Boo

Throughout the course of my life, I have fortunately had many great, sage role models, folks wise beyond reason, who’ve served as teachers, mentors, friends, and family. When I think back over all of the people who’ve taught me the most, though, there is one that stands out. Her name was Boo and she was a dark tabby cat who lived with my family for nineteen years.

Boo was right out of kittenhood when she came to stay with us. I was probably around five-years-old and I was so excited for her arrival. Our first family pet, Muffin, also a dark tabby cat, had passed away suddenly after running head first into our grandfather clock — you can’t make this stuff up. And while we missed Muffin, my mother, a music teacher, had a former student who needed someone to take care of her cat while she went to work on a cruise line for two weeks. I’m sure my mom thought, sure, easy gig, it’ll make the kids happy to have a pet for a bit.

And so Boo came to stay.

Boo was the name she came with, also — her real name was actually “Booshwa,” slang for bourgeois, though my mom’s student said she thought Booshwa “might be a bad word,” and so she changed it for our delicate sensibilities, youngins that my brothers and I were. Boo turned out to be far more appropriate since what this cat actually did was scare the shit out of us on a daily basis. Even my father, a six-foot-three man, was afraid of her. She still had her claws and she had an awfully terrifying growl that was frequently followed by a spitting hiss. She liked to hide at the bottom of the stairs and come flying out from nowhere to attack anyone who dared come down. She especially hated men since, we later learned, my mother’s student lived with her boyfriend who used to shut Boo in the closet when he was left alone with her.

This cat was a nightmare pet for a home with three small children — my older brother Casey being probably 7 and my younger brother Joshua being 3. But my father, especially, was bound and determined to win this beast over. So he spent time hanging out near her, inching ever closer to the point where she allowed him to pet her, and before you knew it, my dad and Boo were the best of friends.

I’m not entirely sure how long this process took since the original plan for us to have Boo for two weeks stretched into a third week and then a fourth and then a few more months as her owner kept returning to the cruise line for more gigs until finally there was no more discussion about when this ornery cat might leave our home. I’m not sure her original owner officially gave her up, but she certainly became ours — and that cat was in charge.

She chilled out on the sneak attacks but would still, on occasion, express her displeasure at our youthful exuberance. She liked to sit on top of the refrigerator and swipe her paw at unsuspecting passers-by. She found a crawl space in the basement that allowed her to peer down on anyone doing laundry so you’d get that creepy sensation that someone was watching and get a real jolt if you turned around and caught a glimpse of those shiny cat eyes reflecting at you. And, man oh man, don’t leave chicken on your plate or she will eat it. She’d jump right onto the table and snatch whatever she wanted and which one of us was going to tell her she couldn’t? Boo was a tough old broad who didn’t take any shit.

And, oh my, did we love her.

She learned to love us all, too, but none more so than my father. Just like Muffin, the cat who came before her, she liked to sleep in his briefcase and whenever he was home, she was never too far out of reach. She followed him everywhere and they became the best of friends, which was also a miracle as far as my father was concerned since he’d grown up on a farm where cats were outdoor animals who lived in the barn. He’d agreed to have a cat in the house because his tiny blonde daughter (hey, that’s me!) wanted one so, but he had not been jazzed about Muffin or Boo coming to live with us. But seeing the loving bond he formed with this cat who’d gotten her start by terrorizing us was a beautiful thing.

After we’d had Boo in our home for awhile, the decision was made that it was time for us to get a kitten. We’d never had a kitten before, since both Muffin and Boo were adult cats by the time we got them, so my now six-year-old brain was totally wow’d. She was a dark tortoiseshell kitten who purred from the word go and was my constant companion. I named her Bubbles and she was one of the early loves of my life.

While it was an easy fit for Bubbles and me, we all worried how Boo might respond to this…intruder. But an interesting thing happened: Boo adopted Bubbles as if she were her own kitten, grooming her and cuddling with her and showing her the ropes. Maybe it was a sign that Boo was learning to love and trust, something none of us were sure she’d be able to do when she first came to live with us.

