Originally published in Dec 2022
A very Gentile holiday season to you!
Well, that was a year and then some. Of course I have to start with the event of the season, David and Hannah's June wedding at her parents' home in the northern Chicago suburbs. Their wedding day was perfect, falling towards the end of the broods XIII and XIX cicada emergence, which last occurred synchronously in 1803 (each brood sticking to its own 13-17 year schedule). It was a lovely service (the wedding, I mean, not the cicadas but the cicadas were cool too) performed by the couple's dear friend and former professor and advisor at Sarah Lawrence, Mike Siff. They honeymooned in Barcelona & Sevilla afterwards and brought home a couple of cases of ... COVID. They were fully vaxxed and their symptoms were shortlived, thank goodness.
Geof returned to Greece for the summer, but during his hiatus stateside bought a house an hour outside Houston. He still splits his work time between Thessaloniki, Greece and Medford, OR (the synchronicity of which always makes me smile) but for winter 2025 will be working in Ancona, about a 3-hour drive from Rome on the Italian Adriatic . Some life!
Clara had the most uneventful year of all of us, and Abigail lived pretty large by comparison. Originally feral, she never had much time for toys and is not very playful. I left a box by the front door to recycle but before I had a chance to (who am I kidding? We both know it was at least a week later and I just hadn't bothered moving 3 feet into the hallway to be picked up) Abigail discovered the concept of The Box. Originally she just loved sitting in The Box, but by some fluke she noticed her tail in there. She put 2 and 2 together, and came to the very logical conclusion that chasing her tail was only allowed in The Box. So a couple of times a day she'd get up from her nap, saunter over to The Box, do a lap or two with her tail, then return to what she was doing like she was punching back onto the clock after lunch. This went on for weeks until tragedy struck, and the cleaner recycled The Box. I did my best to replace it (I even wrote Do Not Discard in sharpie on a new one) but like a hamster with the wrong markings she was not fooled, and our lives are all a little emptier without The Box. Poor Abigail had most of her teeth extracted in November. FIV+ kitties are particularly susceptible to infections, and gums are a particularly vulnerable spot, and so the teeth had to go. She had a couple of low energy days, which Clara took as an invitation to exert dominance, followed by a full ten days of hissing and swatting on both sides before the balance of power returned, and peace reigns once again at The Home.
Wishing you a wonderful and prosperous new year. See you in 2025?
Love, Linda
David Gentile & Hannah Bates: 318 Rindge Ave #205, Cambridge, MA 02140
Geof Gentile: 275 Road 66121 Dayton, TX 77535
Linda: twoboysfourcats.com
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