I’m staying with my friend Mabel, in Westchester. Mabel runs a battleship of a home-front, with innumerable offspring, and a village in staff, not to mention assorted pets, one of which was a week overdue with four heartbeats detected. The expectant mother was a caramel-colored long haired low-rider wiener with old eyes. The father a tiny white puffball that was partial to yapping incessantly. Despite itself the excitable beast was endearing. Even after he left his still moist gnawed T-bone stuffed in between my pillows.

By my second day two of the four children had been dashed to the ER for various conditions, bee sting allergies and the like. I managed to elude too much direct interaction by submerging myself in a lot of very hot baths, or borrowing one of the many cars in the driveway and poking around the neighborhood.

To slot oneself in with a bustling household is an experience. For one thing all the noises are related in some way, unlike a discordant city. Even the yipping tiny dog was more percussion than annoying. I found I liked lounging on the blue chaise in my room, in the terry bathrobe hung in my bathroom, and listening to the sounds of this home.

On my third day I said to my hostess, “I usually spend all my time by myself. But I’m liking this ‘being with people’ thing.”
Mabel frowned at me.
“This is your idea of being with people?” Mabel asked. Her dark eyebrows raised, her black eyes glis

tened and flashed, like trains rattling away into mountain tunnels. “Sitting in your room with your door closed? That’s your idea of being with people?”
We stared at each other. Mabel crossed her arms, and pursed her mouth. “Watch out, bad weather is coming,” she warned, as she turned and left, already dialing on her cell phone.

The bad weather was a freak blizzard, dumping a couple of feet of snow in a matter of hours. It managed to turn off the power for half the county. Friends and neighbors moved in, seeking warmth, until Mabel’s house also lost power. Not to be defeated Mabel bust out years’ worth of camping gear. A brazier and fire was lit, cocoa was miraculously produced bubbling hot.

The many children made games of the snow.

Night encroached and we decamped to nearby hotels. Last thing before abandoning the battleship was to lock up the white dog in Mabel’s bathroom, with bowls of food and water and chews and toys. “Behave, you hear? You’ve caused enough trouble already,” I scolded the energetic powderpuff, meanwhile stroking his impossibly soft fur.

Mabel’s youngest, ten year old Joshua, admonished me, “It’s not trouble. It’s a blessing. New life.”
I have a lot to learn.
Even though the hotel rules were ‘no animals permitted’, thankfully Mabel had thought to smuggle in the wiener where the little dog promptly gave birth. One loss, one breech, three new lives. Hallelujah.