A free denouement

Every time I get in the shower, this idea for the denouement in a novel comes to me. I'll probably never write a novel, so it's yours if you want it!

The story is about a married couple whose families, like everybody's families, have their own ways of doing things. This man & wife (for indeed it is a man-woman arrangement) are always getting on each other's cases -- in a loving if at times exasperated manner -- about the way they do things.

For instance, she thinks it's stupid to rinse the backs of dishes, because nobody eats off the backs! So who cares if there's soap on them? Plus it wastes water.

He calls her on it, and she says, "It is the way of my people."

For another instance, he insists on keeping two bars of soap in the shower, one strictly for face and upper-body use, the other strictly for lower-body use. She pokes fun at him, but he just says, "It is the way of my people."

So, they go through life, kids, ups, downs, arounds. They get old. She's the first to go. Her daughter is at her hospital bedside.

The old lady takes her daughter's hand and gazes lovingly at her through bleary brown eyes. "I have a message for Daddy."

Daughter wipes away tears, says, "Yes, Mom, what is it?"

Mom is fading. She moves her lips, but nothing comes out.

"What, Mom?" asks the daughter. "That you love him? That you never regretted marrying a bad dancer? That he's been the best husband you could ever have imagined?"

Mom smiles faintly, closes her eyes, and manages to whisper, with her last breath, "I always used the upper-body soap for my lower body, too."

A Strange Occurrence

At the Olive Garden tonight, Rex and I were dining and conversing when a woman at the next table flagged down a waiter and pointed toward another nearby table, where a birthday celebration had been in progress.

We naturally followed the pointing finger, and were surprised and somewhat horrified to see one of the celebrants, a woman, lying on the floor. More precisely, we saw her pants-clad legs and boot heels, because people were kneeling beside her northern areas, presumably administering comfort and perhaps resuscitation techniques in addition to obstructing our view.

God knows how she got there; Rex and I had been completely oblivious! You'd think if she'd fainted and fallen out of her chair we might have heard something! Maybe she just slumped down unobtrusively, and then someone moved her just as unobtrusively to the floor.

A manager arrived. The curious crowded into the room, craning their necks for a better view.

My kid and her two friends had been holding a birthday dinner of their own in another room of the restaurant. They met up with Rex and me as we headed for the exit.

"I wish we'd been in that room," my sensitive child exclaimed. "Nothing exciting happened in our room."

Creative Ants

As life chugs along, I'm more and more inclined to look at the human race as nothing more than very creative ants.

Life is strange. Religion is bizarre. The more I see of us, the less I understand us. We accuse each other of trying to make the world over in our own images, but really, isn't the human race as a whole trying to do that? We are right, our creations (cars, buildings, cities, farms) are right, everything else has to give in to us.

I personally think we're much too big for our britches and frankly, it would be a good thing if someone just stepped on us!

Athena

I was at the computer today when Rex came in the room, bent down to the guinea pigs' cage, and said, "One of these guinea pigs appears to be dead."

Indeed, one of them was dead. It was Athena, the golden guinea pig with a cowlick on her forehead. The one that had been known to bite people on occasion.

Maybe it was because I've only sporadically been taking my little blue "happy pills" lately, but I have to admit, I lost it on my drive into work. What bothers me about little Athena's death is that she spent just about her whole life in a cage. And, truth be told, not a very frequently cleaned cage.

I once had a co-worker who told me he didn't keep animals because he didn't believe in it. (Shortly after that, he sold everything he owned and set out to bike across America. He died not a month later crossing a four-lane highway in Ohio.) Anyway, I didn't understand his philosophy at the time, mainly because I'd never really pondered the ethics of animal-keeping.

Recently, though, being the keeper of so many animals, it has occurred to me that each of these beings has just one life, and if I'm in charge of it, I need to "do right" by them. It's a rich source of guilt, and I guess Athena's death struck a mother lode.

The remaining guinea pig, Jewel, will probably benefit from her pal's passing. I'm envisioning an outdoor pen with lots of toys and other guinea pigs, kind of a Maine version of a prairie dog town.

Either that, or I'll just try taking those pills on a more regular basis, and screw the guilt.