Life is in the Doing, Being, the Threads
Hello, my San Saba friends, and in case you may have thought I wrote my column in disappearing ink last week, there was no Happy Herman at all. Well I suppose I should qualify that statement: I existed. I was still here, but I did not write a column. You know how life sometimes throws you curve balls…well last week it sort of employed a pitching machine and put it on full speed.
Hillard Rodgers was married to my Aunt Ruth Ann which mom tells me since Ruth was his sister, that made Hillard dad’s brother in-law. Personally, I have no idea why the law wants to get involved; all they ever did was laugh together! Hillard had been quite ill for some time, and last week he died. When Ruth and Hillard married, he inherited her children just as mom inherited dads, and now, all these many years later there are grandchildren and great grandchildren. For two days, I didn’t really get to see dad at all because he spent time with all of them. Now I like to think of myself as an understanding and loving dachshund, but I whined, howled, cried and paced the hardwoods of this house as if I was waiting for Ray Riggs to walk in giving me news on a missing persons’ report! Yep, I was so beside myself at one point mom asked me if I had completely cracked in half. I suppose I learned I am about as adept at sharing dad as I am sharing food.
The week didn’t even have a good start because on Monday, mom went to the doctor, and shall we just say when she agrees to see Dr. Whiting, her mood changes to that of a disgruntled bear. No, it isn’t that she has anything against Dr. Whiting; she adores him. But she is very tired of being poked, prodded and treated like a pin cushion. When dad and I went to pick her up, she told us she couldn’t have the biopsy, but Dr. Whiting did freeze the large, weird mole on her chest. I was in the front seat with dad, and I quickly looked at mom sitting in the backseat to see if she still had an upper torso or if it was in the clinic in some freezer! What she described made absolutely no sense to my dachshund ears! I sighed with relief when she explained he used a small canister of liquid nitrogen!
This week was also the fifth anniversary of Patches' death. Although he was the much loved dachshund before me, he allowed me the loving home I am so lucky to have now. I found something he wrote, and it is how I will end my column this week. I love you, my San Saba sweethearts, and I thank you for being.
Life does not always work out the way we plan it, my loves. We do not always get the things we want, but if we take what we are given and weave something beautiful with the threads, then even if we do not manage to complete our tapestry we leave behind a work of art when we go because we have woven our threads with those of others, and they are still weaving. Friendship is a verb, just as is love, and caring...life is about the living and doing of it. Words are easy to say, but if your heart is not there to back up the definition... they are nothing more than letters on a page. I am a writer, but I was a dachshund who lived my words. If I meet you and I look at you, there is no doubt as to what my gentle soul feels. If the eyes are the window to the soul...then let your actions be the mirror to your heart and reflect how amazing, giving and kind you are. Go out and weave something beautiful this day! I love you, I love you, I love you!