No walking today, but it's the first day all week that I haven't slipped and slid in the snow to get my "antidiabetes" exercise. And with the shoveling I have had to do, I feel virtuous enough to skip it today. Any snow that fell was insignificant, so I avoided all outdoor activity.
I read with pleasure, "Anniversary" ~Pantalaimon~
When we left NH for good, we drove to PA in an old Rambler, with 3 children, 2 adults, one dog, and SEVEN cats. That's a story in itself. What with the usual tragedies that befall cats in this world, like being hit by cars, and running away (back to NH?), by the time we moved here, we only had one of those cats left. He was a lazy old tom named Crisco, but because he was the survivor, he was cherished.
Well, in NH he had been a barn cat, used to being outdoors. In PA, I kept him outside as much as I could, because I do not like litter boxes. In this new house, old Crissy decided that outdoor latrines were passe, and began to use my brand-new carpeted bathroom for his doings. I finally put a litter box in there, but it didn't help. He had discovered the carpet and much preferred it.
We planned to keep him indoors for a month or two so that he wouldn't try to run back to PA...silly us, he was too lazy to RUN anywhere. But, by winter, he was an outdoor cat again, and content with that. Ruining my carpet was no longer on his list of things to do, and we settled back into the old barn cat routine. This meant he came inside to eat, be petted, get some snoozing time, but was outside at night.
It got very cold that first winter when Lyra was still living at home. And we had an argument about Crissy being outside all night. I still didn't trust him to be inside during the night, reasoning that he could get into the garage, where there were many warm hidey holes in amongst the boxes and extraneous furniture for him to snuggle into. The argument was fierce, and I won.
The next day, Crissy was found in a snowbank, dead. Lyra was sure he had frozen to death; I was sure something else had happened to him (there was a neighbor who hated cats and laced cat food with poison, I found out later). But, whatever the cause, our ole Crissy was dead. And Lyra was unforgiving.
Well, life does go on, and we became friends again, and I forgot about the trauma my tender daughter had gone through over that cat. She married Jackson and moved back to PA. This was a much bigger, and longer lasting, trauma for me; not the marriage, but her moving back to PA. Years went by, and one day, when I was cleaning out an old cookbook, I came across a poem Lyra had written about the demise of Crisco. It was devastating to me. All her anger was in that poem; and I was the demon. She wrote beautifully about the cat, and the terrible end of his life. She has always written very well, and the emotions expressed in that poem were as cutting as on the day the cat died.
I cried; not for the cat, but for the pain I had inflicted upon this precious daughter of mine. That was years ago and many, many happy memories have been built between the two of us. But the sharpness of the pain I felt when I realized what I had done to her is still there.
I'm glad she is still writing. I hope that forever after, there will never be a time when I hurt her again, knowingly or unknowingly. It's hard to be a parent, isn't it?
This has been a lazy day. It began with serving at the 8:00 o'clock service, which meant I was up very early. There were services, altar clean-up and set-ups, and meetings all morning. Then I sat down to try to do some work on the computer, and found myself unable to think, never mind write. So I snuggled into bed and finished reading one of Lillian Braun's "The Cat Who..." books. It was just the kind of book for a lazy, dozy day.
's entry. And of course, I was reminded of another story about growing up with Lyra.
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