All meringue
I've made a resolution to
keep this space happy and deceptively light,
like freshly whipped cream, like chocolate
souffle or mousse, like flaky layers of puff
pastry. The blog will be fluffy. All meringue.
OK.
Maybe this resolution is what is keeping me
from being able to think, it's keeping my brain
tied in knots and my fingers from the keyboard.
Maybe what I want to write about can't possibly
be lightened.
My trip to Seattle was fabulous, full of good
food and good company, lots of walking, and an
appropriately scary (and sometimes sad)
ghost
tour, but there was an
undercurrent of tension that was based on an
old and tiresome narrative. And,
frustratingly, it's something that I don't
feel comfortable writing about here, for
various reasons, one of which is I don't
want to indulge
myself, would
rather just give it up because resolving it
by writing about its manifestation is
impossible and complicated. At one point,
this would have been perfect blog fodder,
but I have no desire to go there any more.
How much public kvetching and self-analysis
can one person do?
The kid's first day of school was also
fabulous. We hung out with him while the
classes lined up, even got to accompany the
kids to the classroom (parental paparazzi, with
our cameras and our shout-outs to the stars),
and then off we went. There was no trauma. He
emerged at the end of the day unscathed. He was
ready for it, to be with kids his own age,
learning and playing.
There he is, a normal little kid doing normal
little kid things. I've been holding memories
of my own early childhood at a distance, the
multiple moves and mid-year school changes and
how they affected me. I am not him. His father
and I are giving him things that my parents
weren't capable of giving me. I've even been
coming around to the idea that I might be a
good mother, not a perfect one, but a
good-enough one, that maybe he really can grow
up like a normal, well-adjusted kid.
So, here the words are, light, but not overly
airy, with a touch of sugar, yeah. The struggle
will be what to work on if I'm not going to go
heavy, dark, and bitter. How do I frame my
writing life again after a month or more off,
after years of indulging my dark predilections?
I have stories in progress. I can always turn
to memoir
as long as I
give it a happy twist. Otherwise, I'm out of
ideas, feel like my imagination is stuck,
stuck on me-me-me. I worry that I will never
transcend the mundane.
I am so tired of me. I want to write about you,
your quirks and funny ways, they mystery of how
you make decisions, the way you exist in the
world.
I guess we should start hanging out more, me
and you, meeting in the coffee shops, skimming
the whipped cream off our café mochas, burning
our tongues on chai. We'll speak low over
glasses of wine, bump into each other on the
BART train, in the library, at the dry
cleaners, while walking down the street. I'm
certainly not going to find you in the guest
room, standing by my desk. It's time to get off
my ass and walk out the door.
I'll meet you at Caffe Trieste tomorrow at
nine.
Image by Kristin A
of the
Meringue Bake Shop.
Dispatch from a foreign land
As my plane landed, coming down low over the highway, I had a flash of driving to what was then called National Airport with the philosophy student who broke my heart, standing beside his car in the dark, waiting for the rush of the landing planes, with their high-pitched whines and low rumbles, chilled by the fast wind and the thrill of wondering if one would miscalculate, would get too low.
On the light rail from the airport, zipping past a construction site, catching a glimpse of a worker through an open window, I remembered how D smelled at the end of the day, like spice and spent sweat; his steel-toed boots next to the laundry pile, the t-shirts he wore with the sleeves cut off, the bandana he wrapped around his head to catch the drips.
And remembering what it is like to be independent, to get somewhere on my own power.
Sometimes I have a strong desire to escape my life, but what I think I really need is a chance to be on my own occasionally, to show myself that I am a separate human being. The challenge is how to create this feeling in my day-to-day life.
Image: View from my hotel room (taken with cell phone camera).
I'm not back yet
But I will be next month.
My mother's visit, followed by the kid's
illness, my trip away at the end of this week,
and the beginning of the school year are
conspiring to keep me from blogging.
Thank you for all your kind words on Zoe and
writing, and see you in September!
