And it wasn’t a weight thing, anyway. The center of gravity was all wrong, my pelvis was just not cooperating, and I couldn't get the right balance to get up.

So I finally had to crawl off to the side of the road while Stacey went to get a chair for me. I was able to use the chair for leverage to get off the damned ground.

Took George to the vet, where he died within five minutes. The vet thinks he was hit by a car. I don't know -- doesn't really matter at this point.

This was my "single girl" cat. I got him when I was 27 and single and determined that I was going to live alone and be on my own and travel the world, just George and me.

He lived with me in a 300-sq-ft apartment in Galveston and I was crazy about him. I used to come home from my job at the newspaper at 4 a.m. and he'd be there, waiting for me, with a dead lizard in his mouth as a gift. Sometimes it would just be the bottom half of a lizard. Lizard pants, my best friend and I would laugh. He brought lizard pants in homage.

He kept me company in my first garden, and kept the boogeyman away in the first place I lived and slept alone. He ate bugs from the first roses I ever planted. He slept on my bed, among piles of books. I’ve never been so comfortable or cozy.

I’d never had a pet of my own. I never wanted one. I’d raised my three sisters, did auntie/nanny help for my aunt with her three kids, and now for the first time had no one but me to worry about or take care of. 

I got George from the shelter at three years old, where they called him “YaYa.” I came home on my break from work to make sure he was all right. I gave him baths, God help me. I really did. He was all I had.

I named him George because of George McGovern, of course, but also because of the line in the old cartoon, “I’m going to love him and squeeze him and hold him and call him George and never let him go.”

He never forgave me for getting married, and hated me for having kids.

About five years later, when I was in the hospital, pregnant with Sawyer, they put me on an awful drug called magnesium sulfite. It made me loopy and crazy, and all I could think of was that I wanted George to hold and snuggle with me. I begged Mark to go get him and sneak him into the hospital. To Mark’s credit, he didn’t do it.

Lately, I knew he was old. For a cat to live 18 years is a long time, and his bright orange thick fur was looking mangy, and he was getting even more crotchety and mean, and in the last two years he never left a 20-foot circle near my driveway. He just sat and kept watch. Wouldn't come in the house because the kids he hated were here.

But I had him longer than I've had Mark!

And now he's gone.

Sigh.

That's it.

I'm tired and grumpy and I hurt like hell. I’m embarrassed at being caught like a turtle in the middle of the road.

And I miss my cat.

And I wish I could go outside and scoop him up and have him snuggle on my bed to make me feel better.