The Sweetness Of Now

Lying outside on my hammock, dark blue sky with silver dots that are stars over head.  I'm just looking at the beauty all around me.  The colors above me; rich, dark blue, the brilliance of  what looks like diamonds in the sky,  the patterns of foliage, and I feel so alive, so right.  I think of the song "Itchycoo Park".  
"Over bridge of sighs 
To rest my eyes in shades of green Under dreamin' spiresTo Itchycoo Park, that's where I've been
It's all too beautiful!"

Inside I hear the tv and it's luring me in to dull my mind, my senses and my awareness of "now' with it's beautiful images of clean and bright living spaces inviting me to do what I'm dong now; live. But it's only an illusion of living...right now, in the hammock, swinging, dogs playing in the yard, soft  breeze blowing,...this is living.  It's sort of a catch 22 isn't it?  

It's hgtv, which is my weakness.  But I know that if I go inside and sink into my huge, down filled leather sofa, I'll forget all of the things I'm experiencing right now...I'll forget how to put them to words.  And my thoughts at this  moment are of how beautiful this world is, how the colors all around add so much peace and joy in this imperfect world. 

 I love it!!  So I choose not to go in.  Instead I  go to my room, open my computer and do what I love to do; I write.  

Watching tv can suffocate creativity so that nothing is left but empty space in one's head. 

Lately, I have been filled with gratitude, filled with appreciation for being alive.  I haven't always been like this, I've taken it for granted.  I think I'm sort of a slow learner.  At times (more than not) I drift out of reality, out of the now.  I slide slowly into the deep waves of anxiety and worry, otherwise disguised as concern.  Then of course, a song, a blue sky, a silver star just sort of snap me back to the moment...and there it is!  All the beauty.  I mean, it's been there all along hasn't it?
Funny the way it is.  (dmb)

Dear Mom,

So, yesterday I had the oddest thing happen. (However, when I think of it, maybe it wasn't so odd.) I was sitting outside enjoying yet another beautiful day here in Phoenix, and I thought to myself, only for a split second, "I need to get something for mom, Mother's Day is Sunday".  I admit though, the thought didn't even get to the word "something".  But if the thought were to run to completion, that's what it would have been. Maybe it was more like a feeling than a thought.  To put it simply, it was like you were still here, still alive,  in this world,  and I would call you, and of course, you would answer, and I would say something like, "Hi mom, happy Mother's Day!"  Weird huh?  I guess the older I get the more odd  feelings like that happen.


I mean it's normal to think more of you on days like Mother's Day and your birthday and the anniversary of your death.  Geeeez, I can't believe you've been gone so damn long.  It's so long.  Yet it seems like yesterday that you were here.  It also seems like you're here now,




like you know who your adorable great-grand daughter is,





and of course your all boy great- grand sons are.







 If it weren't for you, we, wouldn't be here, wouldn't be who we, are.









For sure, I wouldn't be who I am.

You know I've always said that you taught me more about love than any other human being.  Yesterday at our staff meeting we had this little presentation on active listening.  I can say for sure, and always have, that you listened to me. I know you remember when we would sit in the living room on Saxony and you would just sit and listen to me talk about my favorite songs and their lyrics.  You just sat there, looked at me, and truly listened.  Of course I don't remember anything you said because I was the one going on and on about what I loved.


But there were times when it was me who actively listened to you. I remember you telling me about your boyfriends.  I loved that. I loved getting a little glimpse into who you were before you were a wife and mother. When you were just you, Mary Jane Townsend.





I think you must have been the bomb.  Truly!  You were just a pistol.   Grandma told me about how when she would want to swat your bottom when you were a little girl, she would have to chase you around the dining room table.  And when it was your turn to do the dishes, you would go and hide until you would hear the silver ware clanking; you knew the job was done and you could come out of hiding and play, free of work.

I listened when you told me that grandpa would sit in the dark when you came home from dates.  And you knew he was there because you could see the light from his cigarette in the window.  I listened when you told me about a boy you really loved, and when he wanted to marry you, how his  Protestant mother said he she would disown him if he did because you were Catholic. Even when I was young, I thought, "What a woos...I'm glad she didn't marry that little momma's boy."  Ha! Instead you married a Jewish guy whose mother wouldn't come to the wedding because he married a non Jew.  Hmmmmm...history seems to repeat itself in our family.  At least Dad stood up to his family and married you anyway.  How could he not? He knew what he had and he knew how classy, beautiful and intelligent you were.


