Mostly Sweetness

I am not sure what's going on with this cat. She seems to be extra caring for me right now. When she lies down beside my arm when I'm here on the back porch, typing away, and leans against me with obvious purposeful force and then twists her head up to look at me, I melt and forgive her all her bloody sins. Last night she seemed quite concerned about me and I wasn't really feeling very well, to be honest. I've always called her my nurse cat and sometimes it freaks me out when she's being so very solicitous because I can't help but wonder if she knows something I don't. Like those dogs who can sniff out skin cancer. 
Anyway, she followed me into the bathroom when I took my shower and brushed my teeth and would not leave until I turned out the light and got in bed. She jumped up beside me and squished her whole body against my legs and she stayed there the entire night. Both of us slept inexcusably late this morning but honestly, I have felt better today so maybe she DID know something I didn't. 

I did nothing of any real interest at all today and so have very little to talk about. I also haven't taken any pictures except for a few of Maurice like the one you see above. This morning I felt a bit agitated and on the verge of tears but I picked beans and mostly just hung out, doing the crossword and being lazy and eventually, my mood changed and I have felt more at ease and whatever tears I had decided to stay inside my head and my heart and Mr. Moon has made me feel loved and cherished and that always helps. I've been cooking pinto beans all day long and have focaccia bread dough with sun-dried tomatoes in it rising and have picked arugula and various basils to make a nice little vinegary and olive-oily salad to eat with it when it's been baked. Probably with goat cheese, too. I can't believe it's taken me my entire life to learn about food like this, so very simple and yet so very perfect. Don't get me wrong- I will always love a good meatloaf, whether made with beef or with venison, but I have also loved beans since I was a child and my mother cooked pinto beans. I believe she may have learned to do this when she lived in New Mexico, I believe, with my father who had run away from home as a boy and found work on a ranch there (or it could have been Arizona, yes, I think it may have been) and the woman who was the wife of that ranch welcomed my poor, no doubt completely confused mother into her kitchen and taught her to make beans and cornbread, which were truly her best dishes. My mother had married a man whom she'd known since first grade and who I am sure she thought would simply follow his father and his uncle into their law practice and they would live happily ever after in a beautiful house on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, where they both were raised, with children of their own and quite possibly someone else hired to do the cooking. 
This makes my father sound like far more of a brave and adventuresome and fun man than he actually was. What he actually was was a very dedicated alcoholic who introduced my mother to the sides of life that she never expected to know anything about, including the fear of homelessness, poverty, and starvation, not to mention the regular and terrifying experience of abandonment. 
But goddamn! She sure did learn to make pinto beans and cornbread. 

I think so often of how miraculous it is that despite coming from beginnings like that, followed by living in a house with a certifiably sadistic child abuser and spousal emotional abuser, I ended up marrying a man like Mr. Moon who, although no more perfect than any of us, is as true and steadfast and honest and loving as any man I could imagine. And he has dealt with my deep imperfections for all of these years and continued to love me and has been the best father and grandfather I can imagine. 

Which leads me to the pictures I have gone back into my library to post this evening. They are from when August and Maggie were littles together. Lily and I talked about that time period yesterday and how incredibly precious it was, those two little cousins, so close in age, both with such blonde curls, such beautiful little expressive faces.
From my childhood beginnings to the incredible things that have happened in my life never ceases to amaze me. 

Here we have August Glinden and Magnolia June. 

Sigh. My heart. 

Thank you for indulging me. 

Love...Ms. Moon