Articles Found and Lost

It has been said, "Wear the world like a loose garment." Good advice, especially when it's hot and sticky. It's often wise to avoid chafing, with clothes or demeanor. I sometimes chafe, as word that sounds like "chase" with a lisp. Whoever came up with the loose-garment theory may have been thinking of saris or Hawaiian shirts or dashikis. This will sound strange, but I carry a piece of fabric in my right pants pocket. not a security blanket, no. It has to do with my glasses. They said don't use tissues to clean them. I believed them. The glasses makers provided me with a black silkish microfiber cloth, 6.5 inches by 6.5 inches, I just measured it, centimeters not listed on the ruler, with "DKNY Donna Karan New York" imprinted in silverish. But sometimes I lose it. So as back-up I cut up some old white T-shirts into pieces (smaller than the DKNY official issue). Mind you, I'm lucky if I clean my glasses twice a week. But they cost me a considerable expense so I must be terrified of scratching the lenses. I even bought a little bottle of spray cleaner for the glasses. I rarely use it. Well, I lost the black DKNY cloth, feeling like Leopold Bloom without Molly's panties in his pocket. I looked in all my pants. Again. And again. No success. I pretty much surrendered, gave up. Then this morning, panty cloth shows up in the right pocket of my green pants, one of the collection of pants I had checked repeatedly while they were hanging in the closet. The thought that maybe I really hadn't checked as thoroughly as I had presumed nearly sent me into manic and neurotic and compulsive searching for that recently lost money. Almost.

After all, it's just an article of would-be clothing.

Letting go is hard.

Letting go of people, places, or things. Articles. Article. It's a pleasant-sounding word, as if it were the smaller second cousin of art. In grammar, we have definite articles (the) and indefinite articles (a, an) (as well as partitive and zero articles).

Let me amend that earlier declaration: Letting go of people, places, things, and animals is hard.

My beloved Rosie, our faithful Golden Retriever, is becoming a zero article.

We learned today she has liver and spleen cancer.

Today, after a slow but pleasing walk (yesterday, she spooked a deer in the brush, in the city! and the deer pranced away across a field), I lay down with her, on the grass besides the women's softball game in Burnet Park. An overly warm May sunset. She was panting. I hypnotically caressed her; she moved her paw if I stopped, urging me to continue. I tearfully and softly told her I loved her and kissed her on her snout, the bridge of her thinning frame, her brown deep eyes sad and vacant. And trusting.

Those same eyes replied to me, "I know," and when the game abruptly ended we got up and walked home.

Articles? Rosie's the real article.

And this precious garment I surrender not readily.