Tag: divorce

…And She Served Us Cold Beer

April 29, 2025 / Big Joe / 0 Comments

2761 Washington Boulevard, Arlington, VA 22201

Today this address is home to a barbecue joint. A few years before that, a somewhat posh and pretentious restaurant that thankfully went under. But prior to 2003, for a 50 year stretch, people knew that piece of real estate as Whitey’s Restaurant.

For those unfamiliar, no this was not an Aryan compound or a neo-nazi headquarters. Alexander “Whitey” Joy bought the place in the 1950’s and put his nickname over the striped metal awning. It did have a reputation as a biker bar, but that incrementally faded as the decades passed. It eventually surrendered it’s edge and morphed into an eclectic neighborhood favorite with parents, children, blue collars, and white collars with an occasional Harley parked out front. Everyone felt welcome, and trust me, every local stumbled out of Whitey’s door at least once. For some families it was a generational rite of passage.

I first walked through Whitey’s entrance in 1994. It was a funky local sports bar/music & karaoke venue. Most importantly, it was a short two mile drunk drive home. Not that I ever partook in such reckless behavior. I gotta say shit like that in case my kids read this. Who am I kidding? They’re my only readers! Kids, don’t drink and drive. It’ll turn you into a late 50’s bald, fat, old man. I don’t really know anything more terrifying than that.

Shortly before my inaugural steps over Whitey’s threshold, Brian walked into my life. More specifically he moved into our four bedroom house. All four roommates worked together in Washington, D.C. All four of us guys were in our 20’s. All four of us were single. Well, Brian was recently single again. He needed a spot to crash that didn’t come with an ex-wife.

His marriage lasted a whole year.

Divorce was not his idea. Brian planned to stay wedded to this woman for rest of his life. His wife obviously operated on a far briefer space time continuum. In their 365 days of marital bliss, no procreation occurred, nobody banked millions of dollars, and nobody accumulated a hefty retirement package with unheralded benefits. Basically they had to divvy up the pyrex dishes, mismatched silverware, and beanbag furniture. I don’t know if they had one, but I hope Brian got the gravy boat. I never knew him to whip up some gravy, so it’s unlikely. Damn ex got the boat!

So without his wife and sauce vessel Brian needed cheering up. As a twenty something year old with little to no life experience, I decided the cure rested in alcohol. Imbibing copious amounts of cheap beer at some local establishment could only raise Brian’s spirits and entertain all who joined in our barley and hops merriment. Smartphones were non-existent and the internet was barely a thing. No Google reviews to peruse. We just said fuck it and went to Whitey’s ‘cause it was close.

As it turned out, proximity reigned as a royal decision making gem. Whitey’s kicked ass as the perfect “forget about that woman you loved and planned to grow old with” kinda joint. We shot hoops on basketball machines. We threw tight spirals through football machine portals. We shanked balls on fully functioning golf machines. We played pool. We tossed darts. We tilted pinball machines and pounded video game consoles. They even served quality bar food. And the beers rolled in whether we sat at a table or took in the games scattered about. Is this heaven? Nah, it’s an old Arlington, VA biker bar.

We even had Larry on Karaoke night. I never really knew Larry. Mostly because I never spoke to Larry and nobody ever introduced us. I knew his name was Larry because it said so on his shirt. Not all relationships actually meet the required definition of a relationship. It didn’t matter. Fucking Larry could sing with the best of them. He held no apprehension when taking the stage and belting out a Looking Glass tune. Yes, Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl), but Larry had an even finer set of pipes. I think I would have paid to hear that guy sing. At Whitey’s it was just part of the place’s quirky charm and unsophisticated appeal.

Our first Whitey’s experience occurred on a Wednesday night.

Our waitress was a twenty something year old just like us. She had this cool hair ramp on top of her head. I don’t really know how else to explain it, but I knew I liked it. Not everybody can pull off a hair ramp, but she did. And she was a solid waitress. No matter where we ventured at Whitey’s, she found us and kept us fully beered up. That skillset can’t be underestimated or ever under-appreciated. Maybe this is why we always sat in her section. Maybe.