When my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 1986, everything changed as he spent more and more time in the hospital. My mother’s parents came to stay with us so she could spend time with her husband as they battled this aggressive disease that my brothers and I were too young to understand. Boo become even more devoted to Bubbles during this time, so it only became that much more heartbreaking when we discovered that Bubbles, my beloved kitten, had a tumor growing in her throat and we had to make the difficult decision to put her to sleep.

And a week after we buried her in the backyard next to Muffin, my father died, too.

After those heartbreaking back to back losses, all of our lives changed, even Boo’s. The two friends she cherished most on the planet were gone in the blink of an eye and I don’t think she ever got over it. We had many other cats come to live with us over the course of her life (and you better believe she outlived them all), but she never bonded with any of them like she did with Bubbles. She did love my mother and my brothers and me — especially my older brother Casey — but it wasn’t the same as her devotion to my father. It was like she knew to give just enough not to get hurt — that she’d learned her lesson the hard way. But she was a survivor, so she continued on, stronger than ever, a real matriarch in our household.

And as my childhood rolled on, Boo became more and more in charge of, well, everything. When we had parties, she’d sit in the middle of the kitchen table and survey those coming and going. Better not try and pet her — she will stare you down. And don’t leave cake out, because she’ll definitely eat it. Even if she has to knock it off the table or chew through the box. One time, she even managed to open a cupboard, climb onto a shelf and gnaw through a box of Twinkies because her sweet tooth was not to be stopped. We had to hide stuff like that in high shelves or in the oven or the microwave and I can only imagine how the wheels in her brain would spin as she tried to figure out a way around these cruel obstacles to her frosting addiction. Outside of that undeniable sweet tooth, she was tough as nails, strict as hell, but totally in love with our family. She took care of us more than we took care of her and I still feel her influence on my life to this day.

When she was maybe thirteen, we discovered a large mass growing on her back, so we took her to our vet. He told us that lumps on a dog were usually nothing — but lumps on a cat were often trouble — and he gave us the sad news that Boo had a malignant tumor that he could remove but her prognosis was still pretty dire. My mother agreed to have the surgery done, anyway, and a miraculous thing happened: when we brought Boo home, what she did was spend all day laying in sunny spots, listening to classical music. She loved classical music. So if we put a radio with classical music in a sunny spot, she’d lay with her head next to the speaker, purring audibly as she worked to heal herself post-surgery. It was truly unreal. And the vet was shocked at her next check up to see that Boo was doing even better than she had been doing before the tumor was discovered.

That tumor returned two more times over the next few years, each time with my mother opting for the surgery, each time with Boo recovering in record time. Sunshine and classical music were her cure-alls. Those images of her basking in the warmth will never be erased from my brain.

As she got older, Boo developed another odd habit — she’d sometimes wander through the dark house at night making the most mournful, yelping, unnatural sounds. I always wondered if she was being visited by my father or by Bubbles or by other forces from the Great Beyond. There was something so pungent about hearing her cry like that and if I could, I’d go to her and cuddle with her until she calmed down. It was a sadness that sticks with me just as much as her ability to go to the sun to heal.

I realized when I sat down to write about her today that I don’t have a single photo of her. But I can see her, clear as day, in my mind’s eye and it warms my heart to think of this complex beast of a cat. She taught me so much about life and survival and love and fear and growth and adaptation. She was a true friend, a guardian, a protective force. I’ve known many cats in my life but there will never be one like Boo. She came into our lives for a very concrete reason: to be an example of how to overcome. I loved her very much and was always sad I didn’t get to say a final goodbye to her before my mother made the necessary choice to put her to sleep, ailing as she was in her ancient years. But like all great loves, I carry her with me in my heart, in my mind, in my soul, and always will, still learning from her example, still relishing in telling the story of her life.

