Lucy Fur
I'm trying to stop care-taking y'all so much. While I love you, deep down in the whole of my soul, and I want only the best, softest, most excellent and healthy outcome/s for you and your every dream, whim, desire and endeavor, it's been pointed out to me that I am a Caretaker in the not-great-nor-necessarily-that-healthy sort of way that's not so hot for you or for me. I get too invested. I'm a little too bossy, I worry too much about you, and I don't leave you in peace to try/succeed/fail/tie the game the way I should.
This can be illustrated (and it's on my mind) because of a tiny silly thing I just did with me best and brightest love, my darling lass the Lucy dog. Lucy is old. She's twelve this year, and has started to show her age. A few months ago, overnight, her fuzzy black belly turned silvery white. Her vision may be going- she's been bumping my hand with her nose a lot as I give her her old lady glucosamine biscuits as though she can't quite see them, and when we walk every morning she now brushes my leg with her left side, to keep herself on track or to reassure herself that I'm right there. Used to be walking was a mighty strain on both of us as she pulled (coyly, yet stubbornly, as Chows are wont to do) to one side like a team of dogdamned Clydesdales. Walking together is easy these days, and much slower than she's ever allowed in the eleven years I've known her.
She sleeps outside my bedroom door most nights now, something she's never liked (typically she preferred to sleep on the couch-she's-not-allowed-to-sleep-on, jumping down quickly every morning to pretend she's really been sleeping on the floor all night the way she's supposed to, honest, as I turn the corner on the livingroom). Her hearing is really going- physically, or in an "I'm a senior and I don't give a fuck if you've been calling me for 10 minutes I have important sniffing, stretching or just lying here in the cool grass business to attend to before I'll notice you bellowing for me" way, I can't quite tell.
Anyway, she's showing her age a lot and it worries me. There's nothing I can do to stop it, of course, and I wouldn't try, but as I tend to do with most of my beloveds I fuss, and I worry. I worry about her arthritis, I worry about her canine mental health, I worry about her maybe hurting herself in some small way and the rapid downward slide from the instant when she cracks an old hip to the terrible moment in a vet's office when I might have to say yea or nay to putting her down because her suffering is insurmountable and she's had enough of living and her time here has become more pain than enjoyment.
We're having our morning wakeuo in the front yard. I'm shooting up on the porch (coffee and cigarettes, fool) and she's lying near me thinking dog thoughts and surveying her yardly domain. Suddenly her nemesis appears on the fence. A squirrel, bastard imp of mischevious evil that Luce's been trying to put a stop to since she was a puppy. While she's never laid a tooth on one, she never stops trying. She will capture one someday, and she will chew it and possibly eat the entire damn thing and she will vanquish it and all will be right in her world.
Off she shoots, silent and quick, gone from my side to the fence in a blink. She moves fast for a 90 year old woman with arthritis and Lyme disease. Around the side of the house they go. I putter with my email, sip my coffee, drag my cigarette. A minute or two passes. No sound from around the side of the house. Another long minute passes and I call her (quietly, it's early and I'm a very good neighbor). Nothing. I call her again, a little louder. Nothing. I begin the process of imagining what terrible thing might have befallen her as she chased the squirrel along the fence: she ran headlong into the fence and is unconscious, possibly with a broken old limb or limbs, and I'll have to carry her to the car as I frantically dial the vet and sob. She's twisted an arthritic knee and will soon lose control of her bowels and I'll have to fashion her a cart that she can scoot along on her three good legs as her quality of life degrades and I trail along behind her scooping poop and sobbing.
This process of worst-case thinking takes seven seconds at most. I debate leaving her to her business, I debate trusting that she's fine, that she's just chasing a fucking squirrel on a sunny morning and that the world might actually continue fine and dandy without my having to make sure everything in it is safe and not hurt. I reject this idea and of course stand up, calling her, and walk around the side of the house prepared for the worst.
My Lucy is standing, happily and intently still, staring up at a tree. The squirrel might come down and leap into her mouth, or it might fall off its branch for whatever reason, and intrepid Lucy is standing there, patient, content, waiting without suffering, for whatever outcome might occur. She looks over her shoulder at me briefly as I turn the corner of the house, notes me- hi sis, I'm busy, beat it, yeah?- and goes back to staring quietly up at the tree.