Drinking on Wednesday nights helped us pass the work week hump. And our newly discovered Wednesday night waitress, Janet, didn’t miss a beat in pushing us over that obstacle. Yes it was her job and we tipped her well. Brian bartended and waited tables before, so he was big on taking care of the servers. And Janet never complained about too much Wednesday night tip money. I was uncertain if she liked us or liked the money. Either way, everybody won.

As it turned out, Janet worked Sunday nights at Whitey’s, too. Perfect! Warm up on Thursday night, go hard on Friday and Saturday nights – duh, Sunday night at Whitey’s, day off on Monday if no NFL game, and only someone with a drinking problem drank on Tuesday nights. This returned us to Whitey Wednesdays to start the whole process anew. It takes discipline to stick to a schedule, ya know.

Although maybe still heart-broken, Brian seemed to be getting better.

For brief while, I thought maybe it was just Larry. He really had a beautiful voice. However, it likely rested with the camaraderie. Brian and I enjoyed Whitey’s so much we invited other guys from work to join us. It’s not a hard sell to get other twenty something single young men to stop by a bar on their home to an empty apartment. We offered beer, food, and laughter. Rarely did we hear a no response.

Perhaps it was the freshness of his recent divorce, but Brian was not overly engaged in hitting on the young, attractive women at Whitey’s. We had enough fun with the fellas and the variety of sports machines and video games. And of course Larry’s singing. So it least once or twice a week several work compatriots followed the beer crumbs to Whitey’s to “cheer up” Brian while Janet did her absolute best to keep our mini-fraternity over-served.

Maybe one of us would have asked Janet out as much as we saw her. However, early on in our Whitey’s experience Janet let us know through casual conversation that she did not date her customers. Fair enough. A separation of work life and personal life created a reasonable and healthy balance. Besides it would make tipping weird. Throw more money in the pot you cheapass. I’m dating that girl! Awkward.

Even though customers were off limits, we thought it a good decision to invite her to a keg party we planned to host at our rented Arlington house. We leased it from the church that sat directly off of the backyard with the pastor and his family to our immediate right. As twenty something year olds, the church leaders next door did little to dissuade our planned festivities. Plus, we invited them over. I was hoping for a water into wine experience.

Even though she didn’t date her customers, Janet made the keg party.

She arrived fashionably late, which worked out well. My former girlfriend had just left. Brian spotted her first. I believed he told her something like “boy, somebody’s gonna be glad to see you”. Yes, I liked Janet. I always had. Too bad she didn’t date her customers. That was ok. I wasn’t emotionally prepared to break up with Whitey’s and become a former patron or miss Larry on karaoke night.

Besides, my personal conviction to cheer up Brian remained a top priority even though he seemed pretty darn content. But that could have been a facade. Relapses happen. Scary. I decided Brian was still in a fragile state. For his sake, we couldn’t risk losing Whitey’s to a relationship already barred by Janet’s personal dating doctrine. Silly waitress.

But I could still talk to her at my keg party. That’s not dating. Besides, the pastor never arrived, nullifying any potential, miraculous wine production. God, where are you? He delivered Janet, though. We sat in the kitchen and talked for hours. At one point she got cold and I gave her one of my sweatshirts. When it got later I walked her to her car and said goodnight. I thought I was the perfect gentlemen until Kim told me I was an idiot.

Kim was a longtime friend’s oldest and wildest sister. When I reentered the house she came and asked, “so, who’s the girl?” I told her and she asked when we were going out on a date. When I told Kim that I failed to ask Janet out, Kim punched me as hard as she could in the shoulder.

“What the hell?” I asked.

“She talked to you and you alone the whole time she was here and you didn’t ask her out?” I attempted to explain the “she doesn’t date her customers rule”. Kim had none of that.

“You’re the only person she talked to, you gave her your sweatshirt, and she took it home. That rule of hers clearly does not apply to you. It’s obvious, you idiot.”

“Really?” I wanted that to be true, but I was still caught up in Janet’s relationship rules. “Should I ask her out, then?”. Kim rolled her eyes into the back of head and groaned.

