Parable of the Prodigal Cat

The other night the new family cat didn't come home. Big deal, huh? It was to me. Every time I woke up in the night realizing the cat was still outside in the dark, exposed to the potential dangers of coyotes and raccoons, cold and cars, I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. I got up several times to try to call him home, I heard him scream once or twice in the middle of night as if he had been ensnared by something evil. Finally, I prayed that God would send my cat home. Ridiculous. After all, the cat had chosen to stay away. Even though I am one of those people who will talk to God about any and all things on a constant basis, I thought asking for the cat to come home seemed absurd. Really. And then he came home and I was overjoyed. I can't explain it any differently. Overjoyed.

Last week I lost my favorite earring. I wear them almost every day. On one unidentified day, I decided it would be cool to wear my big hoops and stick my little earring in a partially opened second hole: residue from a line of self-inflicted piercings from my college days. Maybe I was feeling old and thought this would young me up a bit. Who knows? By the end of the day that ear was aching and I took the extra earring out. For the life of me I could not remember where I put it. I looked in every cup, every jewelry box, every tray, every knick- knack holder in the house (for those of you who know my penchant for small receptacles-a Hurculean task). Soon, I was pulling the furniture out from the wall, wrestling with giant dust bunnies, emptying out the garbages, taking apart drains, sifting through the laundry and vent registers. For two days, I obsessed over it, even thinking the cat might have eaten it and that I might have to sift through the kitty litter. Again, a seemingly petty incident but, oh so important to me. I rarely care about material things but these particular earrings were given to me on my fortieth birthday by my husband. Somehow they speak to me about the life we've lived together and the love we've shared, so it would be a little sad to lose that. On Sunday I walked down the stairs on my way to get ready to go to yet another soccer game and there, at the foot of the stairs lay, sparkling, my little tourmaline earring. My heart leapt. I kid you not, it leaped right inside of me with joy.

So what? Right? Why write about my petty triumphs? Well, as I contemplated my good fortune I couldn't help but remember Sunday school parables we've all heard so many times we've barely heard them at all. In one portion of the story of Jesus, the "religious" people were challenging him about his penchant for hanging out with prostitutes, tax collectors and low-lifes. In response he tells a series of three stories:

1. A man has a hundred sheep and one wanders off. The owner of the lost sheep will leave those 99 to go find the one that is lost. When he finds him, he will carry him home on his shoulders and tell his friends "Rejoice with me, for the one I lost has come home."

2. A woman has ten silver coins but loses one. She lights a lamp and sweeps her entire house until she finds the lost coin. She then calls her friends and says, "Rejoice with me, I have found my lost coin."

3. Jesus finishes with the story of the prodigal son. You know the story, the ungrateful kid takes his inheritance, wastes it on wine, women and song and he ends up eating pig slop. The kid comes to his senses and though he has disavowed his father, he figures he can at least go home and get a job at his father's house: better than being a beggar. While the kid is "still a long way off, the father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; threw his arms around him and kissed him." The father throws a party to celebrate the son that was lost and now is found, once was dead and now is alive.

Sometimes my heart grows dry and hard. I forget. Old parables lose their meaning. I don't have sheep, ten silver coins hold no relevant value to me. Into my husk of a heart, a story speaks specifically to me, featuring a young tabby cat and a single tourmaline earring. All at once, my heart is drenched with a downpour of grateful tears and I remember. So, please, rejoice with me because I have found what was lost.

anniversary ring

Yesterday was my twentieth anniversary and not for nothing but I 'm crazy about my husband. This kind of talk might make you want, at the very least, to pinch me maliciously or cyberpuke all over my facebook status like this: :O~~~~. I'm okay with that. Sometimes a girl has to stand at the top of the highest peak and declare her love and good fortune, in fact it would be downright rude and ungrateful not to.

Anyhoo, what brought me to the blogosphere today was a kismet encounter with an artist's work on the day of my anniversary and I wanted to share her with you.

