I had him scrub his head first thing yesterday when we woke up and while he was in the shower, I made an appointment to have his hair cut. We headed down to the shop, him glaring and growling from under his fringe, me humming along with the radio. When we got there, I said, "If you will be a good boy and sit still while the nice lady trims your hair, I will get you ice cream." He snarled and made some guttural noises.
We walked in and she took one look at his wild, still-dampened locks streaming in all directions, winced and said, "Are you wontin' a hair cut, or are you gettin' a hair cut?"
I think that is about the best way to sum up life in general, not just giant little skulking boys who once had shiny brown eyes. I know he had eyes at one point, because you have a picture of them. Sometimes you get it, whether you wanted it or not. And sometimes you don't get it, no matter how much you wanted it. Wanting and getting. Or, if you live in rural Alabama, wontin' and gettin'.
After the trim-she was very kind and clucked and fussed and was easy with the comb-I was once again reunited with the shiny brown eyes I had been missing. They were full of spit and vinegar, but 13 and 3 are nearly identical phases, I knew he would be distracted by something else soon enough-especially now that he could see again.
I paid the $10 and thanked the lady, looked back at the tumble and fall of the 6 inches of his hair now littering the chair and floor. There was a quick hitch in my breath, I am often just behind myself in reactions, I do-then think. It wasn't the cutting his hair, it was the leaving it behind to be swept up and discarded. It was a piece of my child to me, a mess to be swept up to her.
A few months back, we came home with a van full of abandoned kittens we had found out geocaching. We placed what we could, kept one and after much thought, decided to take the last 2 to the pound. I researched and found a local animal shelter that had an 90% success rate in placing pets. It helped if they were young, attractive and healthy. We had adopted through their program twice and send a small donation in on each of the dogs' adoption day every year. We have also helped foster dogs for them in the past.
We took them in one afternoon to drop off and were told we could not drop them there because we did not reside in that county. Our county animal shelter has a 40% success rate. I sobbed all the way home. We could not find a home for them-I had tried for 2 months-we could not afford to keep them, Matt's job was secure, but his take home for the year was cut 20% to keep it that way. There has not been extra money in months.
Finally, a friend who lives in that county said she did not mind running them in and we arranged it, dropped them off and I headed home very happy about the way things had turned out. She called on the way to take them to the shelter and asked a couple questions, their age and sex and so on, so she could better pull off them being 'her' cats. In the background, her daughter asked something and she told her, "We don't need to know their names."
After I hung up, I cried a long time. Their names were River and Simon, they were sibling cats. What had I done? Now no one would ever know their real names, they would not be adopted out together, River in particular was the most beautiful cat I had ever seen and we kept Tuesday Jane, the plain orange tabby who was not regal at all, she laid with her back legs splayed all over the place and had a rusty purr and big wide eyes on a wide, flat face. Was she even really a cat? She could have been some alien posing as a cat and now I was stuck with her.
Then Ben came in and scooped her up, telling her she was his friend cat and they went outside to play with a stick and some string.
And I realize now, it's just another case of wontin' and gettin'. We saved those kittens back in November and they did not freeze to death or get run over. They got fed, got homes-the 2 animal shelter drop-offs were adopted, but not together. And we have 4 other rescue cats already. I wanted to keep them all, we got to keep one. I wanted the pretty one, we got to keep the one Ben loved.
At some point, it becomes what you can realistically do. You let go of this to make room for that. Possessions, people, family, animals and even emotions.
And Jake managed to let go of being pissed about his shearing almost as soon as he got back in the van. He sat down, buckled up, looked at me and said, "I want my ice cream."
He got what he wanted.
