What remains possible

Some days are more possible than others, more seeming infinite in nature. Others shrink down into a nubbin, a hard, mean little kernel that sticks in my throat.

It doesn't help to have a raging headache. It doesn't help to be worn down so thin from autism that I am surprised I can't be seen through, more apparition than person. (My spirit, that is, my waist is thickening like pudding.)

I love my son to pieces but some days can barely stand to be with him; and by bedtime it has been one of those somedays. And it's no one thing, just every little thing. From the moment I greet his bus, on - late today, so I am granted a fifteen minute reprieve, fifteen minutes of sitting in my lobby watching neighbor children arriving home, chatting brightly with their moms or nannies, willing myself to not let envy poison me down to the bones.

I know what Jake-off-the-bus will ask: "Can I pet Cocoa? Where's Cocoa? Can I pet Cocoa? Where's Cocoa, Mommy? Let's go see Cocoa, Mommy!" over and over, and over and over. The same every day these days, his obsession wearing a groove in my soul.

It's nearly all he will talk about, day and night: the cat. The cat, the cat, the cat, thecatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcatcat; the bloody cat.

I love the cat but I would toss her out the fucking window if that would make Jake stop talking about her. And chasing her around the apartment. And dragging her into his lap to pet her. And petting her sometimes gently and sometimes too roughly, so I never know which it's going to be.

I never know if it's safe to leave her alone with him, and so I have to hover and watch and all the YEARS I've gained of being able to trust that he's pretty much safe in the house so I can watch him loosely and go about my business have to be heaved aside.

I can't leave him alone for a minute or the cat may get inadvertently strangled. Strangled by love and Jake's hands that do not understand you can't carry a REAL cat by the head like you can a stuffed animal.

And Jake? He really is a good, compliant child. Jake doesn't want to, but he does his homework. I work hard to maintain a cheery exterior, to praise and smile when inside I am weeping that it is pretty much the same homework he has been doing for the past four years. That he needs a number line to add and subtract, while his twin has moved on to geometry and equations.

And then he sculpts this incredibly interesting "cat-dragon" out of thera-putty on his five minute break between math and reading.

And then he reads so beautifully but it is so clear in his cluelessness at answering the questions that he retains so little. And I am now getting envious of all my autism mom friends with "little professor" aspie kids who have no social skills, but boy are they academically advanced.

And then I feel guilty for wanting my son the be someone other than who he is, and stupid for feeling envy which is the world's most useless emotion and dangerous, too.

And then it's time for dinner which I have to make in the kitchen while listening hard for signs of cat torture coming from the living room, but Jake can't find the cat tonight which is somehow worse.

"Kitty? Kitty where ARE you?" comes his frustrated cry. "I can't find Cocoa! The kitty is missing! HELP! HELP!" he yells, running through our tiny apartment. But Cocoa? She has her hidey-holes for when she simply must get away from Jacob's obsessive love. Lucky cat.

A bit later, Ethan has been picked up from Hebrew school, dinner been wolfed down by hungry growing boys, and Jake is in the bath while Ethan tackles 4th grade math.

Jake is having a loud, growly day and I don't know how much more animal-boy I can take. Every answer I give that he doesn't like is met with a loud snarl and hands made claws, his face a grimace. "I'm a scary monster" he says "I'm a vampire." Halloween can not fade fast enough.

"Can I watch TV?"

"No Jake, it's bed-time; after your bath is BED."

SNARL

"Can I watch TV?"

"No. Bedtime."

SNARL

"Can I watch TV?"

"I am not going to answer that, Jake, you have asked me TEN times in the last two minutes and you know the answer. What's the answer?"

SNARL

"Can I watch TV?"  

And tonight in bed, for maybe the first time in nine years I do not sing to him, I tuck him in and flee. Because he is growling and giggling alternately with every step up the ladder to his top bunk and I know how it's going to go: I will start to sing and he will giggle and growl and I will tell him I can't sing to him if he is isn't quiet and he will stop for a moment and sound so contrite, only to start again a beat later and it will go on and on and on.

So tonight I don't even begin.

My head is pounding and I can't. I just. can't. do it.

I call out that I love him on the way down the ladder. I tell him I don't sing to animals and monsters and I leave. And cry. And paste a better face on before entering the living room to snuggle with  Ethan and Harry Potter on the sofa.

This I can do. Tonight.
 

Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

G is for Goodbye, Willie

G is for Goodbye, Willie.

I am writing this while sitting at the ASPCA, waiting for our number to come up, to walk through those steel doors, to put my 88 year-old mother's 19 year-old cat to "sleep."

How I hate that euphemism. (Plus, remind me NEVER to use this expression around the boys or they may never sleep again.) But to say "death" is still just too harsh. And "down"? Too ambiguous. But maybe that's best.

The technical term "to be euthanized"? Too many shivers down my spine, images of Hitler's death wagons coming for people like my son to let that word trip off my tongue lightly.

But really, all this theorizing about language is the distractor isn't it? To keep me from thinking too much about the next few minutes; about walking Willie through that door.