Boo was one of the greats. She was an epic tale trapped in a body with a twitching, gray and black stripped tail. I am thankful for the many years she was part of our family and still think of her as a role model. I certainly go to the sunny spot whenever I need to heal and never turn down a piece of cake. All in loving memory of the cat that would have been Booshwa if the fates had allowed it.

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From the Inspired in 2017 blog project.

Virtual Tip Jar: Venmo @sarahwolfstar

The Transformation of Maria

When I was a child, I used to get strep throat a lot.  As soon as the strep cleared, I basically contracted it right over again, and so the procedure of fever, doctor, diagnosis, crash on the couch for a few days became normal.  I wasn't one of those kids who was psyched to miss school -- I loved school and had to be convinced to stay home on these contagious days.  My mother sated me by renting a movie of my choice to watch while she went to work and my brothers went to school.  The movie I asked for over and over and over was West Side Story.  I'd been raised on the cannon of musicals -- Fiddler on the Roof, The Music Man, Oklahoma!, Phantom of the Opera, Gypsy, Annie, The Sound of Music, and more -- and I loved them all.  But West Side Story spoke to my soul -- it was far and away my favorite.  It's a long movie -- two and a half hours -- but I watched it over and over, especially once my mother caved and bought a copy so she wouldn't have to keep renting it.  I knew every line of dialogue, every lyric of every song, and could mimic most of the dance moves.  I had a white nightgown with a fanciful red sash that I would wear, even though Maria wasn't the character I wanted to emulate.  It was fiery, passionate, witty, strong Anita that incurred all my love.  I wanted to be Anita, even though I wasn't drawn to Bernardo, preferring the Jets' leader Riff for a leading man.  For all my deep love of the movie, I wanted to mix everything up:  the Jets were clearly the better gang to be in because, well, Riff, and also when you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way -- there was brotherhood, togetherness, support.  Maybe the Sharks were like that offscreen, but they didn't have any songs telling me so.  Meanwhile, the women who dated these Sharks were clearly superior to the passive arm candy women who hung around with the Jets.  Jets boys, Sharks girls.  That's the way I favored it.

And I loved the story, I loved the way the music forced me to get up and dance.  Even those days when I was home sick, I'm certain I couldn't lay there passively during "America."  I loved the flirtatious way Anita showed her power, proved her independence, sealed her love for Bernardo (something I could appreciate even though Nardo wasn't my favorite).  I loved her sheer strength -- her protective-without-smothering mother hen nature in regards to Maria, her ability to be open minded in the face of tragedy.  The scene where Anita discovers Maria is planning to run away with Tony, who just killed Bernardo, Maria's brother, in a knife fight, shows her human capacity to see beyond her own mind, her own pain, and straight into the heart of Maria, no matter how much she may disagree.  Anita is the woman I wanted to be, even as a very small child.  

Just writing that sentence now tells me that it's arguable that Anita is exactly who I grew up to be.

But before I could shape into an adult, I first wanted to emulate this character, I wanted to play her on stage.  I have always loved music and performance and it was my very specific dream to play Anita in West Side Story.  I carried this dream in the pulsing beats of my heart.  I carried it, that is, until I was in second grade and some classmate of mine's dad came to talk to us about his career as a dentist.  I can still remember him sitting at the front of our classroom in this strange elementary school I attended until the end of third grade where there were shelves separating the classrooms instead of walls.  I remember my classmates and me sitting around on the floor, staring up at this man, who, at the end of his talk, asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up.  Hands shot up.  "Teacher!"  "Doctor!"  "Nurse!" my classmates yelled.  "Actress!" I yelled.  The man's eyes flashed when I said that -- and he laughed, a full belly laugh.  Now that I'm an adult, I know that his laughter could have come from many different sources, but as a small child, I heard that laughter as what a fool.  It was the first time in my life someone had ever suggested I couldn't be something -- that a dream I had was silly or unrealistic or unattainable.  It's a moment that stuck with me as one of the most vivid of my childhood.  I try to keep that in mind when I'm hanging out with children -- that what adults say to them matter.  That how you respond to them matters.  In all fairness, that man didn't entirely crush my dreams.  I did go on to do some theatre and other performance -- and still do today -- but my pursuit of that dream, that dream that I'd become an actress, died that day.  I picked something else (hey, writer sounds good!), but it was a pivotal moment during the fragile development of my sense of self.  I was no Tobias Fünke, oblivious to how ridiculous my dream might be.  I was wholly aware that I'd said the "wrong" thing. It's funny -- I don't remember finding out that Santa isn't real, but the day I found out my dream was shit, that I remember in great detail. 

