The Cat’s Always Looking at Me Friday Round-Up

We still have physical custody of our son’s cat, Hercules. That means that when we decamp the big city and head for Lake Superior, he comes along in a cat carrier that sits between us in our truck. He meows at least half the way. The rest of the time, he sleeps with one eye open. Now that we are here, he pads around, sits in windows (pushing the screen out of one this afternoon), and curls himself on the bed belonging to the son whose cat he is. We contemplate taking him to the beach but fear he would find the surf unsettling.

Yesterday it was 55 degrees up here on the shores of Lake Superior, today it is 79 and it feels like noon in Nicaragua. When it is hot here, the flies come out, flitting merrily as if they are glad to fly about without their sweaters. I sat for an hour with my feet in the vastness that is this lake, just sitting and looking, and thinking of the list of dozens until there was nothing left but the rocks beneath my toes.

Kansas pro-choice organizers and voters are the heroes of the week. Since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, I’ve been buttoned down, not wanting to once again haul my own grisly experience out of the closet where it hangs with the mohair sweaters and matching knee socks of my youth. Election night, though, was cause for celebration. Lord, I thought, there is a ‘we’ here. I am part of a ‘we.’ I didn’t cry but I could have.

I think about my age almost all the time. I don’t think this is healthy but that is the way it is. I am fascinated by my age like I might be a carnivorous plant, watching its spiked leaves trap a fly. If you take your eyes off the plant, you might miss that moment when the leaves clench and the fly is doomed. Not a worry for me, since I literally think about my age – 74 – practically every minute of the day. This is nutty and likely to get worse because, you know, I have a birthday coming up in about six months and it’s a notable one.

With age comes great slyness. If you are a normal person with average exposure to the world and the ability to digest what you experience into themes, aging, insofar as it involves the accumulation of a vast amount of experiences, will make you a genius. Right now, this minutes, I am there. I am a genius. It may be fleeting but it’s real. Like a firefly.