nccotus

just bought a pair of grey fleece gloves at the Riteaid around the corner for 6.99.

brought it all back when I saw them.

Lost a pair of grey gloves in the subway in Cambridge in the winter of 1985 in Cambridge when I was losing it generally. I lost a bunch of grey things. I had sent Daisy to my mother. She was a beautiful long haired grey tortoiseshell cat. I hadn’t gotten her spayed because I wanted to let her have kittens. My mother had let her out and she got pregnant, I was terrified. There was another grey cat in the mix from years before. I went looking for those gloves. Couldn’t find them.

I wound up being sent to my mother myself and it was horrible.

Daisy had her kittens and suddenly I had 5 cats to remind me of the relationship I had lost. A few weeks later I was at the state hospital.

finding these grey gloves 39 years later brings it full circle and gives me closure.

Daisy was vigilant over those kittens throughout her life. We kept all of them in my mother’s 40 acre farmhouse property. Along with my sister’s horses.

she used to bring them half-killed mice from the field above the property.

animals like people will hold on for their offspring.

I sense that Daisy is finally able to let go also wherever she has been down all these decades.

Likewise Domino the kitten from Mower A-31 at Harvard. That poor little kitten. And his mother. And the kitten who got lost from the apartment on Granite Street in Somerville. On my watch.

Claire’s horse died of cancer at age 20 when she had gone away to college but was still holding on for her to have her first foal at 20 years old which to my mind would have been a cruelty. I gave my parents some practical advice about calling her first and getting a meal before driving to her college in Massachusetts to bring her home to say goodbye to her horse. I have taken shit for this ever since. The horse is buried on the property.

my mother loved animals and nature and found her niche on the farm in PA and I was never invited to be a part of this. I was parked in her garage there where I was permitted to smoke; after I got out of the state hospital after I was damaged; until I met Alex and left.

Daisy stayed there with “the kittens.” My mother referred to them as “little bits of Lynne.” Two of them died on the road. But Thomas and Sam lived until 20 as Daisy did.

making a molehill out of a mountain in this regard as my relationship with my son hangs in the balance here…