Images: Top, the Golden Gate bridge from the Marin Headlands. Bottom, trying out some doors at Battery Mendell in the Headlands, where they apparently paint to match the ocean.
The cold cold ground
We took Zoe to the vet yesterday and sat with her while the drugs did their work. Then we brought her home and buried her in the backyard. Later, we will get a marker, maybe plant a tree. When I woke up this morning, I thought: now we can never leave this place. Because she is here.
When Kevin announced that he wanted to be buried, it seemed bizarre. In the ground? Smothered under dirt and grass and rock? In the end, we did it. Half of Kevin's ashes were buried in an urn in a cemetery in Chestertown, the same cemetery that my friends and I used to cut through freshman year in college to go to 25-cent draft night at Newt’s. My mother spent the first two years after Kevin's death driving every weekend from the Washington, DC suburbs to his grave, bringing Woody the dog along until Woody got lymphoma and died. Gradually she visited less and less until her trips tapered to one or two a year.
The tapering was bound to happen. Time changes grief, makes it less of a physical ache than an emotional one. Talking to the air can be as satisfying as a graveside monologue. Kevin wanted his little plot of land and he got it, with a stone that my mother dragged out of the woods and a beat-up concrete angel propped next to it. When we want to visit, he’s there. Except, of course, he’s not.
My husband dug the hole yesterday morning. He dug it deep, struggled to cut through cloying clay. We looked at Zoe one last time, touched her soft fur, and told her we loved her before rewrapping her body and lowering it into the grave. I tossed in the first shovelful of earth. It's a strange sensation to cover a body with dirt. It feels wrong or maybe stark, a jarring acknowledgement of death. The towel still contained her warmth. She was alive an hour before we buried her. Surely this was a mistake.
Eventually what is left of Zoe return to the earth. She will live on in our memories and in our stories. The cats we have now will grow old with us. Their time will come. I'll be dust myself some day, my ashes tossed to the wind or scattered into the water, or perhaps sitting in an urn on a mantel or a closet shelf, waiting to be forgotten.
A tribue to Zoe-cat
My first husband and I were newly married and had just bought a house. The realtor’s partner’s daughter had found this malnourished, Giardia-ridden kitten in a German Village alleyway. Once the kitten was done with her medications, would we like to take her in? We already had a cat, Sidney, and a sheltie dog, Loudon. But our new house was big and Mr. X and I had both grown up with animals and we were reveling in domesticity. So a month after we moved in, Zoe moved in too.
Her first night with us was not auspicious. She hid in the litterbox, growling and crying while Sidney lurked silently outside. Eventually she came out and showed her true assertive nature, but those first days of intimidation marked their relationship. She preferred the laps of humans to feline company.
Zoe has remained kitten-sized. In her early and middle years, she was actually somewhat zaftig. Rubenesque. In the past year and half or so, she has gotten heartbreakingly skinny. Her fur goes unwashed and she spends much of her time asleep. Her kidneys are failing. Her mind wanders. She is not the cat she used to be.
So here’s to Zoe, the cat who used to trill every time she leapt, the kitty who convinced us that she couldn’t jump up to her food bowl but who later scaled our 8-foot fence, not once, but twice, the tiny powerhouse who had to be subdued at the vet’s office for any procedure. Zoe who confidently crawled around the cab of the pick-up truck while Mr. X drove from Ohio to Washington, DC and Sidney mewled in terror from his carrier. Zoe who braved the long flight from DC to San Francisco. Zoe, the cat who used to perch herself up to bat at my dental floss every night.
It is time to let her go.
Tomorrow morning she will join the others,
among them cats Regis, Sheba,
Frank,
Liz, Ming, Nicky and Sidney, and dogs Greta,
Buttons, Barney, Samantha, Louise,
Augie, Woody, and Loudon. I’ll ask myself again
why we do this, why we take in animals who will
be with us for such a short time.
It’s about love. Love comes with the threat,
the almost-guarantee, of loss and we take it on
anyway, hoping that the sadness won't outweigh
the joy.
Image: Top, Zoe in her
rounder days. Bottom, Zoe in her kitten
days.