Angry kitty

I skip home from school. Beyond excited. My four-year-self is very aware there is a teeny tiny kitten waiting for me at home.

Every cell in my body is beaming and exploding with excitement. So ready to love this tiny being. I can see our many fun days together. I can’t wait to meet her.

I’m told she’s hiding in the alcove of our old desk. This solid wood desk has a deep alcove and she’s found refuge in its dark recess.

My little feet cannot contain the excitement. My little heart cannot contain the love.

I get down on my knees and crawl into the alcove, close to the kitty, huddled and shivering in the corner. My biggest smile. My sweetest voice. My excited hands trying to touch her.

She hisses. Loudly. Angrily. Fiercely. Maybe she scratches me. I don’t remember. All I remember is her anger and sheer rejection. The pain of rejection.   

Scared, surprised, heartbroken, I move back. Possibly bumping my head against the roof of the table. It wouldn’t be the first or last time, anyhow.

I am devastated. How can a kitty so fragile, so sweet, be so full of anger and hatred towards me? I am to be her best friend. Doesn’t she know it?

All I want to do is to love her and she somehow can’t bear the sight of me.
At four, or at forty even, we are sometimes unable to see the story (or fear) on the other side.

Perhaps memory is a wise and devious charlatan. Perhaps stories have a strange way of reappearing in our lives. Perhaps they have a reason for reappearing – a possible raison d’etre even, who knows. Not quite sure why this one pops in my mind. But it won’t leave. Till I write it down perhaps.

It does however make me marvel at the innate and immeasurable capacity to heal and to forgive and to continue to love unconditionally. No matter the treatment? To continue to believe determinedly, doggedly even, in what a child wants the truth to be. To maintain optimism in that truth.

If so, I wish I could be my four-year-old self.

Children have such huge amazing reserves of forgiveness, such deep capacities to love unconditionally.

And although I don’t remember the ensuing chain of events -- if I went crying to someone older, wiser; if I was consoled; if I kept it all inside, not breathing a word, (sounds most likely) refusing to admit it ever happened; if I was wary for a while… who knows.

What I do know is that one determined four-year-old was convinced to be this kitten’s best friend.   
What I do know is that I absolutely mauled that kitty with an outpouring of my love (poor kitty!). I put the hurt and pain and the scratches aside. We had those many happy days together. I was indeed her best friend.
Well, at least in my version and memory of the story. She may have an entirely different story to tell. Love and torture (ahem..) may be used interchangeably given a four-year-old and her kitty. Oh well…

As we age, is it still possible to put pain, and harsh words and anger (and fears) of others completely aside, as a four-year-old is able to do. No cynicism, no apprehension, no hurt and pain-gone-stale and sour.

There is after all, the matter of “learning from our mistakes”, and “rationality” and “wisdom” and “fairness” and “boundaries” – all good things no doubt and essential.  

Yet, I doubt the four-year-old uses any of those.  

Simply because she has complete faith in her own love. Simply because she knows what she wants, knows what is important to her. Simply so certain in her conviction of it (despite a vivid memory of the hissing), she will put everything aside and start afresh… and afresh… and afresh.

Wise or foolish?