November 28, 2008

The mail delivery today included solicitations from two chiropractors and an attorney concerning my traffic accident. News travels fast, or they, like sharks, have secret senses to tell them when something is thrashing in the water.

Jocasta was sick when I left Wednesday. She had been bleeding from her anus for a couple of days (at first I didn’t know what the stains were), and she was incontinent, nauseated, and clearly miserable. I didn’t know what to do, so I set up a separate place for her in the garage. She was not happy, and howled pitiably when I shut the door. I thought of her all the time I was in Atlanta. I hoped–indeed I prayed–that she might die, in order to spare her the protracted suffering that only ended in death anyway, which I experienced with Theseus and Conrad. When I got home and looked in the garage, she wasn’t there. I crawled down into the furnace crawlspace with flashlight in hand, but I couldn’t find her. I walked the yard, peering into the cave under the spruce that has been her place of resort, calling her name with increasing desperation. Finally I went back into the garage, just at the moment she was emerging from a space which looked too narrow to accommodate her. She is deaf, and hadn’t heard me before. When she saw me, she let out such a howl. I took her in my arms and brought her back into the house. I knew from looking in her eyes that she was well, that whatever had ailed her had passed. She is eighteen, and we cannot look for very many more miraculous recoveries, but this one was sweet, and the outpouring of emotion at having her restored was so great I was exhausted for the rest of the evening.

Kyle invited some of us over for a bachelors’ Thanksgiving, and the whole time I was sleepy and weary, in a good way, spent from the mingling of panic and joy. She lies asleep on her place on my pillow, and all, for this time, is well

Thanksgiving in Alpharetta. The boys have grown into young gods. Bekka’s new boyfriend is a young god, too, and one peered at them to study how that separate creation unfolds. It is a happy, loving, brawling family, and one so unlike their mother’s and mine when we were growing up, and so unlikely to have sprung from the selfish and morose father, that one wonders how such things happen. A kind of miracle, I guess. David spent hours perfecting the design of a homemade plastic-spewing claymore.

Makes me wish I could start over.

Walk along a little brown river after dinner, with everyone crying out, “Happy Thanksgiving!”