The Changing
scrappybadger August 11th, 2007
Last night Ada, our youngest and definitely most mischievous cat, broke Luna’s water bowl. The food bowl that matched it was broken a few months ago by one of the cats, but since I didn’t witness it firsthand I can’t finger the culprit. I have my suspicions nevertheless.
It wasn’t an expensive water bowl. No one brought it back to Luna and I as a present from a transcontinental trip. I didn’t find it in an antique store, save up for weeks to buy it, or see it and instantly love it. It wasn’t even her very first water bowl. In fact, I can’t remember where I got it or exactly when I got it. I think it was shortly after leaving college and settling into our first badger’s-finally-got-a-real-job apartment. It was a simple ceramic bowl with a blue matte finish. Its mate was yellow. And other than being the perfect size and shape for a large dog, there was nothing extra special about either of them. There was certainly nothing about them to inspire crying over broken bowls - or spilled dog’s water as it were. Yet, there I was, sort of frozen, holding a tea bag, looking at the mess over our friend Jackie’s shoulder thinking I didn’t want to look ridiculous for getting upset over Luna’s broken water dish.
It wasn’t the bowl really. I mean, I had planned to keep it forever. I like tangible reminders of the past, and I knew that would be a nice one to have. Even so, it wasn’t the bowl that bothered me so much as another unwelcome reminder that nothing lasts forever, that I can’t hold on to things as long as I want no matter how well I look after them. It seems like I’m reminded of this more and more. Things break or get lost or are ripped to shreds by an energetic, young cat. Everything, time especially, whizzes by my head, and I’m standing there trying not to get dizzy, trying to keep up, but mostly trying to see and remember the past. I don’t want to forget it, and I don’t want everything to change.
And yet, I have the hardest time remembering my past. Piig can tell me specific things about her childhood, she can recall so many people and places and things. Mine is more of a hazy old photograph. The kind where you can make out people, but their faces are fuzzy and no amount of squinting your eyes clears anything up. I remember places because where I grew up they don’t change a lot. I can see buildings and houses and fields, and I can remember, generally, that my sisters and I rode our bikes around, roller skated on a small slab of cement under our carport, and played elaborate games of “store” where we’d put price tags on everything we owned and pretend to sell it all to invisible customers. I remember; I’m not an amnesiac. But my memory is so cotton candy-ish. It squishes and melts together. It has no clear boundaries, and I can’t really trust the shape it takes as being anything close to the original.
I want to remember, clearly remember, my life with Luna. I don’t want little pieces here and there, lots of them spurred on by photographs. I want to see it, a movie reel in my mind, that first night after I found her in the street. I want to remember ordinary days when we’d walk down the alley outside of our first apartment together. I want to be able to recall what I was thinking on my first day of college and then on graduation day. I’d like to remember my old friends and the things we thought were hilariously funny. And I want to know what Piig and I talked about the first time we met. Most of those things are lost. I can think and think and think, but I won’t ever remember them. Instead I get the pieces, and the pieces make me sad more than anything else. They remind me that everything is different now. I’m not a college student anymore, and I’ll never be as carefree and hopeful as I was then. Luna is old, and though spry for her age, she isn’t the same puppyish dog that she was 7 or 8 years ago. I want to stop it; I want to keep it all the same, but that doesn’t even make sense does it? Because if it stopped we’d all be stuck, frozen. And then I wouldn’t hear anything, and I could only see what was frozen in front of me.
And, so, I’m faced with yet another reality — you can’t stop it. The changing is going to happen no matter what. Sometimes it will be good and sometimes it will be bad, but you have to deal with it either way because there is nothing else to do. The reality doesn’t feel very good.
“And I want to know what Piig and I talked about the first time we met.”
Let me see if I can help you, my sad sB. We talked a little about how we both love Audre Lorde and Nikki Giovanni; I insulted you by saying that your couscous salad needed mint; you scolded me for almost blowing up your apartment when I used your gas stove; we figured out how to get your slacker friend Katie’s car towed to your apartment; we gushed over the Indigo Girls; and we laughed and laughed and laughed (you were worried your neighbors would get mad cuz I kept stomping my foot when I laughed). Does that help?
Thanks, Piig. I remembered some of that and some I didn’t. And by the way, as I remember it, you didn’t just “use” my gas stove. You used it with huge gusts of wind blowing in the back door, and the light went out! Hehehe… and the foot stomping was impossible to forget. I thought we talked about NG a few days later.