Along Came A Spider... The Time I Called 911. Because I Didn't Want to Kill One.

Spiders. No one I've ever met is neutral about them. A very few people like or at least appreciate them. Most hate them.

I saw a funny meme once that went something like, "This morning, I found a spider in my bathroom. I took a tissue, and very, very slowly and carefully, I burned my house down."

I have a friend, Lisa, who is actually arachnophobic. I know this, but not by hearing her confession or by reading any certificate from a psychologist. I know this because once, remembering she had mentioned she was afraid of spiders, I playfully posted some horror story or video or something about a spider that was making the rounds (I can't remember what it was now) onto her Facebook wall. Lisa is the sweetest, most non-confrontational person ever. And she F-bombed me. Loudly. On Facebook. I had not really taken her fear seriously. I mean, everyone says they hate spiders. I felt terrible, because had I really listened to her, I would have realized that she probably wouldn't find humor in anything spider-related. Especially not if it included an actual IMAGE of a spider. Lesson learned...

I've heard horror stories of spider bites. A USC Trojan Marching Band mate of mine, John, whom everyone referred to as "Nutcup", once got a spider bite right between his eyes. The wound became infected, I think even necrotic, and to this day, he has a big crater there. As I recall, he was super sick from it. Another friend, Kathy, had a similar experience. A terrible bite she got on her face while sleeping, a wicked infection. I've never been bitten by a spider, but when you hear stories like that, it only goes to increase the reputation spiders have for being dangerous and aggressive.

I never used to like spiders. I mean, if I saw one in the house, I'd usually kill it. If I saw one outside, I'd avoid it. But a specific event changed me. I can't say I love them now, but I can tell you I haven't killed a spider on purpose in about a decade or more... and I'll tell you why.

At the beginning of October, the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles museum transforms its Butterfly Pavilion (there's a whole other blog coming about THAT) into a spider exhibit. Because the butterflies are all bred in captivity, and because they have a ridiculously short life span, they leave them in this habitat and introduce a ton of varieties of spiders. The spiders take up residence, eat the members of the previous exhibit, and provide more education and entertainment for visitors. It sounds grisly, but it's actually quite efficient.

Jennifer and I visited this Spider House one October when she was about eight. Jennifer, who has always been creeped out by just about all insects (there's a reason for that, and that's a whole other blog in the making), was anxious to leave pretty much immediately. But I was absolutely fascinated. A very personable young lady, who was a docent, would very gently lift spiders off of plant leaves and talk about them while we watched them crawl all over her hands and arms. The spider on her hand would walk along, and every so often, it would touch the end of its abdomen onto the surface of her skin. She showed us that it was leaving little anchors of silk, so that if it suddenly fell, it would have a safety line. It was just riveting.

The docent explained that all spiders are venomous, but that they generally choose carefully what to use it on. It's meant for prey or for protection. So if you're not threatening it or squishing it, it won't waste its venom on big giant you. Also, spiders eat pretty much all the bugs I loathe (which is all the other bugs on the planet), so I began to appreciate that they're definitely on my team.

Spiders' webs are all unique and perfectly suited to help them catch prey. I admit that I've done quite a few energetic interpretive dances after walking or horseback riding into a web on an early morning outing. Nothing else gets the blood pumping quite so effectively. And then you spend the next several hours convinced there's a stranded spider crawling around on you.

I've actually held a tarantula before. Jennifer attended a birthday party where a guy brought all kinds of exotic animals for the kids to hold and touch (including wallabies who hopped around the yard the entire time, a possum with giant bulgy eyes, and a huge iguana of some sort that Jennifer held). One of the creatures was a tarantula. Jennifer wouldn't go near it, but I held it. It was fuzzy, warm, and way heavier than I expected. Super cool.

Still, ever since that day at the museum in 2006, when I was so thoroughly schooled on the unique, misunderstood, amazing creatures they are, I haven't intentionally killed a single spider (except for one that was in my car while I was driving - no time for humane treatment then...). If I find one in the house, I catch it and release it outside. Once, my arachnaphobic friend Lisa was picking up Jennifer for some homeschool activity, and we found a big, pinkish orb weaver spider in her car. Lisa went white and said, "Ohhhh boy..." as I gently picked this spider up WITH MY BARE HANDS and put it in my garden. I felt very badass. 

