A domesticated calico sets her bedroom eyes on a feral Tom...

Last Saturday, Mother illustrated to us what might happen if, say, a person were to light a candle in too close a proximity to a green, leafy object...having had some expertise in the field:

Sometimes a person wants, more than anything, an escape from reality...but poor self perception keeps you locked in that box with nothing to look at it but six tableaus of despair. They begin to close in around you until all you can see is the black and the empty. Mom had the rest of her head shaved yesterday.

She called for me from a sudsy tub last night and looked to me in near panic. Running her hands over her closely cropped hair, she whispered emotionally, "I keep getting more hair out. Do I stay here and keep trying to get it out? Do I just let it fall out on it's own? What do I do?" I didn't have an answer, but I know she didn't really need an answer. A natural soother, strife-cloaker, she was near tears. I poked out my lower lip and knelt before her in quiet invitation to set the sadness free.

"I was just getting to the point where I could walk into a store and not feel like the whole place knew I had a disease. I hate feeling different!" she sobbed. Cancer, as I might have mentioned before, sucks. It strips you naked and then kicks you out into the cold without any indication that you'll be allowed back in. Through all of the dashed hopes and emotional beatings, she has endured like a beacon of everlasting guidance, directing me how to conduct my own life.

Life has just thrown us some major curve balls...and I can't tell you that I feel comfortable holding the bat. All I can promise is that I've been to the bottom before. I've been as low as you can go...and found that hitting bottom is the only way you can really bounce back up. I feel sad and helpless, about my life and Mom's. She goes in for her next round of chemotherapy on Tuesday, and I pray that it does not break her spirit. I pray that I can find that small bill of folded strength that I shoved in a pocket long ago, and use it to pay for the next chapter.

Remember that little orange cat who steals my things, bites me in inappropriate places, and generally makes life as I know it too frustrating for words?

Well, he seems to sense that I could use a friend right about now...and, oddly, it is much appreciated, even from him: