I can't really remember what made Lee laugh so hard. I think it was just that I brought up the cat again. My wife doesn't like cats, ever since one climbed up into her engine to keep warm and got itself ground up into catburger when she started it up the next morning, damaging her very first car.
There's a cat that gets into our basement now too, and that also makes her hate all the cats in our neighborhood, because they roam free, and maybe pull at our insulation, but of that they may be unfairly accused, or dare I say, framed? (by the squirrels)
The other night we saw a kitten, new to the neighborhood and in fact to life itself. It was soft, and multicolored, and cute. As we were getting into our car to head to a party, it jingled up to me (it had a collar that jingled), and rubbed against my leg, then looked like it was going to go under my car, so I told it to shoo, but it wouldn't (it liked me), so I chased it off, as if I, too, hated cats. Then as we were driving away it almost got hit by another car backing out of its driveway and that's when I thought I should stop and see who it belongs too. "No" my wife screamed at me. "We're already late."
So I pulled over and we had a fight. It was about her hating all cats, and maybe she could just go to the party by herself, and I would check on the cat. Eventually I resumed course, telling her, however, that if we got back and found out some little kid was crying her eyes out because her new cat had been killed, that I planned on blaming her.
I told Lee about the cat pretty much right away, and truthfully, the cat was on my mind all night, so when I brought it up again, seemingly out of the blue, "I'm just worried about the cat", I said, that's when Lee started laughing, ROTFL, almost. Kneeled over like he was praying laughing, actually. KOLHWPL.
And although this isn't much of a segue, I'll tie it together at some point, my parents are going to be celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary soon. My brothers and my sister and I are planning a party because our dad said we should. Otherwise we probably wouldn't have, bad offspring that that must make us. But I actually see this as a gift to me from my Dad. It forces me to write something about them for the occasion. And in order to do that, I have to figure out why it's so hard for me to say anything about what great parents they were.
What should I say? I still remember when you took away my TV privileges for a week. Where's that helicopter ride you promised me on my 9th birthday? You never understood me.
For this and more I forgive you.
I forgive you for sending me to my room until I was pleasant (when would that be?). And for not giving me enough allowance. And for not giving me a key to the apartment so that I had to wait outside until you got home. (I actually didn't mind that, but others in the building might have liked it better if I hadn't peed in the stairwell).
Is it ok to tell them on their 50th wedding anniversary that you forgive them? And what if they say, "for what?"
For never understanding me, like you aren't right now.
Jesus, I can hear my dad saying. It's a Jewish thing, I guess, to use "Jesus" as a curse word. I always thought it was weird that my dad, a Jew, would exclaim "Jesus".
I was once getting a tour of St. John the Divine in NY, it's a huge church, and it was being explained to me that this particular stained glass figure, way up high, was six feet tall.
"Jesus" I said.
"That's exactly who it is" said the tour guide.
I do seem to be holding onto some childhood anger, as if I was my 9 year old, 35 years from now, still holding on to the fact that we yelled at her this morning because she expected us to get her the honey, and we didn't understand why she was crying when she was the one that expected us to be her servants. And when she did get the honey, she couldn't open it, but she yelled "OPEN IT!" and ended up having to go to school with only one hurried bite of biscuit (sans honey) in her belly. And she didn't say "bye" to me when I dropped her off.
Perhaps this celebration of what became our family 50 years ago (that seems like a lot, but only 6 years afterwards, I was born), may force me to figure out why I moved away, and why I ever said I hated her (I think it was the allowance).
They were good parents. They let us find our own paths. They didn't push us. They didn't guide us. But that's irrelevant. Anybody's issues with their parents are really issues with themselves, because if we are unhappy at all, it must be their fault, if for no other reason, than because they didn't solve it for us.
I don't know when we become our own responsibility, yes I do it's when we are born, but when we realize it, that's a different issue. And if the writing of this thing forces me to realize it, maybe my independance won't have to wait until their deaths (or more realistically, my own).
My friend Lee is the youngest of his siblings, but in his 50s he is the oldest in our circle of friends. And there is a story he likes to tell us about something that will be coming for us, as it has for him, and that is leakage. Leakage happens to him occasionally upon emerging from the bathroom. He commiserated recently with a witness to this embarrassing occurance, as a little spot appeared on his pants.
"You know how to shake it don't you?" the witness asked.
"Well sure," said Lee, "but, y'know, they always say that if you shake it more than twice, you're playing with it."
To which the witness responded in an exaggerated southern drawl, "it's yourn ain't it?"
I know that you can't blame your parents for who you are. I know that I should have gotten out of the car, and checked on that cat, if I damn well pleased (she'd get over it), and I know that your life is your own. It's yourn, ain't it?
And I know that everyone has issues with their parents. That makes them good for nothing… but to love.
And that's what I'm going to say the next time my daughter wants me to do something for her that she can and should do for herself.
"Don't expect anything of me, sweetie, just love me."
That's a lesson, my parents would have been well served to teach me long ago.