She asks herself this question as she wipes black streaks from her eyes onto a tissue.
Is it the music? Or the weather? Or the loneliness? Really she's not lonely; she went for a walk with a friend just this morning, and had a friend over for the afternoon yesterday.
But I use the term "friend" loosely.
What is a "friend"? Someone you know? Someone you care about? Someone you tell everything? Someone who cares about the everything in your life? Someone who thinks like you? Someone you have a history with? Someone you have a future with?
Damn good questions.
Her "best" friend has almost nothing in common with her, but has the history. Her other friends are all new - no history, but a connection of presence. The baby, the time, the location. But who can she talk to?
No one.
That's why we cultivate long relationships. To build something stronger than the everyday bullshit.
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Monday, August 4, 2008
Three babies
Wow, it's been a REALLY long time since I wrote anything here. Sorry about that. But I AM essentially a lazy person, with the additional (and previously mentioned) handicaps of time-management dysfunction and a now 13-month-old baby. Probably I should stop apologizing for that and just write or not write, but writing is truly important to me and my apologies are as much to myself as to my (one or two) faithful Readers.
As you can see in the photos on the right, this post is not about triplets as a result of hormone treatments, but the new additions to our home: two 10-week-old kittens, two brothers, Caillou (the grey one) and Soleil (the orange one). Unfortunately they ended up with French names...I suppose it just seems more unique and exotic to me. If we went with English, they would be Pebble and Sun, now how cool would that be?
Chloé is in non-stop pursuit of the kitties, as you can see in the photo. At first, Soleil was quite frightened of all of us and stayed more or less hidden, and Caillou seemed to understand that he should let Chloé chase him around
but stay just out of reach. Now they're both being fairly lovey and seem to think that they have to sit there and let the baby grab them around the neck and pull their legs...I wish they'd run away or scratch her or something so she'd figure out that what she's doing isn't okay. My stern "Chloé! No!" isn't really going very far.
I'm über-happy to have these kittens, since I've wanted a cat since...well, since I left all of my semi-adoptive street cats (they still lived on the street, I just fed and loved them) in Cairo. But what surprises me is that my feelings towards them are totally different from my feelings towards previous cats. Because of Chloé. I feel like I only truly love her, my baby, and I have no room left for anyone else. With the cats it's become clear, since I've had cats before and I know how I feel about them. But even with Gaetan it's hard. I love him, but I feel like I've got my head so far up Chloé's butt (to put it really obnoxiously) that I can't send any love anywhere else.
Someone told me recently that a mother's hormones are so overdosed and confused after having a baby that it takes a couple of years to get back to yourself. This sounded like a good explanation to me, and I'm holding fast to it although it also sounds a bit like an excuse. But something really has changed, everything feels different. I was always someone who didn't have a lot of friends; I saved everything I had for just one or two people. Now I'm finding it hard to fit two people and two cats into my emotional ventricles. Has anyone else felt this way in this situation??
Crap. Someone started drilling somewhere and woke the cats. And then the baby. Gotta go.
As you can see in the photos on the right, this post is not about triplets as a result of hormone treatments, but the new additions to our home: two 10-week-old kittens, two brothers, Caillou (the grey one) and Soleil (the orange one). Unfortunately they ended up with French names...I suppose it just seems more unique and exotic to me. If we went with English, they would be Pebble and Sun, now how cool would that be?
Chloé is in non-stop pursuit of the kitties, as you can see in the photo. At first, Soleil was quite frightened of all of us and stayed more or less hidden, and Caillou seemed to understand that he should let Chloé chase him around
but stay just out of reach. Now they're both being fairly lovey and seem to think that they have to sit there and let the baby grab them around the neck and pull their legs...I wish they'd run away or scratch her or something so she'd figure out that what she's doing isn't okay. My stern "Chloé! No!" isn't really going very far.I'm über-happy to have these kittens, since I've wanted a cat since...well, since I left all of my semi-adoptive street cats (they still lived on the street, I just fed and loved them) in Cairo. But what surprises me is that my feelings towards them are totally different from my feelings towards previous cats. Because of Chloé. I feel like I only truly love her, my baby, and I have no room left for anyone else. With the cats it's become clear, since I've had cats before and I know how I feel about them. But even with Gaetan it's hard. I love him, but I feel like I've got my head so far up Chloé's butt (to put it really obnoxiously) that I can't send any love anywhere else.
Someone told me recently that a mother's hormones are so overdosed and confused after having a baby that it takes a couple of years to get back to yourself. This sounded like a good explanation to me, and I'm holding fast to it although it also sounds a bit like an excuse. But something really has changed, everything feels different. I was always someone who didn't have a lot of friends; I saved everything I had for just one or two people. Now I'm finding it hard to fit two people and two cats into my emotional ventricles. Has anyone else felt this way in this situation??
Crap. Someone started drilling somewhere and woke the cats. And then the baby. Gotta go.
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