by Helen Brown
It was time to make up for my shocking lack of observation, haul myself out of distraction and notice Cleo. The changes she had gone through while I wasn’t looking were a reminder that life’s relentless cycles were rolling on no matter what. Whether I was going to miss out on some magnificent episodes of change and rebirth was largely up to me.
Scooping her up, I carried her to the front porch and sat on the step with her on my knee. Cleo writhed ecstatically and rolled onto her back, her legs paddling the air. This un-catlike position was one of her favorites. She often fell asleep that way draped upside down across someone’s knee in front of the television, her head drooping backwards so the underside of her neck and chin were exposed to whomever she was sitting on.
Stroking her was a tactile adventure, a journey of discovery through Cleo’s landscape of fur. Her ears were cool and slick the way I’d imagined a seal’s skin would be. Their design was vaguely aerodynamic, potentially giving her descendents the option of flight. The velour ridge of her nose was tipped with a patch of damp leather. On the slope descending between her ears and eyes, the fur was sparser, the closest thing Cleo had to a bald patch these days. But it was in no way unattractive. In fact it was intriguing and stylish in the way Yves Saint Laurent could make tartan a perfect match for polka dots. Taut skin around her eyes was helpful whenever I needed to roll specks of sleep from their corners, which was surprisingly often. Strange there were no eyelashes in this plethora of fur. Two pairs of antennae, a memory of eyebrows, sprouted from her forehead. No doubt they had some stealthy purpose such as measuring rat holes. Her whiskers were like dried grass, her chin a fuzzy beard.
The fur on her torso was fluffy, softer than a rabbit’s. Her “underarms” sprouted longer fringes that seemed vaguely out of place, like human underarm hair, filing cabinets for ancestral memory. A raised ridge of fur ran like a mini Mohawk down the center of her chest. The growth on her lower abdomen was coarser and longer, but still soft. On the inner sides of her legs the fur was silky, the outer thighs slippery and smooth.
Her purr intensified as I rubbed her long back legs with their elongated kangaroo feet. The pads, smoother than vinyl, gleamed purple black in the sun. They were lined with closely cropped hair concealing the sheathed scimitars of her claws.
No decent petting was complete without attention to Cleo’s pride and joy, her tail. Smooth and oily, it had sprouted into an elegant accessory. Serpent-like in appearance and flexibility, it had almost as much personality as Cleo herself. It lay in wait beside her when she woke in the mornings, and coiled stealthily around her last thing at night. Every time she looked over her shoulder there it was again, the stalker snake, shadowing her every move.
Most of the time, Cleo regarded her tail as a playmate. They could spend the best part of an afternoon chasing each other in circles around the floor until they collapsed from dizziness. On other occasions, the tail took on a more malevolent mood. When Cleo was dozing on the window ledge the tail would sometimes twitch, disturbing her sleep. She would open one eye to examine the mischievous appendage. Rippling under her gaze, that tail was asking to be taught a lesson. Cleo would attack, tumbling off the window ledge so she could grab the creature with all four sets of claws and sink her teeth into it. Twitching and writhing between her jaws, the snake put up a noble fight, inflicting mysteriously brutal pain on its attacker. Cleo and her tail were like a warring married couple, glued together for reasons they’d long forgotten and fighting several times a day over imagined insults. It took a long time for them to settle their differences and cohabit in peace.
I resisted the temptation to call Rosie and boast how our “ugly” kitten was transforming into a beauty. Cleo’s newfound elegance aroused two hopes in me. One, that she wouldn’t realize how gorgeous she was and become vain (few weaknesses are more tiresome to live with than vanity, especially in someone who has suffered the indignity of plain looks in their past). Two, that the theory about dog owners developing a physical likeness to their pets might also apply to cat owners. Neither of these aspirations seemed likely to happen. Cleo was too playful and fascinated with life to start behaving like a movie star. And I continued to resemble a food-addicted golden retriever.
