Waiting And Testing

         

This week has been crazy. Aunt Lina’s on the phone or the computer all the time, trying to get together funds to make this move happen. She sold one of her favorite pieces to a wealthy New York collector. She told me “I’ve always wanted to take another crack at that,” meaning she’ll be re-working the sculpture with “improvements.” I just hope she’s not disappointed.

She also spent time talking with school administrators from White Cedars. It seems that I have to take some sort of test to measure my “knowledge base.” The officials seem to think they may have to put me one grade below my age level, because I’ve been home schooled. It’s as if they think that what Aunt Lina and I have been doing isn’t going to live up to the lofty expectations of suburban NJ. I hear that parents in suburban NJ push their children into sports, activities, and studies in order ensure acceptance into top colleges. The information that the White Cedars Board of Education sent us was practically a brag-sheet about the number of kids in honors and Advanced Placement classes at their Middle School. Students in the White Cedars Middle School Band supposedly went on to receive music scholarships in college, and there was a separate page devoted to sports at the D.S. Whitsone Middle School of White Cedars.

Now this cracks me up, although some people (especially those from White Cedars) might not find it funny. You see, the town’s school mascot is the Green Knight. So the High School has variations of that as team names. Its football, baseball, and basketball teams are called the Green Knights. Girls’ teams are called the Lady Knights. Junior Varsity teams are called the Junior Knights. The marching band is called the Green Hornets. So that leaves the D.S. Whitsone Middle School teams with slim pickings. Sports teams there are called the Green Pages. Yeah, that’s right. The name’s like some coupon section of a telephone directory. I imagine their mascot dressed like a big book. It’s like the throwaway script line in a John Hughes movie come to life. Insert joke here.

So my local district set up the testing for me. I had to spend two days this week in a room a nearby elementary school, with a teacher monitoring the test. Mrs. Addams, the test monitor, talked with me the day before the test, and advised me to bring a book along to read between parts of the test. She’d looked at some of my prior testing scores and figured I might need something to keep me occupied.

“By law, if a test section is supposed to take twenty minutes, I have to allow you the twenty minutes, even if you finish in five. I don’t know if it’s a test rule or a union rule, but I was told I have to do it that way. So if you hand me your test each time you finish a section, you can spend the remainder of that time reading,” she explained, in a warm, laughing tone. It’s hard to tell by a voice on the phone what someone looks like, but Mrs. Addams was just as I pictured her: a not too tall, not too skinny (but not fat) woman in her mid-forties who genuinely liked being a teacher. She wore a long wine-colored cotton dress with darker contrasting embroidery, and Sandals. She had a twinkle in her bright brown eyes, and wore glasses to read. This Mrs. Addams was no tall, willowy Morticia.

The test was easy enough. The only section I spent a great deal of time on was the Math section, but even then I had time to read afterward. Miss Addams shared some chocolates with me, and she had brought a novel, too. I was re-reading Topper by Thorne Smith. It’s a story about this banker in the 1920’s, and these zany wisecracking alcoholic ghosts. I loved the movie, but the book’s funnier. And a little sadder, too. Miss Addams was reading Water For Elephants which had been a movie out last spring. I hadn’t seen it; she said I should, but that the book was better. She was impressed that I was reading Topper, because most kids my age wouldn’t even see the black-and-white movie based on the book, let alone bother to find the book. She told me to read more of the author’s stuff—he was very funny, but apparently died way too young. She considered him brilliant, and said that he was the first to write about spirits as anything other than scary. If I have to go to school, I’d love to have a teacher like Miss Addams.

After the testing was over, Miss Addams said she wished more of her students could be like me. She taught Fourth Grade – the principal had been teaching her class during my testing. They would have had him administer the test for me, but because I was a girl, they decided on Miss Addams instead. I’m glad.

