R.I.P. Charlotte Bronte 1996-2016

On Friday morning (September 2) I had to have my 20-year-old Siamese cat, Charlotte Bronte (named because at 5 weeks of age she looked like Charlotte Bronte's little kid gloves on display that week at the New York Public Library) put to sleep.  She had fought the good fight and stayed with me on a lot of expensive medicine, but Wednesday she hadn't eaten and Thursday morning I woke up to find her lying in the litter box.

This is the first time I have had to be in a petless house in over 40 years.  Tomorrow will be my 41st anniversary of sobriety in AA.  It was my beagle Paulie, who got me sober.  I stopped drinking because I could see that I was not taking care of him;  he had  epilepsy and I would forget to give him his medicine because I had passed out.  Since then I have had two more dogs and four cats.

My house will not be petless for long.  I filled out an application with an organization that has pets for adoption and if I don't hear from them by the weekend I am going to go to Petco and see who is there.  And my partner has her enormous tuxedo.  (I will only be adopting one cat because I have promised her that if anything happened to her I would take him.)

Here are some photos.

She saw me through two jobs, a complete life transformation when I began singing, two dogs, and two cats.  She sat on my lap when I was working.  It's lonely enough being isolated working here alone.

I feel that her spirit is still in the house.

Musings on Life as a Groundling

More and more, it seems that most of the people I know spend half of their lives in a plane.  What are they doing and where are they going?  Even when I had money to travel (and paid vacation), I traveled at most twice a year.  Once for the big vacation (Europe, Texas, the West Coast) and maybe once for a small vacation (the North Fork of Long Island).

One of the consequences of not procreating that I never foresaw, is that I don't have issue dispersed throughout the country (or the world).  One of the consequences of being self employed at home is that I am not "sent" anywhere as part of the duties of my employment (and anyhow, that was petering out in many workplaces thanks to the Internet).  I managed to work for 13 years in a high level management job and went out of town "on business" exactly twice: to Cleveland, and the first time I went I fell and smashed up my knee, which was, in retrospect, the last day I felt "young" (I was 54).

Now I don't go anywhere.  This apparently has become extremely unusual.  It certainly didn't used to be.  Most people I knew grew up here, stayed here, had children here, and, if they had demanding jobs, often never even took a vacation except to fix up the new house they bought or catch up on movies.

Suddenly I feel in a position of having to apologize for being here.  And yes, I'll be here Monday.  Yes, I'll be here the third Sunday in November.  Yes, I'll be here on Thursday six months from now.
Except for one week in Maine last year, I have not been farther afield than Brooklyn since 2009.  I have not been on a plane since 2007.  I have not been out of the country since 2004.  Of course, this is true of many people, but it's not true of people like me, you know, "middle class professionals" (which apparently is what I am according to the Hollingshead Index, a formula for figuring out what socioeconomic stratum a child comes from, which I discovered in a reference in one of the articles I edited).

I used to think of myself as a prisoner and my studio apartment as my cell.  I get time off to sing in a church (good works), tutor children (more good works), and take care of my partner (yet more good works) and to shop and see social service providers and doctors, and then it's lockdown time, back to my workstation cleaning up grammar and syntax the way real prisoners make widgets, or whatever (apparently when Anne Perry was in prison as a teenager she made cotton bras on a sewing machine).  I need to add here that I love singing, the new tutoring that I'm doing, and taking care of my partner (well, I love her, if not the mountains of dirty laundry), but it is still a familiar routine.

After doing a lot of reading about real prisoners, some in solitary confinement, I decided that this was an offensive analogy, so I dropped it.  But I still need to read about real prisoners to remind myself that I am not one.

Yesterday after spending an evening at one of my women's Moon Circles (which I love, and find nourishing, but which also, disappointingly, seem to be yet another magnet for ambitious successful professional women who need some New Age downtime and spiritual nourishment) I decided that what I am is a "groundling".  This term originated in Shakespeare's time, and was used for the people at the Globe theater who were too poor to have regular seats and had to stand in the pit.  A third, metaphoric meaning of this term is "someone who lives or works near the ground".  So yes, that's me.  I am not in the air, I am on the ground.  And even thought my small patch of ground (really, I live between Houston Street and 100th Street from York to 10th Avenue) is the most highly prized and most exciting patch of ground in the world, it is still only one patch of ground.  I am of the neighborhood, neighborly.  No grandchildren in California.  No business meetings in Paris - forget Paris! not even any business meetings in Boston.

