Saving a Rat
Once, a long time ago, when I was visiting my college boyfriend’s family in Vermont, they had all left and I was at their home alone.
They were fancy and had a pool. In that pool, which I was about to swim into all by myself—the greatest of luxuries—was a rat, drowning, barely moving. I don’t know how long he’d been there, but it had been a long time.
I tried to fish him out with the net that people use to skim things off the surface of water, but it couldn’t hold his weight, so I hefted him up and carried him to the grass—a sunny part because he seemed cold—by the pool’s cement surface and watched him while he revived and warmed up and lived.
My boyfriend’s family was not happy that I had saved the rat. I get it. But I was happy that I did.
It’s funny sometimes how the things that we do that seem so natural to us seem so unnatural to other people, right?
This poem reminds me a bit of that. Sometimes life is more about saving the unsavory and unloved than it is about saving the beautiful.
KISS
by Ellen Bass
When Lynne saw the lizard floating
in her mother-in-law’s swimming pool,
she jumped in. And when it wasn’t
breathing, its body limp as a baby
drunk on milk, she laid it on her palm
and pressed one fingertip to its silky breast
with just about the force you need
to test the ripeness of a peach, only quicker,
a brisk little push with a bit of spring in it.
Then she knelt, dripping wet in her Doc Martens
and camo T-shirt with the neck ripped out,
and bent her face to the lizard’s face,
her big plush lips to the small stiff jaw
that she’d pried apart with her opposable thumb,
and she blew a tiny puff into the lizard’s lungs.
The sun glared against the turquoise water.
What did it matter if she saved one lizard?
One lizard more or less in the world?
But she bestowed the kiss of life,
again and again, until
the lizard’s wrinkled lids peeled back,
its muscles roused its own first breath
and she set it on the hot cement
where it rested a moment
before darting off.
Ellen Bass’s poem “Kiss” is from her altogether soul-comforting collection Indigo (public library).
THE SOUP THIS WEEK IS A CREAMY TORTELLINI
This is directly from DAMN DELICIOUS. I do not use the sausage to make it vegetarian. :) You get to choose.
Ingredients
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 pound Italian sausage, casing removed
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium sweet onion, diced
2 teaspoons Italian seasoning
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
4 cups chicken stock
1 (8-ounce) can tomato sauce
1 (3-inch) Parmesan rind, optional
1 (9-ounce) package refrigerated three cheese tortellini
½ bunch kale, stems removed and leaves chopped
⅓ cup heavy cream
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
Instructions
Heat olive oil in a large stockpot or Dutch oven over medium heat. Add Italian sausage and cook until browned, about 3-5 minutes, making sure to crumble the sausage as it cooks; drain excess fat.
Stir in garlic, onion and Italian seasoning. Cook, stirring frequently, until onions have become translucent, about 2-3 minutes; season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Whisk in flour until lightly browned, about 1 minute.
Stir in chicken stock, tomato sauce and Parmesan rind, if using. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until reduced and slightly thickened, about 10 minutes.
Stir in tortellini; cover and cook until tender, about 5-7 minutes.
Stir in kale until wilted, about 1-2 minutes. Stir in heavy cream and basil until heated through, about 1 minute; season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Serve immediately.