Changing Flow

I love our boy cat Flow the way Republican Senators love Trump; no matter how many turds he drops around the house, I am still slavishly devoted to him.

Flow, like any animal, has always been utterly himself, with his own quirks and habits and personality.  We had had Flow and his sister Stachie in our home for four years before he would sit in our laps (Stachie was a lap cat after only a month), but once he started, he always got in the same position: stretched out on our legs, facing away.  When he would sleep on the bed with us at night, he always curled up below our knees.  We sometimes called him Trotsky because when we were ready to set down a meal, he would trot a little circuitous path through the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and back to the kitchen.  He and Stachie both loved their food with a noisy passion, and would start asking for it two hours before the feeding times we had chosen for them.  We knew Stachie was sick the day she turned away from food.

Stachie died in 2019 of kidney failure.  Flow has enjoyed being an only cat these past years.  But he has begun to eat less, and has to be coaxed to eat at all.  He drinks prodigious amounts of water, so his kidneys are probably failing.  He doesn't seem to be in pain or even uncomfortable, so we love him up as much as we can.  He still wants affection, but he doesn't sit on our legs any more and doesn't sleep with us at night.  He used to like to curl up in either of two big fuzzy beds we put under the hutch in the living room.  Now he sleeps mostly in a little round gray bed in the coat closet.  When we walk past, he almost always blurps a funny little mew, which sounds as though he's saying "Hey!" or "What?" or "I didn't do it" or "Don't forget me."  We also sometimes find him meat loafing in odd places: twice on the bathroom floor behind the toilet, and recently half on the hallway carpet and half on the bare floor of the guest room, staring off into space.

Flow is changing. He's old and dying.  It's natural.  It's inevitable.  There's not really anything sad about it, although we'll be terribly sad when he dies.  But still, I'm grappling with that inevitability.  I still think about my Mom and Dad and Stachie and think "Really?  I'm never going to see them again?  Really?  How is that possible?"  I just don't get death, can't quite absorb it.  Flow is so much a part of the landscape of our home that it's almost unthinkable that he might - will at some point no longer be with us.  I see it coming, bit by bit, that loss, but somehow I just can't quite believe it.  Our sweet, funny, strange old man kitty.  Gosh but I love him. 

Body beautiful

Several years ago, PP (pre-pandemic), I led a workshop called Loving Our Bodies for a group of women at my UU Church. I talked about the reasons to love our bodies: all the ways it is able to heal itself, which are rather amazing, and the fact that our senses allow us to experience this gorgeous world.  I wore a sports bra and workout pants, which revealed my lumps and flab and flaws.  (I had considered leading naked, but thought that would probably be too distracting.)  I sent them home with little bags of items, each of which was chosen to appeal to one of the senses: rosemary for the nose, a little bell for the ears, a piece of soft fabric for the fingers, a Hershey's kiss for the tongue, and something pretty (can't remember what) for the eyes.

If I were going to lead another workshop of that type today, I would do it differently.  First I would ask everyone to put her hands on whatever part of her body she is most dissatisfied with, or, if that were too awkward, as in the case of hammer toes, for example, simply to visualize that part.  I would encourage the participants to close their eyes and just breathe for a moment, to take some time to truly connect with their bodies, and to notice and allow any feelings that arise.

Then I would tell my own story.  I have spent almost my entire life criticizing my body.  I don't know at what age that started, but it was early, and once begun, that self-criticism has never let up.  My hair is too lank, my knuckles too big, my thighs too chunky, my lips too thin, my chin too undefined, on and on and on.  And always the over-arching accusation of not being thin enough.  (My thyroid once went hyper and speeded up my metabolism so much that I lost a lot of weight, eventually down to a size 4 from a 12, no matter how much I ate.  The only time in my life I didn't think I was too fat.)

