Don't usually get to holler into the empty nest, but the preschool class rabbit is chilling with me this week. Norton has his preferred corner of the living room with sunshiny windows on two sides of his cage. He's been coming to this resort for school breaks for years now, but this is the first time since I moved the Eames furniture down from the house in Lincoln.
I'm sure Norton will learn to appreciate this design aesthetic, but his initial impression regards the lack of shadowy places for curling up to snooze. Sometime during Spring Break I'll show him the TED Talks video about Charles and Ray Eames. Then we will build with my Eames House of Cards picture deck.
Norton is either ten years old and weighs nine pounds, or weighs ten pounds at nine years of age. And after one slow gallumph around the living room he is sound asleep next to the Eames rocking chair. Alas, that is similar to my exercise regimen.
Tonight I gave Norton a full report on the visit to Parkland Hospital to tell Felecia good-bye. I pray this fantastic drama teacher's stage exit will be any hour now. My dear friend is ravaged and reduced to an ineffective gasp of her fabulous self, and every minute is precious torture.
I told Norton how Felecia once sewed Robert Plant into his tight pants. And how she was always the first person to notice the monarch butterfly migration high in the Dallas sky. Glaring blue. Orange wings. How Felecia poured her compassion into tiny glasses of German wine to toast the New Year 2005 when Fritzi was dying.
Who else would savor a drive-through lunch at Burger King with the same connoisseur's relish as a Dallas Opera performance of "Tosca"? What a gift to have shared nine operas with Felecia, and also wandered away from the guided tour to find Nedda's pink trailer from "Pagliacci" in the DO's prop storage?
Please let the former drive time DJ at KGUS in Hot Springs, Arkansas, have "twenty thousand watts of sparkling clear power" sending her off. Soon.
© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder
1 comment:
Thank you for these verbal and visual pictures of your life, the Eames chair, and Norton. I am glad Norton is there for furry comfort, sorry you are losing your friend Felecia, but glad again that you know it is time. I wish her well on her spring trip.
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