Stories of Friendship - Trinh and Rachel

Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, a/k/a Raffaello di Urbino): Self-Portrait with a Friend (1517-1519, Oil on canvas)

Tell me, is it easier to make friends while a child when just running down the street can make you ‘buddies’? When everyone is from the same neighborhood and as a child, you don’t really understand what the economic division means, and we don’t have all those pre-conceived notions (yet) of who we’re not supposed to like, does friendship just come natural?

Some days the friends I had as a child are so clear. The area we lived in was mostly Section 8 housing, which is subsidized by the government for the economically disadvantaged. My mother prided herself on never actually living in the projects, but across the street from us stood ‘The Projects.’ These were housed, when I was a young little thing in Arizona, mostly immigrants as at the time Tempe was a place that was more of a stopping point as people made their way in America.

One of my closest friends was Trinh Phon (excuse me if I mangled the name). There were a lot of Cambodians at the time coming through. I remember the first time I ate at her house, how they sat on the floor and there was a big bowl in the middle. Everyone drank out of the same cup and that was something I was taught was ‘icky’ by my family. Birds were cooked in metal tins on the rooftops.

My mother used to warn me about her, say she was a thief, I didn’t believe it. We were friends, and friends don’t steal from each other! At the time my father, for some reason, had become the care taker of two giant drums of wheat (non-milled). My brother and I were yelled at often for playing with the wheat that was stored in the backyard. My mother was convinced that Trinh was stealing the wheat.

Now, we shared everything. One time she came over with some gum she got from her grandma – which turned out to be ‘chew’. Not something we were allowed to have. I think she did try some first, and thought it was nasty. Another time, she was talking about her sister needing new clothes. Now, I got my clothes as hand-me-downs from my brother, but I knew my mother had some of my older dresses in the closet, which I gave to Trinh. Little did I realize I just gave away my christening gown! My mother didn’t let me live that down for a while.

Trinh also came to my birthday parties. I still have ‘Ozma Of Oz’ – a book she gave me for one birthday. Again, my mother told me it was probably stolen. Well, then arrest me, it’s on my bookcase now.

Now, while she was a close friend, my best friend was Rachel. She lived with her mother and brother in an apartment complex that, well, was in an even worse area than my house. A story my mother always told involved a stabbing happening in front of those apartments. Though, in hindsight, that might have been told to keep me from asking to go to Rachel’s house.

In school, the teacher would give us a penny for each bottle top (the metal kind) that we brought in. I always looked on the streets for them, as at home it was plastic bottles or my parent’s cans of beer. But Rachel, without fail, on Mondays would bring in enough for a whole dollar. How I envied her! She told me that her mom got money off the rent by cleaning the other apartments, and they were always filled with the beer bottle caps! I was so envious of her to get that dollar every week.

When my mother packed up my brother and me up in that car to leave AZ, I was devastated (as I mentioned). But the worst was leaving Rachel. We were going off into the unknown – I didn’t even have an address to give her! A post card was sent once, from one of the states. But there wasn’t a response as there was no place to send one too. Rachel and her family were planning on moving as well, so we were doomed to be separated.

This is in answer to David's question - Who was your childhood friend?

Vague Recollections (II)

(Image created at http://becomeanmm.com)

I had a vague memory the other day. Just sort of, there.

We used to walk to A.J. Bayless, a grocery store in Arizona. If you got separated from your parents, you could go up to the register and they would call for them. While waiting, they would give you M & Ms.

Once, my mother and brother were going somewhere and left me behind with my father. I forget where they were going, but I decided they were at A.J. Bayless, and I left to go there and find them.

If my parents were still together, then I was age seven or under. Very young. The trip to A.J. Bayless involved walking down this alley-way, we always came around behind the store and the big dumpsters that we’d pick through for food.

So that’s the way I went, little seven or under me.

The way there was fine. Then, when I got to the store, I went up to the register and told them I was lost. I sat there and they gave me a handful of M & Ms that I ate as they called for my mother over the store address system.

Next to the grocery store was an ice cream store we used to go to sometimes, they had square scoops – not round. I always thought that was funny, a square lump of ice cream. But I always got the rainbow sherbet. Milk and I have never been friends, and it wasn’t until much later that I heard the term “lactose intolerant” – my mother always tried to get me to drink my milk- even though she later confided that she had to give me grey-soy milk as a child because I couldn’t tolerate milk even as an infant.

