Dragonfly visitation 3

The next evening, as I sat having dinner with Miriam on the deck, I saw another dragonfly dive through the airspace over our backyard.

"Dragonfly!" I said.

She turned to see it swoop, same chartreuse helmet and striped tail as last night's visitor.

"The cats killed one yesterday," I told her, not naming the perpetrator.

She scolded both cats. "Hey, why'd you do that to your brother?"

I pointed at the perfect-looking carcass still lying at the edge of the deck.

Dragonfly

"They didn't even eat it!" she said. "Bad kitties!"

It does seem especially pointless that the cats hunt for sport. That they live out compulsions they can't control. That they swipe sharp claws at a flying creature before they even knew it happened.

I told Miriam about my conversation the night before with Markus.

"Of course it's Simon--why else would the dragonflies be showing up," she said.

I asked her to shoo the cats and scare the dragonfly off. The cats startled, and the striped body cut its way up and over the bushes toward the next yard.

Not much of a visit, if we send the creature away. But imagining it free is better than watching it get plucked from the sky.

Markus was late coming home. I tried not to imagine him somewhere on the bike path between the office and here, lying on his back with legs churning the air. I checked every bike approaching through the dusk on my walk.

Tuesday's sunset

At home I finally called his office. It was after 10pm. He answered. Another half hour, he said, the same thing he'd said two hours before. He'd gotten a new laptop; there was a lot for tech support to set up.

Markus biked safely home.

Previous dragonfly posts:

Dragonfly visitation, August 8, 2014

Dragonfly visitation 2, July 20, 2015

Dragonfly visitation 2

A little before dusk this evening, Simon-the-Cat is crouching alertly next to the backyard sculpture.

"What's he up to?" I ask Markus, who is reading on the deck.

"Dragonfly," Markus replies.

We watch the creature make neat lines across the backyard about two feet above ground. I've seen the cats take interest in bugs before. They always look so surprised when they eat their catch. We rarely see dragonflies around here. When we do, they usually fly off to safety as we cheer them on.

"Suicidal," I say, as the pale speck continues to fly low next to the bushes.

The cat pounces, his sleek black body diving into the brush, bell jingling. And that is that.

"If the spirit of our departed son was hitching a ride on that dragonfly..." I say to Markus. Why else would it come into our yard like that and fly so close to the cat who shares his name?

"...Then he goes into his next incarnation," Markus says, glancing back at his magazine.

The exchange is somehow good-humored. Our son Simon was enamored of nature and of dragonflies and damselflies in particular. As I've written before, it's always easy to picture him somehow inhabiting the sleek body and filigree wings.

Dropped from the cat's mouth, the dragonfly lies supine in the grass, churning its bent-wire legs. Both cats sit nonchalantly nearby. I hope there's a chance the creature will recover, and I grasp its camouflage-striped body-tail so I can place it right side up.

The body sticks strangely to the grass, but I am able to right the creature and place it on the edge of the deck. I watch as it revs what must be fang-pierced wings. Pity.

I leave it on the deck plank, hoping the cats will show some respect and refrain from a fatal bite. Perhaps the dragonfly will rally.

I will check in the morning. Wouldn't it be great if the spot is empty because the dragonfly has recovered and flown away?

But, twinge of hope aside, it feels like another lesson in nothing else I can do.


Currently reading: What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas, master of micro-story and the written (psychological) moment.

Previous post: Dragonfly visitation, August 8, 2014

Dragonfly visitation

Last fall, I admired this butterfly in a garden in the front of the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden Baden. Markus and I had gone with my parents, who were visiting, to see a retrospective of paintings by Emil Nolde. The exhibit included gardens inspired by paintings in the exhibition. That's a nice concept, in case you're in the museum business and can put the idea to use.

As I sat, a creature came flying through the air. It was an enormous, vibrantly green dragonfly. Hello! I said, as I always do. They are such graceful and playful characters, zipping this way and that, their long bodies stretching back from busy wings. The photo above looks like sidewalk and grass until you see the intersecting lines of a dragonfly in head-on flight. I took exactly two photos at considerable distance with an iPad, and here they are.

This evening, I saw a line of motion in the yard with a cat running in lively pursuit. A dragonfly! I'd never seen one in our backyard in Flein before. Yesterday on a hike we saw shimmery blue damselflies above water lilies on a woodland lake. Back when we lived in Salt Lake City, dusk would bring a swarm of the black and white striped dragonflies I call zebraflies. They clustered over our front lawn as if they were holding a convention (we think it was because we never treated our lawn with chemicals and because of the desert flowers in the curb strip, but secretly I always hoped they came because Simon sent them). The dragonfly I saw this evening was large, like the green one in Baden Baden. It flew in circles around the sculpture in our backyard. That gets my attention, because the sculpture is a companion to the one on Simons's grave in Salt Lake City (see slide show 4). 

The cat in the photo above (from a while ago) is Sam. He's the nearly identical brother to our other cat, Simon. Yes, we have a cat named Simon. And a deceased son named Simon. But it's more normal than it sounds. The cats came with their names (and probably caught our attention that way). Simon-the-Boy knew Simon-the-Cat. There has never been any danger of mixing them up.

Simon-the-Cat looked five years younger than his current eleven as he followed the dragonfly this afternoon. Then suddenly he was aloft, his long body stretching four or five feet off the ground. The dragonfly slipped away from his reaching claw, flew higher, and disappeared over the trees.

The tenth anniversary of Simon's death has given impulse for deep reflection. The Anniversary approaching post with all its links remains available for reading any time, but I'm removing the link to the video with the slide show of Simon's life. If you missed your chance to view it, drop me a note, and I'll figure something out. chapterthis@umich.edu