Huckleberry: Part 1

When Dave and I went out on a scooter ride the night of August 5th last year, we did not leave our apartment with any intention of adopting two cats.

But life is funny that way.

It was 10'o'clock at night, and Dave and I we were driving past a gas station when Dave yelled, "I see kittens!" as he swerved sharply into the lot.  "You what?" I bellowed through my helmet.  And as soon as he cut the engine, I heard a wild scraping in the bushes by the road, and a jet-black kitten came shooting down from the branches.  Paws splayed, he caught sight of us, froze, and then shot back into the shrubbery.

"There's another one!" Dave called out, pointing beyond the bush to an arch-backed kitten, this one grey and white, frozen against the back curb of the gas station lot.  A car suddenly pulled into the lot, cutting my visual with the kitten.  What already hit Dave finally hit me - if they stay here, they'll get run over.  I lifted my face mask and crooned at the kitten as I walked toward her.  But after a day of dodging traffic, she was a might skittish, and took her chances running into the road.  Where a car was coming.  I lumbered out over the curb, looking like a suitless astronaut, and snatched up the kitten, waving my apologies to the car.  Once captured, the kitten succumbed without a fight.

After Dave had coaxed the hyper little black one out of the bushes, we looked at each other for a moment, then down again into our arms, dumbfounded.  Now what?

We walked to the gas station clerk and spoke through the thick plastic window as he peered down at the kittens.  When we asked if he knew where they came from, all he knew was that they had appeared in the afternoon at the same time as a grubby cat carrier shoved up next to the dumpster.  We walked over, and found it, the wire door hanging open, a single can of cat food licked clean. 

Dave tucked the black kitten into his arms, put the carrier on the back of the scooter, and drove the one block home.  I walked, wonderstruck, carrying back the little grey-and-white kitten; she was quiet and alert in my arms, her small face peeked out over the bend of my elbow.


A picture of Huck the night we found Emma and him.

An hour later, the kittens were locked in our bathroom, and Dave and I were in the pet section at Wal-Mart, trying to figure out what to buy for them.  Litter box, litter, pooper scooper, flea shampoo, canned cat food...

They were scratching and mewling at the door when we came home, and eager for the food we set in the tub for them.  We sat in the bathroom with them, keeping them company as they ate to their heart's delight, and finally, they were calm, bellies full and thirst sated.  The little grey-and-white girl curled on the cool porcelain of the bathtub, eyes closed; the black little boy settled down against the vanity between my ankles.  He had a perpetual expression of innocent surprise.

We agreed to not name them.  We lived in a no-pets-allowed one-bedroom apartment at the time, and the plan was to eventually-in-the-very-near-future find homes for them.  I even called a friend of mine whose parents own a farm and a barn full of fifty-odd farm cats.  What difference could two more make?

Well, that was the plan, until our neighbor across the alley put her upstairs 2-bedroom apartment up for rent.  A comparitive Taj Majal, I fell in love with the spacious kitchen, the deep endless closets, the large sun-filled windows.

And it didn't hurt that she was a fierce animal lover.  She owned four Shih Tzus, and responded with enthusiasm to our timid inquiry about keeping the two kittens.

The day that Dave helped the landlady pluck the FOR RENT sign from the yard, we sat down with our tiny nameless beasties.  "I guess we should name them," one of us said.

Dave named the girl Emma.  And I named the little black one Huckleberry.

(Part 2 - coming)

Heart

Leaving a church you love is difficult.

What a small word, "difficult".  Nine letters, three syllables, a small vague word full of heartbreak.

It is October now.  And in October of last year, I left a church I loved.

It was the right decision.  But it was "difficult".

Dave and I left at the end of October.  At this time last year, we were in the final throes, and I was thrashing, in agony, miserable.  The church I loved and the people I loved were hurting me.  And worse, the wounds were inflicted with imperfect judgement and the best intentions.

Some mornings, I still wake up angry thinking about it.  Misguided love is a dangerous thing.

For some reason, it helps to know that it hurts so much because I loved them, that church, so much.  My heart was there, had grown vessels and nerves, was pumping blood, deep-set in the chest of that church.  And then when we left, I had to cut it out.

I sometimes wonder if my heart will ever beat right again.

The healing has been slow, and confusing.  It was six months before Dave and I went to church again, and still, it was tentative.  My mother invited us to the Easter Sunday service at her church, and I begged Dave to go.  Being there tugged on the ragged stitches; we bickered and fought; I cried a lot.

It is hard to try again.  For weeks, it was unbearable.  Standing next to my mother as the sanctuary filled with worship music, my throat would close.  I would push my long hair forward to hide my tears.  My heart was still so bruised; it felt so misshapen in this new place.  I missed the church I loved, hated that I missed it, knew that I would never go back, longed for a new community to give my heart to, and also wondered if I could ever give my heart like that again.  I loved that church; it broke my heart.

It has been getting better.  Slowly, raggedly, like physical therapy.  I went to my mother's church's picnic and ate cake and played cornhole and exchanged numbers and made friends.  I came home smiling.  I went to a movie at the dollar theater with a Taiwanese girl my age, and we spent a beautiful evening in disjointed English and the getting-to-know-you awkwardness.  My heart is fearful now, more than it ever has been before, but I ache with hope.  I am so afraid of the commitment of community, yet I also want it so much.  My fractured heart can hardly bear it.

I am fragile right now.  We have been at this church for five months, and I am approaching the point where I want to do more than just Sundays.  I have not yet taken the steps to do so, and my bruised husband is hesitant.  It is hard - "difficult" - to give your heart away again after heartbreak.  This world offers no guarantees - Dave and I are very conscious of the cost of giving our hearts away.  And there is no insurance policy for it.

This gamble, that awful fact of love and friendship, that it can only be bought by taking my heart from my chest and putting it in their hands, utterly exposed, my vulnerable soul stretched out on the stone altar trying to trust that I will not be sacrificed...it is "difficult" to reach through my ribs, to go up those steps, to get up on that altar again, when you've been gutted on it before.

But what else can I do?

C.S. Lewis said:

"To love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken.  If you want to be sure of keeping your heart in tact, you must give your heart to no one....lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness.  But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change.  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable."

These are my options?  A cold heart of stone kept safe, or a warm heart of flesh offered up for butchering again and again?

It is not an easy thing to love, really love.  Especially after heartbreak.  To know what you are offering up, what you might suffer, every time you place your heart in the palm of another.  The thought can be agonizing, maddening even.

But please, God, I hope I always have the courage to stick my fist in my chest and offer it up again and again, bloody and scarred and weeping in fear.  I hope it is always soft enough to be cut to pieces, to be broken.  I don't understand why the world has to be this way, why it's better to be so vulnerable, but if that's the way it is, then, alright.

Alright.

It's October.  I left a church I loved a year ago.  I loved it, and it broke my heart.

May God help me in offering up my heart again in this new place.