back to school

Today, my husband John returned to work. He is a professor at a college, and today is the first day back for the students enrolled in fall semester. As I am prone to do, when he goes back after a break, knowing full well how much of the parenting he shoulders right alongside me, I begin to wonder if I can handle the twins alone today.

Jackson and Evelyn are sleeping still, and through the monitor beside me I can hear the faint strains of the lullaby CD we have played on repeat for them every night since they stopped sharing a crib with each other and a bedroom with us. But I don't hear them. Any minute now, that will change, but for right now, it's just me, my thoughts and my coffee... and the monitor.

I feel vaguely lonely. John's cat CC is asleep on the couch nearby, and it is times like this one that make me acutely aware that my cat, Stella, is gone. I miss her terribly (it has only been 2 months since her death), and I have a pain in my heart that comes and goes whenever she pops into my head -- usually in the late night or early morning hours like now. Times when I could tell you exactly what she would be doing if she were still here. Stella would have been rubbing all over my legs and eventually coming to rest very close to me, but slightly angled toward the doorway, as if to guard me from anyone who may enter to steal me from her. She was possessive of me in that way and I loved it. For years, I loved it.

But see, there's the problem. Stella couldn't share me with the twins. Their very arrival made her sick. We brought them home at Christmastime, and both cats acted up in varying degrees for almost 3 months, but CC eventually got back to normal. Stella got worse. She started pulling out her hair and leaving it in clumps on the floor. She got clingier and clingier and more and more nervous and cranky. She vomited a lot. The vet couldn't find anything wrong with her and she just got worse. My living room floor looked like that of a pet grooming station... fur 'clippings' everywhere, and the twins were starting to spend more time on the floor by then and I had almost no time for the amount of vacuuming I would have had to do to keep up with Stella's [presumed] OCD. That cat would stay up late with me while I pumped and just tear clumps of hair out the whole time. She'd come to bed with me, and in the morning, I'd find that she'd removed even more hair while I was sleeping, and the bed would be covered in soft, wet clumps of downy, blonde, angora-like hair.

After much agonizing over what to do, I decided I had to have her put to sleep and I will never forgive myself. She was my friend and had been for so many years -- long before I met my husband and so long before I even dreamed of kids. But I knew she was not happy and the behavioral problems she had would have made her impossible to place into a new home. Plus, I'd wonder endlessly if she were being treated properly and I just couldn't imagine the alternative. I thought she'd live out her days by my side, and I loved her for that predictable loyalty. But motherhood changes a person and all I could think about was my babies crawling around on the floor amidst the choking hazard of Stella's hair, and I was angry at her for it. And I knew she was getting worse. She was not an animal that you could medicate (I'd tried in the past with drugs to calm her, long before she got to the stage where she was), or I would have considered anti-depressants for her (and no, I'm not a crazy cat lady). I would have done almost anything for her... but I had to put my kids first and I could see that in the 6 months since their arrival, Stella had gotten worse and life was just continuing to move forward at the same pace as always. I couldn't see a future when I'd have more spare time again to cater to her the way I did pre-twins. So much time was needed to 'fix' her. It was time I didn't have already -- no time for me, my husband, my laundry... but I couldn't sit back and watch her suffer.

I will always miss her in the mornings and the late nights the most. Those quiet hours of the day when I am alone and life seems to be closest to the way it 'used to be'. In those hours, I have a taste of life before Jackson and Evelyn came into it... just the tiniest taste. All around still are the reminders of what I will do for them, what I have done for them, and how far I will go to be as good at parenting them as I can be. The sacrifices I will make (and have made) that they won't ever know about. It is funny how loss can be so loud when a house is so quiet. How noticeable the absence of something can be in the silence...

...speaking of unbearable silence, are those kids awake yet?