Ding Dong

The witch is gone.

I'm not sure when it happened but I can only assume it has been a fairly recent occurrence. Her broom hasn't been seen parked in front of her apartment and the local children don't seem to be behaving as though they've been turned into gingerbread.

Her patio––a monstrous place––was nearly empty of her strange, maroon decorations, the wicked creatures with open mouths as bird feeders, and the twisted, stick art reminiscent of the Blair Witch Project. The only thing remaining was a bizarre sculpture that hung above her patio doors, a skull with blood red wings shooting out from it like flames, reminiscent of the Día de los Muertos masks worn in Mexico the day after Halloween. It was exactly where it has always been and even though her blinds were open and I could clearly see the entire apartment was empty, it made me nervous, as though she was somehow watching us, waiting to lock Duncan and me up in a cage to fatten us up before tossing into a cauldron.

Duncan, who has not been allowed anywhere near her for years, seemed to know she was gone and walked right up to the patio. I hung back, even whistled at him out of habit, to come back to me and steer clear of the entire cursed area. But he was impervious to whatever spell she had cast over her property, and sensed no power remaining in the watchful black eye-sockets of that dreadful mask. He was so confident in himself that after sniffing around for a moment or two, he ambled up to the edge of the railing, raised his leg and shot a steady stream of pee right across the cement, a faint of steam rising up where it landed. And when he was done he looked up at me, grinned in that Golden way of his, wagged his tail, and gave me the all-clear.

The witch is truly gone.

Hey you! Yeah you, the one who just read this post. How about leaving a comment? That would be an awesome thing to do!

Starts with "A"

Duncan has no qualms. He is an unabashed window peeper. Each time we venture down The Run Dunc prefers to gallop through the bushes and trees that grow along the edges of the apartments, stopping more often than I care to admit, to stare straight into the homes and lives of the people who reside within. It happens even when we're walking on-leash. He'll pause to peek through the blinds at another dog, or a cat who's perched on the sill, or even just to take a gander at folks eating their breakfasts or dinners. On more than one occasion he's caught someone emerging from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around their body, singing softly to themselves while they dry their hair or pick out their clothes. I tend to stand off to the side, my back turned, my arm wrenched at an awkward angle in the hopes that they'll recognize my dog as the pervert and not me.

This afternoon he paused in front of The Witch's Lair, raised his hackles and growled a low, deep growl, the kind I don't hear very often from him. I'd been walking a bit ahead, whistling, as I'm known to do, enjoying the warmth of the sun and the incredible spring sky. When I noticed he wasn't at my side I turned back and saw him looking as though he was about to pounce through the window and attack whatever it was on the other side. I hurried back to him and laughed when I saw what had caught his attention.

Hanging on a chair in the window was the ugliest afghan I'd ever seen, a purple and orange thing, made of thick, fuzzy yarn that looked like it had been skinned from some sort of creature conjured by the imagination of HR Giger. It was not a pretty thing and looked too thin to offer much in the way of warmth, but was instead meant as some sort of decoration. Either that or a quick throw to toss over a dead body. One never knows when dealing with The Witch.

I called to Roo softly in hopes of avoiding attracting the attention of the wretched woman who owns the thing, but he would not listen. So after snapping a quick picture for my April Photo-of-the-Day Challenge, I leaned in, leashed him up and pulled him away. He kept looking back over his shoulder, though, and growling, then back up at me as though shocked I wouldn't let him attack and kill it. 

 

It wasn't until we arrived at The Glen and I removed his leash that he put it out of his mind. I'd been stressing my photo all day, looking for things that started with the letter "A" and hardly noticed when he led me to an aspen tree, plopped down in front of it and waited for me to figure out what he was trying to tell me. It was almost as though he refused to let me use the afghan and wanted something prettier instead. So I snapped a picture to appease him and led him across the street to the park for the rest of our walk.

 

 

As usual, Duncan knows best.

The Witch

So there is this woman who lives here, mid-way down The Run. I've written about her before, and have spent nearly every walk since those initial encounters biting my tongue and playing nice. But last summer, after several unpleasant words, I've taken to calling her The Witch. Her patio is decorated with all manner of unpleasant hangings, bizarre wind chimes that, for all I know, could be made from the bones of little fingers of children she has lured into her abode with promises of sweets and goodies; baskets made of wicker that look like aboriginal snares and ghastly, clotted paintings that depict what I can only imagine is her mood at any given moment. Late in the fall, just before the first snows came, a number of tall, grizzly-looking bird feeders appeared, brassy, copper-ish things turned green with age, with strange shapes and undulating figures running up their sides, their wide basins open mouths waiting to swallow the finches and nuthatches which frequent Jeffrey's patio only a hundred yards away. She fills them regularly with seeds and grains and while the birds have largely ignored them the squirrels have been unable to turn their backs on the treats she puts out as offerings.

