Fine Print

On Love, and Heartbreak, and Pets

A dear friend of mine lost her cat of 18 years last week.  She wrote me asking, essentially, whether she will ever love again. I thought about what we’ve been experiencing here, these last six months, and I told her this.

***

I cried for a solid two months, I think, after we put Sully to sleep — every night I’d crawl into bed and just weep. It was truly awful. And then I started to feel obsessive, like I had to have another pet as soon as possible. We got Captain Catty four months after Sully died, and even as I was arranging to go get him I worried I was making a mistake, because the cat was never going to fill the hole Sully left — and why was I even trying to fill it? I almost felt like I was betraying Sully.

But after a few weeks I realized I was falling in love with Smokey — and yet at the same time I was still in love with Sully. Smokey is so different that it no longer felt like I was cheating on Sully, just finding another outlet for all my furry love to go. We talk about Sullivan all the time. Sometimes we even compare Smokey to Sully, which is patently unfair, even though Smokey is frankly a lot easier than Sully was (cats are easier than dogs, there’s no denying it).  Does this make any sense?

I’m still not really over Sullivan’s death and I don’t know that one really DOES get over it, I think one just gets used to it. I am still sad that she’s not here — in addition to Smokey (not that they’d get along). But I’m not sad that Smokey isn’t Sully — I honestly love this cat, and I think it’s been really healing to have him here. Life without a pet just seems wrong in every way, to me. 

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Having a pet? There is always an end. We know it. And yet we sign ourselves up for this certain pain. Are we masochists? Just plain fools? Makes me think of that famous line from Annie Hall — we know we’re insane, but we need those eggs.

Ideas for a bed (by Stella)

Ideeas for a bed. By Stella.

1. Bed that has munkee bars.  

2. Bed that is mad of pilos.

3. Bed edabel. [“Made of lollipops,” Stella explains.]

4. Bed for a hog.

Ick. Oh, and ICK. Did I mention ICK!?

When I picked up Stella at school today, she opened her hand to show me a tiny baby tooth. “Stella!” I cooed. “You lost a tooth today, sweetie?” 

“No,” she said, shaking her head.  ”It’s not mine.”

I stopped in my tracks.  ”What do you mean it’s not yours?”

“It’s Emmet’s.” (A boy in her kindergarten class.) 

“Honey…did Emmet lose this today?”

“No. He lost it a long time ago. He lost TWO teeth,” she explained.

“So why do you have it?”

“I told him I needed it, so he gave it to me.”

Turns out Stella has been longing for her first visit from the Tooth Fairy for a looooong time, and will probably have to wait a long while yet, given how late her teeth arrived in the first place. My understanding is that late teethers lose their teeth on the late side, and Stella’s first tooth came in at around 14 months.  So she struck a deal with her classmate, and planned to put the tooth under her pillow to fool the Tooth Fairy into coming early.

Funny how teeth from my own children are adorable, but a tooth from someone else’s child is…a tooth from someone else’s child. “Don’t you think the Tooth Fairy will know it’s not yours, honey?” I prodded. “Don’t you think she wants your tooth to be from YOU?”

“I bet she thinks a tooth’s a tooth,” Stella shrugged.

Overheard

Lila: We had a substitute today.

Stella: Who was she?

Lila: I don’t remember her name.

Stella: What did she look like? Was she fat?

Lila: (pause) I wouldn’t call her fat…

Stella: Well, I mean, was she kind of like Mommy?

****

In other news, the cat seems to feel quite at home now.

What a cat isn’t

What a cat isn’t is a dog. I miss Sullivan, our adorable naughty puppy, so sharply it still takes me by surprise. I haven’t written about her death because, frankly, it’s too hard. I start, I cry, I stop. Suffice to say: We’ve been grieving. And I knew if I tried to get another dog, we would be comparing that dog to Sullivan, probably unfairly.

But we need something furry around here. And a cat — a cat is a cat. A whole different thing. So we decided to plunge into something new. 

Meet Smokey. He’s nine weeks old, and it’s his first day here. He’s freakin’ out a little bit, but every now and then he darts up to me, gives me a little sniff, and looks at me like, “Huh.”  Which I’m taking as a good sign.

A little shout-out

FYI, this is not where my kids will be going to camp. They’re going to attend these fantastic new summer programs — a week of cooking and a week of art — and a couple weeks of Mass Audubon camp, also known as Trial by Mosquitoes.  But, if they weren’t attending those camps, they’d be going here.

Have you ever wondered where yarn comes from? Would you like to know which garden plants make dyes? Have you ever wished you could work on a farm? If you answered yes to any or all of these questions, then this camp is for you! We will take care of some wooly animals, while enjoying the views at Bramble Hill Farm. We will tend the NEW fiber and dye garden, where we’ll grow plants that can be used for spinning yarn and for dyes. We will also take some hikes and learn about local wild plants that are good for fiber and dyeing. Watching these plants be spun into yarn and cordage is as magical as Rumpelstiltskin spinning flax into gold!

If I were the right age, I’d maybe even attend myself. And not just because one of my dearest friends happens to be the director of this camp, and the driving force behind its awesomeness.

Everything I ever wanted

This afternoon — standing at the kitchen counter, glancing up to look at my daughters playing in the afternoon sunshine, kneading a hunk of pizza dough for their dinner, vaguely aware of an NPR commentator intoning in the background — this afternoon, I felt a sudden realization. This is everything I ever wanted.

It’s a feeling that can’t be forced, I find. I remember having the same epiphany one day in college, walking uphill to a morning class one fall. My book bag was heavy against my back, and I was taking in the Vermont fall colors, thinking about the date I would have with my new boyfriend that evening — the boyfriend who I already kind of knew, deep down, would one day be my husband. And a little bubble of happiness popped, and I realized: This is it. This is what I’d been waiting for.

I know the mood won’t last — I know I’ll be griping about some small thing, maybe even ten minutes from now. But when contentment settles in, I have to stop and notice.

April, come she will

The weather today is insanely beautiful.  Too hot, even, but I know it’s fleeting, and so I appreciate it for what it is. Why can’t I do this in the dead of summer — recognize the brevity of the season, and accept it for its beautiful, ephemeral self? 

Less thinking. More sunning. 

(Photo taken today by my friend Rachel on the Hipstamatic for iPhone. ‘Cause if there’s one thing for sure, it’s that I’m a hipsta.)

Everyone was out today — crawling into the sunshine after a long gray winter. I was reminded of how I started this blog — as a log of everyone I met during my walks downtown. I might need to resurrect that theme.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl

My dear friend Pam McMahon is a portraitist. Her rendition of Stella takes my breath away.