Still Fishing

Early this week, we lost our beloved little cat, Fish, to a tragic dryer accident. It was her nature to be in and amongst all things troublesome and her number finally came up. As I was gathering pictures of her, I found myself missing her terribly, the soft little ears, the tiny felt feet. She had a bad case of “little.” It was one of her distinguishing qualities. In fact, I’m sure that we adored her specifically because she stayed little, not just in size, but in personality. Fish was feisty and kittenish, always playing (sometimes roughly) and always intensely unmarked by age or better sense. She retained her youthful spirit, yes, but never seemed to grow any wiser. In the end, it was a fatal flaw.

I hope Connor, my son, has a gentler nature. I also hope he’ll have a wiser one. I would love him to remain young at heart, wild with his sense of self and so potent in his desires as to have the robustness of life about him. Dan and I both pride ourselves on some of the stupider yet fun stuff we’ve done. Who picks up and goes to New York at 30, starts business because they’re broke, spends 15 years in college, gets up to some of the trouble we used to get up to in the middle of the night? We do, and in some ways I hope Connor will live as exuberantly. In some ways, I hope he’ll have better sense to measure twice and cut once, leave off dark alleys, whiskey and wild women. I have the fear on me now, you see and I just want him to come home safe and stay out of the appliances.

Of course, he’s MY son. Moreover he’s Dan’s son and if he inherits anything of his parents’ spirit, he’ll probably give me three heart attacks a day once he starts walking and twice that when he figures out how to run. By three, he’ll probably think his name is “Get Down From There!” And I’ll be secretly proud, while I run after him, try to catch him before he jumps off the roof, and cover my ever-increasingly gray hair with ever stronger batches of Loreal. Fact is, I’d delight in this liveliness, but I have to face that fact that risk takers often take one too many and end up on the wrong side of their luck.

My Momma told me to let wild things be. She also tried to tame me, talk me down out of trees and big cities, and away from wild men. For all her efforts, I broke away from her only to heartlessly do those things that frightened her most. Will I have the courage to let Connor be himself and the wisdom to know when he's courting disaster? Will I have the strength to survive his loss if he goes one step too far, or can I stand losing him as he slowly blanches, shade by shade, like a photograph left in the sun? Neither seems acceptable, yet I feel the fear on me again and don’t know how to shake it.