She is a short thing with wild, white hair, who crouches and lurks in her window watching for Duncan each morning as we pass by and then again in the afternoons and evenings. She has chastised me for not cleaning up after him––a crime I have never committed––and has lectured me about keeping him away from the flowers she has planted in the common area that does not belong to her. She is mightily unpleasant and a dark cloud seems to hang over that area of The Run no matter the season or the time of day. I have worked tirelessly at training Roo to stay away from her patio and the bulbs which erupt there in the spring, but he is a lover of all things bright and wonderful, those things that sway in a summer breeze, and the wondrous things which make music by the invisible hands of the wind. It hasn't been easy but I try. And last summer, when I spied her lurking behind her curtains waiting to reprimand me for his appearance once again on her patio, I started warning Dunc, loudly so she could hear, "Be careful, Roo. Get too close and she'll turn you into gingerbread. Or worse, a toad! And I don't have any water on me to melt her down should she get too close." She's stopped accosting us but she hasn't ceased her glowering or the loud sighs and grunts which emanate from behind her screen door and windows.

She was on her patio this morning, clad in a bright orange bathrobe, so short as to leave her mottled and purple-veined knees exposed, her skinny legs white and twiggish, impossibly pale even in the glare of the thick, new snow and the bitter cold. I did not see her so when she screamed, a guttural low roar, I jumped and Duncan tripped over himself as his body tensed and recoiled all at once.

"You scared me," I laughed uneasily as she hissed loudly and waved her hands in the air, the limp band of a slingshot wagging above her head.

"These damn squirrels," she cursed as one darted past Duncan and up a nearby birch. Duncan, terrified of the crone, didn't dare follow after it. He sat solidly beside me, his weight pushing against my leg. "They won't leave the bird feeders alone."

"I know they have special feeders you can get that make it difficult for squirrels to get the seed. My mother has several," I offered.

"I don't want other feeders. I want these," she spat and hissed again at another squirrel. "So I got this slingshot. Just about took the leg off one yesterday. And now he's limping around. Can't even climb very fast. I hope the coyotes get him."

I blinked, astonished at her malice. I patted Duncan's head and softly urged him forward. "Let's go, Roo."

"You should get your dog back here to scare them off," she said. "He can finally be useful."

I just stared at her, my back straightening and my gloved hands clenching in my pockets. There were a myriad of things I wanted to say, none of them nice, several of them downright awful, but instead I took a deep breath and said, very calmly, "You have made it clear you want my dog nowhere near your patio and I've trained him to stay away. He is very useful but he will never be of any use to you. I wouldn't allow it." I turned away but then stopped and looked back at her. "And if I ever see that slingshot again I'll report you to the leasing office." And with that, we walked away. Duncan strutted beside me, head high, tail even higher, perhaps proud of his papa, perhaps simply happy to be done with that old witch.

I was just happy to finally give her (a tiny sample of) The Full Curt.

Forgiveness

I'm going to tell you the truth, and that is never an easy thing. But I'm going to do it because I've never really admitted this to anyone and my friends, who all know, have been kind enough not to say it.

I am not always a very good person. In fact, I would go so far as to say that sometimes I can be downright petty and mean-spirited, vengeful and bitter. More often than not my rashness leads me to overreact. Most of the time I'm able to quell my initial instinct but the fact remains that I am capable of some very nasty and treacherous thoughts that teeter on the very fine edge of becoming actions. It's always been something I've despised about myself because such things lead me to question whether I'm a good person at heart.

For instance, there is this woman who lives midway down The Run, a strange little thing with silver hair she tries to conceal behind a gloss of maroon dye. She has eclectic tastes and decorates her patio with odd trinkets, bizarre art rendered in bright, almost garish primary colors, things with eyes and many arms, or shapes unknown to the natural world, invented entirely by the mind of Man. When she first moved in last fall, shortly after the departure of The Wretched Hyenas, I was intrigued and wondered if we'd strike up a conversation as Duncan and I passed by two or three times daily. I wondered if, like Jeffrey, we'd develop a routine and if she'd ever confess the secrets of her strange taste in decor. But that never happened. Shortly after our first pass-by, she appeared on the patio to lecture me about cleaning up after Duncan after he took care of business. The odd thing was that I was already carrying a bright green bag filled with his inner goodness. And anyone who knows me here on the property knows that I am a tireless advocate for cleaning up after your pet. It infuriates me to discover someone is not. And here was this woman––this stranger––accusing me of doing the very thing I have fought so hard against. I politely assured her that I was very mindful of cleaning up after Roo and held up my bag as proof, but the next day and nearly every day after that she appeared on her patio, arms folded across her chest, a scowl scratched across her face, to watch us and make sure I didn't leave anything behind, which, of course, I hadn't.

We were blessedly free of her for most of the winter months, but she has appeared again recently. This morning I noticed she's planted a patch of tulips in the red-tinted mulch at the edge of her patio. Duncan noticed them, too, and as he trotted among the shrubs, he stopped to sniff each in turn and then move along to the trees where the squirrels crouch. She was sitting at her couch watching us, her back straight and tense as though ready to spring forward and scold me. But Duncan, intrigued briefly, ambled away, his tail wagging happily behind him, his curiosity leading the way.