So we are mostly ready to move. Aunt Lina’s a little short tempered that the formalities are making the process of moving take longer than she feels it should, especially because the house in White Cedars had been empty for a few months. So I went next door to see Mrs. Kemper. She was making stuffed cabbage for a church festival. Steamed cabbage leaves lay on an aluminum tray on her counter; she was mixing the ground beef with rice and eggs when I knocked on the back porch door. Within minutes I had on an apron and was learning how to roll the meat into a cabbage leaf to form a dumpling-like packet that would be cooked in a tangy gravy. Mrs. Kemper baked her stuffed cabbage; she said other people cooked theirs on the stovetop. We talked about her family, her garden, the books I’ve been reading, the latest silly video she’d seen on the computer, just spending the afternoon together. Without ever actually agreeing on it, we avoided the subject of my upcoming move. It makes us both so sad.

But at the end of the afternoon, when I was ready to leave, she handed me a shopping bag with a small casserole dish full of stuffed cabbage for Aunt Lina and me to eat for dinner. It wasn’t until I unpacked it back at home that I realized there was more to it than just dinner. In the bag was a white index card with Mrs. Kemper’s neat handwriting on it. I couldn’t believe what she had given me today.

On that card was the recipe for her super-delicious Oatmeal Lace Cookies. And she hadn’t given it to Aunt Lina, as she’d promised. In the top corner of the card, she’d written “For Miranda, from the kitchen of Velma Kemper.”

I hadn’t known her first name until today. Mr. Kemper and Aunt Lina always her Vee. I never knew what it was short for.

So… I’m sure you’re wondering what the ingredients are, and how to make those crispy discs of sugary goodness that are unbelievable when you sandwich chocolate in between them. The recipe is a good one. But keeping in the tradition of my dear friend Velma Kemper, I’ll “have to write it down sometime…”

Until my next post…

Randi

Finally! We Get to NJ

          It’s been a while since I posted, but we had some situations at the farm and power and the DSL line went out.  The ground was so wet that one of the old maples in the yard just toppled over.  Uprooted.  Of course, it took out some lines and we had to wait for the utility guys to come fix things.  Luckily, no one was hurt, and the tree didn’t hit the house.  It did hit the roof of one of the storage barns that Aunt Lina usually stores her artwork in, but we’d moved most of her stuff to the “cabin” already.  But there were insurance guys coming and going, and workmen to repair things, and neighbors who needed help because they’d had to evacuate their home.  We took in a family from down the road.  Their basement had entirely flooded and the first floor took on water, too.  Annie and Charles have a two-year-old and an infant; Aunt Lina and I took care of the kids while the young couple dealt with the clean-up of the mess.  We had extra bedrooms to offer, and a hot meal in the evening for them to come back to.  So there was little time to write or post.  And with guests in the house, no shifting.  Aunt Lina and I both get tense when we can’t shift.  She’s better at handling it than I am, but having little Bess and Tyler to care for kept me in line.  Then Annie said that her Mom from Ohio would come out to take the kids for a week, and Aunt Lina and I could finally go to NJ.

    The water level in the river has have gone down, but as we drove East, a steady rain seemed to follow us.  I am so sick of rain!  After a couple of hours on the road, I got to see the house Aunt Lina had chosen, the school I’d be attending, and the town we’d be living in.  The experience was….how should I put this….interesting?  Eye opening? Refreshing?  Peculiar?  Perhaps it’s all of the above.

The house is—a house.  Duh.  The kitchen is smallish, and the living room is too.  The two bedrooms are large, and the dining room has a round wall that bows out, with cabinets in the two corner ends of the bow.  The wood’s not painted over, and the floors are hardwood.  The enclosed back porch has a wood-burning stove that the business- suit-high-heel- wearing real estate lady sang the praises of as she wrinkled her nose.  That was amusing.  She obviously found the idea of such a stove dirty and distasteful, yet it was a selling point and she was gonna do her damndest to use it to sell.

Aunt Lina tends to be inscrutable to most people.  I knew that she wanted the place, but this woman wasn’t sure.  I asked Aunt Lina if I could look around the town as she and Miss Business-suit discussed particulars.  I took Aunt Lina’s cell phone, and headed to find the Horseneck Nature Sanctuary, the wooded patch I’d seen on Google Earth when I looked. 

