Memorial Day Serendipity

When I got up to pee in the middle of the night, I stepped directly in the nest that Goddess had made while I slept. I jumped a mile in the air and cussed. "Dammit Goddess!" I screamed into the darkness.

Whenever I am traveling, I'm not certain if Goddess misses me or not because she loves her other keepers. It had been Chelsea and Sam this time. But it could just as easily had been Kim or Tony and Margaret or Jeremy and Marie, like it will be tomorrow. And when I'm home consistently here she just goes to sleep in the floor beside where I'm sleeping.

When I'm gone, as I was over the weekend, the first night that I'm back she builds a nest beside me on the floor and then sleeps in the doorway protecting me from whatever it is she thinks might get me. Of course I never remember this and step onto several palms and sticks.

But it is hard to be mad with her. A dog finds a way to let me know that I was missed and she is glad that I am home and that we are together again.

I was in Richmond, Virginia to do the homily at the wedding of Micah and Mary Catherine Berry. Micah is the son of Bill Berry, not the former drummer for R.E.M. but the other one. The one that I went to seminary with.

At one point we were cracking up because it was the first time that we had been to church together in ten years. And it was the first time in twenty-five that we both had ties on at the same time.

The last time, we had committed some unpardonable sin at the seminary and had been summoned to someone's office. We had been ordered to wear ties. So we did. We tied them around our heads as headbands and calmy walked into whosever's office it was. I've forgotten which unpardonable sin that we had committed but I do remember that I got in more trouble than Bill did. Come to think of it, I always seemed to get in more trouble than he did even though he was with me the whole time that we were committing whichever unpardonable sin that we were committing.

So Bill's daughter Amber snapped a picture of us wearing ties and posted it on Face Book. Then Stretch, the offical photographer wanted one of us so we recreated the while tie-as-headband-for-committed-unpardonable-sin thing. I swear I got in more trouble than Bill did again!

We're waiting on Stretch to post the picture.

But I digress. It is Memorial Day. A lot has happened since last Memorial Day and I am spending this one alone. I don't remember the last time that I did that. In fact, I don't think that I have ever spent Memorial Day alone. It's always been filled with family, beach, cookouts, music and love.

Today there is the beach. Music is playing. And there is me.

Well, and Goddess who is laying flat on her back, with all four legs up in the air, tail just a wagging, wanting me to lay in the floor and rub her stomach.

I'll take my serendipity where I can get it.