We All Pick Sides

 At 24 years old I was a First Officer assinged to the Cable Ship Global Mariner docked and home ported in the great bluw color city of Baltimore Maryland. I worked the midnight to 8 am shift. I loved it for all of the reasons the rest of the deck offiers disliked. I was on my own and didn't have to put up with the frontal and not so obvious displacement of my sexual status and the marimtime inducstries disgruntled attitude towards it. 

There was never a moment that I felt appreciated, needed, wanted or safe. 

I slept from 3 pm to 11 pm, woke up, put on my khaki uniform and wished the world a sleepy few hours as I mae sure the stumblers made it up the gangway safely. There were rounds to be made every hour. Fires to be kept absent, and kitchen songs to sing me midway through the shift into the dawn

I had discovered running at the Academy. The only way to get off the Academy grounds was to use your own two legs. It was an escape as much as it was a freedom.

Running got me acquainted with the edges, periphery and genuine life of Baltimores less touristy spots. I ran every day before lunchtime for the rest of you. Hours of weaving down back streets, front streets and main streets. I watched the seals dance in their circular pool as the fish defrosted behind the scenes. They were my good morning colleagues. They reminded me that I had a calling elsewhere and a job to do to help propel me to pastures later. On one of these days I ran by a little bar on Fort Avenue. It was a sailors bar. Raw, unadulterated by fresh paint, and a feminine touch. Dark, quiet in the daylight, a parlor for spilling sea stories and alter egos after dark.  This particular morning the clean up was underway. The doors were open, the interior was dark, and a small black and white ball of fluff was launched out the door onto my traveling sneakers. A meow erupted. A scant piece of fur had vocal cords and a preference for kinder foregivings. I abruptly stopped, scooped and back tracked. To this day I have an impossible time seeing cruelty unfold in front of me. I cradled that kitten like he was Faberge glass. I pleaded for the only home he had ever known to consider offering him a short reprieve. Seems he had made a friend or two there. A hand out as his affirmation of acceptance. And the management wouldn't have freeloaders. 

My life at this time was four months aboard the Mariner and four months in Blacksburg awaiting a slot to open in vet school, or a call back to sea.

I had a decision to make. I could leave this tuxedo on the streets on Fort Avenue, a busy raucous place, or, I could find him a happier ending than his head smashed under a tire, or by some angered bar keep. There was a local shelter. I knew it well. It was a place I had volunteered at for years. The current daily kill numbers were above 70. This kitten had three days to find his owner or he was sent to the freezer to be picked up and disposed of as land fill. 

These are the moments that make the WOman. 

This one moment was where I had to decide who I really was and how I was going to answer harder questions down the road.

I don't remember how I secured that kitten into my running clothes and made it the mile back to the ship, but I did.

I kept him in my room for the two months it took to get my discharge papers,, until the last day aboard. I was called to Capt Kelly's office and had my ass handed to me. He was so angry at me, and looking back for very good reason. I headed home with my kitten, who by then I had named Boots, and left for vet school 6 years later.

There are always sides to pick. That day I chose his. I chose to be kind over being right. 

In the many years that have passed between my first day with Socks and my last case at my veterinary clinic just the other day, it has occurred to me that there is a degree of courage that being a vet for the patients requires.