I have a pretty good sense of direction.  It’s five blocks away – I have to pass fifteen houses to get there.  I can’t go through yards to get there; not only would that not be neighborly, but there were also several fences around some of the yards, and I could smell about eight dogs that lived in the area.  Several of them set to barking as I passed their houses.  One pup, a German Shepard, out in a fenced-in yard despite the drizzle, began to bark when I was a few houses away.  He got up and began to jump at the fence as I passed, so I stopped and stared him down.  At first the barking got wilder, then I exhaled heavily, and he stopped, midbark.  He made a whiny sound and slunk back behind the house, with his tail between his legs. 

            “I don’t know what you’ve got honey, but you should bottle it and sell it.  I didn’t think anything could shut Chester up!”  An older woman was sitting on the front porch of the house after the dog’s.  She smiled and nodded, and I waved and nodded.  Well, there was one friendly soul in White Cedars.

            I found the entrance to the sanctuary grounds, but there was yellow tape with the words “Caution – do not pass” strung between two trees barring the way.  A sign on a post said “Sanctuary Closed –Wet Ground and Fallen Trees,” so I turned around and walked back to the house with the “For Sale” sign out front.  It’s a cute little place – the front of the ground floor was made of stone, with blue vinyl siding covering the outside of the second floor.  The roof is a greyish color.  The place is OK, I guess, and would probably look better on a sunny day, but I kinda like the farmhouse with its five bedrooms, front and back parlors, porches, and pantry.  This place looked like the place next door (except that it was brick and white instead of stone and blue). And like another across the street, and a few down the block….suburbia.  Ugh.

            Aunt Lina and Miss Business-suit were done with whatever papers needed signing, and the real estate agent was talking about how much I would “love” the small town atmosphere of White Cedars, and how “good the schools were”, yadda yadda… I wanted to scream.  Aunt Lina saw that, and winked.  She cut the chit-chat short by saying that I needed lunch, and then we went to this place on the town’s main drag, Overbrook Pike Road.  We found this sandwich shop, across from the park, called The Knight Brothers Deli, where she had a burger and I had soup and a roast beef and cheddar on rye.  There were some older kids having lunch at a nearby table – apparently they let the students go out to lunch here.  Or maybe these kids were “cutting” class.  But would they be so brazen as to sit in a place not far from City Hall and the police station?

            After lunch we walked the block-and-a-half down Overbrook Pike Road to the “middle school”.  Aunt Lina keeps calling it “junior high” because I suppose that’s what they called them when she went to school. We had to ring a bell and a buzzer rang to unlock the door remotely.  It was like I imagined a prison would be.  We went to the “front office” where Aunt Lina spoke to a gaggle of secretaries, who introduced us to the principal, a Mr. Yevetski, who told us that we’d have to have our school district contact the White Cedars district.  When Aunt Lina told him I was homeschooled, his eyebrows shot up, he wrinkled his nose and began to talk about “comparative test scores”.  I hate being talked about as if I were an object, so I decided to ask a question of him.

            “What kind of World History do 12-year-olds study here?  Are they reading Russian Literature? And how about Chemistry?  Are they doing independent labs here?”

            Mr. Yevetski looked at me as if I’d sprouted an extra head.  Aunt Lina’s eyes were glaring, but her mouth was twitching a little in the left corner.  That meant a laugh was being suppressed.

            Suddenly this loud alarm bell rang, and I jumped.  A dull roar sounded outside the office.  I looked through the glass doors of the office-- a swarm of bodies surged through the hallways like sludge through a drainpipe.  My God!  There were so many of them!

            There was a dull thud as one boy pushed another right into the glass doors.  Mr. Yevetski excused himself (probably relieved that he didn’t have to answer my questions), and went out into the fray.  Aunt Lina was given school contact information from one of the ladies at the front desk, then we slipped out of the office, through the throng of students and out the door.  I breathed in the damp air, relieved to be out of there.  How was I going to handle that, every day?

