I Don't Like Heaven

by TS

Last night I was sitting in the dining room, toggling ipad, phone and laptop. Obsessively checking email, playing Words, texting and putting off dinner. Basically wondering why no one was replying immediately to my emails and feeling nonplussed.
The back door was open, screen in place copacetic.

Around 9 pm.Jake flew through the room and busted clean out of the screen, after another cat.
Frisco was in hot pursuit.
I jumped up- grabbed her back in, closed the door and headed out right away. JAKEY!!!
He must have gone up the hill so I kept calling him, climbed up the ghetto hill and over to the street- calling and calling him.
No time to think.

Then a young girl comes out of a nearby house and says, 'Hi! Do you have any baking soda?'
"yes, I do" I said, "But I am looking for my cat, he just busted out and is not used to being outside".
'OK, she says, I'll see if my mother can help.'

More calling and wandering around. I call HK and tell him I need his help. He's on his way.

The young beautiful girl comes back outside with a kind of hot guy. We introduce ourselves. They are Chris and Amber. I say to Chris- are you her father?
No, I'm 18, I'm her brother. Me: you look older.
He: I get that a lot.

So Chris, Amber and I go inside to fetch a flashlight and head back out.
I show them the scene of the crime and we chat.
What do you need baking soda for?
Cookies, they are making cookies and some of the other neighbors didn't have any baking soda.

Outside again, ambling around the back with the flashlight.
I have to explain how Jake is a scaredy cat and won't come for favorite food, etc.
Amber says: I hear something. I just heard scratching.
And Chris says. I heard it too.
I'm starting to doubt them, thinking, they're nuts.

Then Chris shines the light into the yard next door and says: There he is, he's right there.
And there's Jake sitting next to the house next door.
Put the light down! I say, and don't move.

I circled over into the yard and using my calm, Jakey you're OK voice -got him.
Grabbed him on his scruff like a mother cat and scooped him up.
He dug into my palm with his claws and I had him in a death grip.
Chris and Amber followed me inside.

With Jake in ( bounding upstairs to safety) we start talking about the neighborhood.
This after hugs and bowing and thank yous and giving them a box of baking soda and a jar of granola as a token of thanks- HK arrives.

Phew! We got him! I said.

Chris and Amber proceed to tell me about their life. He has a big tattoo running down his right forearm that says' Bubba' in gothic kind of font.
He says that it is what Amber calls him.
hmmmmm, I think,
They have a close relationship. They tell me they both love Ozzie Osborne.

They know Heaven, the young girl who lives in the house on the other side.
I used to be Heaven's friend Amber tells me.
I don't like Heaven, Chris says. Her mother is a drunk.

We hang out on my front porch. Talking tattoos and me wondering how I can do something for them. Chris says he promotes the Big Dog Inkx tattoo parlor nearby and if I want to help maybe I can tell people about them.
No problem!

Amber is a beautiful girl, shining eyes, curly hair...and asks me if I have ever heard of cat scratch fever.

She tells me she will put the granola on her cereal and return the mason jar. The she says:
Do you like root beer floats?
LOVE them I say, my mother used to make them for us.
Would you like two? She asks.

I say - one is good. I can't really eat that food. (then I felt like a jerk for saying that).

A couple minutes later they come back with a root beer float in a big red hard plastic cup.
wow. thanks.

HK and I sit in the dining room and he drinks the whole thing. I have a celebratory sip.

We talk about how lucky I was, this time. How things can go either way at any time. How bad luck turned into good luck and how great those kids were.

And we are reminded of the Heart Sutra.
Form is emptiness. Emptiness also is form. How phenomena appears and disappears.
How Jake was here one minute and gone the next.
And how the only way to alleviate suffering is to accept the changing nature of life.

Then, HK went home.

I washed out the hard plastic cup and left it out on the counter, so in the morning, I would have a happy memory.