Some small signature of continued being.

When it’s really cold, thin bands of frost form along the edges of the six glass panes over our front door. Sometimes frost creeps in under the door so I spread my army-green winter coat across the threshold before I go to bed.

On these sort of nights I used to worry about Orange Cat, the stray we’d been feeding for a half a year or so. Outside sleeping in single digit temperatures, maybe under the deck, maybe tucked against the base of the ragweed tree in the far back.

One winter, I built her a house out of a rubber container and put it on the back step. I cut a small entrance in the cover, flipped it on its side, made a dividing wall to block the wind, and filled it with old towels. In the mornings just a plane of fresh smooth snow and then, after she came to the door for breakfast, a single track of paw prints. Some small signature of being, a line written.

She trusted us. It took time but at the end of one winter (on the cusp of a late arriving Vermont spring) she bumped her paw against my hand after I dropped the dry food onto the back step. Paw bump then eat. It became a daily ritual. Later, a slow short pet on the head. At some point she was more interested in getting pet than eating. She’d purr softly and push her head against our hands, food untouched until we said goodbye and closed the sliding glass door.

…

Here’s a humans story. We flew back from London in late December and landed in JFK and it had already started snowing. My friend and I collected our luggage and caught a bus for an insufferably long ride up to Connecticut. Tired from it all, sick of the stale air that infuses plane & bus travel, unable to sleep & eager to get home after six months studying abroad.

The snow picked up and reached blizzard conditions. We sat across from each other, too blown out to really talk, just watching the passing sprawl of cities & towns as we moved ever slower northward. Larchmont, Rye, Greenwich, Stamford. The blurry glow of life spilling out off the vein that is I-95.

Miles ahead, my father and my friend’s mother were waiting for us at a bus terminal/off-track betting joint in New Haven. The passing hours saw the crowd there diminish and when it was down to just the two of them, they realized they were waiting for the same bus and for their sons. Oh yes, I remember you from parents weekend. Right right. A nice conversation ensued. Better to wait together, to share the uncertainty of arrival, the anxious looks at the heavy snow and growing drifts. Better than waiting alone.

We made it, finally, and the bus bellied through the unplowed parking lot and came to a stop next to the small brightly lit waiting area. Our parents came out and we came down. We hugged them and collected our baggage and said goodbye see you for winter semester and walked toward our respective cars. I climbed in and sat next to my father in our Subaru station wagon. A passenger once more, treacherous roads ahead, New England in a near state of shutdown, but knowing we were heading home. All you need is a destination.

…

My mother wanted to adopt her so we brought Orange Cat to the vet. An FIV diagnosis undid that plan as my mom already had a cat so we brought Orange Cat home and she stayed for six days in the other half of our duplex. We’d feed her in the morning and evening and I’d work in the bedroom she called home. She settled in easily and ate well and purred often.

I sometimes wondered what she was thinking. Being tricked and put in a carrying case and whisked away in a car to get poked by new people in some strange room. Then brought back and kept inside a house after living outdoors. It seemed like she just rolled with the oddity of it all. Maybe years of being a stray prepared her for uncertainty of all makes & models. One day you’re famished and praying to snag a slow chickadee, the next you’re curled up on a warm bed and food is brought to you twice a day. ‘Well this is happening. I guess this is where I am now.’

…

I saw my friend this past weekend in NYC. Seven hour train ride into Penn Station and then a quick taxi to the corner of Bowery & Broome. He was waiting at the hotel bar where I was staying. It’s nice to see a familiar face when you walk in. It’s nice to travel and leave home and end up at a bar with an old friend. I checked in and came back downstairs. The tall bartender shuffled over with our drinks.

Look: I think about our parents at that bus station a lot because it’s a nice scene and because both of them are gone now. My father one spring, my friend’s mother in early fall some years later, both seasonally removed from this winter memory.

There was one slow goodbye (my dad) and one rather sudden (his mom). There was time spent in hospitals waiting with them, waiting for them, waiting for something. Leaving in different ways but both via that haziest line of travel, one shockingly devoid of schedule or specifics considering the importance of said trip. But you sit and wait. You hope they know you’re there. Hours and maybe days. Departure times may vary. Management apologizes for any confusion.

…

One Tuesday morning I brought Orange Cat to the shelter to find a permanent home. The woman who did the intake was nice and the whole place seemed nice. A second woman came in to help with the forms and was very pleasant as well. Orange Cat was in her carrier and watching me the whole time. I pet her through the grid the best I could. We waited. They finished the intake and I said “ok be a good cat” and they carried her across the unevenly patterned linoleum floor through a heavy door. I said thank you and walked to the parking lot.

Later that night (with everyone else asleep upstairs and the January wind swaying the trees and the rubber container gone from the back patio) I thought about mothers and fathers and Orange Cat. And how at the end, we have to say goodbye to those we love in some unfamiliar room and then off they go through a door and we say “ok be good” and hope that where they end up (some new home, reborn on arrival, someplace unknown, imagined, hoped for) is good and when they settle in they feel loved and not so sad about saying goodbye to the world they knew.