            We went over to the White Cedars School Administration Office, which was back by the house we’d probably be living in soon.  As Aunt Lina talked to more office ladies, I looked at the trophies, old black-and-white photos and other sports paraphernalia in a glass case in the hallway.  There was a mural of a knight on a white charger, wearing green armor, with a banner proclaiming “Go Green Knights”.  I guess it’s more imaginative than some other High School mascots I’ve seen: animals like mustangs, rams, colts, tigers, wolverines, or even dubious occupations, like the lumberjacks, astronauts, or hillbillies.   Not that I’m the rah-rah sporto type anyway.  Not my thing.  I suppose I’ll have to pretend to like football and baseball in order to fit in.

            What if I don’t fit in?  What if I don’t try to change in order to be “typical”?  I could just be myself, and if these suburban kids don’t like me, then it’s their loss.  I didn’t need them before…why should it matter now?

            I thought about it on the ride back home – I mean back to PA.  I suppose it’s not really “home” anymore.  I wonder if I’ll ever think of NJ as “home,” or if Pennsylvania will always hold that place in my heart.  Only time will tell.

Until my next post…

Randi       

The Mess After The Second Storm

         

So this week had more rain, and now there’s flooding here in Pennsylvania.  Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene flooded New Jersey, and the rain from Tropical Storm Lee flooded us.  So the trip to NJ planned for this week was put off because some of the roads are out.  The creek at the back of the farm re-flooded the field, and we even have dampness in the cellar.  Aunt Lina and I were talking about it at breakfast and I told her that I thought that it was a sign from God that the move to suburbia was a bad idea.  She was not amused.

I went to Google Earth and looked at the town that we’ll be moving to.  White Cedars is tiny—like two square miles, with a park with a pond or lake on the West side, and a big tract of tree-coverage to the North of the park…kinda Northeast….that’s a few blocks from the house Aunt Lina’s moving us to.  That means I won’t be able to just shed clothes and shift at home, jump out the window and run to cover.  I asked Aunt Lina about shifting.  She said that we (I liked the “we” part) were going to have to be very stealthy if we were going to shift. 

Aunt Lina spent the last couple of days fixing up the cabin over by the road so we can use it.  She’s moving some of our extra stuff into its two rooms, for storage, but she suggested that on weekends we might be able to come back here.  It will depend on who moves into the farm after us, and if they want other people there.  Aunt Lina is Jack’s sister, but our chances of weekend visits will depend on whatever agreement he comes to with his tenants.

The cabin is a rustic little dump, with a tiny bathroom and a shower—no tub.  There’s the kitchen/dining/living room, and a bedroom. We jokingly called it the “carriage house” when some NY artists came to visit us a couple of summers ago.  They loved it, and considered it “camping” when they stayed there.  I think the painter, Alex, would have preferred to stay at the farmhouse with us, but his girlfriend, Chandra (it used to be ‘Sandra’ but then she moved to NY) didn’t want to “be a bother”.  Translation: they were afraid that I’d hear them making love. 

If we come back here as guests, I may not be able to run off into the woods and shift.  What if they have pets?  Or kids?  It might even be better if we just don’t come back at all.  Make a clean break.

We went into town for a few things and it took an hour and a half just to get a few miles down the road.  There was a bridge under water, detours and the hardware store had no electricity, so we had to go over to Dickson City to the Wal-Mart.  Actually, the highways weren’t too bad, just local streets.  And it seemed everyone was out on the road today.  We came left before noon and came back in time to start cooking dinner.  I can’t imagine what it would have been like trying to get to NJ today!

Tomorrow’s the 10^th anniversary of the attack on NY.  I was two when it happened.  I remember them playing the airplane crashing into the twin towers on TV, and the building collapse.  It was before we moved to PA.  Aunt Lina thinks that traveling East on Route 80 might not be a good thing, so we’re postponing our trip until Monday.  I don’t know why she’s insisting I see the place before she signs any contract.  It’s not like I have any real say in the matter.  She’s my guardian and I really don’t have a say in things until I’m 18. 

I don’t resent it – she’s been my parental figure ever since I could remember.  She could have lied and had me call her Mama or something like that, but it’s not the way she works.  She’s honest, and up-front.  When I couldn’t say “Aunt Lina,” she accepted “Alina” but always referred to herself as “Aunt Lina” until I could say it.  She’s strong, willful, strict, yet fun. 

