The elastic was stretched thin on the worn red cotton gingerbread-printed pajama pants. My second-hand find from years ago slipped dangerously low despite my bread-and-sugar belly. The chickens never seemed bothered by my fashion sense; they fluttered to greet me that morning as I delivered their feed.
“I like your pants.” My little son’s words jolted me out of my morning reverie wherein I was actually having coffee in an actual coffee shop with one of my actual friends.
He had come out of my bed (which he says he prefers to his, because it’s bigger, and also comfier) where he had been sleeping while I went to tend the chickens. “Thank you” was my simple response because I could think of nothing more to say. My pajama pants had been marked for the rag pile a while ago, but he liked them. He really did like them, I knew, because six-year-olds have not yet learned to say things to make people feel good just for the sake of doing so. They say kind things when they genuinely mean them.
Juliet was like that. She was quiet even for a cat, except when she was sleeping in my bed, breathing like a freight train coming right at my face. She must have thought that my bed was comfy, too. She did, though, have a particular way of making me happy…really happy.
She liked to stand on my paperwork, right in the middle of it, and park herself in my chair precisely when I was making my way over to sit in it. I could always count on her to sit with me (actually, right by the coffee pot) while I had my morning cup.
She also, though, appeared like a faithful angel in the aftermath of our struggles with mental illness, when the demons had retreated and we were left to assess the damages. She would always emerge, watching me, as if to say that I was going to be okay. And she would roll her eyes at the foolish antics of the rest of them, while she certainly thought about how nice it was, and I thought how nice it would be, to be a cat. Juliet was my quiet companion on the rough seas, the soft, white ball of fluff who appreciated every warm load of laundry that ever came from the dryer. She loved me, she loved butter, and she died on the kitchen floor last month.
It’s lonely around here, even with all of the people. I think many people are lonely these days, even when their best cats didn’t just die.
It sure is a hard, weird world these days. All of these meets and zooms are getting to me. I know I am not the only one. I would like to live life with my camera off, perhaps in the forest in my backyard, maybe close to where Juliet is buried. I can’t, though, because I have to chase my six-year-old around with his Chromebook. It’s my new job, one I got when I didn’t know I was getting one. At least he likes my pants.
I miss how things were before, when I missed how things were before that. I miss my tiny windows of time alone in my garden. I miss sitting with my people in Common Grounds, our downtown coffee shop. I miss the freedom that I didn’t even know was a thing. I guess we all do. Also, I miss Juliet.
I guess I can learn from my little son to be genuine and generous, too, with my words… To take a lesson from what is right before me, because now, that’s pretty much all there is.
I still have visions of Juliet. I expect to see her on the kitchen counter, scoping out the butter, waiting next to the crockpot, planning her next move. She’s not coming back, though. Things are going to be different from now on. The hole in the living room wall will be patched soon. The boys will grow older. I will get my time in the garden again. I don’t think we will soon forget about this isolation and how it has made us feel. And I think those old pajama pants are worth wearing at least a few more times. I just hope the elastic holds.
RIP, sweet Juliet❤️
Photo credit: Sam Ihm