But maybe I'm doing one better than that dream, since Anita became a role model for me beyond the context of West Side Story.  She represents many pieces of me that are in play today.  

I had the exceptional opportunity to watch this favorite movie of mine at the Somerville Theatre in Davis Square just last night and the experience was just beyond all expectations.  My friend Shira came with me, which is always a delight, but as the movie began -- as the overture played -- I suddenly felt very emotional, like my childhood was about to be projected onto the big screen.  That my dream of the past was going to play out in my present and shine a light into my future.  The opening shot, panning over New York City while a call and response of whistles echoes over the vastness of the place, shook me up.  I laid my head on Shira's shoulder and I said, "I'm so glad you're here."  Shira, who just gets me, smiled.  "I'm glad I'm here, too," she said.

My insides bubbled.  I had to remind my body to relax.  My lips moved along with much of the dialogue and most of the songs.  I'd discovered this portal to another time and the joy that discovery brought me can't be described with words.

Of course, as I watched this classic film, whose story is famously based on Romeo and Juliet, it also became painfully clear how little has changed in the world -- how turf wars and unscrupulous cops and closed minds and miscommunication pave the way for conflict.  How even the people who want to change things or want to help or who try to talk sense into others are mostly powerless to stop the violence or the struggle.  As I watched it last night, my mind was busy at work, understanding why this movie had resonated with me so much as a child, long before any of these bigger, more adult truths were something I could understand.  As the movie moved into the much darker second act, I thought about how it made sense for me to feel so connected to a story about star-crossed lovers, characters who suffer lost life, be it their own or someone they hold dear, and it swished through my stomach how much more I could relate to these elements now as an adult. 

And as the movie hurdled into its final, incredibly powerful scene, that's when the emotional wheels came right off the wagon:

"You all killed [him]...  not with bullets and guns, but with hate.  Well, now I can kill, too.  Because now I have hate.  How many can I kill, Chino, before I have one bullet left for me?"

Here is Maria, in her coming of age moment.  You may recall that the first scene she's in, she's begging Anita to do something provocative with the white dress she's to wear to the dance.  Couldn't Anita lower the neckline or at least dye it red?  And here we are, in the final scene, with Maria finally in that red dress she longed for at the start.  It's an incredibly powerful scene.  Incredibly powerful.  I was afraid to turn my head or blink or move in any way for fear I might crumble straight away.  Maria, whose name means bitter.  Maria in the red dress, mourning and in pain, surrounded by stunned and heavy silence.  As the screen flashed "THE END," the packed house at the Somerville Theatre let out a breath it had been collectively holding.  But otherwise, no one moved.  No one.  Not until "Music by Leonard Bernstein and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim" flashed on the screen.  Then everyone applauded and I began to breath normally again.  I looked over at Shira who was looking back at me.  God, I was relieved to be sitting next to a person that I love in that moment.

