Tag: beauty

Uncategorized

Me and the cat

Mary Elyn Bahlert

When I married in 1984, I married a man and a cat. The cat’s name was Schatzi – and Schatzi was the best cat in the world. She was cuddly and friendly to everyone. When company came to visit, Schatzi would join all of us in the living room as we sat and talked. When I lay on the couch to take an afternoon nap, Schatzi would cuddle up next to me, her back against my body. We’d take a nap together.

I think Schatzi stayed alive that winter of 2000-2001, even after she spent most days next to the heat register in the dining room, because that was the winter we learned that my mother had inoperable cancer and was put on hospice, and as Mom spent her last days in her little room at the Mathilda Brown Home in Oakland. When I arrived home after a long day at church and then after a long day with Mom, Schatzi would be cuddled up close to the heat, soaking up the comfort she found there. And the spring after Mom died, Schatzi, too, died, on the kitchen floor where Jeff had spent her last hours beside her. She was a good cat. We buried her in the back yard of the duplex on Sunnyslope Avenue in Oakland.

*

Sometimes now, I lay on the grass in the yard of our house on View Place, near the back door. Before I do this, I open the kitchen door wide. Then I call the cat, LiLi, who spends most of her days sleeping on the yellow quilt on our bed. She never fails to jump down from the bed, down the five stairs from the bedroom into the hall, through the kitchen, to rush out the back door to join me on the lawn. As she comes to sit with me, I watch her from the ground, my view of the earth close to hers.

LiLi is not an affectionate girl, but for a few minutes as we lay on the grass, she rumbles next to me, leaning in just so – just so she is in the shade that my arm forms. It seems to me that we must both enjoy the same things in those moments: the smell of the grass, watered for a few minutes before dawn, the sunshine, and the shade, the good company of another being.

I almost hold my breath when she’s with me; soon her nose is moving, down, down, down to the earth, and her eyes narrow into slits as she surveys her surroundings. She moves slowly, but she crawls away, her body close to the ground, her nose down, to the bushes a few feet from where I lay. Someone interesting must have visited that spot during the night, because she spends a few moments sniffing. Then, she places one foot gingerly in front of her, then another, and she moves into the shadow of the rose bushes or the rosemary bush.

She doesn’t come back to me. I’ll have to wait for her another day.

*

I think about these moments with the cat, in the winter, when it’s raining. When I pass the step into the yard, I turn my head to look at our place. I think about the sun shining, I think about the clear air, the smell of the earth, and I see the two of us – me and the cat – lying there, on the grass.

LiLi, who is now in her elder years, on one of her short excursions into the yard. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert

Uncategorized

Clouds and Memories

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I drop under the azure sky,

fall onto the grass, fresh in spring,

sniff as if for the first time.

The little cat comes to join me,

picking up each paw to navigate the way.

She drops into the shade traced by my arm.

Then, she crawls away

to her better advantage.

Once I sat under this sky

on a green hill

with a boy.

We laughed at the slow parade of cumulus clouds,

watched the white birds drifting:

an angel,

a circus clown —

a theater of our own.

Mary Elyn Bahlert, 04/2020

memories, reflecting, Uncategorized

Mother’s Day at the slough

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Our mothers have passed, many years ago, now, but we remember that for many others, this day of honoring mothers is being celebrated. For Jeff and for me, though, it’s another Sunday when neither of us has the work of the Church on our minds, a Sunday all to ourselves, a Sunday to fill with moments that belong to us alone.

And so we get up early – as we do every day – and our early morning is filled with getting ready for the day, like any other morning. And then, we drive to Martinez, to walk along the Carquinez Strait, a series of walking paths along the Strait, with its view of the hills and the water. Other faithful folks walk on Sunday mornings, also, and most are friendly, passing with a smile and a few kind words.