So, no more spider killing for me... even though, long before that, when Jennifer was only four years old, I had an interesting incident that began with my reluctance to kill a spider and ended in a call to 911.

It all started with a spider in a Kleenex box.  I had brought Jennifer into my shower with me, and when I was done, I got out and left her in there to play some more, as she often did. As long as she stayed seated and didn't plug the drain, I'd let her take little toys in there, and she'd enjoy a little water play. I'd hang around within earshot, listening to make sure she was safe, and when she tired of being in there, she'd call me to come get her.

I was breaking down an empty Kleenex box on the bathroom counter, when I saw a big ol' spider inside it. It was rather skittish and very quick. Being too chicken to try to smoosh it inside (it just might crawl on my hand or something, you know…), I decided to take it down to the front porch. As I still wasn't, um, entirely decent after my shower, I set the box outside the front door and went upstairs to finish dressing. After pulling on a t-shirt and pair of jeans, I returned to the porch to get rid of the spider and toss the box. Not wanting the little monster to run into the house, I quickly closed the front door behind me and looked into the tissue box -- which was now empty. I had no idea where the spider had gone, so I turned to go back into the house. 

The door was locked.

I was outside, wet-haired and barefoot. 

My four-year-old child was playing, alone, upstairs, in the running shower.

Oops.

Thinking quickly, and remembering that my neighbor Lilly kept our spare house key, I looked around to see if her car was there. It was, of course, gone.  I pounded on her door anyway in case her husband Tony was home, but no luck. With a growing sense of panic, kicking myself for being so incredibly stupid, I ran up the driveway to our nextdoor neighbors and asked to use their phone. A bunch of big teenage boys were lounging in the living room, and it took a second for it to sink in that this was kind of a big deal. Seeing my growing agitation, they finally sprang into action. After a brief search, they found the phone, and I called 911 while the boys dashed off toward my house. 

How humiliating was this phone call, you ask?

911 Operator: 911, what is your emergency?

Me: Um, hi, I've locked myself out of my house, and my little daughter is in the shower!

911 Operator: How old is your child?

Me: She's four.

911 Operator: FOUR? You said she's in the BATHTUB??

Me: No, it's a standing shower. There's not enough water to drown in, but I gotta get back in there!

I've forgotten the rest of the call, but I'm sure I remember the unveiled disapproval in the operator's voice.

While we waited, the neighbor boys tried to get into a window downstairs. I'm pleased to report that my house is very safe against intruders. Meanwhile, I was picturing Jennifer upstairs, calling to me, telling me she was ready to get out, and wondering why I wasn't coming.  Or falling and cracking her head on the tile as she pushed open the door by herself, or or or or...

Fortunately, the fire department is only a couple of blocks away, so sure enough, after a few minutes that seemed like forever, a big ol' fire engine showed up with sirens and lights and everything. The firemen were very courteous and never once called me an idiot, although at one point, I was standing outside my door with one of them, who shouted up the hill to the men in the truck some code number.  I asked, "Is that the code for 'really stupid mother'?"  He laughed and assured me it wasn't. He was just asking his partner to bring a ladder. They also seemed less worried that Jennifer was already drowning than they would have been if she’d been in a bathtub full of water.  

They brought a big ladder down the driveway and took what I felt was an inordinate amount of time to make sure it was properly and safely anchored before someone climbed it.  I felt like screaming, "HURRY UP!!!!", but I managed to keep it together.  So this fireman in full gear -- big ol' boots, coat, helmet -- got ready to climb up and try the balcony door to my room, which I was relatively sure was unlocked.  He asked what my child's name was, and I could just imagine how she'd flip if some fireman came barging into the bathroom and popped open the shower door to see her.  Wisely, his partner suggested that he try to get in without her really noticing, so that we wouldn't upset her unnecessarily.  So he climbed the ladder, and about three hours later -- okay, I guess it was only moments later -- he opened the front door.  He said he listened in and could hear her, still in the shower. "She was just singing away in there," he said with a smile. As I dashed past the fireman, he said, "We're gonna take off now," and I bolted upstairs to find Jennifer singing and washing the walls with a sponge, completely oblivious to the drama that had been occurring downstairs. 

