Light and Dark

    A few weeks ago I posted about my alcoholic sister who was hospitalized due to her drinking and had to have emergency surgery to save her life.  Many slicers posted both thoughtful and supportive posts to me about my sister and I'm sorry I haven't responded until now. It's been a messy time. 

     She spent a month in rehab after the surgery to regain mobility, and her strength. Her debilitating physical condition going into the emergency surgery factored heavily. Her surgeon told her never to drink again.

      She was released to go home three weeks ago and has resumed drinking.

      I hate to be cliche and trite but I'm learning how to hold the dark, and the light. I feel like I'm walking on the moon. I just flew to visit her for 48 hours, reshuffled my own schedule, to effectively say "good-bye" to her.

   What can you say, what can you do, when someone thinks so little of themselves (if anything at all) that they want to drink themselves to death? I said everything I thought of, and my heart felt better, but I knew it made no difference. I knew it fell on deaf ears. She drinks every day. I found at least a dozen boxes of box wine under her bathroom sink.

   Locked up in an apartment all day, full of empty boxes and hefty trash bags knotted tightly, but somehow managing to do her work online (it's a MYSTERY).

     As I sit by the gate waiting for my flight I wonder. What makes a person check out?  What is so broken inside of her that she would rather drink, be drunk, and just sit inside her apartment all day? It makes me so sad to even type this.

   But I must.

Frenemies?

     This morning while sitting outside in my backyard before the blankets of blistering heat hit I heard the rustling of what I guessed a fairly large animal. The noises came from some trees that line our yard.  Much bigger than a bird, I guessed. Watching, and sipping my much needed cup of coffee, I saw a few baby squirrels emerge. I had seen them earlier in the spring, and had laughed at their tiny bodies but adult-size tails.  

     They were chasing each other. Amused I watched them not only chase each other, but leap from tree to tree, maybe twenty feet up, in impressive spider man fashion. I was amazed that even that young, they had the scaling, and jumping skills of adult squirrels.

    And then I caught myself. These aren't just some cute baby squirrels playing together like little children  might play tag. These are RODENTS. And they are my arch nemesis.

   Ever since we have lived here I have bought every squirrel proof bird feeder, as well as tried out ever squirrel resistant contraption on said bird feeders, to absolutely no avail. Bitter? Maybe, a little. . . 

   This Mother's Day my family got me a Smart Bird Feeder. And (you better believe it) I've got that sucker secured tighter than Fort Knox.  It's placed strategically on a pole far away from anything, it's enclosed in a pen of chicken wire, the bottom half of the pole is insulated in piping, and the top half of the pole is completely encased in bird spikes. The spikes make the pole impossible to scale- or so I naively thought.

     I know exactly how Mr. McGregor felt. 

     But this morning as I watched them I think I found myself smiling?  I guess it really is all in your perspective.