Mother Insists They’re Called Power Animals

Adieu, Garp. We thought you and Freddie Mercury might overlap, but God didn’t want to give me more than I could handle. Or maybe God didn’t want the children to have to feel conflicted when Freddie ate you. If you are inside her now, thank goodness it is only in spirit. We have placed your ashes out of reach.

I am no cat apologist. Particularly before my children became blindingly allergic to them, Helen and Garp were two of my favorite members of the family. My motherly instinct to forgive destructive behaviors extended to them, and I replaced sofas and tolerated cat litter as if I never expected to live in a grown-up’s house. The cats were even allowed to pace around at dinner parties, inevitably jumping into laps or onto broad shoulders, until at last a hairball in a pool of beurre blanc convinced me cats should be heard and not seen.

Freddie’s arrival has, in a different way, returned the house to a nursery scene, with squeaky toys underfoot and a play yard in the family room. She is learning not to bite except when she is feeling playful or greeting a stranger, and if I offer her a very smelly treat, she comes when I call her name.

My daughter told me I have been even happier since she got here, which confirms for me that she (and not Lagavulin, which is what I think I told Facebook,) is my spirit animal*. I’m definitely happy I didn’t have to glue her ears to get them to stand up. Beyond that I don’t think it’s a very good idea to reflect on one’s happiness. That will only give your puppy more time to chew up your Fendi pumps.

*My mother’s spirit animal is a giraffe, but she never got to live with one, so I’m still going to assume hers is a liturgical clown.

Feline Blindness, American Positivity, Otherwise German

I closed my blind, seventeen year-old cat in the space underneath the freezer drawer recently. He has lost so much weight since his sister died that he fit without causing the door to catch. His meow, which guests routinely mistake for a baby’s whimper, sounded distant, the way it sounded on mornings I used to discover him outside the kitchen slider after a rogue night on the deck.
What is the word that means the same thing as widow, but refers instead to one left behind by a half-sibling? In German, of course, it’s Halbgeschwisterwitwe. Maybe it’s the same in English but just not very common here*.

If it’s true that emotions affect our physical well-being, I ache to think I may have contributed to Garp’s health problems as a sibling-widower by going on and on in front of him about getting a puppy. I wonder if he understands the power of positivity.

A few weeks ago I added both good energy and electrolytes to my physical therapy regimen, and my leg has stopped hurting when I run uphill. For the purpose of running euphoria, I am tempted to have warm thoughts even more often–it seems to work for Kilian Jornet–but I guess I’m a little bit afraid of losing my edginess and my dirty Hendrick’s martinis.

The German word for children-who-are-gradually-getting-more-allergic-to –their- seventeen-year-old-sibling-widowed-cat-while-they-wait-to-get-a-puppy is not used in English because we don’t like to admit the truth of it, just as we don’t read our children the original Grimm’s Fairy Tales. In either case, we hate to see our children teary and bloodshot.

*e.g. Schadenfreude is in Webster’s Dictionary, but we don’t use it very much because the sentiment is so un-American.

Cat Hospice, Salmon Breakfast, Hashtag German Shepherd

The cats are 16 now, which makes me—well I must have been quite young when I got them. Garp, in particular, is really slowing down. I can remember when he used to scare a mouse so badly I’d have to climb up onto a barstool to rescue it from the top of a curtain rod. Now, if anything, he tends to stand droopily in front of the stove, nodding at the hole behind it where I already knew the mice were getting inside in the first place.

A year ago, when he took a sudden turn, I drove Garp to the vet and prepared myself. This was a cat with fifteen good years behind him of ravaging carpet, knocking glasses of water off counter tops in the middle of the night, and leaving puddles of bile in the path of my bare, uncaffeinated feet after waking me up at 5:30am to feed him. I tried to communicate to the vet the complexity of my feelings. I didn’t know, for example, if such a thing as hospice care existed for cats. As a gesture, I agreed to pay $287.00 to send some of his blood work to a lab in Michigan, and as a result, I have had to squeeze an expensive brown placebo gel onto his salmon guts feast every 5:30am since.