If you want to know the truth, I’d rather be “stuck” with her in NJ than be anywhere else with anyone else in the world.  Yes, even my biological mother; she didn’t want me, and I know that I’d be nothing but a bad reminder to her.  It’s a long story, and I don’t want to get into it. 

I think that even in NJ, my aunt and I will manage to have fun.  And we’ll be closer to NY City.  Plays, galleries, cafes and shops…I love Manhattan.  And it will all be less than twenty miles away!  Perhaps there is a silver lining in these thunderheads.

Until my next post…

Randi

The Mess After The Storm

We had a tree fall on the old garage, and the creek did flood the back field.  The phone wires were pulled right off the house, so we had no landline and no DSL for the internet for a whole week!  Ronnie had gone off to school, and Lizzie had stayed with us until her father could come to pick her up.  We didn’t lose power, so there were DVDs to watch….Liz and I love old movies. Mr. and Mrs. Kemper, the old couple on the next farm over, had problems with their well pump, so we’d drive over every day with plastic jugs filled with water, until their system got fixed.   Mrs. Kemper baked such delicious oatmeal lace cookies, and she had made a batch for Lizzie and me.  Lizzie asked her for the recipe, and Mrs. Kemper said she’d “have to write it down sometime…”  That’s what she’s been telling Aunt Lina for years.  She just doesn’t want to give the recipe up – I guess she thinks that if we have it, we might not visit again.  I’d still visit – she’s such a sweet lady, and the things that she remembers are so fascinating.  When she was a child, a subway ride to Coney Island cost a nickel.  She used to sew button holes on men’s suits – by hand! She only made like a dime per buttonhole, so she had to be fast.  She’d been a city girl all her life, then met Mr. Kemper at a wedding, and became a farmer’s wife.  She loves to talk, and is a good listener, too.  I visit as often as I can, and she always has some homemade treat, but those cookies are my favorite.

I told her that we’re gonna move.  She just sighed and shook her head.  The land actually isn’t Aunt Lina’s; it’s her brother’s.  The Kemps liked having us as neighbors; the last family that had lived on our farm wasn’t as friendly.  Aunt Lina’s brother Jack hadn’t lived there in years; he lived out west, and rented out the property to young couples or families who needed a place off rez.

So we were supposed to go to NJ this weekend, but between the storm, the floods after Hurricane Irene closing roads, and the holiday weekend, it’s pushed things back a little.  So I won’t be starting school when it opens this week in White Cedars.  I won’t get registered until later this month.  Aunt Lina’s been on the phone with the real estate agent almost every day.  I’ve been packing my books and things up, and Aunt Lina’s been packing dishes and stuff.  Next week some other cousins will come to help pack up some of her sculpture and paintings to go into storage.  Then we’ll put our stuff into a U-Haul truck and they guys will help us cart it all over to the glorious suburbs of New Jersey.

After Lizzie went home, I tried to get Aunt Lina to talk about the move.  She was hesitant, but she then she told me that when she’s been out in bear form, she’s scented some strange things in the woods.  Things that are telling her to move on.  I hate when she gets all “mystical Native American” on me.  I’ve seen her do it at gallery openings, when the hoity-toity art collectors started asking stupid questions.  I thought it was beneath both of our dignities for her to pull that on me.  But there was a kernel of truth in what she was saying – I could see it in her eyes.   There was something out there that made her uneasy, and Aunt Lina could usually handle anything.  It made me wonder.  So I shifted and went out into the woods myself.  If there had been anything there, the storm had washed it away, I only smelled the usual animals – bobcat, deer, pheasant, grouse, bear (not Aunt Lina – a wild bear).  I thought I scented the trace of another cougar, near a group of boulders that formed a shelter, but it was not a common scent in our area, and it was over a week old; the rain could have affected the odor.  It’s not as if I was around cougars often – just at zoos.

So we wait for the joys of suburbia.  I am so not going to fit in there—I’ve been reading articles in the magazines Lizzie left me, and if suburban girls are as superficial and insipid as the ones in those articles, I’m going to go insane. 

And this waiting is driving me halfway there already!  I wish this stupid move was over already!

