Flor de Cana Friday Round-Up

The homeless outreach group I work with came upon a wandering, bewildered, hapless man last night and sent him home to his mama. The stories are always complicated. This one involved landing in Milwaukee somehow, losing everything, including his phone, sleeping behind gas stations, eating scraps he could find and having no idea how to get help. The team gave him dinner, listened to his story, called his mama on the phone and listened to her cry with joy that he was found, and then the outreach team bought him a bus ticket home. He’s probably there tonight eating meat loaf or spaghetti or whatever his mama’s specialty is. It’s that simple. I love it so much.

Yesterday, I bought 120 bagels at Target. The cashier said, “Why are you buying so many bagels?” So, I told her that the bagels that were donated to the same homeless outreach group had gotten moldy and so we had to quick buy replacements to go with the egg bake that was for dinner for 240 people. The thing was we had already sawed through what seemed like hundreds of tough old bagels (it’s not so easy) and spread peanut butter on them before the moldy culprits were discovered. But, hey, you know what? Target bagels are pre-sliced. I love Target.

I love talking to women who hold my hands when they’re talking to me. Where does this come from, I wonder? Why am I holding this woman’s hands and looking in her eyes while we are talking business, positions, schedules, and strategies? Because it is a friendship thing, a gentle thing, a thing between women working on the same quilt. I love quilting even though I don’t sew.

We bought a new bottle of Flor de Cana rum tonight. This is Nicaraguan rum that we have been drinking for years but now I am the only one who is the rum drinker. There are a lot of rums and Flor de Cana is hard to find but we search for it anyway and appreciate the stores that keep it on their shelves. I drink this rum because thirty-five years ago I drank rum and Coke with a lime plucked from a tree in the courtyard of where I was staying in Managua, then sliced by a Sandinista on the run from the army with a knife as big as a machete while I was holding my newly adopted 18-month-old Nicaraguan son under a palm tree. I love this rum and the son, although I see the rum much more often.

The cat has finally adjusted to my putting his food on top of the bookshelf, so a dog doesn’t eat it. This has taken months despite the cat being unusually savvy in other matters. I take this as a surrender which is both unfortunate and wise. I love people and creatures who accept what they cannot change. Hercules has crossed that important moral and ethical bridge.