Anyway, it's Mother's Day, not Valentine's Day, again I digress.  I think I just wanted to say to you that yes, you were a pretty good mother who taught me unconditional love, but I also see you as a person, apart from me, apart from Dad.  And I see an amazing, feisty woman with creativity that didn't belong in the suburbs.  (But, it was in the 40's and 50's, the suburbs is where it was happening.)


I also know that you still see us, our family. At least that's what I choose to believe.  For some reason I think you see Maya especially.  Last night at the talent show she was in, I felt you were looking on at her, at your grand-daughter and at me.




I miss you mom...but c'est la vie.  Thank you for having me and being there for me always, I mean always.  And thanks so much for giving me that special song when you died.  I love you and always will.......

Pegala

Ramblings About Life and Death On a Beautiful Sunday Evening in the Desert

Now, I am sitting outside on my vintage, chalk painted brown wicker sofa, listening to the wind in the palms.  I'm looking at my little, very little, piece of paradise here in the east valley, thinking of life and how things come an go.


My three lovely, four legged friends are all around me, and my two legged lover/friend/husband, is sitting in the brown wicker chair in our little seating arrangement on our patio. (It must all match, thus the brown wicker.)  I have to say life is good.  We are dog sitting our grand-dog, Luke, who is about 14, same age as my princess Lexy.  And for them life as they know it, is almost over. Their sight is failing and their hearing has failed them a few years ago.


 I must admit, I'm getting on too.  I think of "the end" too.  Whether it be tomorrow or thirty years from now, (I would be REALLY old by today's standards thirty years from now.)  I know that soon, I will say goodbye.  I thought of that this morning during church.  I don't even know what the pastor was saying but I thought of my mortality and I think I had a very slight panic attack.  I love life.  It's about time too.  For the longest time I just sort of tolerated it.  I hate to say it, but I"m vulnerable here...so be patient.


Sitting here chatting with my other half chatting about mundane things make life very comfortable  I mean we don't sit here and discuss the ways we hope to die.  But it's there, in the back of my mind.  How will I die?  I really hate that our culture is so damn uptight about discussion concerning death.  However, my daughter says that I need to sort of keep it light if I want friends to hang out with. She's right, of course she's right, who wants to talk about death? Other than me.  

My life couldn't be better right now. I mean there are things I think of, knowing that the future is pretty much behind me as far as seeing multiple possibilities.  My life is peaceful tranquil and filled with family and friends that mean a whole lot to me. For however this sounds, my home is my little castle. It is the escape from the world of pressures and responsibilities of others. I enter this little paradise where my husband usually cooks me amazing meals on a Sunday, where my four legged loved ones greet me at the door EVERY time I come home, and where I can look at all the things these four walls contain and love each and every piece of art displayed.


Saying that, my extremely beautiful daughter called saying her and my wonderful son in law and my above average grandchildren are home from a weekend in Cali visiting their her brother and the ever so famous Disneyland.  (A place I never ever dreamed of taking my children for lack of funds in the mid west.)


Contemplating my life, I can't even begin to tell you how grateful I am to be alive.  Truly, it won't be long and I won't be, but now, I'm grateful.  Love you all...xoxoxo

Here's to You Dad!!!

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good."
(Auden)




Lately I've been thinking of my father, feeling him around.  It's a distant type of feeling, I mean it's been so long since I've seen him or heard him, but I've been feeling him lately no matter. Maybe it's because next month is his birthday, and  this month is the anniversary of his death; I think.  I'm terrible with dates.



I ache when I think of him.  Our relationship was pretty stormy yet I can proudly say that I was a daddy's girl for sure.  He gave me my name, don't know if I should love him for that or not, Ha!  I always hated my name.  But he thought about it and gave it to me.

The night before my dear, young boyfriend was killed in a car accident I had a dream that he was in an accident.  I was with my father the next morning, the morning of my boyfriend's death, and I told my father about the dream, he was the only one I told.

