November 15, 2006
Only three more days of injections now, and life will resume in “normal time”. These treatments always return me to reflections of the mysteries of life, death, creation, and God’s intentions. I told a friend that I wished that I could turn in my body like a used appliance, replacing it with one that is reliable and in good condition and her reply was that she preferred the concept of bionic parts replacement.
In the two weeks since Alphie has returned home from school, on three different occasions he has emerged from his first moments of the pre-bedtime walk with an opossum clenched in his mouth. He carries it triumphantly all the way around the paths through pasture and wood, laying it down several times and waiting for me to reach for it so that he can then do his favorite “grab and run” maneuver. I walk on by as though there is nothing at all because I know the creature is “playing ‘possum” just as the folk tales I have heard since childhood have reported. Alphie picks it back up, runs on, and finally, at the end of the walk, deposits it at the door as we go back into the house. The opossum will be gone shortly thereafter. At first, I thought perhaps this was a rite of initiation devised by the young and foolhardy marsupials – to take “The Ride” in the jaws of death and survive – proving to all a macho personae not to be trifled with, but when I looked up “opossum” the information said that this is a solitary creature, thus laying to rest my theory. It can only be the same opossum. . . stuffing itself with sunflower seeds at the feeders and bouncing along in supine resignation when it lacks the agility to get away in time. If it happens again, I will need to give it a name to honor its place in our wonderful ecosystem with the misnomer “Sanctuary”.