I've heard a few people say they generally leave spiders alone, as long as they're not black widows. I have a friend, Rommi, whose hubby found a black widow in a shed they were cleaning out. Because we're all homeschoolers, this of course became a great teachable opportunity. Joe put the spider into a jar, poked holed in the lid, and brought it into the house for the four kids to see. Well, within a day, they found a big giant egg sac in there. So now, it wasn't one black widow. It was about a hundred of them in the making.

Rommi flipped out and asked me what they should do with it. She's a total hippie (for which I love her immensely!!), and she said that she was afraid to kill it. She was convinced that if they killed the spider and her egg sac, her descendants would hunt her down and take their revenge.

For years, I've had periodic contact with a guy I call "Brent the Bug Guy". He works at the Insect Zoo at the Museum of Natural History. Often, I'd email him a picture of a caterpillar or other bug we'd found and ask what kind it was, what we should feed it, etc. So I emailed him:

"Dear Brent,
My friend found a black widow and put it in a jar. While it was there, it laid an egg sac. Now what should they do? Just how poisonous are they? Is there a humane way to dispose of them? And if she does, she is worried that the descendants of the spider will come after her."

Brent's response was something like:

"Honestly, when I find black widows, I leave them where I find them. Unless you're jamming your hand into a garden glove without looking first, chances are you aren't going to be bitten. Yes, they're poisonous, but not generally deadly, and if you leave them alone, they'll leave you alone. I'd tell your friend to put the spider back where she found it. If she really wants to dispose of them, the most humane way would be to put the jar into the freezer for a couple of weeks. They'll just go to sleep from the cold and die without really suffering.

As for the descendants taking revenge, I'm not going to make any promises..."

I don't remember what she ended up doing. But, just to be safe, I don't hang around her much anymore.

If I Were Hindu, Could I Think of Fleas as Pets?

Fleas are part of having pets — one of the worst of very many bad things about having pets (if you’re an adult, considering getting pets, please read my blog about “Parenting and Pets”. http://doreensings.blogspot.com/2015/06/parenting-and-pets.html You have been warned).

Fleas. In the old days (or, as Jennifer said when she was little, “the elden days”), they sold these smelly plastic collars you put on the cat or dog; you’d cut off the excess at the end, and Fluffy would walk around with a toxic-to-the-touch, smelly, flea-killing accessory.

And then there was flea dip. I have excruciating memories of setting up a bucket of warm water in the back yard, mixed with smelly pesticide. We'd literally dip the gazillion cats we had in and around my childhood home (at one time we had 17 cats, I think. Still not sure what was up with that), dunking one arm down in there with the cat to massage the mixture into the fur for several minutes (or until the cat managed to escape), while the other hand held onto the cat's scruff for dear life. The kitty would often arch its back and claw madly at the rim of the bucket, certain that we'd finally had enough of this “having pets” thing and were now trying to drown the little beast.  The dip would kill the fleas, for sure. And there was a certain amount of sport in seeing usually haughty cats humbled, soaking wet and scrawny. But the fleas always came back.

Then, in recent years, the invention of topical flea treatment sort of leveled up the war against fleas. Once a month, you squirt this oily, pungent, but much smaller amount of liquid between the shoulders of the cat or dog, and voila! The fleas apparently still jump onto the pet, and they still bite, but then they die before they get the chance to lay eggs and pass on their little flea genes to the next generation.

This worked for us. For a while. On a tip from my sister Diana, I learned to buy the flea treatment for a giant dog or cat, then do the math for the smaller actual weight of my pets, then empty the vial into a medicine dropper, and only dole out about a fourth or fifth of the total at a time. The price for the medicine is the same for a small dog or a giant one, so why not make it go further? Brilliant.

The drawbacks came when I’d accidentally squirt more than the required amount onto the beast, which I've done a time or two. I always worry I'm gonna kill a pet this way. But so far, no luck. And then, there's this greasy, smelly skid mark on the animal for a full day or longer. If you or a child accidentally touches it, you have to wash your hands. And all my pets have reveled in rolling on the carpet right after application, to rid themselves of the oily feeling. Lovely. And now, in the past year or so, this medicine has stopped working. I think maybe the fleas are evolving into these super-poison-resistant mutants, because I've heard lots of people say it no longer works for them either. Within days, my pets were crawling with fleas. Even the accidental double dose isn’t enough any more.