“Of course you should ask her out, you idiot. She gave you her number, didn’t she?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Idiot.”

After getting insulted for the third time in 30 seconds, it sank in.

This could actually, possibly, maybe have the chance of becoming a potential, sorta thing. The ambiguous certainty of the situation was crystal unclear. But call her? I’d only spoken to her face to face. I couldn’t take a chance on the telephone. Tomorrow was Sunday and I knew exactly where she’d be.

Despite her dating doctrine, I felt confident she’d say yes to a date. I had the leverage of the sweatshirt. You just can’t take a guy’s third favorite sweatshirt and not agree to go out with him at least once, right? I’m pretty sure that’s a rule, too. But this ocean of precepts was beginning to make me feel underwater. I needed to breach the surface, grab some air, and ask her out. Things would go swimmingly after that, I firmly believed.

I hate to toot my Nostradamus horn, but “beep beep”. Not only did my prediction prove true, but Richard Nixon died shortly after that date. Wait, what’s that got to do with you and Janet? Well our day jobs were spent tirelessly toiling as federal workers. The former Watergate Wonder’s worldly exit precipitated a mid-week U.S. government holiday which dovetailed into an impromptu second date at the Arlington Cinema Drafthouse. It fell into place quickly, dare I say conspiratorially. Nah, he just died and it worked out for us. Thanks Tricky Dick!

I don’t recall what we did on the third date. It doesn’t matter now. Not because Janet is a faded dating memory, but because this November will be our third decade of wedded bliss. Don’t fret. Brian got married by the beach not too long after Janet and I tied the knot, and this time it stuck. He didn’t meet wife #2 at Whitey’s, but I’d like to think that place still had something to do with it, somehow, someway.

Oh yeah. And Larry’s beautiful voice, too.

One Game, One Dad

May 28, 2024 / Big Joe

My father only saw me play in one football game.

Not that my gridiron career spanned decades. We’re talking roughly 50 games, give or take a few. His absence also included youth league basketball, as he missed all of those games. He never attended a band recital either, so it wasn’t an anti-sports sentiment. I hear it’s difficult to juggle a wife and kids when you also live with your girlfriend on the other side of town. Considering that perspective he probably performed admirably with his time management skills.

In my younger, elementary years I loved tossing a ball around with a friend. Honestly, I loved doing that with anyone and any type of ball. Just show up and bring your arms. After my parent’s separation, every other Saturday my dad did just that. He brought his arms and threw a ball back and forth with me for about an hour. I don’t know who allotted that time block, but I enjoyed it. For some reason when our 60 minutes passed, he left. Time management, I suppose.

At my birth both parents hit their mid-40’s while already raising an 18 year-old, a 15 year-old, and an 11 year-old. Quite likely, my unplanned arrival caught dad by surprise. Growing up, I had no idea this age gap wasn’t typical. Alas, I’m sure my moment of conception was a romantic rendezvous dear old dad wished to reverse. It was a bad time for my mom not to have a headache, too. Hey dad, didn’t you have to mow the backyard or wash the VW Bug, you frisky little fornicator? Oh mother, where’s menopause when you need it?

Years later I learned my father sought a divorce far earlier, but his older brother, Daman, forbid it. Keep in mind, my father was a grown man and needed no such approval. However, this was 50 some years ago, so maybe the eldest sibling held some kind of sway over his little brothers. So he stayed in a dead marriage and fathered one last kid he never intended to raise, just to assuage Daman. I’m not trying to dis dysfunction. Growing up in an orphanage, my dad likely relied on Daman as his surrogate paternal role model. Families get so complicated and messy.

My father was a federal judge and Daman was a Georgia redneck.

Daman possessed nothing my father needed, such as an inheritance of land or money. My dad forged a life and a career far from the Georgia backwaters. But nonetheless, Daman held him at marital bay. By the time Daman passed away, my father began crafting his exit strategy. By 1980 my parent’s separation officially morphed into a divorce. My dad and his new wife moved across the country to sunny, southern California. New wife, new life. And less complicated time management, I imagine.

