Pet Parade

I like to believe that when God created the world, giving each bird its own plumage and each alpine range its own crevasses, at the end of the day when he kicked back in his leather recliner and popped open a Bud Lite he stopped, mid-sip, and thought with horror, “My…self! I’ve forgotten something and I know precisely what that is!” He then set to work at once on the blue prints for what would become the greatest gathering of costumed animals that Mankind would ever know. This gathering would later be known as the Eastsound Pet Parade.

The excitement in the air was palpable as I parked my bike on Main Street and headed to Teezer’s for my customary chai. The parade, coinciding with the annual Bite of Orcas, was set to begin at 11:00am. It was just past 10:00, so to kill some time I strolled over to the library to apply for a card and then bought a giant round loaf of garlic parsley walnut bread at Roses, in which the garlic and parsley and walnuts were practically exploding out the top in a doughy volcano of…dough.

By this time crowds were beginning to form along both sides of the street down which the parade was to take place. I wedged myself between a little boy holding a balloon and an elderly woman who’d recently undergone knee-replacement surgery and had set up a camping chair on the curb. In the distance we heard the paraders with their pets, and as they marched closer the people around me raised their cameras in preparation. But then something went a little differently than anticipated: the parade veered off the main street a block before the spectators, crossing just past Teezer’s and heading down the street that ran parallel to the one we were on. Chaos ensued. “They’re going the other way!” a man shouted, as though narrating the action for any blind spectators who might be in attendance. Tourists scrambled toward the through-street in hot pursuit of the pets but I, having a somewhat intimate knowledge of the island’s pathways, turned the opposite direction and ducked down the trail through the community garden, popping out the other side just as the parade leaders were passing. Suckers, I thought, surveying the nearly empty sidewalk. It seemed the tourists, in their mad dash past Teezer’s, had bottlenecked with the animals just outside Mijitas Mexican Restaurant and hadn’t made it through yet. I, meanwhile, was feeling very smug and happy of myself.

 

The parade was magical. I nearly pulled a hamstring trying to photograph everything—which suggests that, as Jeremy on Sports Night would say, maybe I wasn’t doing it right. There were dogs in pink tutus, dogs with ladybug wings, dogs in a wagon decorated to look like the house in Up, complete with balloons and a sign that said “Up with Pups!” There was a girl carrying guinea pigs in a shallow cardboard box hanging from her neck like she was selling peanuts at a baseball game. Marvin and Hannah the Shetland sheep rode by in a cart pulled by a man wearing rainbow knee-socks. Two puppies trotted down the street in matching black vests that had “SECURITY” stenciled on the top of each. Though I was unable to get a clear picture, my absolute favorite part of the parade came when a girl emerged from the crowd pushing a bunny in one of those low plastic baby doll strollers lined with blankets. Right behind her was a boy and girl pushing another bunny, this time in a miniature shopping cart. By the end of the parade, when the pets and their owners wound their way through the farmers market to the stage on the Village Green, all but one wheel had fallen off the cart and the boy and girl were forced to carry it.

Then came the awards ceremony. Snowball the guinea pig won Safest Pet, with the two puppies in SECURITY vests coming in a close second. Most Colorful went to Cookie the Rooster, though I have a sneaking suspicion that was just because Cookie’s owner was wearing about 700 different patterns at once. I missed a big portion of the awards because I was almost trampled by a horse that seemed keen to back over me. Then I saw the goats. Two little brown goats with daisy chains around their necks. Are you kidding me? Goats wearing daisy chains? Can you get any cuter? I wound up stalking the goats for quite some time, as well as the adorable little girls walking them—who were, as it turned out, the grandchildren of a woman who works at the shop.

I needed to get back to to the shop to do some shipping, so I said a silent farewell to Snowball and Cookie and the bunnies and the goats and the Up with Pups, hopped on my bike, and pedaled away.

Some Island Updates

The front yard of the shop

After only a day in the half in the shop I can say with honest conviction that my greatest accomplishment thus far has been catching a dragonfly flapping around between the fluorescent light bulbs and releasing it outside.

