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2024-01-05 - 4:23 p.m.
Tomorrow is a hard day for me. It's the Epiphany. Which I call the Fishy Marie Marguix day. I've celebrated it for something like twenty years now. We were living in Spain. Neither Eric nor I had much religious upbringing. He was raised a lazy Catholic and I was raised as a...well, a wanna be Catholic? My family didn't go to church and all I wanted to be was a nun (I don't know why, I think it something to do with The Sound of Music and my like solitude but it definitely wasn't because of religion) for a very long time. I would go to church with my friend Kelli or my baby sitter, Penney, when I could. One of my famous stories is that I took communion at St. Augustine when I hadn't been whatever it is that you're supposed to be to be able to take communion. Anyway. It was the Epiphany in Spain, twenty some years ago. It was a week day and I was really annoyed that nothing was open. I'm not religious and I hate holidays. I was already annoyed that nothing was open at that particular time of the day EVER because of the damn siesta shit crap burn in hell and I needed to go out and get food but couldn't because of the damn siesta shit crap burn in hell fuckfest....AND it was a big holiday. So the stores or anything were not going to open up even after the siesta ended. My cat, Fishy Marie, got sucked up in a car engine that day around mid afternoon. It was horrible. Eric was home and he yelled, "cat fight" and I ran out there just as someone in the parking lot was turning their car on and I screamed, "NO, STOP"! I don't know why I knew she ran into THAT car engine, there were thirty some cars parked there. But, I knew. And sure enough, little girl got wrapped around a Porsche cayenne engine, on a holiday,in a country that shuts down on Catholic holidays. I screamed and grabbed Eric and and the family in the car was mortified and didn't speak much English and we didn't speak my Spanish and I was sobbing in the middle of the street. Eric has half dressed, his pants were unzipped and he had thrown a shirt on. And the kids...oh, man, the kids. I was crying about my cat wrapped around an engine and still trying to keep keep three kids calm while they all worked to get my cat off that engine. I brought the kids in my house and gave them snacks and turned the tv on and ran back outside to sob in the street. It is the only time in my life that I actually prayed to a god that I don't believe in. It was a last ditch effort to get my kitty out of that engine. Which they did. She was hurt but she survived and made it back to Michigan with us a few years later. She passed away of natural causes a few years after our return. That family never sent us a bill for their car repair, it had to be towed away and they had to get a ride back home. (I did give them a pretty fancy bottle of champagne). The restaurant next door kept bringing us hot tea and the police showed up to help Eric unwind my Fishy. The kindness of people strikes me pretty hard sometimes. |
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