I would say to the participants, "Today, let's take a break from that critical inner voice.  Let's allow ourselves to be with our bodies exactly as they are, to experience our feelings about them, as well as our feelings about how we have treated ourselves.  Anger, sadness, grief, amusement, disappointment, resignation, confusion, whatever those feelings are, to let them arise unimpeded."

Then I would get to the topic of how to love our bodies, which is to decide to love them.  It's really the only way there is to counter all that self-criticism.  This kind of love isn't based on reasons, even though there are many reasons for it (see first paragraph).  It must be a choice.  When the critical voice arises, it must be recognized and put aside.    

Self-criticism is a habit.  The way to change a habit isn't to break the old one but to create a new one.  It takes awareness, the ability - and willingness - to notice and acknowledge the critical voice and to consciously create a new voice.  "No, I don't need to do that.  I'm fine as I am." Or "Thank you, body, for housing my soul and allowing me to experience the world."  Like a mantra used to focus the mind.

That's really all there is to it.  Simple, though not necessarily easy.    

 

Two great mysteries

There are, of course, many mysteries great and small in the world of being human, but I am plagued by two in particular.

The first is: How is it possible that so many people in power either are or have become so terribly hypocritical, mean-spirited, divisive, angry, smug, corrupt, greedy, and ignorant?  I have never been able to completely rid myself of the assumption that on some level, these fanatical Republicans of whom I speak know full well that they have backed a bad horse and are perpetuating lies about a supposedly stolen election and an insurrection they say deserves no deeper investigation.  They must know they've sold their souls.  Or, even more disturbing, have they actually bought into their own lies?  Such a puzzlement.

The other mystery is: What on earth are Sweet Hubby and I doing when we're asleep?  Every morning, I find that the mattress has crept over toward SH's side, the sheets are pulled over toward my side, and the bedspread is way over on SH's side.  How is this even physically possible?  What weird tossing and turning are we doing that results in such uneven distribution of the bedding?  How is it possible for the sheet to go one way and the bedspread another, and why is the mattress moving, and always in one direction?  

These are some of the conundrums taking my attention.  There are others, but these are the big ones, and, unless I set up a camera to record us sleeping, I will probably never have a satisfying answer to either one.

The good ol' factory

Would I know if I lost my sense of smell?  Since that can happen to people who contract COVID, it's  something to be aware of.  But I'm not sure I would notice.  

Certainly if something smells really strong ("Honey, the fish has gone bad.") or is right up close to my nose ("Smell my watchband."), I can smell just fine.  When I'm out walking and pass a rosemary bush, I love to pluck a few needles, crush and inhale them deeply.  That's one of my favorite fragrances.  When I'm baking muffins or some such deliciousness, I can smell them when they're baked just about right.

But most of the time I'm simply not aware of smelling much of anything.  Would I notice an absence of something I'm not aware of to begin with?

I once watched our little girl cat, the late, snuggly Miss Stachie Lou, tracking something on the living room carpet.  She went back and forth, then in tighter and tighter circles, until she finally found what she was sniffing for.  Bip, her little tongue flicked out to get it.  It was a crumb so small, I couldn't even see it, but she was able to hunt it down by smell.  How rich the world must be for animals, at least for those whose sense of smell is their primary way of finding and identifying.

We humans must have had much more acute senses at some point in our distant past.  But I guess they've diminished, become almost as vestigial as appendixes.  We don't need them so much any more, now that our survival depends more on electricity and almost not at all on our connection to nature.

I wonder if what I'm missing isn't the ability to smell, but awareness.  If I took time to notice, the world, truly notice it with all my senses, which would require an enormous stilling of my thoughts, might I discover more of the richness of the natural, and even the human, world?

Will I be satisfied with speculation, as usual, or will I actually give it a try?  Yes, on tomorrow's walk, I am giving my word here and now that I will be as aware as I'm able, to truly see what I am looking at, to truly listen to what I hear, to smell whatever is in the air.  To let my senses, as it were, stretch their legs and do what they're meant for.