He definitely was charismatic.




Born in the Jewish ghetto of Chicago, he always wanted to grow up and be rich.  He lived with my Bubbie (his mother), and his two sisters and one brother.  I heard he had another brother, but that brother didn't live long.  The story goes that he was reaching up for something on the stove and brought down the boiling water all over him.  He was a toddler of two.  Life was rough for my dad, but he didn't really talk much about it, and if he did, it didn't register with me as too much information.  I do know that the fact  he was poor came out when he tried to teach us about not wasting things and saving our money.  Of course I didn't listen to him. To this day I'm a spend thrift; yeah, it's a long story.  But my sister, well, that's another story.  She's more than good with her money, I"m sure my father is proud of her to this day.



He tried to help me so many times, in his own way.  And his own way was something I was never able to relate to, especially as a child.  Anger was his go to emotion. If anyone was hurting, he was angry, if something was wrong in his world, he was angry, and if one of us was in trouble, or sick..yep, you got it...anger. But oh the Christmases we had.  He loved them and always wanted us to have what we wanted. Turns out in the end, when we finally received our inheritance, we understood why he was so "frugal". He left a nice sum.


Yep, I ache still, just thinking about him and our f*cked up relationship; rides to school in silence (mornings weren't the most pleasant times in our household) fights about my mother's illness, pretty much walking out on me when I was in the most pain ever.  But there were good times too. Driving through the neighborhood at Christmas and he would laugh and say, "look at all the beautiful Hanukkah bushes", birthdays, and sure, there were more, I just can't think of them now.



After he died I had the most bizarre experience I have ever had:  I was asleep at the foot of my bed with the light on.  I heard his voice, it was audible, it was him, he said "Peggy".  And I pretty much jumped up and felt a little freaked out. A few seconds after I woke, there was this thought, like a banner across my head which said, "don't give up your faith, you're on the right track."  Do I think it was really him?  YES!  I KNOW it was, as much as one can know the sun comes up each morning, that's how sure I was, still am!



My mother never really liked to have pets, I mean we did, but she wasn't keen on it at all. But my father loved animals. I have a video of him on his last New Years Day.  He was outside filming, it was eerily quiet but you could hear the wind.  It was a cold, grey day.  There in his yard was the neighbors dog, just coming over to visit him. He talked to her, spoke to that dog.  I loved him for that...for his love of animals, for understanding mine.

Once I had a phone call from him.  He had just watched "Gorillas in the Mist".  He called to say I needed to watch it, that he thought of me, saw me in that movie.


He has been an inspiration to me all of my life.  His strength, determination, charisma, charm, and talent have influenced me in every area of my life.  A person never forgets their parents.  He will be with me always, until the day I die and there after I'm sure.  I think of him every day, not a day goes by that I don't.

 Sometimes on a rare occasion I think I see him, I mean it's someone who looks like him.  Funny, just lately I saw someone who looked like him when he was old.  It's probably him tapping me, telling me he loves me, telling me he's sorry.




 Five days before he died I was visiting and went to see a play he was in.  We were in his hallway when we had our little chat.  He told me he probably had about 15 more years. In reality, he had five more days.  He was a year older than I am now when he died; massive heart attack, died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.  According to the paramedic, he looked up at him and said, "I think this is it for me."...  God!




But he was able to say good-bye to me that evening in the hallway, he said something so sweet, so special to me, his number one daughter, the rebel who caused him more worry, more heartache than my other two sisters.

I don't think I have any real regrets...no, that's not true.  I have one!  One night we were in St. Louis at a bar where there was live music and he asked me to dance...I didn't.  He really wanted me to and I didn't. Damn stupid religious beliefs I had, damn stupid me.  Next time I dance, I'll do one for you dad!


I'm pretty proud of myself, I spoke at his funeral.  It was difficult, but I knew I had to do it.  Damn, it was difficult. I sat on the floor in the bathroom of our hotel room the night before his funeral, it was pretty late, and I sat there, on that cold tile floor and wrote down what I would say.  I don't remember much about what I wrote, I only remember a couple of things.  I used my love of interior design as a metaphor of him... I said that you want a space that people either love, or hate, but never something they're bored with.  That was my dad, you either loved him or hated him, but you weren't bored with him--ever!