First, there's a little backstory that I need to lay down. A long time ago, over twenty years to be precise, in a faraway land, Perù to be exact, my fiancé returned to his home country to tell his parents that he was getting married to a girl they had never laid eyes on. Upon his return, he surprised me with a beautiful engagement ring. When he handed me the delicately handcrafted piece, I was shocked. I knew we hadn't any money between us, he just coming out of college and I not even close to being finished. He explained that his grandmother had donated the beautifully burnished 18K Peruvian gold and his mother a baguette from her own engagement ring. I had never heard of recycling gold or imagined a woman I had never even met would give up one of her own engagement stones for me. What was interesting about the ring is that it was so unexpected. Not only because I didn't know he was bringing it but because the style of it was so different than anything I had ever imagined for myself. My mom had a big emerald cut flawless diamond set in platinum from Tiffany's. That was my idea of an engagement ring. This tiny little work of love and art was so different and yet, exactly what I never knew I always wanted. In this, it reminded me of my husband.

Fast forward twenty years, I and my long since lawfully wedded husband are waiting to have a delicious anniversary lunch at Bette's Oceanview Diner as seen on Diner's Drive-ins and Dive's

on Fourth St. in Berkeley when I spot a sidewalk sign advertising gorgeous rings. The sign sends us over to Fifth St to visit the storefront of the artist selling these wares: Melissa Joy Manning.

My words cannot accurately capture the mood of this store and alas, I didn't take any pictures. I was so enthralled by the jewelry and the artistry of the displays that I didn't even think of taking pictures or blogging or anything. Each display case was intricately simple in its appointment: juxtaposing sometimes a ring with the husk of a locust or an organically crafted pair of earrings with the skeleton of a bat. I kid you not. It sounds so odd in print but in situ, the effect was perfectly charming. Immediately my eye fell on a raw diamond ring, the diamond the color of gray sea salt. The extremely solicitous shop assistant let me try it on. We arranged and rearranged the ring to see if it would fit with my engagement ring and matching wedding band. Before I knew it, my husband was purchasing a twentieth year anniversary ring and the new ring fit right in like it had always been intended to join the group, it just needed those twenty years to find its way home.

I am not a woman who needs objects and material goods for gratification. I never even thought I would get an engagement ring much less a twentieth anniversary ring. Still, I do love what it represents: this lovely work of art is a constant little reminder that I have been loved so well and so long by a good man. That is something worth remembering. Thanks to Melissa Joy Manning for helping me remember in such a delightful way.

most important role

Regarding the picture: Another work from Shu Nung Lee. Whenever I do get a blog up, I will try to include an original work from someone I know.

I don't blog much anymore but some stuff has been making me think lately and that always spells Trouble (note the capital T). It's really the Oscars' fault. To start with, the Oscars bug me. How can the people in Hollywood take themselves so seriously? Actors, have you forgotten what you do for a living? Stop bowing at me! Am I your sensei? Do not steeple your fingers together and point them at me like that, you're creeping me out! Old ladies (yes Susan Sarandon I am talking to you, don't look so surprised), hear me well, there is such a thing as long sleeves. Ask Helen Mirren, she knows.

I've devised a system of punishment for contravention of my Oscar rules: bow=you will be tazed, give a political speech=a basketball game buzzer will be sounded until you have finished your nonsense, expose your arm cellulite= be forced to wear an altar boy carapace with the word shame emblazoned on the back. The list of crime and punishment is as labyrinthine as my crazy brain so I will limit myself to this final observation on the subject: in my world, next time Sean Penn forgets he started in Fast Time at Ridgemont High and was married to Madonna, he will be given the old vaudevillian hook.

In addition to suffering over the individual actors and their buffoonery, I was destined for disappointment because I had all my hopes for winning in the eggbasket of Inception. I am in love with Inception, I would marry it if: a. I wasn't already married to the love of my life b. it was a sentient being. Honestly, I haven't even seen the other Oscar picks for best movie, I'm waiting for the videos, whereas I have seen Inception a number of times too embarrassing to type out. On this subject I have only to say: Christopher Nolan, you are brilliant. There aren't enough members of the Academy smart enough to get you.