Anyway, after eating some M & Ms I left the store and went back home. On the way through the alley there was a kid (probably a teen) bouncing a basketball. He asked if I’d like to learn how to dribble. I told him no. He asked again if I wanted to play with the ball. I was a little frightened at that point, but just said ‘no’ again and kept walking and went home.

When I got back, I don’t even remember what happened. I think my father might have asked where I was, with me answering ‘out playing’ as a response. The guise of the memory is that I went looking for my mother, but that was what I said I was doing, not what I was really doing. I think I just wanted some M & Ms and to get out of the house. My mother had taken my brother to the fish store, and I knew that. Not the grocery store.

The Trip - Part Two

My mother only beleived in camping at KOA Kampgrounds.

New Mexico was the first stop. The tent we had was white and blue, a three person pop-up tent with those ‘collapsable poles’ – the type with that elasticy bungee chord type string in the middle. They bend and twist and collapse at inopportune times. I think there were only three poles that crossed over each other on the top of the tent. Then there were the little stakes we used to pound it into the ground so that some errant breeze wouldn’t blow our new home away. Imagine, just an overgrown raincoat separated us from the elements.

All I remember about New Mexico was that it was flat, it was our first state, and I want to live there someday. Alamogordo. Albuquerque. Names Bugs Bunny loved saying. That’s New Mexico.

Tennessee was scary. My brother and I were used to the flatlands, the desert, the land of tumbleweeds and cacti and suddenly we were around towering trees. Amidst the trees on the campground my brother and I found a playground. It was damp and there was moss all around. We were convinced it was a secret playground and we were the first to find it in centuries. I think we were in such awe that we didn’t even take a trip down the slide, just ran our hands over it and ‘felt the children from the past.’

It was in Tennessee that we learned of ticks, as a neighboring camper warned us that they jump out of the trees on to animals and people. As if we weren’t scared enough watching the trees bend in the winds. Shortly after, my mother did get a tick in her head and had my brother rub butter into it, but to no avail. Finally we went back to our informative neighbors and they extracted the blood sucker. My brother and I went straight into the tent and put clothes on top of our heads. We covered every inch of our body.

Lesson: Trees can be intimidating, and dangerous.

I think it was Oklahoma that had red sand, one of the states did. I had me favorite florescent yellow socks and wore them all the time, but in Oklahoma the sand got to them. There were also mosquitos. Lots and lots of mosquitos. They were everywhere, the state ‘bird.’

There was one state where we were greeted by a group of ducks. One of them had a shriveled leg. I imagined it got caught in a fire. We called them the welcoming committee, and gave them some bread (which I’m sure was their real purpose for visiting). There was a place to fish there and my brother caught a number of them. He used some of our spoiled meat for bait, the stench drew in the fish. Then, later, when we took a boat out on the lake my brother said it was okay to swim in it. So he and I jumped in the water and grabbed on to the side of the boat. We were enjoying ourselves, until someone from administration saw us and was screaming frantically. My brother and I climbed into the boat and came ashore. The lady was furious, she had specifically told my brother we couldn’t swim in the water as it was filled with water moccasins. He just grinned.

Arkansas had clay-like dirt, I think it was Arkansas. I had ziploc bags and was collecting some dirt from each state as we drove. At first my mother tried to tell me it was illegal (first it was theft, then it was something to do with ruining ecology) but in the end relented. Really, what’s a little dirt in a baggie? It was there that my brother was attacked by some birds. Apparently they nest in the ground and he got too close. He came running to our tent screaming, “mom! I got stung! I got stung!” as he thought they were huge bees. There was a puncture wound in-between his eyes (he got lucky with that one) and in his buttocks from them attacking as he ran away. It was the manager who told us that they were small birds, not large bees that attacked. He warned us that they nest around waters edge, so stay in the designated areas.

One campground had a sign around the pool forbidding you to walk on water.

In one state the wind was so strong even with the tent tethered down it was blowing away (with the cat inside!) so we stayed in a musty cabin instead.

In another state we met a kid who was a vegetarian. We didn’t understand what it meant, my brother and I never saw vegetables, it was all hotdogs and macaroni and cheese. So he ate a hotdog with us and liked it. How could he not? It’s all nitrates and salt. His family was furious.