At the end of my eulogy, I quoted a part of the lyrics "Wind Beneath My Wings"...  And I'll do so again...

Here's to you dad...I still miss you, still want you around...and will always love you!

Pegala

Did you ever know that you're my hero

and everything I would like to be?

I can fly higher than an eagle,

'cause you are the wind beneath my wings.

It might have appeared to go unnoticed,

but I've got it all here in my heart.

I want you to know I know the truth, of course I know it.

I would be nothing without you.

Peace to You on This Night

This year tells me I'll be 63.  Dear God, yes, 63.  I was 25 just yesterday and my whole life was before me, endless opportunities.     



 I was probably in my thirties when I read an article in' Reader's Digest' that was written by a woman, uhhh...probably my age now.   She wrote that she would look into the mirror and see an old woman who was unrecognizable to her soul, and of course, that woman was her.  Although I don't see an old woman, I am old.  I am imperfect. Lately I have been feeling like a cat with nine lives, and I could be on my ninth.  



I still talk too much, but not nearly as much as I used to.  I have learned, at least most of the time, (NOT last night) to keep my mouth shut when I want to rant and rave and change the world for MY better. 





I have had babies who are now grown adults, one with her own babies, and one getting ready to embark on the union of partnering with his fiance for life. His fiance is a beautiful, strong woman, with spirit.  How happy does that make me to know that she probably can handle my complicated son who is way too much like me!!!  My three grandchildren call me Poppy instead of Grandma, (No, it wasn't planned.  My Maya Moo named me when she could barely talk.) and yes, I love not being called "grandma".  Don't ask me why, because I'll tell you.


So here I sit at my beloved, huge, old oak library table that serves us as a dining table, on a Saturday night.  The desert is wonderful this time of year.  The days are warm, and the nights are very cool.  My doors are open and looking out of my french doors on the other end of my table, I see the lights on our trees outside that are there year 'round. Pandora is set on the Bonobo station (which my son turned me on to), the dogs arelying on the floor, exhausted after working with us in the yard, and I'm feeling good! Really good!  Yep, it could be the vodka, but I don't think so.  I tend to believe that it's because I have learned to, perhaps, appreciate and be grateful for the things that I have been blessed to have: namely relationships, home, and of course, love.


My husband is in the office doing what he does, no, don't ask, because I really don't know, probably just chilling, and I am grateful he is my life partner.  We have been through a lot him and me, probably a whole 'nother blog.  He has been so many roles to me: husband, lover, friend, and the list goes on. We have come to a place in our lives where we can live with one another's differences, at least, so it seems.  I love him, I will always love him.  How could I not?  I have been with him longer than I haven't.  It's not the hormonally charged love you feel when you're young and feelings are intense. It's the love you feel for a person who has been with you, very imperfectly, for so long that you have forgotten what it's like to be without them.

At 62 I don't compete with young, beautiful things that I think will steal my husband's attention away.  Now I am more comfortable in my own skin than I have ever been. I have regrets, but I can look back on me and see a person that I never really knew when I was young and in her skin.  Now I see her as just a girl, a young woman, who was who she was; wanting truth at any cost, always curious and restless, not ever wanting to settle for second best, and knowing exactly what she wanted, and when she wanted it. Whether it be good or bad, she counted the cost, and still does.


What I want these days is so much different from what I wanted when I was half this age, but yet, there are so many things that stay on my desire list. What I want comes to my consciousness each morning I wake; I want to be happy, I want to be present and not think about what coulda been, shoulda been, woulda been.  So as I sit up in my bed that looks out at the beautiful mountain and red tile roofs ,and intentionally think "this is my life"  it is good, it is perfect right now.  Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.  It's the littlest things that break those idealistic thoughts: like on my way to work and someone does something really stupid and cuts me off, or goes too slowly in the left lane.  So, I'm back to square one. I begin to miss the days when I would sit up until wee hours of the morning talking about the mysteries of life.