Knowing the Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts will invariably irk me, I watch anon with avid fascination, like a teenager in the mirror picking at the pimple she should leave alone. I know it's bad for me, I just can't help it! There are bright moments, like that fluffy haired kid's, "I should've gotten my hair cut," and enragingly beautiful Natalie Portman's deprecating acknowledgement of the wonder of being a mother. Real human moments like these make me want to slap Hollywood less, a little bit.

Two days after the Oscars I heard about that Salon article lambasting Natalie Portman for daring to call motherhood "the greatest role of her life." Somebody sent me the article and asked me what I thought and I was able to name that tune in five letters: eejit. Please, go over and read it yourself and make up your own mind. I might have picked over the article, refuting the author point by point had I not been so deeply satisfied with my knee jerk summation.

But today on the elliptical machine at the gym I was running along, reading this book called The Furious Longing of God, by Brennan Manning. I can't tell you what thought led to the next but there I was running along with tears streaming down my face, absolutely bowled over that I have been given the opportunity to share in the creation of life, in the nurturing of life, in the union of spirit that comes from having a life inside of myself, of the colossal wonder of helping to bring that life to fruition in birth and then through life to adulthood. Amazing. Awe inspiring privilege.

In the denouement of my 24 fitness epiphany, I thought to myself, "Why did Natalie Portman's admission of her awe at being a mother piss that author off so much?" Actually, Ms. Williams tells on herself in the article when she hails as pithy genius some cranky piece of bizness' tweet that said, "Like, my garbage man could give you your most important role lady." Really? Is that what it boils down to? Will you reject the ultimate wonder of creation and nurture because any lowlife can do it? Just because you don't need a PhD to get pregnant or press credentials to nurse a baby, will you turn your nose up at this fundamental life-giving role? Because it doesn't make you feel superior to even the most ignorant human being, will you fail to give it its proper importance?

What happens when you take this snobbish elitism to its fearful conclusion? What happens when someone, say a garbage man, has a Rhodes scholar for a child and you, a highly educated feminist, have a kid that turns out to be a (gasp) janitor? Is there a fear that, in giving our role in the formation of our children its proper importance, we will be horribly accountable if our kids turn out to be obnoxious turds? If Sally Jr. is not so bright, or is lazy, or even average, will we then be the ultimate failure? Would it gall us to no end if someone we feel is inferior to ourselves genetically, socially, intellectually, has a "better child" than ours? In the world where garbage men are treated so dismissively, I imagine that is a terrible prospect.

Just maybe, if those of us who get pregnant and become parents could embrace our share in this ultimate creative process as "our most important role", our children would develop into secure, loved, human beings who are free to fulfill their potential, whether as actress, writer, or as the best friggin' garbage man you've ever met.

In parting, I note that the author begs the question in her article "When was the last time a male star gave an acceptance speech calling fatherhood his biggest role?" Um, dearest feminist, I didn't realize that women were supposed to model their behavior after men. When was the last time a man peed sitting down? Just because they never do doesn't mean I'm gonna start trying it standing up. All that's gonna get me is a bunch of urine dribbling down my leg. No thanks.

RocketCity: Bedroom Demos

Taking a long hiatus between book chapters, I thought I might just be done with the blogging business. But my son's boldness has brought me out of hiding for a second. Initially started as a Salon des Arts, Night of Grace is the perfect venue for me to give a shout-out for my singer/songwriter son Antonio Silva, better known to a small community as RocketCity.

While the video above does not quite convey the full heart-clenching poignancy of this song, "The Shorter Story", you gotta start somewhere. That is what I most admire about my son's endeavor: without waiting for the polish of a studio edit, he put himself out there, to be judged, to be liked, to be hated, to be ignored. I have never had the courage to lay myself bare in such a way, inviting the world to poke its fingers into my sorest secrets. So, bravo to you Toño, you're the balls.

Below, you'll find the link for his album Bedroom Demos, eponymous in that it was demoed in his bedroom.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=V4O9X1O4

Wait forty seconds so that you can get the free regular download.