Week 11 Exercises

Characters and Ways of Seeing: Loving

Oh. My. God. My sister, Kay.

Being ten years older than me, she left home for college before I was ten. And I was glad. Seriously, she nagged me far more than my mom, played catch with glass vases over my head, and made me practice my speech, over and over and over again. She, of everyone, recognized that I couldn’t hear or understand all spoken speech. It pissed her off, and she wasn’t haven’t any of it.

Still, there was that earthquake… We had had a huge screaming match the night before, our specialty. Yet when the earthquake hit, she ran past every other family member to belly flop on top of me, screaming, “Dolly, its an earthquake! Get up! Get up!” I couldn’t breathe, let alone move, with her on top of me.

After she left home, we just didn’t see each other that much. Holidays, mostly. When we did, I couldn’t tell her things. Once, the Christmas when I was thirteen and spent the day huddled up on the couch, she asked if I was getting my period. I was angry. God, I was so angry. “No,” I wanted to scream, “our brother-in-law isn’t having sex with our sister, because he’s got me. He married her to get to me, and he’s been getting to me for the past two years!” I said nothing.

Fast forwarding a few decades, I get a call that our dad is dying. Kay and I meet at our parents’ house, and sit with our mother. Dad was at his cabin when he collapsed, and had been airlifted to a hospital that was more than 350 miles from our home. After being assured that he was in a coma, and unlikely to live for even the next day, there seemed to be little point in any one of us hopping on a plane. Still, I voiced my policy to never leave a family member unattended in the hospital. Before I could say another word, mom was charging a hotel room for me, and Kay would pay for my plane ticket and drive me to the airport.

That drive to the airport changed everything.

She talked about how she just couldn’t imagine the house without dad. I looked out the window, not responding. That was my best defense, not responding. What? She demanded. What?

“Kay, can we try this from my perspective, just this once? You had thirteen years of a loving, doting father before he became a complete alcoholic. I was three, Kay, three years old when he started drinking morning, noon, and night. I have never known him when he wasn’t an alcoholic. Do you see the difference?”

She cried, and I was upset that I had made her cry. What I didn’t know at the time was that she cried every single day. She didn’t wreck the car on the way to the airport because she was adept at crying and driving at the same time, whether our dad was dying or not.

My dad recovered a bit, enough to come home for four months before he died. In that time, all the barriers were worn down by how much time we spent together. It was like discovering a new person that you shared a past with. Odd, but wonderful.

She is a complete mess of contradictions.

In part, I believe this is because of an illness she had when she was a baby. She ran a very high fever and they determined enough to figure out it was a blood disease. She had 42 blood transfusions. She died twice, and was once dead long enough for them to start the death certificate before she self-revived. The doctors predicted she would be a vegetable, there just wasn’t another possible future for her. Yes, she does have brain damage – she has no sense of spatial relationships and her tolerance level couldn’t be much lower because everything is frustrating. She drives by time and landmarks, of which there are many in Los Angeles but the open road, however, couldn’t be more terrifying. She doesn’t recognize the front of a garment from the back without a tag. The computer frustrates her. The DVD player frustrates her, as does her car, packaging and frankly, anything more complex than an on/off switch.

She is also a well-respected history teacher at a private Jewish high school in Beverly Hills, California, where she holds the record for the most consecutive years with 100% of her students passing AP World History. She is a single home-owner, just months from paying off her home. She works on her novels, daily, and although we don’t quite get what the other writes, we keep supporting each other in our efforts. Now, we work to reserve a week a year to spend together, which is truly the only time when we can be ourselves.

Women and Men: Smart Pets

Although she had the wisdom to name me Darwin (but frequently addresses me as kitty or katze), and supplies food, water and the cat box, in other ways she doesn’t appear, well, right. It isn’t just a matter of her refusal to nap until it is dark, to wake up when I want fresh water in the middle of the night, it is the male who shows up on occasion.

For example, she was gone for some days and when he brought her back where she is supposed to always be, he didn’t understand the need to get the bad-smelling things off her as soon as possible. We couldn’t have them in the house. I was the one who had to chew off the thing on her wrist, cutting my gums in the process. I even tried to chew off the plastic bits they left in her hind parts but she kept them covered. It was completely frustrating that no one knew that they needed to be gone.

That male, he didn’t lick her clean. Not once. He gave her smelly bits of fluff to clean herself that were damp, but certainly not as good as a tongue for cleaning. Her fur, oddly long in only one place and usually free for me to pick at, was bound against her head and again, it was left to me to try and get it unknotted. I was able to get a few bits free and chew at them, but the job was not properly done. How would that appear to others? How would that smell to others? There is another cat, not of this house, but one I permit to use the back space – there are enough things to hunt out there for the both of us. He had to have smelled her fur and wondered if I wasn’t taking proper care of her.

He came in once, just for a look about, and thankfully she was properly cleaned that day. By water, of all things. She lays in it. I mean, she lays her whole body in it, not just a toe to watch it ripple. And she stays there. When its cold, I do like the heat that rises off the water. I just can’t imagine lying in it like I do with the places in the floor where the heat comes out.

Happily, her male isn’t around that often, and I get my half of the bed, which is proper. When her male arrives, he doesn’t seem to understand that the space is mine. Can’t he smell my scent or see my fur? I have spent considerable amounts of time marking out the spaces that are mine. He can have the rest. Well, technically, anything with a padded covering is mine, but I have my special places: the top of the couch, the right side of the big bed, and the entire small bed. When she cleans them, I immediately set back to work on them.

There is also this noise that they make. She sits on my couch, and he sits in the chair, and they make noise. I don’t know what they are trying to communicate, but they can do that for hours. I give a deep yowl on my way to bed, and she gets upset. It makes no sense whatsoever.

There is just no figuring out these creatures, but as long as she provides me the basics and allows me to take her heat in the cold seasons, we get along.

Children and Childhood: Child’s Play

Her First Birthday

She understood that the day was somehow different. More people were there. She didn’t know why. They lifted her into the high place. She loved the high place – things to chew appeared on the smooth surface. She hated the high place – she couldn’t move as she wanted.

Today, they put a huge round thing in front of her. They watched her watching the round thing until someone yelled. She looked and a new shape was coming out of the top of the big white box. “Hot” they called it. The new shape was orange and yellow and moved constantly. She was fascinated. Then the people squished it. They squished it again. It reformed into a new shape.

The round thing was removed. Her smooth surface was removed. The straps were removed, but so quickly that it hurt her leg. She was angry. Her nose stung. She opened her mouth to cry her displeasure but no one paid attention.

A noise started and kept repeating, so loud it hurt her ears. She cried more. She was bounced up and down but she wanted to crawl, and the person wasn’t letting her. Usually, if she struggled enough, the people would let her go. It wasn’t working. Now she was really getting angry and threw out her arms to get away from the person and the noise.

The noise stopped. After too long she was carried back to the high place.

Again, the person strapped her in.

Again, the smooth surface reappeared.

Again, the round thing reappeared.

She sniffled. She touched the round thing, and wondered if it was something to chew. It stuck to her hand. She didn’t like things sticking to her hand. She put her hand in her mouth. It was good, but almost too much good, too much. She pushed it away and watched it fall to the ground. The round thing was now a bunch of pieces. One of them might be good to chew and she cried for the smaller pieces she couldn’t reach.

She wanted down. She could still smell something funny. It still made her nose hurt. She wanted to crawl away. Or just sit with her bottle and watch the too many people. Or even nap, if she had her blankie.