Texas. Amarillo, the ‘armpit of the South’ as others have since told me. There were big bugs, crickets we could tie to our shoes and uses as moon boots, roaches the size of kittens.

Let’s see, in one of the states there was Mello Yellow, the first and last time I saw that brand of soda. It was some lemony-limey type thing. Another had Giggles Potato Chips. I had never realized there was such a thing as ‘regional food’ before then. The world was what it was.

We left behind Carls Jr. For the first few states that was a huge staple of our diet, when we got sick of the hotdogs we could get a hamburger for 39 cents and I think the fries were a quarter. In my memory, their fries beat out those of any other chain restaurant. McDonald’s was too expensive at the time, although one of my mother’s first jobs in our
‘promised land’ was to make the biscuits at McDonald’s (before they were sent frozen) so we ate there every day. She prided herself on how fluffy her biscuits were compared to others.

We didn’t go straight to New York, we stopped in Pennsylvania to meet the people my mom had us call Aunt, Uncle, and Cousin. At least, for a while we did. They were camping there and we would meet them on the campground, and then follow them to our temporary home.

The Trip - Part One

Taken by Wing-Chi Poon on 19th December 2004

I think I mentioned that as my brother and I were spending our days selling everything we owned at the Park and Swap we really didn’t realize the truth behind what was happening. We were young, and we were spending time with our mother, and we were ingesting a hell of a lot of sugar.

The sad part was our animals. I had a rabbit still (my brother’s had died earlier) and she went to a neighbor I think. I liked her, she was big and fluffy. When we first got her we were warned she was a cat killer, but we kept her (mostly) in her hutch. I think my father made the hutch. I remember this one thunderstorm where we had to take the rabbits into our rooms. My brother’s rabbit left so many ‘presents’ all around the room, and mine (Snuffy, named after my favorite Sesame Street character) left only one. She was a good rabbit.

The turtles went to someone, I don’t remember. We also had fish. The birds had died long ago, as had the dog (another case of my mom taking an animal to the pound for some reason of the other). The only animal we were going to take was Georgie. One bi-polar mother, two kids, and a cat in a car for two weeks as they traveled across the United States. Such a recipe for excitement.

My brother had this giant stuffed pink snake, I still remember it. I used to sit in the center of its coils. My brother offered to trade it to me for batteries, and I agreed imagining myself sitting safe in its coils in the back seat of the car. Of course that night my mother tossed it out, and my brother stood by laughing. It was too big to bring in the car, and he had been warned earlier. Cheeky bugger just got free batteries.

A lot of stuff was tossed. The day we left, I clung to my closet door looking around my empty yellow room and cried so hard. My mother told me it was too late, I had agreed. She told me not to cry, I had even helped sell off everything. I don’t think she had the capacity to understand that I didn’t really know what forever meant, what leaving meant. I would never see my friends again, they were moving soon and we didn’t have a house or address at all, just the car cruising on the highways.

The car was once a burgundy red, but the Arizona sun had faded it. It had a pretty big trunk. The cat was in the back seat, I think I spent most of the time sleeping in the back seat too. I remember there were somethings we forgot:

My mothers new swimsuit, and it was the first one she bought that fit her in years.

The porta potty that consisted of some metal contraption and blue bags.

Do You Beleive In Ghosts?

David McMahon of Authorblog asks this question of his readers this week. It’s an interesting one indeed, because what is a ghost? Is it the spirit of a dead person come to haunt us? A lost soul stuck between realms? Maybe the question is broader in scope though, just asking if I think there are other things out there, things that perhaps we can’t see and that aren’t a divinity.

To that, I say yes.

When I was younger the Major of our Salvation Army corps helped my mother out by baby-sitting my brother and I on occasion. He had a trampoline that I loved and would jump on it the entire time I was there. My mother commented on how I could just jump on that thing for hours.

In what is probably not the norm for Salvation Army officers, this man claimed to have the gift of exorcism. He could also speak in tongues and translate when others did so. In fact, he regaled his congregation with stories of going to revivals where people were supposedly speaking in tongues. Then, he would speak in a foreign language and laugh as others mistranslated what he was saying.

We learned that if Satan or his demons come after you to say, “In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ I order you to leave.” I woke up from more than one dream saying these words.

“Exorcism,” he explained to his congregation, “is not like you see in movies. It is not something ‘spectacular’ that takes place in hours. It is a long process. The person must want the demon gone, they must learn of God’s love, of his power.” It was more like therapy sessions that he did with these people.

