Randy Fitzgerald

Moe lay in the grass and watched us dig his grave.
            His eyesight wasn’t as sharp as in days past and he was having trouble holding his head up, but to the end, despite the fact that all his organs and systems had broken down, that he had been on IV fluids for four months, that his quality of life had passed the point of any good return, he managed a few last moments of cat curiosity in our direction.
            The only way Barb had gotten through the morning, knowing it was the last day in the life of a pet we had loved and pampered for almost 20 years, was alternating tears and gallows humor.  As she took her turn with the shovel under the clothesline, she looked over at Moe, so bony and frail, who once had been the biggest, longest, heaviest tomcat in the neighborhood, and she said to him, “I’m planting begonias, Mr. Moe.”
            And then a moment later she answered herself, as she has for years in the voice I recognize as Cat: “Wrong season, Miss Barbara.”
            Very wrong season.  There may be a time to love and a time to die, but there is never a season when it’s easy to bury a beloved pet. No matter how much you can see that they are at—or even beyond—the point that they need to be put down, it’s a hard, hard thing to decide upon, and a harder thing to do.
            Barb and I fought that decision all summer.  This cat was our last pet standing and, for the past five years since our children grew up and moved finally out of the house after college, our baby.  He had outlived his sister cat, found alongside him under a neighbor’s garage in the summer of ’88, having been dropped on the street from a passing car as kittens so young and tiny that their survival was in doubt for days.  Barb nursed them along with hand feeding and love, and when the kids came back from summer camp two weeks later, they each found they had been granted a pet kitty in their absence. 
            They named them Nibbles and Muffin, the female a calico and the male a gray with a snow-white vest and paws and a black Hitler mustache.  Over the years the cats acquired several nicknames as we learned their personalities, and finding out how pugnacious Muffin was, Barb dubbed him Moe. Sometime in ‘89 I wrote what I thought was a very funny column about Muffin’s trip to the vet to be neutered, and a reader wrote me back that when somebody gave him a sissy name like Muffin, they had insured he was destined to be neutered.
            Muff was no sissy. He’d fight any cat that turned up in his territory, and many a time he limped home with a slashed face and a bleeding paw.  Once he ran headlong into the side of a passing car and never stopped moving, returning hours later with knots and scrapes from the car door, walking stiffly but with eight lives still intact. He needed them all.
Sometimes we called him Puppy, because he was such a dog-like cat. He would meet me at the car when I came home from work.  He would put his front paws up on my knee and wait for his head to be petted. He would almost always run away from you instantly after swatting your leg or overturning a vase, hiding until the moment had passed.  He didn’t wait for you to yell at him—he was gone before you could react.  Very smart cat.
            On the morning that his sister Nibbles was killed a few years back by two neighborhood dogs that came upon her as she slept on the front porch, Muffin had been sent to the basement for just that kind of affront.  Barb can’t remember what he had done—maybe put a paw in the birdcage or climbed on the screendoor, but on that day she had deposited him in the basement and slammed the door.  That may have saved his life. Nibbles was outside alone. After the chaos of that morning, the growling and snarling of the dogs, the screams of his sister cat and of Barb as she rushed out the front door, the confusion as neighbors gathered in the yard, Barb saw Muffin in the basement window, eyes wide.
After that day, after Nibbles was buried under the same clothesline where Muffin would be destined to rest, his personality changed. He never hissed at us again, he never swatted or scratched, and he seldom ignored us.  After that, he was appreciative of a kind word or the touch of a hand. After that, he wanted to sleep in the bed with us at night and stay close to our heels by day.
He still wanted to be near us at the end as we dug his grave, so ill he could manage only a slow, stiff-legged walk that had him lying down to rest every few feet. Barb and I took turns digging, and when the rock and roots and sadness became too much for us, our neighbors Tom and Karin came and took over the job, and we retreated with Muffin onto the back porch to wait for the vet and say our goodbyes. 
No more pets. This is it.  In our life together we’ve buried two dogs, three cats and two birds. No more. Saturday was too hard a day. And Muffin was just too good a cat.  

We did it!  For months Barb and I had been seeing those commercials about the advantages of combining high-speed computer access with cable and telephone service, and last month we decided to go for it.

            We now have hundreds of TV channels to choose among, call waiting whether we want it or not, and computer access so fast that I can actually get Google on the screen before I forget what I need it for.

            For me, the best part of my technological advancement is actually being able to download things without going to sleep in the process.  I had gotten extremely tired of telling folks who shared their pictures and forwarded me articles and sent me cartoons that I couldn’t open whatever it was. Now I believe I could open “War and Peace” and have it all before me in about a minute and a half.  Welcome to the new century, old man.

            For Barb, the best part of the deal is the vast selection of TV channels now available.  Middle-aged women don’t seem to sleep well at night—at least Barb and her friends don’t.  I often find her on the phone at all hours, chatting up another lady in her age group who can always be counted upon to be awake at 3 a.m., too.

            But for the past few weeks, since the advent of this new and varied channel lineup, I find her in the spare room with the TV instead.  “Why are you watching the military channel at 3.a.m.,” I asked her last week. 

            “Because I can,” she replied.

            That is no doubt the reason she also has been seen watching a show in Spanish, when she doesn’t speak Spanish. One TV or another in the house seems to be on all the time now. Oxygen and Lifeline are getting a good workout, as are History and Discovery.  I took a magic marker and blacked out the numbers on the guide for QVC, Shop NBC and the Jewelry channels, but she found them anyway.