The paths are level, the hills are in the distance, green, turning now to brown again after a winter with a lot of rain. As we walk, we see a ship, returning from the Pacific, coming through the strait. When I see a ship, I’m reminded that I’m not in Wisconsin anymore, haven’t been, for over half my life.

We pass the ruins of a shipwreck from the last century, and read again the plaque with its story, its history of how it ended up deserted, sometimes hidden by the tide when we walk past. Today was lovely, a wind gliding past us, making the air a bit cool until the sunlight got the best of the temperature and we were warm.

The remains of a shipwreck, stranded here for the last century, Martinez, California

Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 5/2024

We’ve walked at the Slough many times over the past four years. In the early months of Covid-Time (a season of its own in our lives), we felt strongly the freedom of Sunday mornings – mornings without churches to go to, mornings without sermons to deliver – and we set out to walk in some place outside our own very walkable neighborhood in Oakland. We walked through almost twenty neighborhoods in San Francisco over the course of many months. We walked along the Bay in Oakland, where we discovered a new development right on the water – Brooklyn Basin. We walked at the sea shore in Half Moon Bay, looking down on the Pacific from a high path. Usually, when the walk had ended, we’d find a cafe to sit outside, to continue our luxurious Sunday morning, to have a cup of coffee, before getting back into the car to return home.

When our friend Joanne arrived from Wisconsin to stay with us for a few days last winter, I took her to the Martinez Strait to enjoy the paths there.

We loved the paths and the breeze we discovered at Martinez, and we have returned there again and again, now that life is back to a “new normal” after the ravages of Covid-Time. Often after our walk, we drive closer to downtown where the main street is bustling with a Sunday morning Farmers’ Market. We leave with a couple of bags of fresh vegetables to enjoy the rest of the week.

Along the path, along the slough…

Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Martinez Slough, 5/12/2024

Uncategorized

Grandma and Me

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I leaned over the railing of the front porch of the Upper Flat on Ring Street, and I craned my head to look down the alley to the left.  A long way down the alley – almost to Burleigh Street – I saw the little figure, long dark coat almost touching the ground – of Grandma.  She walked slowly – my Grandma was old – and she looked down at the pavement.  Careful.  Old.  As she got closer, I saw her head was wrapped in a thick black scarf decorated with the bright colors of flowers.  The scarf covered her hair, except for the hairline in the front, and she had tied it in a knot at the back of her neck.  She didn’t look up, not even once. 

When Grandma came up the narrow stairs and into the flat, I watched her from the other side of the living room.  She looked at me once, twice, and a little smile came to her face.  And then she talked, but only to Mom.  They spoke their own language when she came over, and I didn’t understand.  So I played on the floor across from the couch and listened.  I listened and listened.  What did they say?  I listened and listened.  

Years later, after she died, Grandma would come to me, as if in a dream.  And she stayed with me for a long time.  “Why did she come to me?”  I asked a friend.  “Who else would she go to?” she answered, wisely.

My favorite picture of Grandma – Feodosia Machsuda Srebny – shows her with a little smile on her face, sitting with me and Ronnie at the table.  Ronnie wanted to be cool, a teenager.  I love the picture because she is smiling, and her eyes are smiling.  I don’t think of her as smiling, a little foreign woman – foreign even to me – poor, sad.  When she was older she didn’t say any words in English.  She forgot.  Only Mom could talk to her then.  

At Easter, we decorated eggs – some in the old fashioned way, pysanke – and some just dipped into colors:  blue, pink, yellow.  We blew raw eggs out through holes on the ends and Mom took hours to craft hers. Ronnie was good at it, I think.  And Mom.  But Grandma didn’t make the eggs.  She sat on the couch in her long black dress, her dark hair held back in a loose bun, streaked with gray, her fingers bent as she tried to crack eggs with Suzie.  

Daddy and I would go to get her at the nursing home and bring her home for Easter dinner.  And soon after dinner, she’d look at my mother again and again, asking to go home.  Mom did the same thing when she got old.