The view from my balcony

I have also noticed that my being left-handed appears to be a popular conversation topic among customers. Apparently we south pawers find great joy in the discovery of our own out in the wild. One man said "Thanks, Lefty!" when I handed him his bagged pottery and receipt. An hour later an elderly woman told me that she'd had her left hand tied behind her back in school to encourage her integration into the flock of righties. Of all the things I could be asked--why eight giant fir trees have been felled at the edge of the shop yard; why the elderly sweet but hostile shop cat Max only attacks dogs when they're on leashes; why I insist on dumping water out of 200 or so pots that have been left out overnight when it's still raining--the hand in which my pen is located is above and beyond the most interesting topic.

I suppose I should take you on a tour of my apartment. Here 'tis:

The living quarters

The cooking quarters

The nook-like upstairs sleeping quarters

The ungodly steep stairway quarters--or as I call it, Mt. Never-rest

I've been spying on the Canadians. I did some detective work over Skype with my friend Meaghin before I came and I'm fairly certain those lights are Whistler.

 

That's all for now. Stay tuned for the pet parade!

Leaving

I'm leaving tomorrow to spend three months working in a pottery shop on Orcas Island.

Here is what I will miss the most about being home for the summer:

 

But I can't really complain too much because I'll be here:

Bye, home. See you in September.

This Time

In my dream last night I was sitting at a table with my friends at our 10-year high school reunion. Greta had just said something profoundly witty, as are most of the things she says, and we were laughing. Across the room our AP English teacher, Dr. Babienko, rose from her table and made her way toward us. Jessica pulled up an empty chair and Dr. Babienko sat down. Instantly our faces dropped. We knew, as dream people always do, that whatever our former teacher said to us right then was going to hurt.
     She made eye contact with each and every one of us. She took a breath and folded her hands on the table. After a moment she spoke. "She didn't mean to die," she said, almost at a whisper. "She didn't mean to leave you."
     We had all lived every day with an accented voice in our heads, had all caught ourselves referring to each other as "kidlets" and "bubbleses." We had all checked the internet every week for news of a man in a jail cell who had murdered our teacher.

Every other time in my life when I've woken from nightmares the first thing I've felt is an overwhelming sense of relief--relief that I'm not falling off a bridge to my death, that I didn't just lose my legs in a shark attack, that my house isn't burning. Every time I realize my nightmares aren't real I feel lucky and grateful.

This time I didn't feel relieved. I didn't feel lucky or grateful. This time I just felt hollow. I think I always will. What happened on December 24, 2011 can't unhappen. It'll never be okay. Somehow, though, Dr. Babienko assuring us that Hockley never meant to leave us comforts me more than most things. I know it's true, and that if she could have she would have followed each and every one of us down every crooked path of our lives until we said, with love and admiration, "I'm here, Prudence. It's okay. You can go now."

But that, I know, would never happen. We would never want her to leave.

So That Happened

*Leaving the stadium after a Sounders game*
Me: I don't understand why Eddie is getting paid the big bucks to spend the majority of every game writhing in pain on the field.
Mom: Me neither. He probably pulled an eyelash.

In other news, I was in Target this morning stocking up on supplies for Orcas. Having noticed that my usual trusted hair product was not on the shelf where it normally is, I wandered aimlessly up and down the aisles of the beauty department searching for it. That was when I noticed these:

Who knew that I could get a full day's worth of meals from just four curl-enhancing concoctions? (And "creme brule"? Clearly, hiring even a part-time proofreader would be money well spent. Or, you know, use Word. It's got a spell-checker built right in!)

And then there are these, which I found while sorting through donations for the Literacy Council of Seattle's annual book sale:

(Not pictured: one self-help guide to recovering from incest.)

Well I think that's enough head-scratching for one day, don't you? Happy Tuesday!

Poetry Corner Monday

Another Time

W.H. Auden

For us like any other fugitive,
Like the numberless flowers that cannot number
And all the beasts that need not remember,
It is to-day in which we live.

