Sitting in the Red Bullet at the Cat Nap Inn

The Cat Nap Inn looked different in the rain. Softer. Like the whole place was exhaling. The elephant ears were having the time of their lives — wide open, shameless, drinking. The cannas leaned in the wind and didn't break. The little citrus tree by the cinderblocks held on. Even the satellite dish on the porch roof looked humble for once.

And the porch — that porch. The same porch where Heather lives now, on the Soul Cloth Sanctuary side. I could just see the edge of it from where I was parked. Dry. Holding. Doing its job whether anybody noticed or not.

I didn't think anything important. That's the truth of it. I sat there and let the rain do the talking. After a day that started with a missing chicken and a long drive out to the county and a train on Highway 99 and a semi-truck I had to ask for help and an exit-58 detour I didn't plan — sitting still in the Red Bullet with the rain coming down was the first thing all day that didn't ask anything of me.

That's a thing nobody really teaches you in recovery, in caregiving, in any of it: how to let the day be the day. How to stop trying to fix the afternoon. How to let the weather take a turn at running things for a while.

The honey badger in me wanted to do. Wanted to check on the coop, move the tarp, bring something in, fix something. But the Sage in me — the part of me that knows when to put the claws down — said sit, baby. Just sit. The rain has this one.

There's an old red dresser out there by the porch. I keep meaning to move it. It's been "I'll move it tomorrow" for longer than I want to admit. Today, in the rain, I looked at it and thought: well, it's still red. It's still standing. It's not asking to be saved today. Sometimes that's the whole lesson. Some things are okay being weathered. Some things keep their color anyway.

I thought about Betty and Lucy. I always do, when it rains hard like this. I thought about Heather on the dry side of the porch, probably tucked up tight, not laying yet but not gone either. I thought about Sire and the long road between us and what I'm still building so the bridge is here when he's old enough to walk it.

I thought about the neighbors and Ralph the rat-raccoon and the cat food lid we cannot keep on. I thought about the liquid soap I still wanted to make tonight. None of it loud. None of it pressing. Just a slow parade of the people and creatures my heart keeps a chair for.

The rain finally eased up. The elephant ears tipped their cups out. The cannas stood back up like they'd been waiting for their cue. I sat one minute longer than I needed to — just to be sure I wasn't going back inside out of duty. When I finally opened the door of the Red Bullet, the air smelled like wet clay and green and the kind of clean that only happens after the sky has been honest with you for a while.

Heather was on the porch. Of course she was. She watched me come up the path like she'd been waiting. Maybe she had. Maybe she just liked the rain too.

That was the whole afternoon. A chicken came home. A storm came through. A Honey Badger sat still long enough to remember she's allowed to.

Sit a minute. Let the rain have it. The work will still be there when the sky's done talking.