Sixth Sense

Friends said she should put her dog to sleep. He was old and ill and now he was acting strangely

By Chris Bohjalian

Garden of Angel

After laying dozens of tiny souls to rest, an American woman takes up the fight to save young lives.

By Gail Wescott

A short Love Story

The Stranger Who Changed My Life: A Short Love Story

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In 1983, I was traveling with a tiny theater company doing vaudeville-type shows in 
community centers and bars—anywhere we could earn $25 each plus enough gas money to get to the next small town in our ramshackle yellow bus.

As we passed through Bozeman, Montana, in early February, a heavy snow slowed us down. The radio crackled warnings about black ice and poor visibility, so we opted to impose on friends who were doing a production of Fiddler on the Roof at Montana State University. See a show, hit a few bars, sleep on a sofa: This is as close to prudence as it gets when you’re an itinerant 20-something troubadour.

After the show, well-wishers and stagehands milled behind the curtain. I hugged my coat around me, humming that “If I Were a Rich Man” riff from the show, aching for sunrise and sunset, missing my sisters. What a wonderful show that was—and is.

A heavy metal door swung open, allowing in a blast of frigid air, and clanged shut behind two men who stomped snow from their boots. One was big and bearlike in an Irish wool sweater and gaiters; the other was as tall and skinny as a chimney sweep in a peacoat.

“… but I’m just saying, it would be nice to see some serious theater,” one of them said. “Chekhov, Ibsen, anything but this musical comedy shtick.”

“Excuse me?” I huffed, hackles raised. “Anyone who doesn’t think comedy is an art form certainly hasn’t read much Shakespeare, have they?”

I informed them that I was a “professional shticktress” and went on to deliver a tart, pedantic lecture on the French neoclassics, the cultural impact of Punch and Judy as an I Love Lucy prototype, and the importance of Fiddler on the Roof as both artistic and oral history. The shrill diatribe left a puff of frozen breath in the air. I felt my snootiness showing like a stray bra strap as the sweep in the peacoat rolled his eyes and walked away.

The bear stood there for a moment, an easy smile in his brown eyes. Then he put his arms around me and whispered in my ear, “I love you.”

I took in a deep, startled breath—winter, Irish wool, coffee, and fresh-baked bread—and then pushed away with a jittery half-joke. Something like, “Watch it. I have pepper spray.”

“OK,” he said with a broad baritone laugh. “Come for a walk, then. It’ll be nice.”

I shook my head. Alarm and skepticism warred with spreading, unsteady warmth behind my collarbone. “Walking around in the freezing dark with a total stranger is not nice,” I said. I tipped a glance to the well-worn gaiters. “Planning to do some cross-country skiing?”

“Riding my bike,” he said, and then added without apology, “I’m between vehicles.”

He held the heavy door open expectantly. I moved the pepper spray from my purse to my coat pocket and followed my heart out under the clear, cold stars.

“What are you reading?” I asked, because that question always opens doors of its own. I was in the habit of asking the nuns at the bus stop, a barber who paid me to scrub his floor once a week, elderly ladies and children at the park. To this day, I ask people who sit beside me on airplanes, baristas at Starbucks, exchange students standing in line with me. Over the years, “What are you reading?” has introduced me to many of my favorite books and favorite people.

The bear had a good answer: “Chesapeake. Have you read it?”

“No, but I love James Michener,” I said. “When I was 12, I fell in love with Hawaii and vowed that if I ever had a daughter, I’d name her Jerusha after the heroine.”

“Big book for a 12-year-old.”

“We didn’t have a TV. And I was a dork.”

He laughed that broad baritone laugh again. “Literature: last refuge of the tragically uncool.”

“Same could be said of bicycling in your ski gaiters.”

The conversation ranged organically from books and theater to politics and our personal histories.

Having embraced the life of an artsy party girl, I was the black sheep of my conservative Midwestern family, thoroughly enjoying my freedom and a steady diet of wild oats. He’d spent a dysfunctional childhood on the East Coast. A troubled path of drug and alcohol abuse had brought him to one of those legendary moments of clarity at which he made a hard right turn to an almost monkish existence in a tiny mountain cabin. He’d built an ascetic life that was solitary but substantive, baking bread at a local restaurant, splitting wood for his heating stove, staying out of trouble.

“That probably sounds pretty dull to you,” he said.

“Agonizingly dull, but don’t worry,” I said, and then patted his arm. “Maybe someday you’ll remember how to have fun.”

He shrugged. “Maybe someday you’ll forget.”

We talked about the things people tend to avoid when they’re trying to make a good impression: hopes subverted by mistakes, relationships sabotaged by shortcomings. My bus was leaving in the morning, and we would never see each other again, so there was no need to posture.

Fingers and chins numb with cold, we found refuge in a Four B’s Restaurant and sat across from each other in a red vinyl booth. We had enough money between us for a short stack of buckwheat pancakes. A few morning papers were delivered to the front door, and we worked our way through the crossword puzzle, coffee cups between our hands.

