Thoughts from Annette

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Remember the kitchen table...

Time seems to stand still.

Pull up a chair. 

The window looks out over the garden

and the sliding glass doors  to the left open out to the back porch.

Today was tea time with lunch after morning worship services. Sister Patricia Goad, my dear friend, and her grandsons came to my home unexpectedly. I had not felt up to taking Jim, my husband, to work and keeping the car and having to go to Church late…to accommodate his work schedule so I had stayed home alone.

The boys, Joseph and Anthony, still had on their black ties and Sunday School clothes when Ruffles, our family dog, and I met them at the front door. The sun was shinning. The wind was blowing. It seemed like a spring day in January. When they came in Sister Patricia gave them a tour of our home, and we had a simple lunch followed by hot tea and petit fours (Zebra cakes from the local grocery store).

Such handsome young gentlemen they were. Several pictures were taken. Time does not stand still. It moves sometimes as fast as the wind. When I had prayed over the food as we sat down earlier to eat, tears came as I thanked the Lord for the boys coming to my home.

Tomorrow, today will have passed. The sound of the music box and the piano notes will be silent. Where does it all go? Inside sometimes…little tender hearts are touched. Memories are made. We have learned a little about quietness and feeling the music and the sadness on visiting the pet grave yard (My Kitty Baby of seventeen and half years had died last week.) and the serenity of the sanctuary in the woods.

Listen to the wind blow. Hear the quietness. Sharing on Sunday afternoon. As they got in their car and headed toward home, I thanked them for coming and said, kind of to myself…"I was feeling a bit lonely today."

As Ruffles, the dog, and I were coming back into the house, my mind went to Sister Lois Houser, a dear lady at Church who called me last evening. I thought, now wouldn’t it be fun to have her for tea. Her right hand is not working these days, but I am sure we could figure it out. Left handed tea might work. I am sure in days gone by she held a china tea cup just perfectly with her pinky uplifted just so.

She says she is just a country lady, but I know better. I have seen how she wears her hats at Church and her lovely dresses. A delicate lady now in her years, but one can always tell a beautiful woman even through the wrinkles. Funny, I don’t remember wrinkles with Sister Lois. What one remembers is the love and outstretched hand and the lady like gestures coming from a Queen.

I spoke once at a Ladies Luncheon at Avoca Christian Church. At the end of my talk I said something like this: When we get to Heaven, will those around begin saying, "Make way! A Queen is coming!"

If I am there before you, Sister Lois, I shall be the one to begin the shouting. You are God’s Queen and no wrinkles or body parts that don’t work right will keep you from shouting with me. Oh, what a joyous time we will have dancing around the throne, singing praises to the King.

Interesting, as I think about it, how I have written about young boys and a mature woman. The boys sang a bit of a song that they sang in Church today…"This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…" Old and young alike let their lights shine. Love that God has put in us always comes out.

I thank you Father for the day and for my visitors and my thoughts of Sister Lois Houser. God bless us all. There are many "God’s Queen’s" out there and many little children coming to Jesus. May the Good Lord shine His face upon us all special today. May we all feel young and just maybe today, even if in Spirit, we can practice dancing around the throne. God is so good. I feel so blessed. Thank you Father.

II Corinthians 3:18 "But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."

Annette and Kitty Baby

In later years, she was known as Kitty Cat. My friends sometimes called her "Miss Kitty". She was seventeen and a half years old. She endured my children and tried sometimes to be friendly. She saw all the eight grandbabies as they were brought into our home. She went through a few cleaning ladies. She let "the dog" live when he came into her home…as a matter of respect to the master of the house.

She met me at the door each time I would come home with her little greeting meow until she became feeble. I remember one evening years ago, I was coming in the door from working all day and she was standing there and spoke. I nodded my head to her and said, "Hello Ma’am." Each morning for 17 ½ years unless I was out-of-town…we would have our morning greeting. She as a rule spoke first.

The picture was made in November 2005. She had started on her decline. She was very thin. She enjoyed my computer time. For this picture she was up in my lap and looking at the screen. I switched from email to the web cam and caught our picture together, which of course is a treasure now.

In the early years, she would find my most important papers on my desk and lay on them. She would choose my finest of fabrics and the cleanest of clothes to lie on in my bedroom. She was a lady…a fancy lady. And she was loved. I called the grandchildren and told them that she had died. I wanted them to know from me. Kitty Baby was part of the family. She let the grandchildren touch her and rub her head some on Thanksgiving and Christmas when they were here last year.

I shall never forget her little delicate paw touching me wanting me to pick her up. I loved to rub the soft fur on her head and her ears. She loved it too. That’s probably how I came to enjoy face and head massage with my clients. The little things…they are what we remember, when there is a pasting.

The day before she died, she had wanted to go out on the back porch. I took her gently and put her in the sunshine. I sat there with her for a while. Then, she started ever so carefully down the steps. I usually didn’t let her go out into the yard, because in earlier years she would run fast and hide. I walked behind her. At the bottom of the steps, she sat and looked into the sun. Then, she walked frailly over to the garden gate and just stood and looked.

I went over and opened the gate for her, and she slowly walked around the gate and into the garden. I walked with her. After a moment, she lay on the concrete under the rose trellis, and I got a chair from the front yard and sat with her. We enjoyed the sunshine. In a few moments she made her way back out the gate and into the yard and up the steps onto the porch. As I sat again with her, I wondered…when I am frail and weak, will someone open the garden gate for me and walk with me a moment…Soon I took her inside.

That night after it became dark, she let me know she wanted to go back outside. I took her out and put her on the ground. She laid there for awhile and then I took her back in, and she just rested on the wool rug under the kitchen table looking out.

I came downstairs to be on the computer for a while. She did not come. When I went back upstairs, she was not under the table. I found her in my bedroom waiting there on the rug by my bed. I had not let her come in my bedroom for years. My Macrobiotic Counselor was appalled that I had a cat and told me to at least not let her in my bedroom. This time it was OK. I got some pillows off the bed and a cover and lay down beside her. She didn’t want me to hold her. I rubbed her and I talked. She didn’t. Not even a purr. Sometime during the night I got in my bed and woke up many times to check on her, she was right there.

The next morning I knew her time was near. By evening Jim and I had buried her in the family pet graveyard at the edge of the woods in the back of our house. It was a beautiful sunny day. As I finish writing this on the day after…it has been rainy and cloudy all day. Tears are easy. My Kitty Baby is gone.

Annette Livingston,

Companion of Kitty Baby

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