I don’t know when this started, sometime in the 15 years she has graced me with her existence. Crackers, of Cheese and Crackers, has always slept in my bed. In recent years, her claim is right in the nook of my arm so it wraps completely around her. She wakes me up in the night if I’ve moved and she can’t get in the nook.
She has never been one to deny her wants.
There are nights I do not go to bed at a reasonable hour. When I’ve fallen victim to the auto-play of the next episode of whatever show I’m watching.
Crackers will leave the room. Cheese, content to exist wherever I am, stays.
A faint meow.
A louder meow.
Some kind of rustling of sheets, scratching of a bed frame.
A long, loud meow.
Quick footsteps.
Crackers returns.
She hisses at Cheese, who is still just as happy existing in the same place as me.
She jumps in my lap and gives her best soft, sweet meow.
Immediately unsatisfied, she runs again to the bedroom.
The meows start anew. This time they are screams.
What Crackers wants is to be put to bed. She needs me to physically pick her up, put her in bed, and kiss her goodnight.
This is the dance we do. More nights than not, when she makes her first step I save us the routine by instantly giving her what she wants. It is how I love her.
There’s so much silence in love. Tenderness that exists without words. An intimacy that needs no spoken language.
You did not ask this of me. I am doing it because you take up a part of my heart that I cannot ever ignore. A friend sends me a newspaper clipping that reminded her of me. My dad takes my car to the car wash when I would visit in college. Someone I love goes to rehab and I do not have the right words, so I send them a care package instead. My mom dies and a friend immediately comes to sit in silence next to me.
We spend so much time trying to communicate. Occasionally getting it right. Often getting it wrong.
Assumptions are made. Our tone in a text is misread. We ignore what we know in favor of what we’re scared of. We let people leave our lives because we can’t have a hard conversation. We don’t know what someone wants. We don’t know how to ask.
It’s impossible to move through the world without leaving some trail of hurt we’ve inflicted. Despite our best effort, we will inevitably mess it all up. Then mess it up more trying to fix it. There are people we don’t know we hurt, who are meanwhile unable to move past that hurt.
How could it go any other way? To live in this world is to develop your very own language. You do not come to it immediately, but rather slowly over your entire life. And while you’re spending your life learning yours and teaching everyone how you speak, everyone else is doing the same right back.
I am trying to say. Are you listening? You’re not hearing me. You misunderstood. I thought you meant. I don’t get why you don’t understand.
I go on a walk with a friend and neither of us have anything new to say. The company is enough. A person I love is sick so I bring soup. I mention to someone in passing that I’d like to try knitting again after failing the first time. Later I open a gift of a very beginner-friendly knitting instruction manual.
We do not need language to show love.
Maybe there’s a universe in which we always get it right. A world in which we say the right thing when the moment confronts us. Where all the other stuff never happens and we get to do it differently.
But until that universe is ours, maybe all we have is to just keep showing up. To keep carving out spaces in our hearts. To find what in our life needs to be picked up, put to bed, and kiss it goodnight.
A gorgeous piece and a gentle reminder to treasure the small expressions of love.
This is beautiful. Thank you x