Everyone has been talking about Spring. For a moment I can’t remember which side of the body you are supposed to lie on for maximum blood flow. Which side you are supposed to turn someone who has collapsed.
I lie on my left.
I bury my heart.
Another atmospheric river arrives. And I wonder if this is how the future is going to be. Waiting for the weather. Calculating what we have in the fridge. What we have in the freezer. What lentils and beans. What to cook first. That no matter what I do I can’t like kombucha squash. That I am still not over the months and months and months of beets that came in my pandemic farm box. How dutifully I sliced them then and roasted them and tossed them with farro and feta and their greens. My hands turning their color. Bringing them in Tupperware to the beach. How for a while I had baked bread and made picnics and thought about alternatives to eggs and giving meat up again. I had felt so beautiful in my longing to become another woman. A longer one, with bells around her ankle. I wake now in the middle of the night praying for deliverance. For knowledge of the earth that I do not have. On the edge of the apocalypse.
What nobody tells you about motherhood is that you won’t sleep again.
Not when the baby sleeps.
Not when you are away from the baby in the desert for the first time.
Not during the day when someone else is watching the baby.
Not at night.
At the veterinarians office the doctor combs through the cat’s fur and says God her coat is so beautiful and healthy. Feeling the cysts on her kidneys. Mentioning her heart murmur. I sign off on all the tests. The urine. The blood. The xrays. The shot for anti-nausea.
If her kidneys are breaking down. The doctor says. She might be losing her sight. And I had been wondering, going for the rose petals, for the baby’s cup of milk, for the slice of steak my husband had ordered from the Mexican restaurant we loved.
I wonder if she is anemic, but in the end it didn’t matter. I drive back and forth in the rain from one side of the city to the other arguing with three different vets, who all say I don’t understand. When I ask What does it look like if she just comes home with us? How much time will we have? (Can I take her to the mountains?) All of them pointing to her kidney levels. All of them saying, this is end of life. That it took my husband saying Jane, she is not going to come back from this. To finally understand.
That’s what happens right? One of the fathers at my daughter’s school says. With cats.
A cyst ruptured in her kidneys. Outliving her polycystic kidney disease diagnosis by 7 years, and it only took me after her death to realize why all the doctors were amazed by her. How she hung on until the very end.
Maybe we should just go look. I say. After the rain passed and the mountains filled with snow again.
At what? The kitties? My husband laughs.
Nobody warned me that it would hurt this much. That I would want to tattoo myself. That this was my heart completely stretched out. In the shape of a feline the entire length of a windowsill. The gold flecked through her coat. Like a trout. That she had taught me how to love, how to walk, how to stretch, how to mother. Her head balanced perfectly on top of her shoulders. We joked once that we bought our house because she looked so good in it, the green tiles matching her eyes, her coat the wood, her fur catching the light that came through the windows.
Our cat is dying. I wrote on February 6th at 6:27 AM. I make tea because I don’t think my heart can handle coffee. The baby trying to go back to sleep.
I bring the cat home from the vets and she leans her head up against mine and she tells me she is ready. Forehead against my forehead. And I tell her no no no. As she curls up in our room on a chair by the window we open for her and doesn’t move.
I try to list the things I love:
The sound of a dog’s bark traveling across a valley.
The sun setting.
The ocean.
The wind in my daughter’s hair. The wind in my own hair.
I try to list the things I love to eat:
Pear
Cheese
Bread
Butter
Mushrooms
Our windowsills now filled with flowers. Our front door left open.
Our cat suddenly purring and purring and purring into our arms. Relaxing her body, I realized for the first time in a few months, that I had forgotten how long she could be. That now she could stretch out forever. And ever. And ever. And boy would I miss her.
My heart hurts for yours...
I am as affected as ever by your words. More than ever by the heart here. I love you all so much.