The sun came up, and we emerged from Four B’s to discover a warm chinook blowing in. Already the eaves were weeping, icicles thinning on trees and telephone wires. This is what Montana does in midwinter: clears off and gets bitter cold, and then suddenly it’s as warm and exhilarating as Easter morning. Don’t believe it for a minute, you tell yourself as the streets turn into trout streams, but the sheer pleasure of the feeling makes a fool of you. You forget your scarf and mittens on a hook behind the door. You know it’s still winter, but that’s just what you know; the chinook is what you believe in.

The bear held my hand inside his coat pocket as we walked in silence back to the parking lot to meet my company’s bus. Before he kissed me, he asked me if I was ready. Ready for what I have no idea, but ready is how I felt. I was stricken with readiness. Humbled by it.

“I hope you have a wonderful life,” I told him.

“You too,” he replied before nodding stiffly and walking away.

The bus lumbered through the slush and labored over the mountains to a fading Highline town where we were booked to play a quaintly shabby old opera house. The guy at the box office immediately pegged me as a party girl who’d been up all night and invited me to go to the bar next door for a hair of the dog before the show, but I could not for the life of me remember why that used to sound like fun.

Later that evening, as I did my shtick out on the foot-lit stage, I heard the bear’s distinctive baritone laughter from somewhere in the audience. After the show, he was waiting for me by the door. I didn’t bother asking him how he’d gotten there. He didn’t bother asking me where I wanted to go.

I can’t endorse the idea of love at first sight, but maybe there are moments when God or fate or some cosmic sense of humor rolls its eyes at two stammering human hearts and says, “Oh, for crying out loud.” I married the bear a few months later in a meadow above his tiny cabin in the Bridger Mountains. We weren’t exempted from any of the hard work a long marriage demands, but for better or worse, in sickness and in health, that moment of unguarded, chinook-blown folly has somehow lasted 30 years.

We laugh. We read. I do dishes; he bakes bread. Every morning, we work through the daily crossword puzzle. Our daughter, Jerusha, and son, Malachi Blackstone (named after his great-grandfather and an island in Chesapeake Bay) tell us we are agonizingly dull.

We listen to their 20-something diatribes and smile. 

http://www.rd.com/true-stories/love/the-stranger-who-changed-my-life-short-love-story/

I Love you !

10 ways to say "I Love You" without words !

Saying "I love you" is complicated. Luckily, you can tell someone you love them without words.

By Sarah Harrison from yourtango.com

Saying “I love you” comes with so much baggage. First, there’s the question of what you want it to mean. Is it a declaration of commitment? Is it a simple statement of appreciation? Do you even know why you want to say it?

Then there’s the question of when to say it. Do you plan a time, like a romantic dinner or a lazy Saturday morning in bed? Do you let it pop out unexpectedly? Or do you wait for him to say it first?

And finally there’s the question of how it’s received. Will it freak him out? Will he understand what you mean? Will he say it back? And if he does say it back, does he mean it the same way you do?

No matter how you answer all these questions, telling someone you love them is a big deal. So what if you’re not quite ready to say it, but you want to show it? Or what if you’ve already said it, and you want something more than just words?

Here are the ways...

·         1. Take a picture of yourself smiling while you're on the phone with him so he can see how happy he makes you.

·    2. Grab him when you're in front of a mirror or a reflective store window and say, 'Look, it's us!'

     3. Do the dishes, even though it's his turn.

·   

    4. Let him have the smushy pillow.

     5. Pay for dinner.

   

   6. Always answer his phone calls and respond right away to his texts and emails.

     7. Make his bed after he's left in the morning.

     8. Kiss his eyelids.

     9. Be the outside spoon.

     10.  Buy him toilet paper when you notice he's almost out.

Break up ?

Breaking Up? Best Apps to Get You Through the 5 Stages of Grief

Looking to erase an ex from your mind and reach the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Today’s technology can help, with a clutch of apps and sites that make heartbreak hurt a little less.

Stage 1: Denial

Killswitch is a mobile app that removes all traces of your ex from your Facebook by deleting pictures, videos, wall posts, and status updates that tagged the two of you together. Ironically enough, it was released on Valentine’s Day.

Stage 2: Anger

Trash the stuff they gave you…or make money off of it. NeverLikedItAnyway.com lets heartbroken lovers sell gifts from their exes. Why burn/toss/shred ever again? Especially when there's a little cash possible to ease the pain.

Stage 3: Bargaining

Ex-Lover Blocker is an app that tackles the impulse to reconnect by publicly shaming you. Try to call an ex, and the app will send a text message to your closest friends so they can yell at you before you make a tragic mistake. As if that wasn’t enough, the app also posts an update on Facebook alerting the world of your attempt.

Stage 4: Depression

Anonymously mourn or vent on the Dear Old Love Tumblr. Sample posts include: "I can still feel you lying behind me, your laugh shaking me so much that I laughed too," and "It is your birthday tomorrow and I wanted to greet you, but then quickly realized that we’re no longer friends anymore, not even in Facebook." Feel better?

Stage 5: Acceptance

Congratulations! Now, don’t make the same mistake twice. FutureMe.org allows you to jot down your advice, and email it to yourself in the future. After that, do a happy dance. And meet someone new!