So what to do? For years, I've been hearing about a once-a-month pill that magically works. No smelly oil on the back of the pet. The drawback is that you actually need a veterinarian's prescription, and it costs a bundle. About 20 bucks a pill. While I could stretch the topical stuff, making a $40 box last for several months, now it's pretty much $20 per pet, per month. Sure, there are volume discounts. Which brings up a whole other gambling routine, as my cat is almost 21 years old. Will she even last six more months? Should I spend a little more by paying month-by-month, for a shorter amount of time? Or do I suck it up and buy six months, thereby "tempting the wrath of the whatever from high atop the thing"? (Thank you, Toby Ziegler of the television show "The West Wing" for one of my favorite phrases EVER…)

Plus, as I mentioned, you need the prescription. I think I’ve said before that I try to spend as little as possible on my pets. A couple months ago, I finally took the last dog I’ll ever own in to a weekly clinic at Petco for his shots (which were WAY overdue) and to get the flea pill prescription. I was hoping that getting rid of his fleas would fix the cat’s problem. I spent a bundle on carpet powder to try to kill all the pests. Brian, my ever-patient man, bathed the cat with flea shampoo. But she still had tons of fleas within days. 

Plus, as she’s super old and sort of addled, Jasmine does this alarming thing when a flea bites her. She’ll be quietly sleeping on your lap, and then suddenly, she explodes upward and starts frantically licking a fresh bite (usually back by her butt), and pee literally JETS out of her, like a mini fire hose. So Jasmine looks like she’s having a seizure, pee is flying everywhere, and God forbid there is someone actually visiting who wasn’t prepared for this. My daughter’s friends were recently scarred for life while this happened during a screening of a Harry Potter movie. Jen calmly reached for the cat and said, "Yeah, sorry guys. She does this sometimes..."

So, I decided it was time to drag poor Jasmine in to get the flea pill. She hasn’t been to a vet in YEARS. As an indoor cat, she doesn’t go in every year for shots. I was worried that she’d be totally stressed out, but I realized I had no choice. Well, no cheap choice. I mean, I could pay for an in-home visit. But have you met me? Not gonna happen.

As I sat on the floor in line at the cheap clinic (where there’s no $60-just-to-walk-in-the-door fee — just the price of treatment, thanks), Jasmine huddled quietly in her cat carrier. A toothless woman with a thick Southern accent stood behind me, pushing a shopping cart that carried a trembling little chihuahua, who cringed warily on a dirty towel. This dear lady was super chatty, and repeatedly offered to let me pet her dog, “Sweetie Pie.” I politely declined, as the dog would snarl at anyone who passed by too closely. 

Jasmine, my elderly cat, handled the trip like a boss. She even came right out of the carrier and stood on the scale on the floor to get weighed, amid all sorts of chaos and noise and yapping dogs. I think being almost deaf helps a lot with her nerves. The “vet” running the clinic asked a few questions and marveled at her age. He told me that I really should take her in to our “regular vet” for a full blood workup and aging cat well-check. I uttered the magical phrase, “Um, she’s on palliative care.” This phrase probably works universally to get any nagging sales rep off one’s back.  I’ll have to try it. It basically means I’m keeping her comfortable til she dies, but I’m not doing anything to extend her life (think “kitty hospice”). The vet immediately nodded and said, “Ah… well, I’m required to offer that recommendation…” But I nodded and smiled politely, and he wrote the prescription.

So 45 minutes and almost $200 later, I walked out with six months of flea pills for both the cat and the last dog I’ll ever own.

If you’ve ever tried to pill a dog, you know that it’s pretty easy. You can tuck it into a piece of cheese or smear some bacon grease on it, toss it into the air, and you’re set. Bingley doesn’t even need that much encouragement. I don’t even need to hide it in the bathroom trash can or the litter box, although that would certainly work, too. Cats, though, are a different kettle of fish.  I have vivid memories of a childhood cat, Blackie, being sick and needing pills. Diana and I would hold her down, and I remember her foaming at the mouth, clawing madly, and usually spitting the pill out. I even remember desperately trying to use a pencil to jam the pill down her throat at some point. It was a horror movie.

