Cosmos, Coco, and Quinoa on a Sunday
A holy communion and a beginning of a new era
What do Cosmos, Coco, and quinoa have in common? they share emotions and feelings with someone or something without speaking. The inevitable end of an era and a long visit to the vet.
We can do hard things.
The words that kept repeating as I meandered down the rainy highway on a Sunday morning. Often the drive some take to go to church or enjoy a family brunch but this Sunday had other plans for me. This drive was quiet, there was a familiar scent in the air like honeydew mixed with composting soil. My ears drifted between the song playing through the muffled speakers, catching each word like a prayer to the inevitable unfolding. Life as I have known it is changing and was about to change in a new way.
An animal can teach you the ways of the heart like no person can. They sit there in silence and unconditional love just awaiting the simple pleasures of your tender touch and affection. There is a sweet aloneness in their presence, a longing for a deeper sense of connection that only they have the key to unlock. The familiarity of their eyes peering back at you, the soft tilt of their ears as you sob into your hands feeling words they are never able to articulate but I am sure have also felt in their lifetimes. They are holy in the sense that they commune with humans in ways no other human can truly do.
A language fluent in memories, a dance of trust that one another relies on, the building blocks that give life to these sacred beings. The only codependence that is valid in partaking and compulsively entertained daily.
I sit between the precipice of birthing a new being, my son into this beautiful full world and letting go of our cat Cosmo. To me, he resembles much more than just a feline who as cheeky as he was, held a deeper meaning to my ‘old’ life that was truly slipping away. Just 2.5 months post birth and as new parents, we are traversing new waters as we inhabit a slowly moving island that has set sail off the mainland and is soon to potentially land in some new Pangea.
I rescued these two kittens 5 years ago on my 23rd birthday. It was a day full of excitement as I drove with my best friend to pick them up. We meandered through the hillsides and a nostalgic feeling took over my whole being. It’s in my DNA to comfort and give a loving home to animals. From the time I brought home two barn kittens when I was 13 to the time I would bike after school to visit a newlyborn litter. It was a never-ending love affair, an unsatiated desire to mother.
Now standing in the depths of that longing having come to life, a mother to my own baby boy I watch that old chapter of my life come to a close. At the altar of my mothering, I find myself in a brand new version of the mother I always desired to be as I simultaneously say goodbye to the threshold of my maiden years.
Through salt-stained cheeks and a cold barren room with not a tissue in sight, I commune with a soft-spoken woman and her 15-year-old dog, coco. Coco decided to stop eating her quinoa and I am yet to find out if I will be taking my cat home today. We briefly exchanged a few words and both agreed that animals just so happen to fall sick on a Sunday and that you would truly do anything for them.
The nurse came out with the heart-sickening news that Cosmo’s outcome did not look good. I will spare the details but let’s just say Australia and cats are not friends. I was given a consent form and a few brief moments to sit with my cat. The shortest and longest 10 minutes of fumbling through my words and choking up prayer and distant memories to this feline beneath a furry unicorn blanket. The seat beneath me creaked as I wailed on the inside, letting go of something I have loved and an era of my life that is falling fast at my feet. As my tears fell, as did my milk, quickly filling my breasts, reminding me of this new life, this new era I am mothering.
From the cosmos you were born to the cosmos, you will return my sweet cat.
To Learn From Animal Being
by John O'Donohue
“Nearer to the earth's heart, Deeper within its silence: Animals know this world In a way we never will.
We who are ever Distanced and distracted By the parade of bright Windows thought opens: Their seamless presence Is not fractured thus.
Stranded between time Gone and time emerging, We manage seldom To be where we are: Whereas they are always Looking out from The here and now.
May we learn to return And rest in the beauty Of animal being, Learn to lean low, Leave our locked minds, And with freed senses Feel the earth Breathing with us.
May we enter Into lightness of spirit, And slip frequently into The feel of the wild.
Let the clear silence Of our animal being Cleanse our hearts Of corrosive words.
May we learn to walk Upon the earth With all their confidence And clear-eyed stillness So that our minds
Might be baptized In the name of the wind And the light and the rain.”
~ John O'Donohue From: To Bless the Space Between Us