Because I have already asked for the box of Kleenex, dripping snotty tears all over the poor reception clerk's desk as I filled out the forms that will make this come to pass, today.

Mom & Willie, June 1, 2011

I am writing this sitting in a hard wooden chair in a small room, redolent of bleach, with a raised steel table at the center. Lovely photographs of wild animals hang on the walls, I'm sure meant to soothe; to establish that this place is all about the animals.

But really, don't you think it's kind of cruel in this place emblematic of our ultimate control over our domestic pets' lives to taunt them with images from their ancestral memory, when their great, great (to the hundredth power) grandmothers were once wild and free?

I see owls and does, wolves and tigers all around me.

And this one little tiger, William "Tyger" Blake, alternately panting and wild eyed or serenely resigned and calm, waiting, contained, in the carrier beside me.

And in spite of the many pounds lost, the ravages of old age and kidney disease upon his once solid frame, his ribs countable, his fur clumped and patchy, he is still rubbing his large, now quite angular head against the fingers I snake through the bars of his cage to offer what little comfort I may in this strange place that smells of dogs and fear.

The veterinarian and technician finally enter the room, are lovely young women, kind and clearly compassionate. They reassure, tell me we're doing the right thing; rattle off the ways Willie's body is failing him, confirm he is on the brink of heavy suffering and that this is the just right time to do this, when the scales of pleasure and pain in his life are about to tip straight down into nightmare.

"You have loved him much, and are saving him needless suffering," they say.  And: "It's truly time."

And so, it was time.

An anesthetic held his body still while I pet him one last time, recalled to the gentle vet how handsome Willie was in his glory, the now matted fur sleek and full, the most glorious bushy tail I'd ever seen on a cat held regal and high.

I kissed the top of his head one last goodbye, waited for her to push the plunger with the final, heart stopping drug...

And then?

My damn cellphone rang.

Caretaker of so many, I had to glance over, and then, holding up my hand, requested a halt for a moment. It was the the driver of my autistic son Jacob's school bus. It seems the bus had broken down in the extreme heat and humidity while still downtown, miles from my home.

(People? You just can't make this shit up. It would be way too cliche: the phone ringing as the vet pulls back the plunger, just like in all those death row movies, the governor calling at the zero hour with a stay of execution.

But this is my real life. And there's a reason I called my blog "The Squashed Bologna": I am the meat flattened in the middle of the sandwich. I honestly earn my bloggy nickname and Twitter handle "SquashedMom" nearly every day.)

It was hard to get the details clear from Jake's driver. She's a lovely woman but with a thick Spanish accent, much more understandable in person than through the filter of cell to cell telephony. While we worked out the plan to get him picked up, the vet was growing impatient, worried the sedative was wearing off and Willie would begin to stir.

So I hung up on the bus driver, crossed my fingers that she had understood my intent to send a babysitter to get Jake rather than wait the possibly two hours it will take the bus company to get a new bus into position, and jumped back to the steel table of death.

And then? Quickly, so quickly, it is done. One last kiss, one last tear dripped upon his still warm but now lifeless body. The vet picked him up, cradled him lovingly as she carried him from the room.

And out I went, to wheel an empty carrier home to my mother in the sweltering heat. To tell my mother it is over. To take her to her doctor's appointment, the follow-up from last week's hospitalization, where we will at last have good news. And during which my missing-me son and my currently-in-Milan husband will call my cell phone simultaneously while the doctor is still talking to me.

Squashed. Always.

Willie was a vastly handsome, but an aloof, cat-like cat. He interacted with humans on his terms only, choosing to sit upon a lap or not according to his own arcane rules or whims. This earned him the affectionate sobriquet 'Willie, you mamzer" from my Mother.

But since my father's passing last March? Willie has stepped up to the plate, kept on knocking them out of the ballpark. He talked to Mom all day long, sat near and on her constantly, slept on Dad's side of the bed beside her, a smaller weight for sure, but comfort, nonetheless.

Now gone.

Willie's small furry absence will ring loudly, echoing the much larger one that looms over all, in my mother's life. His ashes, once claimed, will sit in their own little box, next to my father's, on their bookcase shelf.

My mother misses my father fiercely, still, every day in every way. They had a true partnership, a deep friendship; were mates, through and through. (We should all be so lucky.)

Now gone.

But never forgotten.

Someday soon I will walk into my mother's apartment bearing a sweet orange tiger, someone's beloved kitty that they just could not keep.  They will regard each other warily for a few minutes, then a head will be stroked, a paw extended, a lap occupied; purring will begin.

Embers will beget sparks, and the flames of love will start to dance anew in hearts once bereft and sundered.

Goodbye, Willie. You were a good cat, much beloved. You will be deeply missed. Rest in peace (and catnip).  
 

This post has been inspired by and linked up to Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday writing meme. I believe that G is also for Gah! Get me through this week! (Holding my breath to see what ripe new disaster is headed our way.)

I'm also linking this post up to Shell's Pour Your Heart Out linky at Things I Can't Say


Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.