We also learned that when a hypnotist puts a person under, they are making them susceptible to possession by another entity. In terms of past lives, it is the demon that has entered the body and speaking of their life they’ve led, not the person who is hypnotized. There is but one life for us on Earth, and then the other either in heaven or hell.

Now, our church had a big gymnasium and play room. I remember one potluck dinner when my brother and I were running around with all the other kids, then called in to hear the prayer before eating. As the Major prayed, one of the lights, the long bolted into the ceiling florescent gymnasium lights, pulled from the ceiling and swung toward him, then dropped to the floor a few inches in front of him. We all stood our mouths agape. It had literally swung across the room.

There were other things too, similar to what Shrink posted about in her response. Times when items just started flinging off shelves and my brother and I stood in the corner repeating, “In the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, I command you to leave” in our frightened young voices.

Maybe it’s not belief, maybe it’s knowledge that there is more out there. Angels, demons, poltergeists, ghosts, whatever you want to call it. They are there.

The Park N Swap

So many things happened in my childhood, it’s hard to say what stuck and what didn’t. Life was just topsy-turvy. One day was normal and the next felt like you were doing handstands underwater.

Part of the divorce called for visitation rights for my father. I think they were supervised. At first we were aloud at the home he was staying at, as he was living with family friends. But then after he hit me it was at our house where he would come over, turn on the television, and promptly fall asleep. Yay, daddy’s here. *snore*

Legally, I think my father had custody rights. He had to pay child support, after all. I’m not sure. But then my mother got it in her head that life was better in New York, far away from the desert wasteland of Arizona. Granted, the place was starting to explode with industrialization which in theory would bring jobs, but New York was the promised land.

My mother sent out letters to her ‘family,’ that is, the ones she believed to be her family. At the same time we started selling everything we owned at the Park and Swap, which is basically a huge parking lot that rents out spaces each weekend so people can come and sell things. My brother and I loved the Park and Swap. We would run around and look at everything and sometimes bug our mother for money to buy something new, which of course we couldn’t considering the point was to sell off everything we owned. Once my brother did buy something new, I think a water gun, so my mother made him try to return it. When he couldn’t, he had to sell it at our table, and he made a profit.

Goodness, the Park and Swap. We would sit there all day in the sun trying to sell off what little we had. I remember there was this mirrored placemat my mother had, and on top she had placed a piece of crystal (one of her former occupations involved home parties and she had some product left over). Someone told her it was basically blinding everyone so it would be best to move it. There was the time she sold some shoehorn and then heard the guy snicker that it was worth double what he paid.

One time, I really wanted to play cards. I was bored. My mother was selling the deck of cards for 50 cents. I pleaded with her until finally she gave in. Inside was a twenty-dollar bill. She forgot she had hidden it in there. She always secreted money away, something I do now too. Every time I clean I find money hidden in places I have forgotten about.

In Arizona we have what are called dust devils, the wind starts to zip around and basically form low-level funnel clouds on the ground. It’s kind of like mini-tornado’s that zip through the vastness of the desert but then die down quickly. Next to our booth was a woman selling these little rings, they were maybe a dollar each. I used to love trying them on and smiling at the sparkling ‘jewels’ which were probably nothing more than cheap glass. One of those dust devils tore through the Park and Swap and sent everyone’s wares flying. We all scrambled to get our goods, and then helped the others around us. I ran to the lady selling jewelry and helped her get everything back together. Such excitement! Then she wanted to offer me a ring as a thank you, since I’d been admiring them for so long. I was so happy! They were a bit big for me, but there was one with a pink heart. . . .

I wasn’t allowed by my mother and had to return the ring. She refused to allow this person to give me anything. I understood part of it, she wanted me to not expect a reward, but I still remember that ring.

The best part about the Park and Swap was that after we loaded up what was left and went home, we would stop at the 7/11 and get a Big Gulp. And, even better, the fountain was in the open so we could control how much ice or soda to put in. I always mixed mine, as much as it grossed out my brother. The best recipe was half orange, a quarter sprite, and a quarter cherry soda. Sometimes I’d ad a touch of root beer on top for some bite. In fact, my favorite soda is still a mixture of orange soda, sprite, and root beer. Not that I’ve had it in years. But my brother would say I was disgusting and my mother wonder, until finally she caved and tried some and admitted it was indeed tasty. As for the others, my brother would get I think Sprite or Cola and my mother her Diet Coke.

