RIP Archie

giving and getting compassionate care

Our cat is dying and there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m angry, I’m heartbroken, sometimes I’m nothing. I’m nothing when there’s nothing I can do.

“You’re different these days,” says Olive, and I know what she means. I’m clicked into life about 10% of the time. That’s down from my average of 50%. For that 10% I’m making an effort to be my most relaxed, my most fun, my most centered and most importantly, my most silly. Here are some silly playful things I do:

• Pretend I’m a puppy and do a little pant and dance around as if I am ready to pounce.

• Pretend surprise attack, which means I jump out in an unexpected way but only when I’m pretty sure I’ve given O a subtle heads up the surprise is coming.

• Sing a song about how everyone has a butt cheek. This is so contrary to my own nature that O requested I sing it for her dad. This crossed the line and I would not do it.

• Pretend I don’t know things about Harry Potter and ask questions about Harry Potter with an interest of someone asking an expert about something they want passionately to learn about. I’d say this is harder than the three things above. 

• Stand a foot or so from a step where O is standing and then squat down and hold my arms out so she can jump in them. It’s my way of getting a hug without asking for one.

• There’s also wrestling. This is about 10 minutes before 8pm when we go on my bed and we stand up in front of each other. Then I basically lift her up and drop her down on the mattresses and she loves this. Sometimes I squash her with two pillows and pretend I’m hungry and she is a sandwich. Research shows that kids who have physical play with their parents (though I think the data is with dads) do better somehow later on. This is 100% Olive’s favorite time of the day. 

The rest of the time I’m working. I’m doing admin, I’m putting a serum made of essential oils on my face. In the tiniest most invisible chunks ever I’m pushing the rock of a novel-in-progress-for-over-five-years through a snowy field making the most laborious path known to man. But really this takes up only, what, 50% of the time? Then there’s driving to school and pickup from school which counts for something. I’m not great at math but that’s a whole lot of time left to stare into the space of the future without Archie.

“I want a kitty,” Olive says, without missing a beat. We talked about how the cat would be another inside cat and how cats should have a sibling and how maybe we aren’t great candidates for another pet since O is at school all day and we are often out and about. My first cat was named Whiskers, though, and I loved her with a passion I’ve known for little else. So I imagine that one day soon we will have kittens. 

But in the meantime I feel hard pressed to do my artist’s date. Grief (guilt? depression?) sometimes means that you can’t yourself to do the things that you know would make you feel better. Or it can also mean that you get to question whether those things were actually making you feel good. For instance, Absolute Beginner Ballet. The series started up again this year and I signed up for session B. Session A covered plié, relevé and tendu and ronde jambe. Session B reviews and remixes these things and adds an excruciatingly difficult half plié, half leg extension to the repertoire. I thought it’d make me stronger. 

A few days after class, the back pain I’ve had for four years was way worse.

“We’re looking to first reduce the inflammation and then we can work on mobility, so anything that irritates that L5, like lifting the leg back or forward too far is out for now.” 

I’m quoting to you from the chiropractors office, where we’re discussing the slight convex curve in my upper spine that likely has made the lower part of the spine compensate with a curve in the other direction. Add to that a yoga practice, a birth, carrying a kid on a hip and probably a lot of other more controllable things, and you have the growing irritation of one tiny part of the spine rubbing against another.

“So no ballet then right now,” I said, looking at him with an expressionless face. I had already come to the office angry. He didn’t blink an eye about it and understood that I had been at this place, not this exact place, but this place in addressing my back pain but with a different practitioner, before. And that it made sense to be frustrated. 

“There are a lot of us out there,” he said, about chiropractors, "so thanks for giving another one of us a chance.”

There was a part of me that thought that maybe he was talking more abstractly about men. I barely made it past the front door of this office, TBH. Another man was the front and the receptionist was so young and female and it struck me as outdated to hire someone to sit there and look pretty and do the tasks that you’d just rather not do. If you ask John Sarno, he might say the back pain has nothing to do with the L5 and everything to do with my anger about this receptionist and her boss. Her straight hair. Him interrupting her and taking over the second she has a question. 

I cried on the adjustment table. Maybe it was all about the cat.

“I know, I know,” he said, agreeing that patience would be required for this work. 

You’d think he was asking me to stop dancing forever.

It just brings you to your knees sometimes, the steps required to heal.