She was waiting for us on our evening walk. I was whistling an Indigo Girls song about the joys of being out in the world in the glow of the sunshine while Dunc jogged here and there, pausing to sniff or just raise his curious eyebrows at the discovery of something new. She practically careened through her screen and called after me. Before I could even speak she began to lecture me about her delicate flowers and how Duncan was destroying them and how she'd worked hard to plant them and wasn't about "to let some dog run them under." My mouth snapped shut and I felt my cheeks redden as my heart rate picked up. "Do we agree?" she asked. There was nothing I could say except, "I'll try."

But, oh, what I was thinking. And if my eyes were capable of melting her with those thoughts she'd be little more than a puddle, dusted over with the sad maroon remnants of her thinning, pink hair. We walked away, Duncan completely oblivious to the situation, but inside I was seething. I'd tolerated her scorn and suspicion for months and now she was practically accusing my dog of desecrating her precious tulips, which he clearly had not. My walk was ruined. Inside I had all sorts of thoughts, and each time Dunc paused at my side to nuzzle his nose against the cup of my hand where I hold his treats, I'd say, "She needs to move. I need to find a way to make her move." And then my mind would race with things I will never type out. I even went so far as to envision myself sneaking out in the dead of night and stomping all over her flowers, uprooting them, crushing the fat bulbs under my heels and leaving them on her patio. I had skipped anger and gone straight to evil.

After an hour of walking through the park, my anger spilled over into the soccer hoards and their parents, who crowded the park and will undoubtedly leave the remnants of their water bottles and fast food wrappers behind them when they depart. I seethed at the traffic on Bowles and the foul odor of the exhaust left behind in clouds along the edge of the road. The wind picked up and I raged internally at its presence and how after three weeks of enduring it I wished it would just blow itself straight to Hell.

There was no way Duncan could not notice my state of mind. Rather than walk this way and that he stayed close to my side, often leaning against me as though to say, "C'mon, she's a harmless, sad old woman. All she has is her flowers. It's not that big a deal." I patted his head absentmindedly and walked on, my steps sharp and quick, my thoughts and heart sharper. But finally he couldn't stand it any longer so he took control and led me across the park to a quiet, secluded spot where the crab apples blossoms have exploded into dazzling white, sweet-smelling clouds hovering in the low trees just above our heads. Days of wind had loosened the petals and a light downy bed of them coated the ground. He pulled against the leash and tossed himself onto his back into the short greening grass, only just beginning to take on the rich fragrance of Spring. He rolled and growled deep in his chest, snorting and huffing as he did, his thick red fur catching the grass and ivory petals and holding tight to them until he was covered. He paused, looked up at me a moment then rolled again.

I am smart enough to know when he is instructing me and offering up another of his life lessons, the ones I seem to constantly require. So I laid down next to him and rolled, the cold of the flowers igniting the nerves on the back of my arms and neck, the grass, still slightly damp from yesterday's morning snow. We rolled together and when we were done he rested his head against my ribs, breathing heavily, one paw pushing against the top of my head.

And then, like that, I understood. I had to let it go, and not just this anger but all of it. He was right. She is a sad, miserable old woman who lives alone and rarely, if ever, has company. All she wants to do is plant flowers and enjoy their blooming in this blessed time of year. Is it so wrong for her to want to protect them? They are simple things, but important nonetheless. Perhaps just as important to her as Duncan is to me.

And with that realization came shame. I hated my thoughts and the venomous places they'd led me. I had grandmothers once and it would kill me to think anyone had thought as ill of them as I had of her. Over flowers, which are beautiful and remarkable living things. Flowers.

Now don't laugh when I tell you that just last week I was ordained in the Universal Life Church, which believes that "we are all children of the same Universe" and "that every person has the natural right (and the responsibility) to peacefully determine what is right." I was "ordained" because my sister and her fiance, Christian, asked me to conduct their wedding this summer in Idaho. I have delivered three eulogies and have spoken at all sorts of events, delivered insightful stories and more than one killer toast, but this will be my first wedding. And as Duncan and I walked home I couldn't help but feel that perhaps I was the wrong person to do it, that maybe Dunc would be a better choice, with his big, open heart and patient and forgiving spirit. But we paused and he sat before me, watching me carefully before leaning forward to touch his nose to mine and to lick my cheek. In that instant I knew that all was good, that I'd forgiven and was forgiven and that flowers in Spring are a priceless thing and that even the best of us can sometimes go astray.

So this Spring, in preparation for Casey's wedding, I am going to make a concerted effort to control my anger, to see things for what they are and not just what I perceive them to be and to let Duncan lead me to the kinder places I sometimes forget exist within myself. I am going to protect the flowers.