I hate saying this, but in complete fairness (what a dumb concept, nothing is fair), my father stayed married to the “other” woman for longer than the 32 years he spent wedded to my mother. As far as I know he remained faithful, which was not a skillset he mastered after his first “I do”. I wonder whether my mother knew of his infidelities and just kept the the family chugging along. Perhaps she never knew. Without modern day technologies, indiscretions remained discrete. No answering machines, 4 television channels, and the term social media had more akin to fascist newspapers than digitized networking.

Since mom and dad both passed away, such questions will likely remain unanswered. If my mother knew, how lonely and rejected did she feel? I remember her attending counseling after the divorce. She seemed to carry an immeasurable burden in those days. Oddly, she never took off her wedding ring. She wore it for the next three decades and most likely carried it to her grave. My mom raised me in Virginia, but she lived in denial. The ex isn’t coming back, so sell that damn thing and move forward!

My sister cremated our mother shortly after her death.

In a stroke of brilliance she combined our mother’s ashes with some of my father’s ashes and interred them together inside a memorial bench’s leg at a Danielsville, Georgia cemetery. I know. I, too, cringed upon hearing how my parents got unwittingly reunited in death, forever trapped together in the base of a concrete graveyard loveseat 36 years post their divorce. It’s kinda like a Hallmark romance movie filmed through the lens of an insane asylum. Maybe someday your children will bury part of your ashes with your ex or former lover. It’s just so damn heart warming and unsettling.

As I aged, I understood that relationships take hard work, raising children gets tough, and all marriages harbor some issues, disagreements, and letdowns. As humans we tend to foul things up from time to time. So when I found myself in southern Georgia for work in my late-30’s, I thought it wise to bury the hatchet. I planned a visit with my once philandering father at his retirement home near Savanah.

I arrived on Saturday morning and planned to stay as long as possible into Sunday with him and his wife, Kelly. Imagine my surprise on Saturday night when he relayed that they planned to hit a flea market Sunday morning, followed by him watching a televised tennis match in his den. Their plans did not include me, be it the shopping excursion or watching television. They indirectly invited me to leave. Our extended father-son hour was up. Time management, baby.

My visit checked a box for both of us.

We filled our proverbial 60 minute session. I didn’t see him again for about 9 years, shortly before he passed away. By this point his memory faded in and out. Sometimes he knew who I was, other times he asked who my father was. Exactly, I thought.

But on a chilly October Friday night in 1984, the only thought coursing through my un-matured prefrontal cortex centered on why is my dad here. He stood by the track with his hands atop a chainlink fence as we ran off the football field into the locker room. I cannot say whether he saw the whole game or just the final few minutes. It didn’t matter. He showed up once and ruined his perfect absence record. Way to blow an unblemished mark.

My wife and I only missed our kid’s events for work trips and conflicting children’s schedules. We maintained this during youth league up through high school. I can’t imagine just not showing up when it’s completely feasible to make the event. My daughter will play in what is likely her final collegiate volleyball season this fall. My wife and I plan to make every game. Even if there’s a super neat flea market or inane pro tennis match to watch from a BarcaLounger.

I don’t remember who we played that Friday night, or how well I performed, or if we won or lost the game. I just remember dad showed up out of the blue, without any advanced warnings or notifications. Maybe that’s how he saw me 57 years ago in the delivery room. Assuming he managed to carve out the time to be there. Thank God mom made it!

Something Broken , Something Fixed, Something Ignored, Something Nixed

February 28, 2022 / Big Joe

That annoying rattle sounded more on the passenger side of our 2013 Nissan Pathfinder.

In hindsight, maybe I should have put some personal effort into finding the source of the noise. But the car needed new tires. And the original shocks and struts still remained on the Nissan at 133,000 miles. These worn out parts were definitely the culprits behind that irritating front end noise. Did I mention that I’m not an automotive mechanic?

That didn’t really matter, though. I knew trusted automotive mechanics and they always shot me a fair price. More than once I’d run the car by their shop after a dealership quoted a litany of repair items. Almost always, my guys refuted their claims or could fix what needed repair for far less than the dealership’s inflated estimate. If it ain’t worn out or broke, don’t fix it.