Image from www.mediabistro.com

Vague Recollections

There was a time when my brother and I were close friends. We would go down to a field near our house in Arizona and chase the jackrabbits around the brush. He was a cactus magnet. There is one species – Choia- the jumping cactus that would always attack his little legs as he ran by. The only time I got a cactus prickles in me is when I pet a Prickly Pear because the needles looked so fine. I remember school teaching us that even though Teddy Bear cacti have such an inviting name, we aren’t to touch them.

My father told us tales of the jackelope, a jack rabbit with antlers. We wanted to meet him and go to his home and talk to him. I think we believed him able to grant our wishes or something. I don’t know what we would wish for – I think to have some money, to have food. My brother loved bacon; he dreamed of bacon and begged for bacon. He knew many folk tales involving bacon. One of them involved the reason why the sea is salty, although I forget the rest.

There was a Mexican place that my mother loved to take us to when she had the money. I only remember getting the American platter or cheese crisp (cheese melted on top of a crispy tortilla). On your birthday they gave the kids a free piñata. For some reason, I enjoyed tearing off all the brightly colored paper to make it bare. My brother said I was the fastest at taking off the crepe paper. I have such a vague recollection of me choosing an elephant one. They would put a sombrero on you and take a picture to hang on the wall of the happy children. I have this image of a young me smiling with my elephant (to be de-frocked later) surrounded by that thick white border of Polaroid film embedded in some recess of my memory.

I remember my mother saying I always had the cleanest bedroom. It was yellow, I liked yellow. She said it was bright and a nice retreat for her, to come and sit on my bed while I was at school and enjoy the only clean spot in the house, the one that was so bright and cheery.

I also remember her commenting on it being so messy, years later, and lamenting what happened. She wondered where things changed that I went from the neat freak to total slob. I think she was trying to put two and two together, but by leaving herself out of the equation there was never an answer.

There was Owen who threw peaches at the chickens in his backyard.

There was me walking to the backyard of family friends where they were draining a chicken. The bucket held so much blood. I learned it’s easier to defeather a chicken when it’s still warm.

Juanita sometimes ate play dough, she said it was salty. It was; it was the homemade play dough of flour and salt and coloring.

My mother made a rule, “if you accuse your brother of stealing something, then find it later in your room, he gets to keep it.”

My mother said I was a brat a lot. Later, she said I was a bitch a lot. I remember my father calling me a dirty little ragamuffin. I’ve forgotten the context for most of this. The words do remain.

Of the few letters my father sent after the divorce, I just remember one where he wrote that it was so hot he bought a kiddie pool to sit in. He was wearing his shorts and the zipper rusted. I remember this because my mother said the letter was inappropriate. I don’t know if there is more to the letter that I don’t remember or not.

When old enough (and in a safe enough neighborhood) to trick or treat I had to hide my candy inside stuffed animals in my room if I didn’t want my brother to steal it. My mother usually got a good portion of our chocolate. One year, back in Arizona, she said she would make me my costume for school. I think I was in second grade. I wanted to go as a quarter. The coin, not a quarter-horse, but an actual quarter. She made me one out of cardboard, duct tape, and a lot of the silver crayon.

One year my brother was a chicken in the school play, or a turkey, something that had to hatch out of an egg. He couldn’t get out of the egg, it got stuck together.

I don’t know why all this just flitted through my head. I wonder if it means something? Does it have to or can it just be what it is, vague recollections of a life once lived, one so far removed now?


Note: I did bring these up in therapy and my doctor was happy to note that it is a picture of happy, sad, and just kind of there memories. There is no need to analyze them – they are what they are. But she did laugh, a lot, about me wanting to be a quarter. I think it served as a warning to her to not promise her kids she will get them whatever costumes they want because, who knows what a kid will say?

The Cats of My Life: Georgie

Cats paid a huge role in my development. In fact, the grief therapist I went too after my little tuxedo babe died said it was unusual, but it sounded like the cat was my mother. The therapist I had afterward agreed - Penny showed me love and raised me. Some of the Tall Tales of America have people raised by wolves but no, I was raised by an eleven pound former street cat named Penny.

However, it’s not time for her story yet.