There’s a hilarious step-by-step guide for pilling a cat that is eerily accurate. I think this is the link to it: 

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC372253/

There’s another equally hilarious YouTube video that shows a lady whose cat is clearly an opium addict, giving her cat a monthly pill for, I don’t remember, diabetes? Whatever. I was laughing til I cried at how mellow and pleasant the whole process was. Seriously, I’m not even sure this cat wasn’t a fake plush toy. Here’s the link for that: 

https://youtu.be/sZhFKHxnG4Q

My favorite quote: "Her conscious participation makes it so much easier!"

Or this one - it's awesome and sooooo realistic! 

https://youtu.be/h6rk-qh_l4o

So suffice it to say that I was prepared. I’ve found that the best way to proceed with a cat is to be completely confident and FAST. If you can get ‘er done before the cat knows what hit her, you’re set. 

So, the first time I gave Jasmine her flea pill, I recall it was a little dodgy - I might have had to give it two tries. But she’s super old, and I’m crafty and experienced. She won the first round, so I wrapped her in a towel and managed to get her to swallow the pill on the second try. And she did bite through my finger, even managing to get a fang up under my fingernail, like a bamboo shoot that torturers use. But other than that, I got it done without too much fuss. The FIRST time.

This, however, was the second time.

I opened the foil pack for the cat and set it on the kitchen rug, next to the towel and nail clippers. I figured I'd bundle Jasmine up and clip her claws, as I do every few weeks, and I’d sneak the pill in while I had her captive. She was busy drinking water, so in the meantime, I called in the last dog I'll ever own, to give him his pill. Bingley, of course, gulped his pill down without even chewing. No need to disguise it. He’ll eat anything. And he has. 

Then, on his way out of the kitchen, Bingley noticed the cat's $20 flea pill just lying there, so he snarfed that up too.

After cursing him to the moon and back, I opened a second $20 foil pack for the cat, wrapped her in a towel, clipped her claws, and then tried to give it to her. The frail, 6 pound, 20 year old cat gave me a six inch gash on my thigh and spit the pill out. I retrieved the soggy pill and managed to get it into her before it disintegrated, while she proceeded to pee all over me.

I showered myself off, sat down with my calm, sweet daughter to play some cards, then watched the cat try twice to barf up the second $20 flea pill. She didn’t actually bring anything up, so I decided to put the pets to bed and call it a night.

So, remember that the last dog I’ll ever own has now had one dog dose and one cat dose. The cat finally got her dose, but I wasn’t sure she’d keep it down.  The next day, I saw no barf in the laundry room (where Jasmine sleeps, confined — see other pet blog for those details). So far, so good. Bingley had thrown his up, but, as dogs do, he helpfully re-ate it all. So for $30, I was pretty sure we were set for the month.

Jasmine stayed in her little downstairs bed in the laundry room almost all day. No food. She only drank water every so often. I think her claw was probably sore from tearing through the flesh of my leg, poor thing. Late in the afternoon, I checked on her for about the tenth time, and she emerged, finally deciding she'd punished me enough for the previous night's trauma. Or so I thought.

I leave an entire can of food on a plate for her at night, and generally she finishes it. I'm an excellent housekeeper (just ask my family), but occasionally when I'm scouring the laundry room floor, I may miss a morsel or two of cat food. As a result, I had found several scout ants in there. I cleaned them up and sprayed ant poison all around. Although the new Raid formula smells just terrific, I didn't want to leave the cat enclosed in there all night with poison fumes. So I decided to give her the run of the house that night. Perhaps I needed a reminder of why, so long ago, I decided to confine her each night.

As it was blistering hot, I left our bedroom door open. Knowing Jasmine would want to come snuggle in the middle of the night, as cats do, I put a baby gate up in our doorway. Being old and stiff, Jasmine can't make it onto my bed anymore without help, and with Brian being a Ninja-light sleeper, I wanted to avoid a middle-of-the-night rescue, where I'd have to untangle her claws from halfway up to our bed.

You know that sound cats make when they have a toy or a dead mouse in their mouth? Not a cheerful, high-pitched "meow", but a deep-throated, loud, guttural "MROOUUURRRR"? That was Jasmine. Over and over. Several times. All night. Plus, she is almost totally deaf, so she forgets how to make normal cat sounds. So HER weird, super loud "Hey humans, where are you? I require your company" yowling is especially pleasant.  Amazingly, Brian never even heard it.

I’m counting the days til I have to do this again for my pets. Every month. For the rest of their lives.

Home Again...

