coco

tuesday 12 april, 2011... turners fails


Coco was a little brown mouse that I bought in 1995 at the request of my daughter's boyfriend, who was staying with us at the time. While there were many pets in our home, he didn't have one of his own, and he asked for the mouse. So I bought the mouse and the wheel, etc, as a gift to him.

Eight or nine months after getting Coco, this seventeen-year-old boyfriend decided to return to his parents. Fine, don't have a big problem with that. What I have a problem with is that he left his mouse behind. Not because I didn't want her; on the contrary, I loved her and was happy to have her. But all this love and adoration that boyfriend spoke of over all those months seem to have been what? An act? A temporary infatuation? Or was he afraid his parents wouldn't ALLOW him the mouse, and he'd only have to bring it back to me? He never has explained to me why he walked out on this animal he played with nearly every day, and so I'm left to speculation. I'll say on his behalf that his parents were very twisted people who made him very unhappy, and I can certainly picture his mother screaming "You're not having a dirty mouse in MY home!"

So she was mine after his defection, until she died on 12 April 1996, a sunny Saturday afternoon. I can't speak for others, but for me, INSIDE me, all animals, people and objects take on the flavor of the circumstances that existed when they entered my life. And if those circumstances cease to exist, as they usually do, then the person or object or animal that remains still carries that flavor, that time and place. The parting between my daughter and the boyfriend was fraught with tension, and so he made no return visits to us or to Coco. Every day that I cared for her after he was gone, she was a little brown handful of life and beauty, but also of his going, and of his never coming again, and of his turning his back on her, whatever the reason. When SHE died, another piece of HIM, and of our time together, died along with her.

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(stars from a greeting card)

read... All my stars... Stolen stars
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(all photos, graphics, poems and text copyright 2008-2011 by anne nakis, unless otherwise stated. all rights reserved)
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