Georgie was a tortoiseshell kitty. This means she was a mishmash of dull oranges, greys and black with no white whatsoever. My mother had the cat since she was nineteen and it was a connection to not just her past life without children, but to her ex-husband, her single life, her days as a dog breeder. From the beginning of time for me there was Georgie as a loved member of the family, but to hear my mother’s story, that’s not the way it started.

“I hated cats,” she said. “I raised German Shepherds. They are great dogs, so intelligent. They can climb fences you know?” she’d ask waiting for my brother and I to nod in shared knowledge. “I had to put fences six feet up with a roof. And then those dogs, they learned how to dig under it! So I had to put the fences deep into the earth too!” She’d chuckle after that, a tear streaming down her face. It wasn’t that funny, I think it was a tear of loss for her dogs. They behaved better than children, that was something else she always said.

“The trouble is, when you have so many dogs, you get rats.” She’d continue. “So I had to get rid of the rats, so I found Georgie. She was such an ugly cat. No pattern, just splotches. I took her in – she could eat the rats. That was what she was there for. I never even fed her.”

At that point we’d look at Georgie who was always wherever my mother was. The cat looked up at her with eyes glazed in love, my mom looked down with wistfulness and devotion. She adored the cat and we all knew it, she did everything for that cat. There were days we wished she would touch us as gently as she did Georgie.

“She was good, that one. A hunter. She knew how to kill and kept the rats out. And I don’t know how, but somewhere along the line she started coming into the house. I remember one night, your father and I were in bed sleeping and Georgie comes in, dragging something on the bed. Lays it right on my feet. She’s sitting there smiling and I feel the wet. I shoot straight up and look down at my feet – it’s a dead rabbit. I start screaming. But now I know it was love. She killed it for me, and I responded wrong.”

All through our childhood there was Georgie. There were the times I (unsuccessfully) tried to give her a bath. There were times she’d come in from the outdoors with a smile on her face and a feather on her whisker and outside I’d find just the bones of a bird. I remember finding the heart once, asking my mother what it was. How my mother would smile. “It must have flown into her open mouth,” she’d chuckle, “Georgie’s too fat to catch a bird nowadays!”

When we packed up and moved cross country my mother drove and we stayed at campgrounds. In the car were the three of us and Georgie. Wherever we went, there she was. It was a constant.

My mother often joked that Georgie was my first word. I’d believe it. As much as that cat loved my mom, she was great around us kids. I don’t remember her scratching me at all, there are no trauma stories from her. In fact, for the most part when Georgie was around or in my mom’s lap my mother was calm.

I remember once, when my family was still together, we were having a nice breakfast. My father had made scrambled eggs. Suddenly, with a fork full in my mouth, I had to sneeze. I turned just in time and sneezed, eggs flew out in a nice spray. Georgie was walking by the stove. As she ran out of the room we all laughed at the cat outline done in scrambled eggs against the stove.

My mother had gotten the cat when she was nineteen, and had Georgie for nineteen years. She had Georgie through two husbands, two children, and three different states. I remember when Georgie first started to get sick. She walked around the house yowling and bumping into things. The vetinarian said she had gone blind. We had to keep the house super clean after that, but never seemed to get it clean enough. It was three people in a small apartment to begin with. Then one day I came home and found Georgie sleeping in a pan of grease on top of the stove. I was terrified. We learned that she had the equivalent of Alzheimers. She was seeking warmth and couldn’t tell the wet. If she had flicked her tail into the pilot light there would have been an end to her, as well as our little place we tried to call home. The vet suggested. . . .

My mother cried. As I looked into her eyes it seemed like there was an infinite depth as big reflective tears pooled and fell down her reddening cheeks. Georgie was a living chronicle of her life and her pain. She embodied the good times and the bad. She was her constant companion and the one who gave her the unconditional life she craved.

We planned one last day. It was sunny and the daffodils were in bloom. My mother took Georgie outside to roam in the grass. She lay in the sun, raised her fuzzy muzzle to the sky and smiled. The next day was the end. I don’t remember where she was buried. No one in our family believed in cremation of animals. In Arizona we had a little spot in our yard where our pets were buried. But we were in New York now. I think she ended up in the backyard of my mom’s foster sister, someone we later never spoke to again.

Shadows boldly stepped out into the light after Georgie died.

Picture taken from:
http://cats.about.com/od/catspicturecalendar/ig/Tortoiseshell/Pif.htm