Intact Routine

Yesterday was one of the most perfect days I can remember. When we awoke, a cool front had blown in and it was raining steadily.  After feeding the dogs, my wife started breakfast (breakfast burritos from scratch…just one more element in a perfect day) and I took the spotted menace out for a soaking ramble through the hills.

The mist was curling like Fafnir’s breath, silver and sinister, reaching into hidden places erupting from black chasms in the slick rock. We padded along, Jinx’s paws making a curious leatherlike sound on the wet leaves. We walked and looked and stopped and gazed and strolled and smiled — yes, Jinx smiles — and then we returned home. About fifty yards from the front door, the mist opened up into a pure-D downpour, and we made a run for it. Well, the dog did. When I reached the door and opened it, JInx leaped through the opening and tried to dash up the three little steps that lead into the dining room on one side and the living room on the other. His wet paws, the slick floor, and his innate clumsiness combined and sent him sprawling across the floor, landing hard on his shoulder. Dixee took this opportunity to leap at his face, which Jinx took as an invitation to donnybrook, and away they went. By the time I got them apart, the living room rug looked like Christmas ribbon candy, there was coffee everywhere, and Dixee was out on the front porch where I’d ushered her, screeching like some trigglypuff drama queen. Jinx was stalking Mrs. Orr and me though the house, convinced the game was still on. I’m still trying to remember how we got them both calmed down and the house back into peaceful stillness. The way it had been before the spotted menace and I had left for our walk. In the rain. To draw nearer to death. Because the bell tolls for us.

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Laura Wood posted a beautiful tribute to our winged friends. I highly recommend it. Laura has been such an important factor in encouraging me, not just with her wisdom and her knowledge of traditional Catholic doctrine, but also with her symphonic essays on the creatures with which we share this God-authored earth. She is a bulwark against ugliness, negativity, and the coldness of this world’s folly.

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Speaking of birds, Jinx and I went up to the cemetery at about noon. By that time the sky was as clear as a grandson’s eyes. I spread out a large garbage bag to sit on, since the grass was still damp. I took out a little booklet I’d brought along, a condensed treatment of the doctrine of Marian devotion, but was too taken with the scenery around me to read. So I took photos. Jinx loped around between the stones and hunted rabbits whose trails had gone cold before dawn. Then I heard him bark. When I looked around, I saw that Jinx was pointing with his snout up at the sky, sitting back on his spotted haunches. He was barking at a large hawk that was gliding low across the land. I’ve said it before — he is the most sky-aware dog I’ve ever seen.

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A thank-you to Ann Barnhardt for her collection of quotes the other day, quotes from St. Teresa of Avila. I mulled over one of them for most of yesterday and was thinking about it this morning when I awoke:

If you seek to carry no other crosses but those whose reason you understand, perfection is not for you.

— Saint Teresa of Avila

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Our younger son and his lovely wife are celebrating their wedding anniversary today. I can clearly remember the day they were married, so many years back, on a gorgeous day. Texas had been hot and still the day before the wedding, but on the 17th, it dawned cool and breezy, like a wedding gift.

Joshie-O and his sweet wife have produced two beautiful children and have built a cozy, refreshing home together in the Lone Star State. He is one of the few truly self-made men I’ve ever known (his maternal grandfather was another), truly a man who pulled himself up by his bootstraps and has become an accomplished, impressive gent. Happy Anniversary, much love to you young’uns.

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Speaking of Texas, we learned via Bob Phillips of a lady whose story gave my heart some much-needed warmth during all of the evil we see around us these days.  The lady, who is named Claire Mestepey is the author of dozens of word-search books and two novels. The kicker is that Clair has produced her sizable body of work while living with cerebral palsy.

The next time I am feeling sorry for myself because I haven’t been able to muster the energy to aggressively pursue publication for my own writing, I hope Mrs. Orr will remind me of Claire. And I hope the reminder shames me into silence, and perhaps dilgence.

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Another Sunday has slipped across the spine of the book, and the leaf is about to turn. My mother was right; the older I get, the faster it goes. And fast will come the dawn, when it will be time to rise and spend a little time with those I love before I drive down off the mountain, back to a place where I am marking time until the imperial edict is finally enacted and I am told to gather my things and turn in my keys. But for now, my routine is intact, and I thrive on routine.

God’s blessings to each of you, the readers who are so dear to me.

~ S.K. Orr