A Quiet Evening...

Last year at this time I was up in Kenai, going to OASIS school. I spent my evenings watching television in a motel room, talking with Denny on the phone, then trying to doze off while the television murmured in the curtained darkness. All the while--every day, every night--my heart longed to be home.

Tonight, the feeling of imminent Spring is in the air. The mournful calls of migrating cranes float down from the heights and the setting sun reflects off the windows of the homes up on Diamond Ridge, their feet still firmly planted in the lingering snow. Our yard is mostly bare now, the driveway coated with an inch of mud, the dead grass tossed in skeins along the verge, a few hardened drifts of icy snow lingering in the shady places.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Demi left us yesterday afternoon. It was foreseen and inevitable but sad, nonetheless. For the first time in nearly seventeen years, she wasn't here this morning. The house--so full of cats--still held a somber emptiness.

She was a good cat. I am glad that she found her way here, so many years ago. It was our gain.