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My mother was an odd person. As am I, as are my children...and I don't think that's a bad thing. Although it can be a painful thing, because it means that not only do you not fit in anywhere, but you don't even know why you don't fit in. If you're lucky, you bump into other odd people and you begin to feel slightly less uncomfortable about life. I don't know what happens if you're unlucky, but I suspect it involves a small house filled with lots of stuff...some of it cats.

When I was a very young kid, my mother would get out China pencils (checked...yep, they still exist) and let me and my sister go to work on the faux marble dining room table. Our mission, which we gleefully accepted, was to use the China pencils to darken the lines in the "marble" to reveal what we saw there: faces, animals, etcetera. And one time she called me upstairs to the bathroom and told me to sit on the toilet and look at the towel hanging from the rack on the wall. I did. The towel had roses printed on it. I looked and looked. "Do you see the cow?" my mom asked. And then I did. 

Today I went for a long walk...a solo one, which is rare for me in these Covid days, as six days a week I have the company of my two youngest...and when I got home I was feeling pretty good, pretty strong. In my post-"heart attack" (non-ischemic left bundle branch blockage) life, that's not all that common for me, so I thought I'd get out my chain saw and get to work on some of the outrageous growth in my backyard before it started to sprout. I worked for about an hour and was literally reeling from the exertion. When I finally decided that it wasn't a good idea to keep pushing on, I actually staggered to the back door and had to sit for twenty minutes on my top step before I felt steady again. Then I kicked off my muddy shoes, went into the kitchen and got some water, went to the living room and relaxed for a half-hour with some Winston Churchill (The Second World War Volume III: The Grand Alliance) before I went into the kitchen to see what was up for lunch. As I passed the kitchen window I glanced out, and was startled to see a pale white bear sitting in my backyard:

Do you see it? Just in case it's as elusive as the arrow in the FedEx logo can be, check this out:

I actually stared at it for a couple of seconds thinking, "How the hell did a bear get into my backyard?" before I realized it was the garbage bag that I'd been using to kneel on while I cut away at the intrusive flora. It had blown up into the branches I'd cut and perched there, waiting to give me a start.

I sent this picture to my sister and asked her what she saw. She texted back, "Is that a dog tied to a tree? Call Animal Control, that is illegal!" 

Just like the good old days.

Man, I miss my mom.