I get it. I can worry. I can fuss. I can interfere, and offer, and worry some more, and try to fabricate a world in which you all always be happy and safe from harm, but it's not necessary. The world does what it does. You do what you do. I can love, and support, without fixing or tending. And most of the time I'll come around the corner and there y'all are, quietly gazing up at a tree.
16 Jul 2008
Life Is Beautiful
I would like a pair, possibly three (they're often born in twins, or triplets). Three (or four) perfect pygmy marmosets to live in my hair. I'd feed them grubs or mangos or whatever pygmy marmosets eat and I'd wear tiny silver water bottles (with the little ball bearing, like for guinea pigs) disguised as earrings.
I'd never leash them or make them do tricks, and I'd keep people from jabbing at them or making rude monkey noises in their direction. Just four (or six maybe. Seven). In the winter I'd always wear a soft, breathable hat.
I Have a New Boyfriend and He's Cuter Than You
He's also shorter, and a little on the chunky side, but his irrepressible personality more than makes up for any height deficit or weight issues he may have. Plus, his shortness is temporary- soon he'll be knee-high, and before long like three feet tall.
Let me gush a little: His name is Miles and he has huge brown eyes and a giant round pumpkin head covered with red-blonde fuzz that smells delicious and he simply beams most every time he sees me. I rush to him cooing "My BOYfriend!" and he kicks his legs and smiles, and lets me scoop him from his mama's arms. Mere weeks ago I made him cry when I would hold him- once I hit his scream button and couldn't figure out how to turn it back off for a good fifteen minutes so I simply handed him back to his ma. The beauty of temporary relationships. But my wooing of him has been a success- he likes me now, doesn't shriek when I hold him, and digs his huge noggin into my shoulder with glee when I squeeze him, mooshing my cheek to his and kissing him to pieces.
He cheers me up, my new beau. His excitement is true, his attention never wavers from whatever voice is speaking, or adoring face he's mimicking, or strand of my hair that he's intent on chewing and if possible swallowing. He grins and burbles, and drools, his head bobbles and his fists pinch mightily whatever arm or earring or boob is within his reach. He's pure happiness, is Miles. Just seeing him for a few minutes makes my whole day that much brighter. I'm utterly in love with him.
Don't be jealous though. Our bond is fleeting- soon enough he'll be all toddly and bitey, too busy weaning and potty training to have time for me. He's also far too young for anything serious.
And I'm not a one-baby kind of woman, anyway. As soon as any of my pals (or family, or neighbors, or people I have a nodding acquaintance with in my office building) make me a baby I'll be all over that one too. If any of you beat them to it, count me in as the first loony middle-aged lady to ignore your nervous new-parent boundaries and frighten you with my lust (purely platonic, fool) for your infant. I will boss you, and irritate you, and cover your child with smoky kisses while I mash him/her to me in absolute bliss. I'll forget to wash my hands and will give you palpitations that I just might have it in me to straight-arm you to the floor and bolt down the street with the wee babe tucked under my arm like a football.
Trust me when I tell you that I will not, in fact, abduct your baby. I done already had one child of my own, one perfectly imperfect, gorgeous, singular offspring to satisfy my maternal urges (literally maternal, I mean. You know I'm going to smother and mother and fuss the rest of you to death about what's good for you for the rest of our everloving days). Done did that, don't wanna do it no more. Bearing and rearing your own offspring requires a gluttony for punishment fortitude that I no longer count among my (many, and varied) personal charms. Parenting is tough fucking stuff- I only had it in me for the one, and he's almost out the door.
So no, I'm not gonna steal your kid. Probably won't even offer to babysit much, unless you can provide me some kind of ironclad guarantee that there's no colic, or teething, or extraordinarily foul diaper stuff going on. I just want to touch it. I want to hug it, and gurgle at it, and smooch it and hug it some more. I just want to adore your baby, because I'm full of adoration, brimming with it, and the adults (and the one sixteen year old) in my life get all uncomfortable and shy and rejecty when I drop the unadulterated agape on them. It makes people skittish, the pure squeezy love I have for them, so the only targets available are those young enough to still appreciate it.
I'm left with babies. And my dog- she and I are also head over heels for each other. We're on the same page when it comes to clear, uncomplicated affection. And Lucy never gets handed back.