I ramble, yet again. It's such a beautiful Saturday night.  I love my life; no, it's not perfect and no, it's not without anxiety, lost loves, some regrets and other things along that line.  But I'm alive and I have lived a quality life where I have had to go down to the depths of my spirit to appreciate times like a quiet, uneventful, Saturday night.  I have finally learned how to live without drama and it feels sooo good to be in my skin. It's a grace type of thing.  You know what I mean!

For Seth: Insanity: We're all on the spectrum!

Last night I found out some very disturbing news.  An old acquaintance of mine was found dead.  He was very artistic, very intelligent, and he was young.  He  died in a dumpster amid garbage.  My thoughts are, according to a newspaper article that he was trying to keep warm on a cold Midwest March night.





 He came from a Christian family, went to a Christian high school and graduated from a Christian university.  His family was a respectable middle class family.  His mother was an artist and he seemed to have inherited her talent for the arts.   He won an award or two for film making and his videos were creative, imaginative,  young and interesting. 



I didn't know him that well, but he made a video for me when I had a small, inner city school.  He also did some house sitting and dog watching for me once when I was out of the country. Yet, lately, I found out that he has recently been homeless; drifting around a cold city in the dead of winter, alone.

He was found in a dumpster, dead.  The newspaper article stated that his parents said  he was mentally ill and refused to take his medications.  My heart breaks!  After hearing the news, and then going to bed not long after, my dreams were filled with strange images from my past and dark feelings that made no sense at all.   But the feelings totally aligned themselves with how I felt about my friend's death.


Strange enough, the day they found him, I had been watching some tedtalks on my computer. The ones about mental illness specifically drew my attention and I watched with an alluring curiosity .  When I was a child I knew that my family didn't resemble other families.  My mother had electric shock treatments when I was about eleven or twelve.




"Electroconvulsive therapy is a procedure in which electric currents are passed through the brain, intentionally triggering a brief seizure.  ECT seems to cause changes in brain chemistry that can quickly reverse symptoms of certain mental illnesses.  It often works when other treatments are unsuccessful." (mayoclinic.org) As a young girl, when I asked what mom was going to have done, it was simply explained to me that she was going to have treatments that would help her forget the "bad" things.  In the sixties, these treatments were done without anesthesia

 No one really talked about things like that in those days.  I just knew something wasn't right, especially when she went to the hospital and stayed for what I thought, was a large amount of time. I remember my father taking me to visit her in the psych ward.  It felt so strange, the atmosphere had  an ethereal, sad quality that I felt immediately after I got off the elevator. I can't remember how it came to be, but I was asked to sing "Has Anybody Seen My Gal" to an audience of people captured under the title of mentally ill. Their blank stares and empty faces made me think of zombies and people absent from their bodies. I think I was about twelve.




I was always sort of afraid to tackle the thought that anyone I knew had mental illness, let alone, myself.  I remember my sister saying our mother was mentally ill and how it made me feel defensive, as if  it was a huge insult to be in the league of the mad, and insane.   Now, I see  that type of thinking is more damaging than the illness itself. Still, any sort of "illness" bothers me.  Maybe I'm a perfectionist?   I know I'm codependent, I've been through therapy.  Yet still, the stigma is shadowy, grey and certainly not something you want to discuss at a cocktail party.

My friend didn't take his medications, wound up in a dumpster, and was accidentally killed in that dirty, circular file of other peoples waste and items of rejection.  He didn't take his medications! WHY?

I believe  people diagnosed with mental illness, at least the ones that I know, have all been and are pretty perceiving to things "normal" people aren't.  To live in a world where everyone is expected to think along the lines of someone else's definition of normalcy is difficult if not impossible. Not to forget the trendy thinking of "not depending on chemicals" to "fix" a problem...everything should be "natural", "healthy" and "organic".  Lastly, you have religious solutions to mental problems that say if you pray hard enough, or do just the right thing, say the right thing that God will "deliver" you.  And if God doesn't, just try harder or have other people pray for you.  Whatever!!! Sometimes those theories are the most damaging.


I truly believe that most people, upon further inspection, fall in the category of  "mentally ill".    I know some  who suffer from such severe anxiety that they break out in rashes, or try to plan their lives out ahead so much that the moment is non existent. These same people view counselling or therapy as something for other people; poor souls.  Mentally ill? I believe so.  In denial? Absolutely!   They believe that you have to be in a near vegetative state to even have therapy.

