I just said good bye to my sister and brother-in-law during a very brief visit to Long Island this evening, where my parents and a few relatives gathered together for their final night in the states. It was an evening of mixed emotions. I was happy to see my sister, and sad to say good bye. I was happy to meet my older cousin's newest son for the first time, but sad that I only saw them for an hour, because they arrived right before I had to take the train back to the city.
I was ecstatic to be reunited with one of the kanji t-shirts my Japanese friend Kazuko had created for me. When I left Japan she gave me a second genki shirt written in her traditional calligraphy with her own hand, and a third shirt that said "Ben" in kanji. In China I learned that the "Ben" sound meant "stupid," but in this particular Japanese kanji which she used, it meant "exertion through study." I had left it upstate after Thanksgiving, along with my pillows, so I'd asked my mother to mail the pillows to me, and she might as well throw in the shirt. Weeks later it still hadn't arrived, and I began to get worried. It had been six weeks since she'd mailed it. Yesterday morning I got an e-mail saying that the package with the shirt had finally been sent back to my parents: the address had been written incorrectly. So tonight I finally got my shirt back. I usually wear it when I'm writing, and it's very comfortable. I have to admit, I was trying to be unattached, but it's been a little hard to focus without it, as silly as that seems.
Then the sad news came: our cat Muppet died. She was almost 17 years old, which is very old for a cat. She was the last of our four childhood cats to go. Bort (my favorite, named after a Simpsons joke) left a few years ago when I was in Japan, and Molly a few years before that. Candy died when I was still fifteen. Now all of our childhood pets are gone. My mom might get another cat to enjoy the farm, but it won't be the same. I feel like an important link to my youth has been permanently severed.
The special thing about Muppet is she just wandered into our yard on numerous occasions. She was part of an enormous litter from one of our neighbor's cats, but she was the most adventurous, apparently. She had more energy than any cat we'd ever seen. She could run up a tree, seemingly on a whim, in two seconds. She would wrestle with Candy for an hour, and he was about three times her size. Soon after we showed up we had a big family event with relatives, and she stole the show by running back and forth like some sort of supersonic feline lunatic. Then she got sick and was never the same. She didn't meow for years, only emitting a slow growl when displeased. When the younger cat wanted to play with her, she growled and ran away. It was sad to see her change like that, but she could still purr when you petted her, and she loved to run around and hunt. As sweet as she was, she had a habit of leaving dead rodents on our front doorstep several times a week. My dad doesn't like domesticated pets, but he respected her when he'd see her prowling around on cold winter mornings when he was hunting too. No more prowling now, though.
Then again, maybe all the cats are just lost in the mail somewhere in the soular system, and they'll show up again when I least expect them to. God will say someone will have written the wrong address on their spirits, and that they were supposed to keep running up trees and so forth.
Anyway, a long day, and it's always great to see the family.
But now that it's over, I can look forward to having no plans besides working, reading, writing and doing what I want to do for the foreseeable future.
Right now I want to go to bed.
I was ecstatic to be reunited with one of the kanji t-shirts my Japanese friend Kazuko had created for me. When I left Japan she gave me a second genki shirt written in her traditional calligraphy with her own hand, and a third shirt that said "Ben" in kanji. In China I learned that the "Ben" sound meant "stupid," but in this particular Japanese kanji which she used, it meant "exertion through study." I had left it upstate after Thanksgiving, along with my pillows, so I'd asked my mother to mail the pillows to me, and she might as well throw in the shirt. Weeks later it still hadn't arrived, and I began to get worried. It had been six weeks since she'd mailed it. Yesterday morning I got an e-mail saying that the package with the shirt had finally been sent back to my parents: the address had been written incorrectly. So tonight I finally got my shirt back. I usually wear it when I'm writing, and it's very comfortable. I have to admit, I was trying to be unattached, but it's been a little hard to focus without it, as silly as that seems.
Then the sad news came: our cat Muppet died. She was almost 17 years old, which is very old for a cat. She was the last of our four childhood cats to go. Bort (my favorite, named after a Simpsons joke) left a few years ago when I was in Japan, and Molly a few years before that. Candy died when I was still fifteen. Now all of our childhood pets are gone. My mom might get another cat to enjoy the farm, but it won't be the same. I feel like an important link to my youth has been permanently severed.
The special thing about Muppet is she just wandered into our yard on numerous occasions. She was part of an enormous litter from one of our neighbor's cats, but she was the most adventurous, apparently. She had more energy than any cat we'd ever seen. She could run up a tree, seemingly on a whim, in two seconds. She would wrestle with Candy for an hour, and he was about three times her size. Soon after we showed up we had a big family event with relatives, and she stole the show by running back and forth like some sort of supersonic feline lunatic. Then she got sick and was never the same. She didn't meow for years, only emitting a slow growl when displeased. When the younger cat wanted to play with her, she growled and ran away. It was sad to see her change like that, but she could still purr when you petted her, and she loved to run around and hunt. As sweet as she was, she had a habit of leaving dead rodents on our front doorstep several times a week. My dad doesn't like domesticated pets, but he respected her when he'd see her prowling around on cold winter mornings when he was hunting too. No more prowling now, though.
Then again, maybe all the cats are just lost in the mail somewhere in the soular system, and they'll show up again when I least expect them to. God will say someone will have written the wrong address on their spirits, and that they were supposed to keep running up trees and so forth.
Candy (big) and Muppet (small)
(Bort)
Anyway, a long day, and it's always great to see the family.
But now that it's over, I can look forward to having no plans besides working, reading, writing and doing what I want to do for the foreseeable future.
Right now I want to go to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment