I peeked into the linen closet two nights ago looking for a product called Lid Care, which I use on my eyes for blepharitis and for ragweed allergies when my eyes become especially red and goopy. (Johnson’s Baby Shampoo works, too, and is probably a lot cheaper, but I have had an aversion to putting shampoo near my eyes ever since one of our patients came down with a cellulitis-type reaction to/from an Australian shampoo that had trickled down from her hairline and seeped into her eyes).
Anyway, I opened the linen closet door in the darkened hallway and inadvertently knocked a basketful of Band-Aids onto the floor. As I bent over to retrieve them I could see, in the bit of moonlight peeping in through the skylight, the sun-catcher lying at the bottom of the small basket. I froze.
Many years ago when I tended to the eye patients (to whom I obliquely refer above), I worked with a woman who took it into her head to purchase for me, on special occasions, cow-related items. I have loved cows all of my life – this was clearly no secret to anyone – and my co-worker (cow-worker?) seemed to find the one place in Ottawa that specialized in bovine paraphernalia.
Among the many sweet items I received from her over the years (including a faucet attachment that moos), was a small, round sun-catcher, about three inches in diameter, embossed (no pun intended) with a sweet Holstein cow. His mouth is open, and he is saying, “Eat more chicken.”
Sarah loved my little cow, and whenever she came to visit she would seek out its new hiding place (the sun-catcher hangs from a small silver chain) and spirit it back to her home in Ottawa where she would hide it for me.
Sometimes finding the cow was easy, other times fairly tricky, as over the years we became more adept at hiding him. We hung him from lamps, doorknobs, birdcages, Venetian blinds, curtain rods, typewriter handles, in cupboards, drawers, shoeboxes, on shelves, inside book covers...and so on.
The last time we played our cow prank was in September, the week before Sarah’s cancer diagnosis. She was here visiting with Lainey, as they so often did, and we had had dinner at the Pickle Barrel. (Sarah ordered a smoked meat platter.) After we got home, I put the cow in the closet, expecting to send Sarah on a Band-Aid finding errand.
Of course, over the months I never once thought of the sun-catcher and was stunned when it fell (in the basket) at my feet the other night. I stood there immobile (Sarah would say “not moo-ving), the Holstein trinket on the floor, afraid to pick it up and look at it. After all, for whom would I be hiding it now? Who besides Sarah would have found this small prank funny (over and over and over again) or the little cow worth stealing?
Just as I thought my heart would break irrevocably, I felt Sarah standing next to me...sending me a message, an admonition about finding light, and humour, in the surrounding darkness. “Aw, come on Mum,” she used to say to me. “That’s funny.” And then she would smile in my face like a wide-eyed cat, showing all of her front teeth, and make me laugh.
It occurred to me then, standing in the hallway in the dark, smiling through fat tears, to wonder: who needs a sun-catcher cow – who ever needed a sun-catcher cow – when they had Sarah – the best and brightest sun-catcher in the world, absorbing and reflecting great beams of love and light and scattering them, happily and hopefully, half-way around the world.
Don’t let the sun get in your eyes/Don’t let the moon break your heart...