So recently, I found out that my best friend’s mom has cancer. The same cancer that took my own mom in 1999. Can I just start by saying cancer sucks???

When I say best friend, I mean BEST friend. Kathy and I have been friends since the summer of 1972, when she walked down the hill past the five houses that separated us and knocked on our door, asking if the new little girl who just moved in wanted to come play. We were nine years old, just about to enter fourth grade. 

Not long after that, I also became friends with LeeAnn, who was already a good friend of Kathy’s, and the three of us have remained a bestie trio for over forty years. No matter how time or distance has separated us, we always reconnect instantly when we see each other, as though we’d never been apart. The only reason LeeAnn spent any less time with us before we were all driving was that she lived a bit further away from us, so it wasn't as easy for her just to pop by.

Kathy and I attended the same elementary and junior high schools. When it came time for high school, the district decided that a far-away school on the other side of the hill needed more students, so they re-drew the boundaries of "who went where". The horse trail next to my house was arbitrarily selected as a dividing line, so instead of attending Rolling Hills High, which was only a mile away, with my closest neighborhood friends, I had to drive five miles around the peninsula to attend Miraleste. Rolling Hills, by the way, was the high school that all three of my older siblings had attended. I have no earthly idea why my parents didn’t petition this decision, but there you go.

Because of Kathy’s mom’s illness, I’ve been up to Palos Verdes a few times recently, hanging out at Kathy’s childhood home, delivering a meal, helping with CaringBridge updates, or just offering a little company and moral support to Kathy as she holds vigil and drives her mom back and forth between doctors' offices and chemo treatments. PV is pretty close to my home in Redondo Beach, but it feels like a world away. There, the tree-lined, hilly streets wind their way past fancy homes, horse trails, and peacocks who strut the streets, confident that you'll slow your car to let them pass.

Today, Kathy’s family house remains much as it always was, gorgeous and very unique. They had it custom built when people first started moving in droves to Palos Verdes. It’s a split-level home, with a small horse stable, breathtaking landscaping (her family owns a national garden products company, so of course their landscaping is amazing). A recent addition is a lovely waterfall that flows from the upstairs yard to the patio below. It has provided a tranquil place for her mom to enjoy time outdoors.

I think it’s fair to say that from the ages of 9 through 17, I probably spent about a third of my time at Kathy’s house. Kathy and I rode our ponies through the canyons of Palos Verdes together. We once ate a whole Sara Lee cheesecake together. We played pool and backgammon in the game room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the back yard, or we'd load the player piano with old rolls of music from long ago. Now and then her dad would join us and play a bit of "Clair de Lune", his favorite tune. Other times, we hung out in the corral with her horse, Pony Gal, and her goat, Niña, or we played paddle tennis in the court that was built into the side of the canyon beyond the back yard. 

Almost every day after school or for the better part of most summer days, you could find us doing something together, usually at her house. We’d have sleepovers there. Kathy’s room was always like the room of a princess to me. Right in her bedroom, she had two beds, a sink with mirrors, and this cool faucet that arcs up sort of like a luxurious water fountain, so you could get a drink right there any time you wanted. Sometimes her dad would come home from late night sales meetings and chase us screaming, giggling girls through the house, while emitting a deep, spooky, maniacal laugh… until Kathy’s mom would call up to him and make him reluctantly give up the game and go to bed. 

Out next to their back driveway (yes, there are two driveways), there is a loquat tree that hangs heavy with fruit every year. If you’ve never eaten a loquat, I highly recommend it. We’d gorge ourselves on the tart-yet-sweet fruit and spit out the smooth, brown, oval seeds, until we were completely satisfied.

I even got my first "real" kiss from a boy there, at Kathy's house. He was a friend of her older brother, and I think he was drunk at the time. It was, um, kind of sloppy, and not much else. I don’t even remember his name. Kathy probably does. But I digress.

I haven’t lived in Palos Verdes since I finally made the leap, after college, to my own apartment (which I shared, incidentally, with my best friends, Kathy and LeeAnn) in nearby Redondo Beach. Also, incidentally, Kathy and I both attended USC -- and guess who walked into my dorm room right after I moved in? Kathy. Turns out her room was just a few doors from mine. Which was a little picture of God's amazing grace, as I was super homesick and anxious about living away from home. 