Until my next post…

Randi

Why I Named This Blog “Ghostcat”

So you’re wondering why I named this blog “Ghostcat”.  Ghost cat is another name for a cougar.  According to The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the Eastern Cougar (Puma concolor couguar) is no longer endangered; it’s extinct.  Seriously, they declared it so last April.  Google it, if you don’t believe me.  Extinct.  Dead.  Gone.

I’m going to tell you they are wrong.  On the web, there are lots of reports of cougar sightings (http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/05/the-eastern-cougar-dead-or-alive/?ref=fishandwildlifeservice).  A pale, camel-colored 6 or 8 foot long cat runs across the road, past a hunter, through a yard, and it’s gone before anyone can take a photo.  There’s no footprints, no fur, no spoor.  It just disappears.  So does livestock, sometimes.  Spooky, right? 

Oh, sometimes a cougar’s captured, or shot and we’re told that it was a “pet” that escaped or was set free.  But sometimes the cat is just seen, and then it’s gone.

That’s the nature of a cougar.  They’re secretive, fast, and roam large territories.  They avoid people as much as possible, preferring to hunt deer in solitude.  But people are so arrogant, they think that cougars are too stupid to smell their presence, to see, smell, and avoid the cameras set up in the woods.

How do I know this? 

I’m what you would call a shape-changer.  I can take on the shape of a cougar.  I’m part Native American, Seneca, and ever since I can remember, I’ve had this ability.  Aunt Lina’s not just my aunt; she’s my teacher, my mentor.  She’s a shifter, too; she’s a bear-woman.  She’s told me that there hadn’t been a cougar-child born in the Eastern U.S. for more than a generation, because the Eastern Cougar had disappeared or run north to Canada.  Canadian tribes had only a few cougar-children, but there had been none born in the Eastern States since WWII.  Plenty in the West, but none in the East.  Until me.  I’m also this big secret.  Only the Elders like Aunt Lina know—none of the cousins, like Ron or Lizzie are in on it.

No, it’s not a part of the lunar cycle, nor is it like one of those hairy wolf-man movies, some long, painful process.  The best way I can explain is to say it’s like passing from one place to another, lifting a curtain aside to become that other me. Try asking someone “How do you blink?” or “How do you move your fingers?”  There’s no good answer, you just do it.  I knew a man who could wiggle his ears.  He couldn’t explain how, he just knew he could.  It’s like that I guess.

So, that’s what I was up to last night and that’s why I don’t want to move.

You don’t believe me, right?  THAT’S THEY BEAUTY OF A BLOG!  This could be all bullcrap; a figment of an overactive imagination.  That’s why I’m putting this out there?  Duh!  I have my reasons.  I don’t expect you to understand….I just hope that you read this. 

Now, back to what’s going on at home.   Lizzie & Ron were up early with me the morning after Aunt Lina came home.  Lizzie makes great pancakes; she wanted to make a batch for Ron before he left for college.  They both were a little uncomfortable at first, talking about the move & all, but putting cousins, food and caffeinated drinks together helps loosen tongues.

“Whatever reason she has, Randi, it’s for your own good.  Aunt Lina has lived long enough to know when something’s up.  And she wouldn’t be moving from here without a good reason,” Ronnie said around a mouthful of pancakes and syrup. “You know that you’ve been her main concern ever since you were a baby -- she’s not doing this on a whim.”

“But that’s just it!  We usually discuss things -- I’ve had a say in things ever since I could voice an opinion.”

Lizzie snorted, and Ron shook his head.

“She lets you think you have input.  Aunt Lina is a strong woman, and she tends to do things her way.  The cousins in Maine say she moved you down here to have full control of how you’re raised,” Lizzie explained, as she started to pour more batter on the griddle.

Suddenly I was a little uncomfortable.  I love my cousins very much, but it had been drilled into my head never to let anyone know our secret.  But Lizzie’s version of things wasn’t fair to Aunt Lina.  They only knew a part of the story…

As I thought about this unfairness, I noticed a whole silent conversation going on between my older cousins.  Raised eyebrows, a shrug, a tilted head, a smile and a wink….it all meant something unvoiced.  I was just about to say something when Ronnie spoke first.