I met my friend when I attended an inner city church filled with people who would be diagnosed mentally ill if they had the money for treatment. I loved that church and funnily enough, felt more at home there than anywhere.  There was a woman who was certainly bi-polar, and very kind.  Once she was in one of her moods she threatened to kill me over something trivial in my mind, obviously it wasn't trivial to her. (I was educating her son.) It was almost amusing that I had no fear in me whatsoever!  I knew she deeply loved me and appreciated what I was doing for her and her son.  And, I knew her heart.

A young life is gone and I don't understand why.  Brilliant, creative and good hearted, he left too soon and he left in a way that grieves me as much as his lost life.  In spite of the fact that I haven't spoken with him in years, it still hits hard and heavy that he left our world.  I hope he has found peace.

Just Think About It,( with your heart)

First, I want to say that it's a February evening, the sun has not quite set, and this, my friend, is close to paradise.  The Phoenix weather is p e r f e c t at this time of year.  My windows and french doors are open, I hear the birds singing, and well....I'm just happy I'm here

Secondly, on not such a happy note, I want to talk about my vegetarianism.  I know, there are certain things I just harp on, and this is one. Yep, I'm doing it again. For years I intentionally stayed away from being sort of self righteous about not eating animal. But it seems that the more people actually know about what they're eating, they go one of two ways; they usually lose their appetite for animals, or they defend their desire to still eat meat without feeling bad, to the hilt. 



 “I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)” 
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals

I remember when I was just a little girl, sitting at our family table, looking at the roast my mother put before us.  It was dinner.  I saw dead animal.  I don't know exactly how I finally erased the thought of the truth that I was eating what once was a living creature, an animal, but I managed to get that thought out of my mind.

I love those moments in life when you have this amazing moment of realization...a revelation....a type of waking up.  That type of moment happened to me twenty five years ago this year.  I had been really sick and wasn't able to eat for a week.  As my appetite rapidly returned, I told my husband how hungry I was.  We had a grocery store not too far from us where you could buy fried chicken.  He told me he would  run over there and  and buy us an easy dinner of..yes, fried chicken.  That evening, as  I looked at the dead bird I intended to eat, I looked at it and saw veins, muscle, flesh and blood.  It seemed as though this voice that had been in me for a long time, but only spoke just then, said something....something loud and clear, that resonated in my whole being, had this message:  "You don't have to eat that.  Your mother isn't here to make you eat your meat.  You're an adult now." And that was it. 

 I haven't had meat since then, and I seriously do not miss it.  I didn't become a vegetarian for any sort of health reason.  I became a vegetarian because I knew what I didn't want to do,and that was, eat an animal. I also pictured exactly what the animal looked like before it was slaughtered.Most of all, I wondered what it would be like to be the animal, knowing I would be slaughtered.  I realized that I was eating something that probably didn't want to die so that I could indulge in it's flesh. 

At first I was almost shy about letting others know of my decision. Yet at the same time, there was this sort of peaceful feeling that I had been true to my real self. Not the self that is conditioned by culture and society. But I really didn't want to appear self righteous around all of my meat eating friends. I don't think I actually knew another vegetarian  back then. When I told others I didn't eat meat, they most always had this sort of speech that it's fine, as long as I don't impose my "tastes" on them.  And then of course, they proceeded to tell how there are some "arrogant, self righteous" vegetarians "out there".  

Fast forward twenty five years.  I've changed a lot!  I'm more eccentric about my love for animals to the point where I admit to liking them more than people.  I'm not embarrassed to tell that truth.  As a matter of fact, if someone has a problem with MY vegetarianism..I realize it's not me, but their own self, who has the problem.  AND their problem is usually that they really don't want to think of meat as an animal, or at least they don't want to see, feel, hear the cries of how that animal was killed. 

The thing about me is that I idealistically want people to see life the way I do. (Well, at least I admit it!) Espeically when it has to do with animals. Animals have been faithful and loving to me without exception, why shouldn't I love them so? It's difficult for me to express the way I really feel.  Words don't come easy for me so I'll close with this video, which says it all!