Some broken things should remain broken, though. I have a pair of prescription sunglasses. Well, they used to be a pair until the right arm broke off the frame. They originally broke 14 months into a 12 month warranty. After that repair, they broke again 10 months later. Repair work is not warrantied. Not for 12 months, 12 days, or 12 minutes. Go figure. Walmart Vision is not too big on their handiwork. My eyes can just squint while I drive the Pathfinder.

Some things stay broken because people learned how to benefit from it. Too often this occurs with workplace policies and procedures. There’s nothing more inspiring than listening to a seasoned manager continue to instill a dysfunctional policy, solely based on the fact that they had to go through it. Perpetuating moronic procedures despite the idiocy of a flawed standard sounds more like mental illness than leadership. Way to be brave, think outside of the box, and effectuate positive change.

Sometimes people claim brokenness when in fact everything works fine.

Just ask Joe Rogan. His podcast is a simple format. He brings in one person and talks directly with them for 2-3 hours. The conversations can go all sorts of different directions. Nobody really tries to control it or force a specific narrative. It’s literally two people shooting the breeze about whatever comes to mind. Obviously the guest brings subject matter expertise to the conversation, but they’re never restricted to speaking about just that.

A December podcast guest, Dr. Peter McCullough, made controversial comments regarding Covid-19. As Peter spoke, I caught myself thinking, “well, I don’t know if I believe that.” This happened a few times during the podcast. I listened, nonetheless, because it was interesting and a good way to break up a long car ride, whether I agreed with him or not. Even Joe Rogan questioned some of the things he mentioned.

But that’s ok. Free speech grants people the ability to speak openly about a myriad of topics and express their opinions, thoughts, or professional beliefs. That’s America at its best. But then, the bad hippies came along. First Neil Young, not surprisingly followed by Crosby, Stills, & Nash, along with Joni Mitchell. They decided to collectively silence “The Joe Rogan Experience” through threats and coercion. What happened to make love, not war? Nothing was broke, but they were determined to fix it anyway.

Why do I call them bad hippies? Because they were the tip of the spear in the 1960’s counter culture movement. It was all about the ability to express one’s beliefs, no matter what “the man” said. They wrote and sang songs about freedom and rising above governmental bureaucracies and corporate America. Everybody’s voice mattered and counted.

And now these bad hippies want to censor a man for practicing free speech and open dialogue. Nobody got hurt on “The Joe Rogan Experience”, emotionally, physically, or otherwise. And Joe Rogan never insisted his listeners believe everything his guest proclaimed. He just wanted to have an interesting conversation. Nevertheless, the bad hippies wanted to use their questionable popularity to discontinue a specific podcast. Couldn’t they just change the channel?

Hello people, that’s called censorship.

Old Neil says he doesn’t want to censor Joe, but rather ban him from Spotify. Huh? Neil, Joni, David, Stephen, and Graham might as well follow up this attack with a book burning tour. I suppose if you’re an egotistically fragile celebrity, its unsettling to have someone more popular than you permeate the airwaves with differing ideas. Funny thing, Joe Rogan’s probably a lot more liberal than he is conservative. The left has gone so far from center that Rogan and Bill Maher sound like the right.

I understand, though, getting caught up in the moment and taking it too far. Back in the day, my oldest brother jacked around with me and one of my friends while we played on the Atari. That’s defined as stone age gaming. Being large, brutish teenagers, we took acceptation to his taunts and put a beat down on him. It was intended as good old fashioned rough housing, but we cracked a few ribs. When I say we, I believe it was mostly me. Oops. Fortunately some broken things heal.

It’s not like the aftermath of divorce and broken families. When my parents divorced in 1981, my father moved to California with his new wife. I suppose even back then, people ran away to the west coast when they wanted to escape reality and live a different life. Not that I’m bitter. I’m really not. I was the forgotten last kid and still a minor at home. My mother was traded in for a younger model. Hippies did it all the time.

Not everybody “fixes” a broken marriage or broken family. My mother remained stuck. She was not a fixer. She could have done something cathartic, like pour gasoline on her wedding dress and strike a match. That didn’t happen. She could have sold it and made a few bucks. That didn’t happen either. She never even took off her wedding ring. She wore that stupid rock on the same finger for the next 35+ years. She died with it on. Broken things can debilitate when they’re not fixed.

