Appraisal
Christmas night, 2015, rocking my newborn daughter in a worn Los Angeles bedroom, I disregarded the yellowing paint and the stubbornly dusty sill. Down the portal hall, the husband/new father sunk on the couch, guzzling and streaming, was outside our world. The glider was dark wood with ivory cushions, delicate finger bows tying them to the rods. Indulgently, I’d added it to the baby registry, and my sister gifted it above all things.
On the corner of the bed, my cat curled into her blanket. Large white prolific shedder, she’d been left at a shelter eight years prior. Now fifteen, she no longer trilled, hunting the occasional fly. But she still plotted—the kitchen chair, to the table, to the counter—to the crystalline vase and its dried rosebud. Her lids drooped over her peridot eyes, and her mouth formed its perfect scissor.
Having only adored dogs, I’d entered the bleak shelter, a cinderblock building in a circle of cement. At the front, stacked in cages, listless cats lolled. The soon-to-be-euthanized, the technician explained.
She was alone in the top-left cage, paws tucked beneath her white fluff body. As the technician led me by, she rose. She arched her back like a Halloween cat, met my gaze, and yipped. Surprised, I lingered. As if rabid, she lunged, ramming her side then her snout against the grate. I felt more than summoned. I felt this cat had stripped past my failures and doubts and found a glistening core.
I now see how my daughter benefitted from our love. Before Kapokey (she’d come with the name like she’d come declawed) I’d only fed myself. I learned a parental grip of panic and delight. The time I could not find Kapokey anywhere—not in the closets or on the balcony or in the building’s labyrinthine halls—until finally, I saw her in the oddest place: atop the refrigerator. She squatted there like a goose on her eggs, purring in the spasmodic hum. She knew when I exited the faculty parking lot miles away, scurrying to the door (the husband relayed) at ten PM sharp. It’s not unusual, I’d heard, for pets to exhibit internal clocks. But astonishing that this sweet creature set its hands to me.
That Christmas night, my daughter in my arms, my cat by my feet, my heart glowed like a ruby wedged under rock. “As long as I’ve got you girls,” I whispered to seal the spell.
I didn’t consider that one day Kapokey would be gone. Within two years, a sudden thirst, a kidney problem, would become cancer everywhere. I’d stagger around the apartment searching for her like I had during earthquakes, pocketbook strapped across my neck, delirious with grief. When the torment passed, gratitude came: her affection still radiated. Likewise, for my daughter, I want to nurture a love that outlasts me.
Rocking her that night, I marveled that in a world of possible mothers, she was mine. She eschewed the gifted swaddles, shrieking and flailing in their confinement. So I held her in the hospital blanket—white cotton iced with pink and blue lines. Even at birth, she wanted what she wanted. She was induced, but she wouldn’t come out. So the surgeon said, “We have to cut you open,” and I said, “Do anything.” I lay down, pliant and vulnerable. Bitterness wasn’t present. From the start, with her, I could never hold a grudge. Already I’d have known her scrunched, sleeping face in a crowd of babies. Already I’d timed my life to hers. Her pursed lips endeared me, and SIDS cloaked my nights. Do cradling arms imprint warmth? And if so, how long and how deeply will she feel this love?
Sometimes, as she struggles into adolescence, I picture her before a mirror. It’s full-length but I just see her face, that pocket of brow consistent since birth. Her body changes; it lengthens, curves, and ages. But it’s her eyes I see, damning herself. No matter how much effort she’s exerted or what she’s achieved, some comparison has snaked in and sapped her self-worth.
I return to her first Christmas night, mining it, faithful that something there might help me to guide her assessment. It’s not in the lost marriage or the window overlooking a building. It has nothing to do with my degrees or class or bank account. In fact, it’s in nothing I was groomed to revere. It’s in the rocker, the cat, the baby. It’s a cocoon, my love, I want to say, that wasn’t designed yet was nonetheless created, an enclosure I would have mauled to protect. There’s a pride that comes from ignoring the rot and relishing the gems.
Cover photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
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