After my folks died, I -- as executor of the “estate” -- had the horribly sad task of selling our family home and saying goodbye to any claim I had to life on the hill.  My sister Diana still keeps a horse in Westfield, the housing subdivision where we lived out so much of our youth. Several times since, I’ve ridden with Diana on horseback past our old house. It is strange to see so much that is familiar, and so much that is totally alien. And when I say “alien”, I’m serious. They have a freakin’ GARGOYLE in my old backyard. What???

So, back to Kathy’s house. I'll call it that for simplicity's sake. Kathy actually has her own beautiful home just a couple of miles away from her mom's house in Westfield. But we're talking about her mom's house here - so, for now, this is what I mean by "Kathy's house". I have been back many times as an adult. After college, there was a night when Kathy decked the house out for a murder mystery dinner, and about a dozen of us spent the evening dressed in 1930s attire, figuring out whodunit. It's been the location for several other significant parties and events over the years. There were times when Kathy and I donned aprons and passed drinks and hors d'oeuvres for one swanky event or another hosted by her mom. I think I have a picture somewhere of one such event... we were so cute.

There’s something different, though, when I walk into this beautiful old home today. Every square inch of Kathy's house fills me with nostalgia -- the utility room, specially appointed for wrapping gifts and arranging flowers. The dim, cozy room near the garage that I hardly ever entered, which was her dad's office. Her bedroom, which connected to her brother's room through a bathroom that had sliding doors with these little twisty metal locks on each side. The conversation pit downstairs, where I, as maid of honor, joined Kathy and eight bridesmaids to drink champagne and pose for pictures on her wedding day. The upstairs TV room, where Kathy's dad used to watch television and snack on things I hardly considered snacks. It's also where her folks gave us a stern lecture when our over-18 boyfriends had delivered us home after we got kicked out of Disneyland. That's material for a whole other blog...

But it’s more than that. More than the flood of memories. Walking into Kathy's house, I get an almost overpowering desire to go back to a simpler time in life, a time when, almost daily, I'd wander up to knock on her giant front door. I'd spend hours and hours there while my parents were out of town at one barbershop event or another, seeking refuge from my older siblings' rule of my own home roost. Years later, I learned that Kathy’s mom would often wonder aloud where on earth my parents always were, and, in truth, I think she took pity on me and did her best to provide a sort of haven for me. I really have no idea why we were left on our own so often... I think the term is "barbershop orphans". It never seemed strange to me as a child, but now I wonder what on earth my parents thought was going on in our house during their absence, with three teenagers, a younger sibling, and no supervision. Again, fodder for a whole other blog...

It’s also super eerie, returning so many years later to Kathy's house. I'm having trouble describing why, but it’s as if all the Ghosts of Christmas Past haunt the hallways and rooms. Rather than bringing a fond smile and happy memories, I feel faintly sad and bewildered. There’s a tug, deep in my gut, that I can’t name. So much time has passed since I treated this as my second home. So many life events, from the earth-shattering to the insignificant… yet this house is still almost exactly the same. It’s sort of this eternal Place of Being inside my world, unlike any other place. It stirs longings in me that are difficult to articulate and impossible to fulfill.

I think maybe it’s because this home has remained in place, long after all my other childhood haunts have vanished or become unavailable to me. There are no other places I can go where I feel so connected to my childhood. The closest thing, oddly, is the old DoubleTree Hotel, off Highway 99 in Bakersfield, where my Sweet Adelines regional events took place for most of my barbershop life with my parents. After they died, I'd often coach a chorus up in Fresno, and on the way home, I'd always stop at the DoubleTree and just wander the halls for a while before continuing the drive. It felt comforting to walk through a place where I'd spent so much happy time with my mom and dad. Then one year, they totally remodeled the place, so it just doesn't feel that way anymore. It's just another hotel.

So Kathy's house alone has preserved this piece of my past. It's one of the last touchstones left to my childhood and to my life with my parents. They died far too young, about 16 years ago. Dad was 69 and Mom was only 64. I was talking about this with Brian, and it makes us wonder what places will spark this sort of nostalgia in our own daughters one day, hopefully many, many years from now.

I'm headed up there this evening, where I'll enjoy Kathy's company, the quiet tranquility, and the scenic view. I'll let Kathy vet this blog and tell me it's okay to out her for being expelled from Disneyland... you know, before I click on "Publish"...