Cleo awakened a depth of tenderness in Rob I hadn’t seen before. He’d always been the baby of the household, the one everybody else looked out for. Now, for the first time, he was responsible for something smaller than himself, and a gentle, caring side of him began to emerge. Feeding, combing, cuddling his lovable kitten (often with enthusiastic advice from Jason) was helping him grow stronger and more self-assured. I watched in awe as he carved a fresh identity for himself at school, and a trickle of new friends made their way down the zigzag to our place.
Our affection for Cleo was fiercely returned. As her adopted slaves, we were duty-bound to include her in everything. If she heard a conversation going on in another room she scratched and called at the door until she was part of it. Occasionally she was content to witness goings-on from a vantage point in the sun on the back of the sofa. Mostly, though, she preferred to be wedged into a warm lap, her paws tucked neatly under her body, purring approval.
If someone was reading a book, particularly if the reader was lying comfortably on his back, Cleo knew she was being invited to position herself between him and the pages. Supremely confident that a cat was far more fascinating than any printed word, she’d be astonished when the reader lifted her, evicting her gently to the other side of the book. How could an inferior human be so rude? Once she’d regained her composure, she would examine the outside cover. She could only presume it had been placed there for grooming purposes. Cleo discovered cats don’t need toothbrushes when they can run their teeth along the cardboard edge of a paperback cover.
She waited on Rob’s window ledge with more than a hint of accusation in her eye whenever we went out. Was time going to limp by while we were away? As if. The moment she’d seen the back of the last raincoat disappear up the zigzag she’d get up to secret cat’s business. A potted plant would tumble mysteriously on its side. Telltale paw prints appeared on the kitchen bench. Half-eaten blowflies sprinkled themselves over the carpet. The joint certainly jumped while we were out. When we arrived home Cleo would be waiting in the window again. She seemed to have an inbuilt radar that told her exactly when we’d be back. She would dance down the hall to greet us, her tail raised in an elegant curve of greeting. Anyone who picked her up in their arms would be rewarded with a kiss from her damp, licorice nose.
If dogs could talk, Rata would have been a reliable informant. Gazing mournfully at a tangle of pulled threads on the sofa she’d sigh as if to say, “What can you expect from a cat?” But when Cleo snuggled into the dog’s belly to be slobbered with giant retriever kisses, all was forgiven. For all her uppity, occasionally murderous, habits, we adored her.
The more we let ourselves love our young cat, the more readily we seemed able to open our hearts and forgive the unfamiliar people we’d become since the loss of Sam. As we turned towards each other and started to rebuild a sense of family, a hopeful warmth resurfaced in our marriage. Steve dismantled the barricade of his newspaper one night, looked me straight in the eye and said: “You look so terribly sad and beautiful.” His words stretched across the icy distance and enveloped us.
I’d forgotten how amusing his quirky sense of humor could be. That’s what had drawn us together in the first place. Both outsiders, we’d been hopelessly uncoordinated at school sports and shared a talent for feeling awkward in groups. Together we’d created a separate universe and tried to persuade ourselves that life as a pair of misfits on the edge of the mainstream was a comfortable place to be.
Vulnerable as a pair of oysters without their shells, we put on our winter coats and went on our first movie “date” since our lives had changed so drastically. A divinely youthful and sexy Richard Gere in An Officer and a Gentleman diverted my attention long enough for me to feel surprised, then guilty, I’d gone for a
few minutes not thinking about Sam. When the credits rolled, the lights went up and Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes launched into the theme song, “Up Where We Belong,” reality crashed in again.
Soon after, Steve visited a specialist to investigate the prospect of a vasectomy reversal. Complicated microsurgery would be involved, and he was warned the chances of success were minimal, as low as ten percent. Nevertheless, taking our circumstances into account, the surgeon was willing to give it his best shot. Even though we knew our marriage was on a fault line and on the verge of crumbling, we both desperately wanted another child. A date for the surgery was set.
We weren’t looking for a replacement for Sam. We both knew that would be impossible. But our house and hearts felt empty. I still set the table for four every night, until a cold gong in my heart reminded me I was living in the past. One set of knives and forks had to be put back in the drawer.