Of course, I always could go somewhere, but wait.  My number one priority is taking care of my loved one, for however many more years she has.  She can't travel.  She is too fragile.  I have no money, or very little.  Yes, I take voice lessons and buy astronomically expensive medicine for my soon to be 20 year old cat, but that's about sustaining life (and even if I could bundle up my partner and take her somewhere, what about the cat?  who would medicate her?)  So my priorities right now are right here.

Actually there are a lot of interesting things to do here, and I do do them occasionally: go to concerts, go to museums, sit and take pictures in pretty little pocket parks.

But I don't have a lot of show and tell.  And if you're always going to be here, people tend to take you for granted.

RIP Beloved Chester

Yesterday I had to put our little Dachshund, Chester, to sleep. He was 13 and had been becoming incontinent, as well as having convulsions. We took him to the vet first, for an assessment, and she said he had an enlarged liver which was the source of all these problems, that he was probably in a lot of pain, and that he would keep getting worse.

This is very hard because it comes on the heels of the loss of my cat Branwell, which I wrote about in this post. Now only tiny Charlotte (Bronte) is left.

This is even harder on my partner (who is mostly an "ex" and who lives separately) because the little dog was staying with her and had become her whole world. I had told her that when Chester died I would get her another cat and pay expenses (and take the cat with me if she was in the hospital or a nursing home) but she said her therapist said she should hold off until she moves. I have mixed feelings about that. She desperately needs to move into an assisted living facility or some kind of low-income housing, but most of these do take pets if you just have one cat or a small dog. So I said she could perhaps consider fostering a cat.

For me this is most upsetting as it represents something else lost from my pre-February 15, 2004 life, the life I so wanted an escape from (see here), but which, nonetheless, was my life for several decades.

First I lost my best friend Dora, then my dog sitter, both of whom were connected to me and my partner through our love of pets but both of whom also supported my singing when I began my new life, then my mother (although as she had known me from birth this was different), and then Branwell.

Here are some pictures. The first of Chester on his last day, and another of me and Chester and his dog-sitter.

I am feeling both sad and nostalgic, and rather numb, and not at all like singing, but I need to get ready for choir practice tonight, and then I have a lesson tomorrow. And I am still waiting to hear the outcome of the audition I went to. So until I hear "no" (I plan to contact the pianist the week before rehearsals start if I haven't heard anything) I will continue working on both the mezzo leads in that opera.

Sad News and a Day Off

Yesterday, during a routine vet visit, my beloved 13 year old cat Branwell Bronte, died (apparently of a heart attack).

I am still in shock and very sad. I had gotten Branwell from a shelter as company for my tiny Siamese Charlotte Bronte.

As years went by he did not get along with my tiny miniature wire dachshund Chester

and finally they had a showdown in which Chester was the loser and had to have stitches.

So I sent Chester to live with my partner. They bonded together like glue, and I know one of the reasons she is dragging her feet about moving into assisted living is that she wouldn't want to take Chester with her (you are allowed to have a pet there - a cat or small dog - but Chester is old and cranky and might bite someone). Now the coast is clear - Chester and Charlotte love each other and so I could bring him home, and get my partner her own cat once she settles in.

Yesterday I was sad and in shock, but as I have no paid leave, I had to get back to my laptop and back to work.

I did however, take the day off from singing. To sing properly requires buoyant energy and I didn't have any.

I must sing today, though, so I can continue to overcome my terror of the B flat in "Condotta", polish the recits, and also work on a solo from a Bach cantata that I am singing in church on September 4.

It's funny, opera is my challege, because no matter how much I love it, and no matter how ideally my temperament and voice type are suited to it, I know that my extreme upper register, and my stamina, are both iffy. (Great if all the stars are in alignment, if not, not.)

But Bach is my joy. Pure joy. No high notes to scare me, and lots of runs, trills, and ornaments, which, for me, for some reason, come so easily and naturally, that I just enjoy myself. I never run out of breath, apparently, and can sing every note without fudging.

I was reading an article about Anna Netrebko in which she is quoted as saying that she sings Mozart and Handel to massage her voice after singing too much Puccini. I suppose I do the same thing with Bach, although I never would have thought of it that way. Maybe that's why my voice sounds young and fresh, even at 61 (if I stay away from the extreme top and bottom) and stays agile. And like all choir singers, I have always had perfect intonation.

Today I plan to work until about 4 or 4:30, then practice, and then settle down, score in hand, and listen to the greatest singer in my fach, Dolora Zajick sing Azucena. I hope I can learn something. I saw her in the role live, but there's nothing like being so close I can watch her breathe.