Big Babies

Are we all just big babies?

Mostly, and recently, I would have laughed at that idea, and at people who thought it was true. The older I get, paradoxically, the less sure I am.

I just finished setting up my guest room as a quasi-office. I have a laptop and it's nice, but it's also too easy to get all wi-fied in front of the television and then get jack-shit done. So I moved my (grievously ignored) desktop into my guest bedroom, hooked it up to the internet, installed a webcam per my current job's requirements, and voila...a wired computer set at a sane distance from the satellite dish, refrigerator, front door, and all other distractions.

The guest room and bath in my house are set nicely apart from everything else -- their own little private space. They were also, two years ago, the tiny suite for one of the many cats I've rescued. Mija, a four-week-old kitten of inexplicable origins, spent two weeks there before we deemed her old and big enough to hold her own with our other cats. She was originally slated to go to our wonderful local sanctuary, but fate intervened, and she has become our one friendly cat, welcoming everyone and answering to any version of her long, long name: Mija Mustachio Honey Honey Hey.

Anyway -- I was trying to troubleshoot my webcam setup when Mija joined me in her old room. She jumped onto the guest futon, crawled around happily, and fell asleep. In fact, she refused to leave. She passed out around seven p.m.; at midnight, she still hadn't left, despite several opportunities.

A bit of background, particularly for those unfamiliar with cats: four weeks old is far too young for a kitten to be separated from her mother. Mija did not know how to eat solid food, or drink other than from a nipple, or use a litter box, or even how to clean herself. I spent two weeks teaching her those things. For many months, she treated me as her mother (and I was). In her youth, she would sometimes crawl on top of me and suckle my t-shirt. It was sweet and sad and inevitable, and she mostly outgrew it -- after her first year, she stopped this behavior, and would revert rarely.

So, today -- Mija curled up onto the bed of her youth, and stared around the room strangely, and then she began to purr and mrr in a kittenish fashion. I laid down beside her, and she curled into me and began to try to nurse at the blanket. I petted her and tried to soothe her; she eventually fell asleep. I was surprised by her reversion. Eventually we left the room (and I finally got the fucking webcam set up).

It made me wonder, though. I visit my sister and her family (best brother-in-law ever; sweet niece and nephew) for a month or two every summer. I am in New Mexico; they live within twenty minutes of my childhood home in York Beach, Maine. For a million reasons, at least, it is my favorite time of year -- I get to enjoy the incomparable company of my family, and also to revisit the haunted haunts of my (early) youth. We are adults now, but we are also children retracing time-worn paths, and getting to choose the best of it all.

We go to the beach at York. We follow the meandering back roads between York and Eliot and Berwick and Kittery, Maine; Portsmouth and Newington and Dover and Durham, New Hampshire. Simultaneously uplifted and starved by the usual cacti and creosote and mesquite of the Chihuahuan Desert, I feast on the pine trees and granite and cold, sandy beaches. I inhale the humidity, dance in the rain, feel friendly green grass beneath my bare feet. I live a totally different life.

In fact -- I live my old life, just as Mija does, in her old room. I know it's an old life, but it's a new life too. It's hard to separate -- do I love this place for now, or for then? It's both, of course. But it's also confused...in a happy way.

I wouldn't trade my past; I wouldn't trade my present. And I wouldn't trade the jumbled-together joy of having it all, even if just for a moment -- on the lemon-lit beach of Short Sands, a quick jog from Nubble Light, a sweet walk from Wild Kingdom, a brief jump from beach-side skee-ball -- every now and then, life is perfect.