She was bent out of shape.
She had missed the Barbie movie, the ice cream man, and every atom of August’s awesome.
Her pockets were hairy but otherwise empty.
She would still fly first class.
Harriet had no wings of her own, unless you count the tangled caramel fringe flaring out in all directions like feathers. She had no letter of reference and no letters after her name. She was too short to get on the candy-colored carousel. She could not afford the cost of admission.
She had not counted the cost of growing old. But, can anyone?
When your eyes are misty with maple syrup, your math gets all mixed-up. You don’t keep track of the times someone let you down. You don’t count the steps of feet walking away. You don’t count yourself out, even when the candles on your crab cake are many, even when no one is coming with cake or kisses.
When your name is Harriet, you can’t see past sweet. You are too old and too childlike to expect the worst. You are stuck like a gumdrop to your gut feeling that somewhere, somehow, kindness conquers.
You recycle the ledger that says you’re penniless. You sing like a sparrow in your solitude. And when your chariot arrives, you say, “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”
Harriet knew her ride would come, even though other wheels had been less kind. The last time she heard tires shriek, surely she screamed in pain. The accident left her with a fractured pelvis. Her sweetness would not leave her.
Somewhere in her long and lonely life, Harriet must have determined: my sweetness will be the last thing to leave. People may depart. (You and I would scowl and call them cowards; Harriet shakes her head and says they were only overgrown children.) Health and youth flee in pink Camaros. They always do. We fight the process; Harriet counsels peace.
Harriet’s sweetness was hers to keep and to give.
How else to explain the enchantment on her face, even as she winced with pain? Animal Control had scraped the ancient cat from the street like a melted Milky Way, but Harriet’s eyes were full of stars. She doted on us like a grandmother even as our vet team triaged her many troubles. She was dehydrated, yet a geyser of gratitude. She was frail, with the world’s strongest heart. Her veins sighed with anemia, but her paws did daring drum solos, merry muffins, rebel biscuits of bliss amid the brokenness.
Pain had harrowed her old body, but anger would not own her heart. In the foster home of our selfless Senior Vet Tech, Denise, Harriet was as jubilant as a jellybean. She laughed at herself when she needed a bath. Kindness came late in life, but the sweet don’t consult calendars. The chariot was on time. The broken years turned into an open door. A lifetime of mercies were running in now, making up for lost time, giggling like gerbils. Harriet giggled even though no one offered her gerbil cordon bleu.
I want to be Harriet, but I know my human heart. Forget abandonment and a broken pelvis; all it takes for me to curse the abyss is an extended power outage, or a shortage of Cherry Zero.
I want to keep my heart as open as a shaggy goddess cat, but I know my wingspan. If my golden years were tarnished with terror, I would encase myself in salt. I would form a shell so sturdy, not even dawn could break through. I would take each disappointment as proof that life’s wheels had come off. “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”
I would let my sweetness leave, and slam the door with my broken heart.
But Harriet is first class.
The emergency vet knew he was in the presence of light. Describing Harriet, he ran out of language. She was resilient, remarkable, radiant…sweet.
He put her pelvis back together, but Harriet is the one healing the harried.
She is the sweetness we believed in as children.
She is the rebel expectation that tomorrow just may be the day.
And somehow, we get to be dawn’s delivery truck at Tabby’s Place.
We all know who gives and who receives here. Let us not delude ourselves. Yes: we provide the surgery and the sardines. You, dear donors, provide what Harriet cannot afford. We all come together in a wreath of wet eyes and breathless kisses.
But Harriet carries us on wide, rumpled wings.
Harriet gently deposits us back where we belong, that spot on the timeline before we stopped believing.
Harriet waits for the first gleam of good, shimmies her crooked pelvis, and crows: “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!”
Harriet is first class.