I longed for sorrow to shrivel and sail effortlessly into oblivion. If an autumn leaf could release the memory of summer and float into nothingness, fearless and with such grace, why was it impossible for me?
An inner lioness of motherhood refused to relinquish anything connected to Sam. Alone in the house, I’d carry his blue Boy Scouts jumper around with me like a comfort rug, over my shoulder. His name tag had been hand-sewn clumsily inside the collar. After he’d earned the red patches for Reading, Art, Chess and (laughably) Housework, I’d shared his pride by sewing them on the sleeves with small careful stitches. The garment had shrunk to the shape of his torso. It was redolent of him and now also of my tears.
Mothers are the ultimate power junkies. When we lift a newborn human from our bodies we experience an adrenaline high far headier than anything Bill Gates or Pablo Picasso ever knew. Multi-zillion-dollar businesses and the world’s greatest art fade to trinkets alongside the miraculous creation of a human being. The reason so few women become great concert masters, politicians and inventors isn’t so much because of prejudice (not that there’s a shortage) or lack of opportunity (hardly a drought of that, either). Why would anyone bother writing a symphony when she can create a collection of cells that will one day ask to borrow her car?
Our passion for our children springs straight from the jungle. Would Bill Gates lay down his life for Microsoft? Picasso commit murder for one of his paintings?
Mothers have power beyond politics, art and money. We’re the people who give life, nurture babies and make them grow. Without us humanity would wither like seaweed on a rock. Knowledge of our power is so deep we don’t talk about it often, but we use it all the time.
Ancient mother’s power is employed to make our kids eat green vegetables, aim straight at the toilet bowl and grow a few centimeters every year. When we yell “Come back here!” across a supermarket or a playing field, they freeze, turn around and obey—most of the time, anyway. It’s magic. It works. Because we say so.
I’d brought Sam to life when he slid out of my body all those years ago. Surely I was strong enough to muster enough mother’s power to will him to life again? “Come back here!” I yelled across the universe. The silence was darker than midnight. I longed to see even his ghostly form standing at the end of the bed. But Sam had flown farther away than the distance between stars, to the empty nothingness of space.
I dreaded bumping into Sam’s old school friends. Their innocent faces still fired me with irrational resentment, then profound shame at my reaction. Rage flared whenever I saw a blue Ford Escort. It had yet to occur to me that the events of 21 January could have ruined the woman’s life almost as drastically as ours. I often wondered how events had unfolded that day. After Sam had fallen, Rob had run up the zigzag to find Steve. Had she climbed out of her car to comfort the dying child?
But the sight of our young cat scampering down the hallway invariably lifted my mood. Not so long ago Lena’s instruction to simply love our kitten had seemed an impossible ask. Yet Cleo overwhelmed us all with affection so freely, we couldn’t help loving her back. The youngest, most joyous member of our family, she had woven herself into our life after Sam. I couldn’t believe I’d ever contemplated giving her back to Lena.
Leaves of a birch in our garden transformed themselves into a curtain of gold medallions that shimmered against pewter branches. Oblivious to its chances, a late summer rose unfurled on a bush.
A squall direct from Antarctica pummelled the harbor to stainless steel, scattering birds across the sky. No wonder birds greet a translucent dawn with consummate joy. They don’t dwell on the previous night’s storm. Their chorus betrays no concern for the winter ahead, either. They simply embrace the miracle of being alive in this instant on one perfect autumn morning. I had so much to learn from them.
If anything, the beauty of these sights was heightened now I understood how achingly brief the life span was of any living thing. Maybe the key to healing isn’t found in books, tears or religion, but in affection for small things—a flower, the smell of damp grass. Love for a kitten was helping me embrace the world again.
Observer
A wise cat steps back from emotional response and observes without judgment.
Our first winter after losing Sam was particularly harsh. Snow draped itself over the hills across the harbor. Giant bruises of clouds rolled up from Antarctica and pushed against our windows. Rain pelted sideways at the glass. Wind tore our coats as we scurried down the zigzag, which had become a waterfall.
