I had a cat

Every Christmas, my family and I went to pick out a tree. I loved this part - a bitter cold Nebraska night, all bundled up, over to the parking lot on West O Street where some guys had set up their crowd of pines. Hats, mittens, zippers up over our mouths and my Dad, browsing for the best trunk to fit our tree stand and the space Mom had cleared in the living room. I was trailing them for a while, until I realized that I didn't care about their logical way of making this decision. I had a feeling about the trees. One of them was coming home with us, and I didn't think it had to be the one with the right structure. I didn't want the one that would shed the least needles, and I didn't want the pokey kind that looks fake. I wanted the soft ones, with long, olive needles that hugged your face when you went in for a present. So before long, I was wandering the back rows of trees by myself, thinking about how many people were coming to pick from the lot of them, and how there were some that would never go home with anyone, based on our list of criticisms with their natural form. How sad - these ones in the back corner that no one would see, whose trunks were slanted, or who were missing a branch in the wrong place and had a hole that couldn't be disguised. The wrong shape, wrong height.

And being the melancholy, emotional, empathetic, poetic, sensing little girl I was, I was moved by this moment I was having with the trees. I knew they were lonely, and believed that they, like the front row trees, deserved to be taken to homes, adorned, and adored. "This one!" I called, "Let's have this one." Coming around the rows, Mom appears to see me lovingly holding the branches of a sad little tree. "Oh, honey," (her eyes tell me her answer) "We've already found the one we want." She starts walking away, expecting me to follow. I look at my tree, realizing that I'm it's only hope for a future, that it will never be picked if I don't rescue it. Why does no one understand this but me? "Maran! Come on!" I hear Mom's voice from four rows over. I begin to walk away, glancing back to see my tree's last little quiver in farewell. Tears begin to swell. When I appear before my parents, they are concerned - what had they missed? I am trying to explain the gravity of the situation, but they gather that I've attached my heart to a certain "lesser" tree, and begin to reason with me. This is upsetting as well. My tree, the tree we have to save, hangs in the balance. I stand there, surrounded by green, my breath freezing and my cheeks chapping with tears, over a tree.

I wish I could explain this, or even offer and ending to the story - I don't remember how many years this scenario took place, and how many times I was unable to convince my parents of the importance of this task. I am sure, however, that going my way at any point would have saved them some money - the trees I wanted were cheap, undesirables.

Sort of an interesting memory in the line up of "when Maran was little" stories my family delights to share with all the wrong people. Most of the ones that still get me riled up a bit have a deeper layer they don't know about - an emotional turmoil that gripped my little empathetic heart. These are vivid in my mind. For me, something big was going on, and doing anything different (no matter how reasonable) seemed wrong.

I had a cat named Pickle. Out of the entire litter of kittens, I chose her - the smallest, and the weakest. I liked her. She took my heart immediately - I saw her getting pushed around, struggling with her siblings, and I wanted her. My mother asks me if I'm sure, and I tell her this one's mine. What I didn't know at the time was that Pickle had not only been the runt of the litter, but something had been internally wrong with her at birth - something about her insides hanging out of her butt or something, and the vet sort of sewing her up and hoping for the best. Anyway, all was well until she started doing strange things, like purring and then scratching at your eyes. We began to realize that she had her "wires crossed" as Mom always said - confusing one emotion for another. You'd be petting her, all cozy, and then she'd hiss and take a swing at your face. Despite this being a recurring problem, I was determined that she would work it out, grow out of it, learn to love me better. I didn't want to give up, and I didn't want to even think about what would happen to her if she wasn't mine.

I woke up on a Saturday morning, sleepy, with Pickle curled up on my pillow. I petted her, and she purred. All was well. "See," I told myself, "We're ok." And then she scratched me across the face, drawing blood and just missing my eye. I screamed. She hissed and ran off to hide. I ran, crying, to my parent's room, where Dad declared, "That's it. Pickle goes." And that was the end of my cat.

I don't know what any of this means. Maybe it was the immature version of my spiritual gifts coming out. Maybe it was my personality - making decisions based primarily on how I feel about the situation, rather than the facts in front of me. Well, whatever, there it is. For what it's worth, I think the bigger story is sort of profound...even insightful, for a young child. Moved by the lesser, the underdog. Compassion. I could take a lesson from myself sometimes.

Word and words

It's been 18 days since I came back from Colorado. Back, not home. I have had a hard time trying to figure out what to do with all the drive in me to go west...it seems more pronounced than other years, after a visit there. I am beginning to wonder if I'm picking my feet up, or if I never put them down here in the first place.

A friend and I were talking about cars this week, and he asked me what my dream car is. I began to rattle off a scenario: "Well, if I was living in Colorado, or someplace like that..." And he stopped me and said, "No, I mean, what's you're dream car here?" That's when it hit me that I don't have an answer to that question. I don't have a dream car in Rochester. I don't even have imaginings of what my life would look like here in the future - no house, no nothing. And no dream car. In fact, I've never dreamed about my life being here at all.

Isn't that sad? My entire family lives here. I think a person can be happy here. But I can't imagine never living anywhere else. And I've watched myself through enough seasons of change now to know what it looks like - the difference between God's leading through my thoughts/emotions, and my own stubbornness. This feels too smooth to be me.

But then I come to the part where I have to keep my mouth shut. I don't know where God is leading me, how soon, or why. And to speculate sort of crosses me over into that, "Yeah, just shut up before you say something stupid" zone. Until I know something, I shouldn't guess at it. And it just makes the people around me uncomfortable to hear me talk like that.

Funny thing about talking. You'll believe anything you say enough. I wrote that into one of my most bitter songs - something about how "maybe talking is the folly that I owned/just say it twice to make it so." That was about a boy I talked too much about, and ended up getting my heart way too involved before there was really a relationship to speak of. That messed me up pretty good later on...so now I'm more careful about that. I've never seen excessive verbalization of thoughts/feelings about a certain topic lead to clarity on what God is really saying on the matter...it just seems to make more of a mess to clean up later. And I hate mental messes like that - I hate not being able to really hear God on an issue. I just want to be quiet and wait and really know it's from Him - and then move on it. So that's all I'm going to say about it. Longing out loud doesn't make anything of it. It's still just ache.

Today a co-worker told me he hated me. I mentioned something about having been to Japan once, and he looked me in the face, and told me he hated me for it. He really is just envious, because he desperately wants to go himself - he's been learning Japanese, has plans to move there eventually, and hopes to find himself a "hot Japanese girl" of some kind or another. And his way of expressing this was to be the first person in quite some time to really say those words to me. "I hate you!" He said, multiple times. I walked away annoyed - I know he was just messing around, just expressing himself in his own way, but it was almost like taking blows after the first few. Does that make sense? I mean, we recognize the power of saying, "I love you," to the people around you, how it can melt you down, make your day, soften a hard heart after a while...and I hadn't really thought too hard about what the opposite would do. I do not question that I am loved in all the right ways from all the people it matters - it's just that here's this guy, just some guy, throwing his hate around like it's nothing. I mean, the word. I don't believe he actually hates me. But he said it. Where did that land in the universe? Who knows. I still am a little bugged. Man, I just have always had a natural boundary with that - I can't say it to someone. I don't think I've ever said it to someone. Seriously.

Anyway, sticks and stones, eh?