            There is so much that’s ready-to-watch at all times that I missed half a Redskins game last week because I got sidetracked onto another show before I got far down the guide to see that the Redskins were on. I expect the novelty of hundreds of channels will soon wear off, and we’ll get back to our normal TV habits.  This burst of enthusiasm reminds me of the first time my parents brought a TV into our home when I was a kid in the Fifties.  My brother, sister and I could barely leave it to eat a meal, and bedtime became a heartbreaking experience. It’s almost that bad again.

            But all this electronic wizardry is wonderful, and I recommend it highly. I realize I’m a little late getting to it, but that has to do with the old dog and new tricks thing.  People old enough to remember the Fifties don’t much like change.  Were it up to me, dimmers for car lights would still be foot-operated on the floor.  Radio dials would still be buttons that you turn rather than almost-invisible buttons that you push.  You’d still be able to buy an Oldsmobiles—heck, you’d still be able to buy a Studebakers. Old Nick’s and Wright’s Town House would still be open. 

            The preferred shape for ladies would still be zaftig rather than skinny.  Men would still wear hats, as opposed to baseball caps.  Love would still be romantic.  You get the idea. 

Some of the benefits of our new combined phone/TV/computer service I’m still not sold on.  We have always resisted caller ID and call waiting because they’ve seemed a little rude to us.  We’ll have to live with those “extras” awhile before deciding whether to keep them.  I rather enjoy the surprise of not knowing who’s on the phone until I hear their voice, now that we no longer have to worry about sales calls. And since I’ve never been thrilled to be momentarily cast aside when talking to someone else with call waiting, I assume other people feel the same way.  So we’ll see about those two signs of progress.

            But now that Barb and I are marching along with the times, there is satisfaction in being brought a little bit up to date. Like most new converts to something, we’ve even become ardent and evangelical.  “How will we ever be able to retire to our little farm in the country,” Barb asked me a few days ago, “when this package is not available there?”

            Since we haven’t yet received a bill for this service, perhaps we won’t be able to afford it in retirement.  No one seems able to tell us exactly what the monthly charge will be for all this, once we get past this grace period.

            “Heck, whatever it is,” says Barb, “QVC is worth it.”

Four things that keep me fired up and happy as I move through my sixties are (1) my girl Barb and our children, (2) these weekly “letters” I write to unknown friends around Richmond, (3) my recent return to classroom teaching after 23 years in another trade and (4) my late-in-life discovery of the joys of playing a musical instrument. What more could a man want?

On a recent weekend I was able to some degree to combine all four. Back in April I started heading out every Friday evening to the homes of a group of friends who were all interested in bluegrass music and who all played an instrument of some sort, a group that would over the months turn into a band called East of Afton. These jam sessions and rehearsals have been as much fun as anything I’ve undertaken in life. I would tell anybody of any age who loves music that it’s not too early or too late to learn to play that guitar, banjo-whatever-that you’ve been dreaming about mastering over the years.

You may think when you start off on this journey that being even an amateur musician is somehow beyond your capabilities, but I assure you that one bright day (or one dark night) you’ll be sitting around messing with that instrument and suddenly you’ll get it. You’ll realize that you can play the darn thing, probably without ever quite understanding how you got to this point.  You just keep at it and suddenly, there it is.           Barb told me early on to use a confidence-builder that pregnant woman do when they think about the seemingly impossible mechanics of having a baby. “I always thought if all those other women, including the girly-girls and the gigglers, could do it, so could I.” She then added, “If those strange people on ‘Hee-Haw’ could do it, so can you.” Sometimes along the way I thought it might be easier to have the baby.

Nevertheless, the other week East of Afton arrived at its first gig.  We played at a private party in Hanover-a gathering of hundreds of friends of three Richmond brothers (all musicians themselves), Page, Martin and Phillip Gravely, who, after the son of a friend was stricken, undertook a major effort six years ago to raise funds for research on a childhood cancer-related disease, Fanconi anemia. Each year the Gravelys have hosted this music festival, which they humorously call “Chickenstock,” out in the woods near Montpelier, at the home of Page Gravely, a Richmond attorney, and his wife Mary.  Brother Martin Gravely, a chef by trade, this year produced a shrimp dish that had people basically lined up around the house, and brother Phillip Gravely, who is a writer/editor at the University of Richmond, handles Chickenstock publicity and shares emcee duties. All three brothers also play in the Chickenstock House band.

This year’s concert was made extra special by the appearance of a brother duo-twins, actually-The Readings, from Nashville.  Google them or check YouTube if you have access. They are phenomenal-and they appeared at Chickenstock for free after Page Gravely heard them playing in the Nashville airport (yes, there’s a stage there) and invited them to Montpelier for this year’s festival. The Readings, whose third CD will be out soon, were already spokesmen for the American Cancer Society, had a personal reason for coming: their mother died of bone marrow cancer.

The Gravelys charge no admission to their party but raise money through the sale of tee-shirts, donations for food (Ashland’s Smokey Pig also provided food for the cause this year), and outright donations for the cause.  In their six-year effort, they have raised thousands of dollars.

It was an honor to play for such a good cause. I loved looking out over all the children dancing in front of the stage, finding Barb in the front row, smiling and waving like the middle-aged groupie she is. My bandmates, Dr. Jon Marks, Brian Sullivan, George Brown, Scott Sayles, and two of the Gravely brothers, Phillip and Martin, really got into the bluegrass moment, and I can’t remember when I’ve had more fun.

So how does this moment relate to my teaching efforts?  Simply that the thrill of performing onstage, doing something I love so much, made me wonder what it is in the lives of others, especially my young creative writing students, that provides such exhilaration. I hope they have it. Come Monday, I think I’ll have them write on the topic.  And if you want to send me a letter about the greatest joys in your life, I’ll be happy to hear from you and print parts of responses.

But, frankly, I don’t see how anything could be better than bluegrass.