Last night I dreamt that while in the Boston convention center watching the US Nationals Ice-skaters, Yvette and I turned around because I heard a familiar voice. It was a male friend I did not at first recognize. I felt happy to see a friend here. So aware that when planned last June the Admiral was to be home, perhaps very sick, perhaps doing chemotherapy, but there to be emailed to, and with pussycats.
He would have planned things for us, taken us to airport, been there to pick us up, or at least home waiting for us. Not dead.
Just now: braved fierce cold and winds and subway to lunch in older part of Boston Avery UnNewyoyk like pub which seemed to care about privacy and quiet. Now watching spectacular junior ice-skating ballroom like dancing of couples. And at long last to Night and Day You are the One … only you and me beneath the moon and the sun …
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I have been reading jthe comments on Michelle Dockery as the widowed Lady Mary Crawley. At long last no performing, no calculation. Why should she go through some process out of which she gets over it? Penelope Wilton in her finest moments since she was in Falling (film adaptation of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s novel). And to bring in Joanna David as a congenial third, stroke of emotional rightness; Tom, our widower, cannot see what she means to share because of class barrier, but we can. What distinguishes these two episodes is the respect given, (however qualified) to the experience of ravaging. As Joanne Froggart will show us next week when she is raped, these things alter you forever.
Missing my pussycats who are kindly visited and played with by Caroline, but are missing us.
Why must we have just Lord Grantham’s dog, and repeatedly from the back? As some publicly unadmitted tensions (probably much worse) keeps decimating the staff (not just the actors for Sybil, Matthew, Miss Obrien, but threats from Maggie Smith each year, a new producer and Daisy’s father-in-law, Mr Mason gone missing), perhaps bring in a pet cat who are famously (but not truly) seen as oblivious to nuances of hurt?
Sylvia
Under the Sign of Sylvia II 
I like your idea. Isis seems to be a one-man dog, and a lot of people in that house need comforting. What better than a cat? And a stray, not one of those fancy long-haired purebreds.
Good to hear from you. I just revised blog after reading your encouraging comment. I thought of your missing cat, Phineas, not forgotten. I wondered how your January going.
I am immobilized; January is difficult for me; both my mother and my friend died this month. Superstitious about going anywhere (my mother died while we were in Aruba, my father seems to always have an ER visit when we’re gone this time of year) but missing the warmth and sunshine of Hawaii which normally I would be anticipating now. Dreadful to admit, but feeling much ambivalence about my father. Cats seem to know I’m down; follow me in every room, take turns climbing into my lap. I’m covered with cat fur.
The 3 people closest to me — now all gone, father, mother, husband (oh how the very word hurts to type) died in very different months. October will never again be the celebratory month it once was. Winter has beauty for me, but now we’ve for genuinely polar weather ( threatening for real) all Impressionists’ snow and NewYorker photos of Central Park on snow more pastoral indulgent than ever. Cats know. Clary grieved intensely while Jim died. Sunday morning they felt Izzy and my going away atmosphere and stuck close. I won’t leave them home alone for a full week again — either Izzy or I should be there for any more time than 4 days.