Serenity Slurpee

This is what you buy when you are detoxing off one of your antidepressants and are waiting for the doc to refill and you haven’t much to do at your new job and are feeling a bit like a useless appendage.

At home there are two dogs wrecking the house, aided and abetted by one five-month-old kitten to whom you are highly allergic but saved from a hoarding situation and have so far gotten her every shot imaginable and had her treated for fleas, extreme underweight, and an upper respiratory infection. There is a nice home waiting for her once she is cured of all her illnesses.

You survive the dander by hanging out in your room and not letting the pets in while they wreck the house on the other side of the door.

In two days is the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur and while you walk a fine line between Judaism and Catholicism, this is a day you take seriously. And you hope your saving this little baby will somehow convince God to give you a pass for your errors and trespasses of the past year, of which there were a few.

And if you remember, you will say a prayer for all those who broke your heart by not accepting you for who you are and not recognizing that that is what you tried to do for them, grouchy days, sorrowful days, flaws and all. But then you have to send them on their way.  Because they won’t ever get it and it is not your charge to make them.

And there are Serenity Slurpees (Coke!) to savor, and scrawny kittens to rescue and cuddle, and prescriptions to be filled, and though it is hard to be misunderstood, you will fly far from the burning bridge visible from your rear view window, and you will ask God for a fresh start.