It’s true your relationship with your cats is a lot like the one you have with your children. You are always going to have one favorite, although sometimes it’s one and sometimes it’s the other, depending, for instance, on which one has more recently cost you sleep, or resisted brushing, bathing, or nail clipping with more vigor. Isn’t there something in one of the main parenting books about children being welcome members of the family, but not the darn centers of it? Well, I’m definitely not letting the cats be in charge—is there a bumper sticker that says that, or only the one that says the opposite?

Storyboarding, Old-timey War, Legacy

Hmm. I hope I haven’t been confusing having strong opinions with saying everything I’m thinking, because according to “friends” I do a lot of the second thing. I do have some extremely strong opinions for a housewife, so after a month or so of reflection, meditation, and storyboarding Rosamunde Portsmouth—when you know you have a franchise on your hands you need to have a solid understanding of a character’s trajectory before you begin—I’ve decided to start writing down my thoughts again. And because it’s not the 70’s anymore, except in women’s denim, I’m doing it publicly.

I don’t want to say I’m a loose cannon, because I don’t want my mom to text me to correct my grammar and admonish me not to use the language of (old-timey) war. Funny I get so much advice from her now, because when I was trying to grow up, most of the guidance I got from my parents was probably too subtle. Certainly, there was plenty of theatrical gesturing across the dinner table whenever I slurped or slumped or used an index finger to push aspic onto my runcible spoon. And I think my bedtime stories were often parables, but there were so many names to keep track of that it could be hard to follow the subtext. I feel like I could have used a really practical directive now and then—something like “don’t shave your eyebrows” or “cutting bangs isn’t going to help.”

Is worldliness a good thing, or is that Weltschmerz? Anyway, I know I have those things now, but I still don’t feel the need to go advising everyone I meet, except when it comes to oven drying un-flavorful (or overripe) tomatoes, because there’s almost no tomato that can’t be rescued by seasoning it and putting it in a low oven with a little olive oil. I guess I also say things to my children that might come off as advice, but I think that’s because I want to be sure they will be able to form an outline of me in their memories after they have moved 5 hours away by car and our only communication is Words With Friends. I want to be sure they will be able to tell their spouses or live-in pets what their mom always used to say–for instance: “you realize that doesn’t match.”

Actually, kids—if you ever read this—and you ever read The Great Santini, I can only hope you’ll think of me as part Bull Meechum and part Maria Von Trapp, since I also taught you to sing in harmony.

Your Microbiome, Yusuf Islam, Not Learning

I try not to worry about all the antibiotics I’ve taken over the years having killed off my microbiome. After all, what can I do about it now, except take lots of probiotics, and, of course, eat very little, because the antibiotics have also killed off my metabolism. Don’t take my word for this–I have a terrible memory, and even if that is exactly what I read, heard or saw somewhere, you probably shouldn’t listen to me, particularly about eating lightly, because the latest recipe I tried for homemade marshmallows—it’s from Epicurious, so you can look it up–is very manageable, and, especially roasted, they melt beautifully in full cream hot chocolate. (¼ c Dutch processed cocoa, ½ c sugar, 1 c cream, 3 c whole milk; then if you have any leftover shards of Callebaut from your Christmas cookies, stir that in, and ¼ c of spirits to make Downton more fun, or a candy cane for Christine).

I was right to review The Accursed when I did. If I had waited until I knew the ending, it might have taken some of the joy out of, well, let’s say the journey of reading the book. If there is a parallel here to life, or to running, or to attempting a croquembouche, I hope you will ignore it. I try not to deal in morals. Do you hear me J.C.O.? In fact, I’m guessing it will be even better if I review the book I’m about to start, before it has been soured for me in any way.

Besides my indifference, at age five, to the Booker Prize, I can only explain never having read Midnight’s Children by admitting that back when I had nothing but time to read, and complain to my parents that I didn’t want to leave the car to look at paintings or state parks, I didn’t realize Salman Rushdie was interesting, and I was confused about whether he wanted to kill Cat Stevens, or was it the other way around? I understood Natalie Merchant had an opinion since she took “Peace Train” off In My Tribe, but my young adult life was full of so many preoccupations* that I didn’t give Salman Rushdie another thought until two of my favorite female role models, Padma Lakshmi and Terry Gross, rediscovered him—each in her own way. Review: I expect a bit of playfulness out of Midnight’s Children, because in his Fresh Air interview, Rushdie admitted an addiction to Angry Birds. Padma can’t have put up with much of that, though, so what was the attraction during their three-year marriage? I can only surmise that I am also in for a richly detailed history of post-colonial India, with a touch of Kaffir lime juice for balance.