“I think it’s time that you know something, Randi.  Liz and I know about you.  We’ve known for years what you are, and what you can do.”

My mouth must have hung down to my belly, I was so shocked.  How could they know?

“You were a toddler when you moved here, and a bunch of the aunts, uncles and cousins had come out to help Aunt Lina get settled in.  The three of us were playing, and suddenly we realized that weren’t the youngest anymore -- you were.  So we were ordering you around, making you follow us around, just like the bigger kids did to us.  We made you climb a rock, and you were getting tired.  You fell, and suddenly, there was a cub where you had been.  The cub was spitting mad-- furious.  It was tangled in your clothes. Then it looked at Lizzie and me, and that cub became you.  Crying. So we that you were a shifter.  And we knew that you were to be protected at all costs, and should never be betrayed.”

“We never told anyone else that we knew you were a cougar.  We just fixed you up, and carried you back home.  It was your secret that started a relationship between us,” explained Lizzie as she slid another platter of pancakes onto the table.   Ron forked a few onto his plate, and she hugged him.  He rolled his eyes.

“It’s really her cooking, but let Lizzie think what she wants,” Ronnie mock-whispered with a wink, stuffing another fork-full of syrup drenched pancake in his mouth.  Lizzie pretended to hit him with the pancake flipper, and he pretended to be dazed.  I giggled.  They had been together ever since I could remember -- everyone expected them to get married after Ron finished college.

So… my big secret wasn’t such a secret after all.  But did they know about Aunt Lina? Probably not. 

“I heard you go outside last night,” said Lizzie.  “I don’t blame you -- I would have, if I were you.  What’s it like, being able to do that?  It didn’t seem to hurt you, when you shifted as a child that day.  I’ve always wanted to ask you -- does it hurt?  Do you realize you are -- who you are, or do you lose yourself over to the cat?  I’ve always wanted to ask you…..”

“Shifting is like going through a door to another place, but it’s a place inside of me.  I still know I’m me, and I know I’m cat.  Both at the same time.  Always.  When I shift, I see things as a cat does, and sense them that way, too.  I feel things through my whiskers.  Scents are so intense….I can’t really describe it in words.  It’s so wonderful.  That’s why I can’t imagine why Aunt Lina’s doing this to us.  How can we -- I mean, how can I shift anymore in a town? All I can think of is nosy neighbors and house after house of people and pets.  Why would she choose that? She loves it here.  Her art is inspired by these woods.  There’s got to be more to this than she’s letting on,” I said with a sigh.

“Has she been acting any different?” asked Ron.

“Well…she’s been funny ever since that news story about that cougar in Connecticut about the cougar hit by a car. It was thought to be a pet or something, but they cut it up & tested its tissue & it was supposedly from North Dakota.  She was distracted and snappish for a few days after that. ”

“So this is probably a reaction to that.”

“I wonder if it was just a cat,” said Ron thoughtfully, brushing a stray lock of hair aside as he leaned back in his chair.  “What if it was another shifter?  And what if the government knows that?  They’re gonna be watching us Natives, just like they’re watching the Muslims.  And a homeschooled girl living with her aunt off the rez….I guess there’s a reason to run to the ‘burbs right there.”

Upstairs the floor creaked.  Aunt Lina was up!  Lizzie put a finger to her lips, went over to the back staircase, and called up to Aunt Lina.

“Do you want pancakes?”

The door of the big bedroom over the kitchen opened, and a sleepy voice called down appreciatively “Ooh, yes!  I smell coffee, too.  I’ll be down in a few minutes.

That put an end to our conversation.  By the afternoon, both Ronnie and Liz were gone – Ron was heading west to college, and Liz was heading north before the predicted hurricane hit.

The weather was reflecting my life. Earthquake = upheaval.  Hurricane = mess.  I hope I can actually finish this and post it before the storm, but I also have to help Aunt Lina make sure everything’s secure.  There’s gonna be a lot of rain, and the creek could overflow and make a mess for us…

Until my next post…

Randi