Me Me Me

I got my first pet when I was 25 years old. Isn’t that a tragic statement? Imagine all the unconditional love and deep understanding I missed out on in the first quarter-century of my life, simply because the amazing Mary couldn’t stand animals of any kind. In my second quarter-century, the Henderson family has included two pairs of cats. Kappa (named for my sorority) and Fuzzy were in our lives when the kids were born. After those two beloved kitties went to heaven, the lovely Kiki (named for Kiki Dee of “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” fame) and Rosie became part of the family. They have been outstanding pets. And now they are old — almost 15 and 14. And when cats get old, they get verrrrry expensive and time-consuming.

Just as I began the mourning period over my son’s imminent departure for college, the Lord decided to make me feel needed. It seems that Rosie, our morbidly obese (sorry, Ro-Ro) feline child, had developed diabetes and would need an insulin shot twice a day, morning and night. My initial reaction to this news was a Kathy-style freak-out session in the vet’s office that stunned the nurse into silence. Two. Shots. A. Day!?

Well, we did it, and lo and behold, Rosie got better (though, alas, no thinner). But about the time the shots ended, the Lord felt I needed a new challenge. Skinny Miss Kiki developed a thyroid condition that would require tossing a pill down her throat twice a day, morning and night, for the rest of her life. Easy, right? Not when your cat is a mind reader! Never mind reaching for the pill bottle: This one can sense the very moment you THINK about the pill, which sends her scurrying to the one spot under the bed that no human arm can reach. Fun times, Keek!

Now that we are empty nesters, it is a royal pain to box up two ancient cats and take them with us every weekend, even if we’ll only be gone 36 hours. I’ve found one friend who can cat-sit and administer meds, but the logistics of that aren’t simple either. So when these girls go to heaven, it’s tempting to say that we’ll be finished with pets. But how could I be happy without a sweet furry friend to greet me at the end of the day?

When we moved into this apartment, my adorable daughter was three years old and ready for her first “big girl” room, decorated in preparation for the birth of her baby brother. She had flowered Marimekko curtains, a pink comforter on her trundle bed and a game table and two little chairs. When she turned four, we marked her height in pencil on the back of her closet door, a ritual we repeated every year until she was 16 and stopped growing. 

Now that pretty and smart baby girl is a college graduate with an apartment of her own in a city far away. It’s time to get the magazine clippings of Mischa Barton and the Olsen twins off the wall and create a proper guest room. As an enthusiastic amateur decorator, I embraced this project with gusto, repressing feelings of regret as I placed stacks of snapshots of my baby and her high school friends into a shoebox for storage and tossed assorted high school Latin and Spanish notebooks into garbage bags (oy, what a fabulous education this child had).

The walls have been painted (with a strict warning NOT to eliminate the penciled growth chart on the closet door), the carpet is being delivered Friday, and a brand new set of Pottery Barn bedding is ready to be put on a double bed salvaged from my childhood home. When my angel comes home for Thanksgiving, her room will be unrecognizable from the days when we played Barbies together on the floor. And I am sad!

When I decided to create an archive of my work, I assumed that I would also include a blog. Hey, it’s the 21st century, and the only way anybody knows what he or she thinks these days is by typing it and sending it out over the internet! But what’s the difference between a blog and a diary of self-indulgent musings better left under lock and key in a bedside table — the kind of stuff you read a year later and go “Ewww!”? I don’t want to write about the thing I know best — theater — because I do that all day at work. My darling husband says I should think of the blog as my personal editorial page, and lord knows I’ve got strong opinions about just about everything. But I am also interested in the whole idea of midlife/empty nest/what the hell do I do now that I don’t have to take care of kids? I have more energy and drive than I did 10 or even 20 years ago — how should I use it? The outer package is getting old, and “old” is a no-no in New York City. But inside? I’m ready to do something big.