“Sandwich?” Nana Mae asked, as if Amelia Ann’s arrival in the boat were entirely expected. “Nana Mae, Mr. Perkins has dad by the scruff of his neck.” Amelia Ann and Nana Mae often spoke about their family members as if they were cats. Both of them had an easy affinity to felines, and there was just something about having someone by the scruff of his neck that precisely reflected Amelia Ann’s sentiment about what she had just witnessed. It was, after all, quite clear that Norman Perkins had her father in a grip that made him docile and rendered him unable to fight back.

Nana Mae’s thoughts turned to Caroline, her most beloved cat, and the nasty hematoma that had developed on her small ear last week, causing it to flop over and twitch involuntarily. When Nana Mae took Caroline in to get the ear examined, the vet gently reminded her that Caroline was a good two years overdue for her rabies shot and that this was actually a matter that could be of concern to law enforcement. A rabid cat was not what the island needed just now.

“How long will it take the shot to take effect?” Nana Mae had asked as Dr. Meyer held Caroline by the scruff of her neck and administered the vaccination. “Legally, it will take effect immediately. Practically, keep her away from rabid animals for at least a week,” Dr. Meyer had replied with a smirk.

Nana Mae was often dodging both fate and the law in matters that seemed to slip her attention. Were Caroline a cat who ever set foot outdoors, the rabies shot would have been administered on time; Nana Mae would have moved heaven and earth to make sure of that. In important things, she never slipped. Amelia Ann’s arrival in the pontoon signaled a matter of importance had just arrived on her horizon.

It occurred to Nana Mae that perhaps her son was overdue for his rabies shot, in a manner of speaking. Unprotected from psychic domination as she knew he had been for decades, perhaps since the summer of his twelfth birthday, he was an easy target for someone like Norman Perkins.

“Well,” Nana Mae said to Amelia Ann, “you’ve made your way here. So, I’m wondering, what is your current plan of attack for this situation?” Nana Mae and Amelia Ann both knew that the gift they had developed together for spirit travel always served a larger purpose. Their “plan of attack,” as they called it, was always the impetus for such trips as Amelia Ann had just made to the pontoon.
“I don’t quite have one yet,” Amelia Ann replied. “I’m not sure how to fight this one, Nana Mae. It’s bigger than anything we’ve had to deal with before…convincing Abba to let me home school, starting the animal sanctuary in the yard to keep that despicable exterminator from taking out all the prarie dogs, or even figuring out what to do with the well of grief in my stomach that keeps giving me a tight gut…all of those had a plan of attack you and I could describe and carry out. But this one, well…” Nana Mae finished her sentence, “it’s bigger than all of them.” “Yes,” Amelia Ann said almost in a whisper.

“Perhaps the place to start is the end you have in mind,” Nana Mae said, after some contemplation. “Not following you, Nana.” It wasn’t the first time, or the last, that Amelia Ann would have to catch up to Nana Mae.
“I propose a day with Bernie and Ella,” Nana Mae offered in response.

“I’m always up for watching Bernie and Ella blow glass, cut crystal, and weld silver, but I’m not sure how that’s the end I have in mind.” Bernie and Ella Whitcoff had been making jewelry on the island for forty years. Each piece was a mixture of Swarovski crystal hand cut with extra facets—more opportunity for light refraction, Bernie always said, sterling silver hammered into intricate orbs, cubes, and fasteners, and, the best part, glass blown in their garage studio then hand tooled to form miniature replicas of the sea life on the island. Ella and Bernie both had the uncommon gift of being able to make a sea urchin small enough to require a looking glass for Nana Mae to see, or a jellyfish with tiny ethereal tentacles, suspended in ocean blue glass. Never had Amelia Ann seen any jewelry approaching Bernie and Ella’s—it was in a league of its own.

“What do Bernie and Ella do to forge their pieces of jewelry?” Nana Mae asked rhetorically. “I’ve got this one, Nana. They make charts,” Amelia Ann said, with a touch of laughter. “Charts all over their walls, charts that make me dizzy—measurements, color palettes, thematic diagrams, questions about the sea, poems.”

“Precisely. They are masters not only at forging their pieces; they are masters at imagining them. With discipline, inquiry, and analysis. If we ask them in just the right way, I can’t see any reason they would not apply those same skills to honing the vision of the end you have in mind. Then, we work backwards from that end to the problem at hand.” Nana Mae looked out beyond the boat toward the horizon for a long while. A blue heron took flight from the branches of a dead tree at the edge of the river. Amelia Ann watched the heron and kept quiet; she had learned long ago to wait in such moments; Nana Mae’s mind would soon produce something worth the wait.

After the silence, Nana said, “The greatest and most important problems in life are fundamentally insoluble, Amelia Ann,…They can never be solved, but only outgrown…You see, some higher or wider interest appears on the horizon like that heron and broadens the outlook of the watcher. Only then does the insoluble problem lose its urgency. It is not solved logically in its own terms but fades when confronted with a new and stronger life urge.” [adapted from C. Jung.]

“Carl Jung?”
“Now, how do you know that’s not Nana Mae Virden?” Nana asked with the corner of her mouth turned down and her eyebrows lifted just slightly.

“Just a hunch, that’s all.” Amelia Ann replied and then said, with a new resolve of optimism, “let’s get to Bernie and Ella’s. We’ve got some problems to outgrow. No cat needs to be gotten by the scruff of his neck for long; especially not Abba.”