So many try to say Not Now,
So many have fogotten how
To say I Am, and would be
Lost, if they could, in history.

Bowing, for instance, with such old-world grace
To a proper flag in a proper place,
Muttering like ancients as they stump upstairs
Of Mine and His or Ours and Theirs.

Just as if time were what they used to will
When it was gifted with possession still,
Just as if they were wrong
In no more wishing to belong.

No wonder then so many die of grief,
So many are so lonely as they die;
No one has yet believed or liked a lie:
Another time has other lives to live.

The Best Part of Every Saturday

Need I say more?

Poetry Corner Monday Wednesday

The Wild Rose

Wendell Berry

Sometimes hidden from me
in daily custom and in trust,
so that I live by you unaware
as by the beating of my heart,

suddenly you flare in my sight,
a wild rose blooming at the edge
of thicket, grace and light
where yesterday was only shade,

and once more I am blessed, choosing
again what I chose before.

The Girl Who Hides Under Slides

For the past few days it has been true spring in Seattle. The afternoon skies are cloudless. The lilacs--my favorite flower--are sagging on their branches in fragrant purple clusters. The wild rabbits that live in some hidden nook of our backyard have emerged to launch their attack against our dandelions. With temperatures in the high 70s to mid 80s, we can finally throw open our windows without getting cold.

It's my first spring without the evergreen I climbed as a child. In its absence, as the evenings stretch themselves later and later, I find I am seeing my neighborhood in a way I never have before. The tree had shielded my window from the road and the cul-de-sac on the other side of our pasture. These days I can sit at my window at 8:30 at night, the remnants of a bloodshot sunset sinking beneath the trees, and watch taillights disappear up the hill, lights come on in upstairs windows and a single frenetic bat--and I'm sure it's the same one every night--looping one exhausted circle after another in the falling light.

A few evenings ago I knelt on my floor and leaned on my windowsill to listen to a game of hide-and-seek being played in the yard of a neighboring house. The girl counted to 20, speeding through the final five numbers in that way we all did when we thought that because you couldn't see us you couldn't hear us either. "Ready or not, here I co--found you, Nadine, you're under the slide!" The round lasted less than the length of a single breath. The girl counted again. "Eighteennineteentwenty! Ready or not, here I come--FOUND YOU, NADINE!" I laughed and shook my head. Poor Nadine, I thought. This just isn't her game.

And then I thought: It's me. I'm her. Here was a girl who was, despite her best efforts, found. Her friend knew, probably before she even started counting, that Nadine would be under the slide. She probably positioned her body facing the slide so that all she had to do to catch Nadine was open her eyes. Maybe not even Nadine herself realized this. Maybe each time her friend started counting, Nadine's eyes would dart from one side of the yard to the other in search of the perfect hiding place. Behind the bushes? No, there were snakes back there. On the wooden bench on the deck? No, you could see through the slats. Under the slide? Yes. Genius. Maybe Nadine went through this process every time they played, and every time they played she was sure that this would be the time she wouldn't be found. But she always was, quiet little Nadine, huddled under the slide with her eyes squeezed shut, oblivious to the fact that for the rest of her life this is who she would be: the girl who weighed her options but always chose the familiarity of the shadows underneath the slide.

I have spent so many years trying to be unpredictable. Those who know me well will find this entertaining, as I am so profoundly, oftentimes upsettingly predictable that you wouldn't even conceive of my attempts to be otherwise. My idea of switching it up on a Friday night is reading a history of the Bosnian Crisis rather than my trusted companion, Anne of Green Gables. Nonetheless, I like to think that I have the capacity to be spontaneous--to shock people. Witnessing Nadine's inevitable hide-and-seek collapses was a stinging uppercut of reality: I am not predictable. I am not mysterious. I am simply a twenty-five-year-old child who is more found than I ever wanted to be.

And you know what? Given the chance to play a round of hide-and-seek, me and Nadine against Nadine's friend, I don't have a doubt in my mind as to where we would hide.