I gradually trained myself to drive under the footbridge. The first time I held my breath and focused on a triangle of harbor in the distance as the car hurtled down the hill. Next time, driving slowly up the slope, I allowed my eyes to drift to the bus stop and the curb Sam’s foot had left.
A reluctant spring arrived with spikes of yellow bloom. Reliving Sam’s last steps, I forced myself to walk down the zigzag and onto the tired wooden planks of the footbridge. Pausing in the center, I gazed down at the road. It was an unremarkable strip of tar seal. No stains, no hollows or irregularities. Nothing to indicate a boy had lost his life there. I hoped he hadn’t died frightened and alone.
I gave up scouring the streets for mousey-haired, thirty-something largish women with or without spectacles in navy coats. A Ford Escort parked on the side of the street was no longer an invitation to inspect its headlights. The damage would’ve been fixed months ago, anyway. It was probably beetling up and down hills, pretending it had never killed.
With warmer weather a gut-wrenching series of firsts had to be endured: what would have been Sam’s tenth birthday, closely followed by our first Christmas without him, then the anniversary of the accident. I’ve never been able to love summer wholeheartedly since.
Sometimes I’d been paralyzed with guilt if a few minutes went by without grief for Sam. A moment of laughter or happiness would shame me into thinking I was letting Sam down. But I gradually realized that being locked in a state of misery wasn’t helping Rob or honoring the life we’d had with Sam or the fact I was still alive.
With courage worthy of Superman himself, Rob had settled back well into school. Teachers whined about learning difficulties but the main thing was he seemed to have plenty of friends. While Steve and I hadn’t fallen in love again, we’d accepted some of our differences and were getting along better. Cleo was constantly springing out at us from behind doorways, reminding us life was too profound to be taken seriously.
I was beginning to relate to Cleo’s attraction to high places. Even if it was just a hereditary Abyssinian thing, the notion of taking a step above daily life and gazing down at it from a distance had compelling logic. I’d been doing it myself at night recently, standing at the top of the zigzag, the chill wind slicing my cheeks, and staring down at the glittering city. When observed from a great height, pain sometimes shrinks and subsides into the wider pattern of life. With practice and time I was learning it’s possible to disengage emotion occasionally and experience the serenity of a cat observing the world from a rooftop.
Gazing down at t
he grids of streetlights, I would wonder if a person’s life is packaged in a predestined design. When Sam was just two years old we’d walked through a picturesque old cemetery one morning. He ran ahead and stopped at a grave stone engraved with the name “Samuel.” Pointing at the headstone, he howled uncontrollably. I’d had to lift him, red-faced and sobbing, in my arms and carry him away from the place. He couldn’t even read at the time and had no way to understand the technicalities of death and cemeteries. How could a toddler comprehend so much, let alone experience a terrifying premonition? The memory of that day still makes me shudder.
The night sky that had once seemed so icy and indifferent would draw me into its magnificence. Maybe the cloak of space wasn’t empty after all, but full of profound energies humans have yet to perceive. Instead of limitless nothing, that giant bowl of stars could be where we’ve come from and the place we return to. So far away and yet intimately close. Light that had left those stars years ago traveled across time to enter the retinas of my eyes and become part of my experience. They were as close to me now as darling Sam, distant as the stars and yet an integral part of every breath. The sky, stars, Sam and I were closer than I’d dared imagine. Maybe that’s what Mum had been talking about when she’d said Sam was part of the sunset. Perhaps she wasn’t insensitive after all, but incredibly wise. When it’s my turn, maybe I’ll discover death isn’t a terrifying full stop but a return to the eternal mystery that is home.
With help from Jason and Ginny we plowed through another winter into a second spring. As nights grew longer, evenings after school were a favorite time for the four of us to get together. Ginny and I would meet in the garden and soothe the day away with a glass of bubbles while we watched the boys burn off the last of their energy before bedtime.