After a few days, I got the Nissan back.

New tires, new shocks, and new struts. Thanks to oil prices, Covid-19 (the great catch-all excuse), and supply chain issues (I like that one a lot too), tires are almost double what they were a year ago. I got a rebate for the old ones, but the final bill was not cheap. However, the fixes were necessary.

As I drove away from the repair shop, I heard that same familiar front end rattle. I thought of turning around, but I knew if there was a larger mechanical issue making this sound, my guys would have found it. I went home and parked the car in the garage, unwilling to deal with the noise.

A few days later I pulled the car out of the garage. I crawled underneath and looked for anything loose or flopping around. Nothing. I looked under the hood. Nothing. Then I crammed my head into the wheel well. A plastic shroud hung askew. Three plastic clips held it in place and one was missing.

I didn’t have a similar clip and there were no threads to run a screw through it. Having no other means of securing the loose plastic shroud, I decided to try a small zip tie. I easily slid the tie through the plastic and ratcheted it tight to the frame. Everything looked secured.

I drove the Pathfinder around the neighborhood for a couple of miles, intently listening for that annoying front end rattle. I heard nothing. After spending about $2300, the initial source of my automotive concern was repaired with a .03 cent zip tie. Some fixes are so obvious, we miss them while chasing after complicated answers.

Damn You, Change…Maybe

February 12, 2022 / Big Joe

My dog is lumpy.

Not in a cancerous, on death’s doorstep kind of way, but she is old. Benign growths periodically crop up on Gigi’s aging body. She doesn’t seem to care. Our vet says they’re just ugly, nothing harmful. Still, our cute, former five pound puppy is 11 years old and five times heavier than she was in her youth. And lumpier. Things change, whether I want them to or not.

Gigi is the second pet I’ve ever owned. The first was a stray cat my brother Bill unexpectedly brought home one night. She was completely white from nose to tail, with the exception of a faint black spot in the middle of her forehead. It looked as if she crawled under a car and slightly brushed her head against a stained oil pan. We named her Cleo.

Bill wasn’t far removed from high school and I was in the latter parts of grade school. Bill was closest in age to me at 11 years older. My sister Liz was 15 years older than me and Bob, the oldest, was 18 years older. Bob and Liz no longer lived at home, while Bill remained in the house, struggling to find his place in the world. I had siblings, but I felt more of an only child.

I was clearly the only planned pregnancy of the group. Why else would my parents have a baby in their forties when the oldest was beginning college? Things change, often times unexpectedly.

As a kitten, Cleo screeched at night. During the day she peed and pooped inside the house. I took on the chores of feeding the feline and enforcing litter box usage. Not that cats need it, but I also did my best to keep her brushed and well groomed.

Cleo quickly became my pet.

This responsibility did not actually entail much effort on my part. Cleo was an outdoor cat. After eating breakfast she remained outside until dinner. After eating again, she returned to the great suburban outdoors and happily stayed there until I rattled the handle on the back screen door. Upon hearing that noise she’d eventually scamper up the back steps and stay the night for a sleepover.

Since she spent most of her day unsuccessfully chasing squirrels and birds, keeping the litter box odor free and tidy was not a monumental task. Maybe a once a month endeavor at best. My main job was to rip open the packet of foul smelling cat food twice a day and give her water. That and be her friend while she was on the “inside”. I played with her, petted her, and provided her safe refuge at night. Cleo slept on my bed, usually somewhere near my feet so she could randomly attack them when they moved under the covers. It was our ritual.

Another ritual in my house entailed my father maintaining a separate residence with his mistress.

Of course I knew nothing of the affair and only learned about it over a decade later from my oldest brother, Bob. This explained my father’s protracted domestic absences, although my mother insisted it pertained to work related travel. This made perfect sense, maybe even to her. He simply wasn’t around much. Interestingly, I never questioned why he showed up at the house on Christmas morning and then abruptly left before noon. Didn’t everybody’s dad do that on December 25th?