But that final scene also reminded me of the last time I watched West Side Story in the company of people I loved.  It was May 2006 and there are lots of reasons why I know that.  The main one is that I wrote a poem about the experience and I always date my poems.  But I also know where I was in my own personal evolution -- it was an internal changing of the guard.  I was just getting over true love, right as I was becoming close friends with a boy named Tom who played in a cover band my friend Whitney and I liked to go see.  Whitney had a crush on Tom and that's sort of why we got into the habit of emailing with him during the week and it's how I got the idea to ask him to help me with a computer problem and it's what made him suggest we make a night out of it, including Whitney, and the two of them came to my first Somerville apartment on Sanborne Avenue in Union Square where Tom fixed my computer, introducing himself to my two roommates as "Tommy," which made Whitney and me giggle since we knew him as Tom and always had (later I would learn it was more common -- if not standard practice -- for him to introduce himself in the diminutive form of his name), and once my computer was fixed, we got some food and a bottle of Southern Comfort and we sat down to talk.  There was a picture of me with my recently lost love on display and Tom asked some questions and when I lamented the end of that road, Tom said, "Any man who has even had the chance to touch you is the luckiest man," something I found very sweet, though it raised the eyebrows on, well, everyone I told after the fact, especially since Whitney, who very publicly was into Tom, was sitting right next to him on the couch.  I just thought he was being kind.  A lot of other people thought he was falling in love.  I mean, it was over ten years ago -- who knows?  But that night, Tom was definitely trying to duck and dodge Whitney's crush (a confusing thing since he'd very recently participated in a photo school project of hers that lead to them taking -- very tasteful and frankly pretty awesome -- pictures in the shower together, which made Whitney wonder if theirs was a path leading somewhere), and, at the same time, reaffirm the many similarities he and I shared, including some of our favorite movies.  "You've never seen Mallrats?" Tom scoffed at Whitney as he pulled the DVD off my shelf and we put it right in the player.  And when that film ended a little after midnight, we returned to an earlier discussion we'd had about both Tom and my favorite musical West Side Story, another movie Whitney had never seen, and despite the late hour, Tom and I rushed to put it on.  Whitney loved the Leonardo DiCaprio Romeo and Juliet, so she simply had to see this classic update of that Shakespearean play.  As the overture played, Tom warned us:  "I always cry at the end," he said.  Sure, sure, I remember thinking.  But two hours and thirty minutes later, hand on a Bible, Tom was streaming tears down his face during Maria's final speech.  It was hard not to think of this endearing and beautiful memory I have of Tom while watching West Side Story last night.  It was hard not to have Maria's declaration of "Now I have hate, too," turn up the volume in my capacity to feel.

I don't hate Tom, I never could.  But the pain resonating in Maria's outburst -- that I understood better than I ever have before.

West Side Story is personal for me -- it's part of me.  Its existence in my life contributes to all that defines me as a human.  I love it with my whole heart, my whole mind, my whole being.  I'm still tingling from what I experienced last night and I will likely have more thoughts on the subject later.  But I couldn't wait to share with you what I had so far.

I'll leave you with the poem I wrote on May 2, 2006 about another mile-marker moment in my life facilitated by the magic of my favorite movie:

Menage a tois (a Boston poem)

I. We polished off sixteen ounces of So-Co

on a Tuesday night, savoring the last

few swallows around four a.m. We were watching

West Side Story and Tom cried

when Tony fell dead, when Maria stood up

for nonviolence. Whitney said she didn’t

like the movie. As always, I was somewhere

in the middle, content to hum and sing

about love and rumbles and all things passionate.

II. Tom colored the nails on his right hand

black with Whitney’s good Sharpie

and drew symbols of anarchy on his wrist.

While she was in the bathroom, he asked me

what else he should draw. I said a heart.

He put an arrow through it.

III. It was the nicest thing anyone had ever said

to me -- “You know, honestly, I have to say, any man

who has even had the chance to touch you

is the luckiest man...” Oh, that Tom,

who told me again that I should call

the lead singer in his band. I balked. Whitney sat

beside the bassist with her arms folded across her chest.

Originally written for the ABC's of 2016 on September 23, 2016 under the title "F is for Fragile."