*e.g. Garp got a fish hook stuck in his mouth, outside of normal vet hours, and was returned in a cardboard box (alive).

Dream Animals, Chris Farley, I Lie

My teenage whininess forced my mother to join a Jungian women’s group, where she learned her Dream Animal is a giraffe. Maybe it was a book group and a Jungian analyst? It’s possible I’m conflating some things. When it comes to personal minutiae, the responsibility for keeping track flows more from parent to child than the other way around, eh?

Anyway, this blog, which I started as an assignment for a class I’m taking, got leaked a little bit because of @kplawson9’s enthusiasm for social media, and I was reminded why I have always liked to write a once-a-year Christmas letter on a typewriter, glue a Polaroid or a candy cane to it, and mail it via USPS to anyone whose address I might still have in my little red planner from the Coach outlet, Senior Skip Day, Norfolk Academy, 1994. Remember when Chris Farley used to interview celebrities on SNL and then immediately berate himself for whatever he said? I think it’s kind of obvious that I live like Chris Farley: balls out, immediately regretting almost everything I say.

So I wanted to make it clear that in my previous post I meant “Dream Animal” in a Jungian sense, to the extent I remember, or ever knew what that means. I don’t dream of owning a German Shepherd in the same way I dream of being able to kitesurf, or being a bartender/ski bum in Aspen with no children. Though I do seem to do a lot of daydreaming about it, and to friends who’ve apparently heard a little much about the potential unrecommended dog, it’s become known as my direwolf, and I don’t even know if those exist outside of Game of Thrones. Don’t tell me, because I enjoy imagining myself as Daenerys, with my big loyal direwolf following me to Whole Foods and Montessori. I know–Daenerys has dragons. But that’s not very likely to happen is it? The last thing I want is to end up with an unruly, un-furry dragon, and the whole de-clawing issue again. All I meant was, when I’ve taken the right combination of sleep medications, or performed my yoga fire breaths–this second thing is an aspirational lie, ugh, and an unintentional pun, which I hate but now I’ve said it and can’t un-type–to dream vividly, the animal most likely to appear is a wolf-like dog. But I will do my best to remember not to get one, even though I’m sure they are available online.

I lied about the babies, too. I’m not going to talk about babies.
Next time: I explain my first post, about Austin, which was really more of a Tweet, or a Tumbl? Fingers crossed the topic will be covered in my next class.

Tattoos, Pets, Life Lessons

In a few weeks, my older child, a daughter, will be eleven, so I guess it’s time to start talking to her about not getting a tattoo. But you know, these days you go in for Restylane and Coolsculpting and your dermatologist asks if you want her to take off the tramp stamp while you’re in there. So maybe that’s not even a thing anymore?
I did bring up her changing body the other day–I mean, not hers specifically–God, she would kill me–and she really wasn’t receptive at all. So I think what I’m going to do to kind of check that box is to give her the talk about pet ownership. I’m not at all nervous about this one because I have given this talk to several of my newly married friends when they wanted to get pets either to “test things out” before they started having children, or just, I don’t know, travel less and spend their extra money on emergency vet bills.
Personal story: A long time ago I used to have a job. I won’t say what it is because that would be too personal a story, but I took both it and myself seriously enough that I believed the time was wrong for my dream animal, a German Shepherd (or similar). So I got onto the dial-up internet and ordered some Burmese cats. (From Texas! Like I’m going to order cats from Burma/Myanmar.) They are still alive. They have ruined most of my furniture because I used to be nice and I didn’t have them de-clawed and now the vet won’t do it.
It is much less humane to have two healthy cats removed than it is to have a cat tattoo removed, and, presumably, even more expensive, because of the discretion involved. Also, the vet bills, food, destroyed furniture and what-not add up. And if you get a dog, you can’t go on vacation. And you’ll stop liking it if you have a baby.

Next: Babies are also more permanent than tattoos.