But at least I had Cleo. She was a constant, always there. I’m sure she occasionally ventured outside the confines of our semi-rotted split rail fence that enclosed the backyard. However, I often spotted her on our long concrete patio in the sun, lurking around the giant cedar tree for the elusive squirrel, or inquisitively eyeing the multitude of birds that perched in the back fruit trees and along the vines holding red and white grapes.

And there was also a pine tree, tucked far away in the back left corner of the property. That pine tree was special. Every first grade student at Waynewood Elementary School received a pine sapling to plant. I suppose that back corner was out of the way enough as not to deter from the apple, peach, plum, pear, and persimmon trees that populated our backyard. Cleo didn’t venture there too much, but that was just as well.

Fascinatingly, after four or five years, I possessed the only sapling from my class that survived and grew into an actual pine tree.

Perhaps my mother fertilized the soil or added nutrients to its base without my knowledge. Regardless, I know I did nothing but admire its perseverance and will to live. That and shake the snow from its branches in the winter.

I don’t believe Cleo ever gave that pine a second thought. Her interests lay in patrolling her domain, eating her Friskies, and sleeping on my bed. Cleo typically rose before me. I know this because she woke me almost every morning by licking my face. It was like a small, wet piece of sandpaper rubbing my cheek for 3 straight years. Sometimes things change very little, if at all.

One particular morning, I woke first and saw Cleo lift her front leg and place it over her eyes to block out the morning sunlight shining through the front bedroom dormer window. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a dog or cat do that before or since. For a 3 year-old cat, she had personality. It made me forget about those toe bites through the blanket and sheets.

She was my cat and I was her human.

Later that same day, my brother Bill received a phone call from a neighbor that lived directly behind us. A white cat had been hit by a car and was lying in their front yard. We went to check it out and brought a bag. There were other white cats in the neighborhood. I’d never even seen Cleo cross a road. Why’d we bring a bag, again?

When we approached the cat I saw a faint black mark on the cat’s forehead. I literally felt my heart sink into my stomach. She was just lying on my bed a few hours ago with her front leg drawn over her eyes. I still had bites marks on my toes. Now Cleo lay lifeless in my neighbor’s front lawn.

All of my grandparents passed away by the time I was a toddler. I have no memory of them. This was my first taste of death. To say it sucked is woefully insufficient. I know it was just a cat, but not then. I felt like I’d lost one of my closest friends. I buried her in the one place that also meant something special to me, directly under my ever surviving pine tree. Things change, sometimes suddenly.

By the time I reached junior high school, my parents divorced. People told me that it was not my fault. I thought that was the oddest thing I’d ever heard. It never entered my mind that I was to blame. My father was hardly ever around, so divorce was just a new title on the same old thing. The house sold in the divorce and my mom and I moved to a smaller home not too far away. New place, new single mom in her fifties.

Years later I found myself back in the old neighborhood. I was in high school, it was late at night, and my friends and I had been drinking beer. Trespassing seemed like the next logical step. I cut down the side of the front yard where Bill and I found Cleo years ago. I raced through their property and hopped the fence into my former back yard.

The new owners had changed so much landscaping.

The once crowded space, now completely opened up. The majority of the fruit trees that populated the back lawn were gone. The fence with the red and white grapevines was gone. The old shed was gone. Even that big, beautiful cedar tree was gone.

And to my horror, so was my pine tree. Why did they uproot and kill the only surviving sapling from the Waynewood Elementary 1973 1st grade class? Did they not appreciate its historical context? Did they not fathom the trees ability to overcome the odds and thrive? Did they desecrate Cleo’s gravesite, as well? Things change, even when it seems wrong.

Both of my parents passed away within the last 7 years. Even Bill succumbed to lung cancer a decade ago. It’s weird to think about it, but half of my immediate family, growing up, are dead. Four, if you count Cleo.

And of course my dog, Gigi, is still lumpy. Interestingly, Gigi is mostly white with brindle spots. Cleo would have certainly approved. Lumps and all. I suggested “lumpy” as a new nickname for her, but my wife vetoed that suggestion. That particular thing will stay the same.