A client came in for her haircut yesterday, and she was not her usual cheerful self. She told me she was sad…mourning the loss of five owlets that they had been watching grow and thrive in a tree on their property. Some critter had climbed the tree and snatched all five from their nest. Now there were none.  And they had listened to the parent owls call in despair for their babies all night. Her heart was broken. I thought about her, and the owls, all night.

Mother Nature is a bitch that way! We love the ocelots, the tigers, the lions… but they have to eat. If only it didn’t have to be that pretty zebra or that graceful gazelle! 

We live in cities and suburbs these days, where the wild things are not. We are mostly out-of-touch with Mother Nature, and mostly like it that way.  There are occasional interactions with wild things, like the possum that comes on your porch to eat your cat’s crunchies. Or that racoon that figures out how to open your trash can lid and makes a big mess. Out where I live we have racoons, skunks, snakes, owls, hawks, coyotes and roaming herds of deer. I’m sure there are other things I neither see nor hear.

A few years ago I heard a racket in the back yard and went to see what it was all about. A baby jay who couldn’t fly yet, had tried and failed, and was hopping around on the ground. He had a cheering squad on the fence (at least I assumed they were giving him advice and encouragement….anthropmorphization on my part, I’m sure) squawking loudly and standing by.  This went on all day. I worried what would happen that night since it was supposed to rain. Would he get under the leaves in the garden? Would he figure out how to fly?  I went out with my coffee at first light.  He didn’t make it. I buried him under a canna that had lovely red flowers and marked him with a smooth blue river rock.  We’ve tried to rescue many things since we’ve been here. Mostly to no avail. And our hearts break a little more with each loss. Our biggest loss came when our “outdoor cat,” a huge, old, fluffy black-and-white male that loved nothing more than hanging out outside, became a bobcat’s dinner one night. (Well, he may have loved murdering squirrels more, but we discouraged him in that!)  There were only some tufts of his fur scattered about the lawn as evidence, and just like my client, I racked my brain for what would have done this…the loss didn’t make sense to me. In Mother Nature’s big-picture I guess it did.  We are still pet-free after two years. It’s not that I worry about getting attached again, but we enjoy how clean the house is and how chic it looks with the pillows and throws right where you artfully threw them. And how much less often it requires vacuuming  without dustbunnies and fur everywhere!

We should all keep putting ourselves out there. We should all keep loving even though we know our heart will always be broken in the end…by death. Love is it’s own reward. Do it for the sake of loving…expecting nothing in return.  It’s sexy-as-hell to throw yourself wholeheartedly into it! The planet needs your love, as does every living creature on it.

XODonna

As I sit here, staring out the window, I notice two things. First; the “behind-us-neighbors” have painted their house a lovely sage green which  blends into the cedar trees between our yards and doesn’t demand my attention like it did when it was a two-story, cardboard-beige box. I still wish we had more privacy, but this is so much less visually-intrusive.  Good job, neighbors, good job!

And second; I have an old Supercuts ad running through my head on an endless loop! It features Albert Einstein and his notoriously wild hair, and proclaims, “A bad haircut can make anyone look stupid!”  They would know… 

I fell in love with Albert, all over again, when I recently saw a photo of him on a beach in Europe in 1933. His pose was reminiscent of the old “bathing beauties” we’ve seen. What really tugged at my heartstrings were his sandals. People didn’t walk around barefoot the way we do now, they wore shoes to stroll the beaches, and I was most struck by how feminine I felt these shoes were.  A beautiful mind, and pretty ankles! I remembered growing up seeing men in Fisherman’s sandals (which I love to this day) but I’d never seen anything like these.

In high-school, in the 1960’s, my friends Rosie and Joachim moved here with their Mom and Dad and Oma (grandma) from Germany. I loved going to their house to visit – everything was at once both more formal, and more casual, than at my house. For instance, breakfast at my house was a kind of  free-for-all with two adults and five children. Chaos!  But at Joe and Rosie’s house it was a mellow affair. Soft-boiled eggs in egg cups (which I had to learn how to eat), cloth napkins, and a basket full of freshly made toast and rolls with soft butter and plum preserves (which I’d also never had before, grape jelly ruled supreme in our house). Everyone talked to each other about their week, and everyone helped clean up afterwards without being asked, although Oma, in German, always said she could manage. She’d wave her hands to shoo us out of the kitchen, go on!

Joe and his Dad were rebuilding a car, ( a 1957 Chevy Belair) which Rosie and I loved to sit and watch, or hand them tools and ask questions. They both wore athletic undershirts ( called “wife beaters” these days) and  brown Fisherman sandals.  Joe wore his with bare feet, but his Dad wore his with black socks. I noticed that a lot of my friend’s fathers  from Italy, Germany, Poland, and Greece did the same.  Try as I might, I cannot remember what my Dad wore with shorts in the summertime (I remember that he liked to sunbathe, and used Ban de Soleil orange tanning gelee), but I can’t remember what he wore on his feet…I will have to ask him later.

I went online to see if I could find a pair of sandals like Einstein’s for myself, and I got pretty close!  Now when it warms up, I need to get a sexy spray tan, and I’ll be ready to walk a mile in Einstein’s shoes! 

XODonna