I wrote this a little over two years ago, but I don't remember ever writing this.
Her eyes bulged out of her head, like she was running on amphetamines.
I envied her.
Before tonight, I never took Carly for a drive, other than for her visits to the veterinarian. Though short, the car rides in the tacky, teal and lavender crate made her nervous. I understand her fear of the car, being enclosed in a small space with bars and few openings, crashing around with every bump in the road without warning. Arriving to a small, sterile room in a building, noisy with restless canines, where giants with cold hands remove your private bits; that’s a bit unsettling, too.
This time would be different. No rocky, plastic prison, no powder blue walls meeting wall-to-wall white tiles tonight. I want her to enjoy the ride and really see her surroundings.
Being a house cat doesn’t sound like much fun in the long run. You don’t really get out much. Make that “never.”
My baby deserves to see the world she lives in.
She was completely taken aback when the car started, lurching as I shifted into D, the car’s first movements in staccato from years of abuse from my older brother. Without front claws (a result of the antiseptic facility she had grown to dread), it’s her hind claws’ responsibility to keep her upright in the passenger seat. After a few minutes, she found herself struggling less to stay upright and began to explore the interior of her mechanical bull.
At night, the streets are transformed. What was once a little sidewalk alongside a sea of little shops and little houses inhabited by little people is now made bigger, bigger than life, aglow with the light of the towering street lamps dotting the roads. In the daytime, a tree may have been mistaken for something ordinary, but in the dark of the night, it is bestialized: the wind through the branches sways them violently, like the thin arms of some rare, angry demon.
I never really thought about it before, the complete awesomeness of the roads at night, even in my own neighborhood. It was something I experienced everyday, nothing of interest or anything worth a second glance, a second thought. Not anymore. But to Carly, this was all brand new, something she had not seen before. She was making a revolutionary journey through something she had never experienced, not in her eleven long years on the inside.
It’s been a while since I’ve sought out and experienced something completely new that captivated me in this way. Maybe I haven’t had time, or maybe I’m just not interested. I can’t even begin to imagine what Carly sees and feels and smells and tastes as she jumps around the inside of the car, anxiously taking in all she can from the passenger seat, passenger floor, back seat, floor mats, and under my feet, dangerously close to the pedals.
At one point, she stops to peer out the back window, wide-eyed and animated. What was my first car ride like? There’s no way that I could have been so aware, so keyed-in on my surroundings. I envied her then, in that her age gave her more insight, more understanding in what was going on around her.
I envied her for more than that. I can’t even remember the last time I felt so exhilarated with a new experience. When was the last time my eyes bulged out of my head like I was on amphetamines? I’ve grown up feeling accustomed to everything. Even when I was very young, and I was still doing things for the first time, I was too young to appreciate the moment. As we grow older, everything is done out of habit, something we learned to do back before we can remember. We can’t remember how we learned to do this or that or what it was like the first time we did … whatever. The human brain remembers things best when an emotional connection is made, and if we can’t remember, we must not have had an emotional experience that first time, and we’ve got no chance after that. If we weren’t emotionally stimulated when we were very young, is it just human nature to be unaffected by new things?
I’ll jump on the bandwagon and blame society.
We live in the MTV generation, completely jaded and immune to any genuine feelings relating to the real world, the world beyond our television and computer screens.
Carly has never been much for television. She can’t stand it if anyone in the family spends too much time in front of the computer, processing our seemingly-important businesses, when we could be showering her, a living, breathing being, with love and attention.
I was so completely captivated by Carly’s enthusiasm that I found myself having difficult keeping my eyes on the road. Suddenly, I became more aware of the interior of my car than I had ever before. The leather seats were light and smooth to the touch. The blue, pine tree-shaped air freshener, long since lost its “new car” smell, seemed to emanate its cool fragrance once more, not that it had ever actually smelled like “new car.” Even though I had just cleaned out the car a few weeks before, tattered leaves lay scattered across and under the floor mats once again and I made a mental note to vacuum again soon.
Carly’s zealous obsession for the city outside the lightly tinted windows influenced me to roll down her window a few inches. I stopped it at halfway; I wouldn’t want her to get too curious and jump out to explore more. I just can’t risk losing the one who’s always there for me, the one who really matters to me. I’m pathetic, but I love her. She’s my outlet for affection.
Getting close to home, I turned off onto our street and the bright lights of High Street faded behind us as I drove twenty-two to a stop sign. Carly, unprepared for the slow but sudden stop, pitched forward and fell to the front edge of her seat, looking obviously annoyed.
Just like that, the captivating feeling was gone. Her interest in the car ride disappeared just as quickly as it had come.
In an attempt to persuade myself that she could still enjoy life in a way I never again could, I took her for another ride two days later. Carly acted as if that magnificent evening had never happened, but not in the way I would have liked. She was on edge and panicky for the entirety of the short ride to and from the library. Carly has never been a lap cat, so it came as surprise to have her crouched on my thigh, clutching it as if her life depended on it. With every little bounce of the car, her sharp nails bit into me angrily, which only added to the frustration of turning, as her chunky body blocked my arms from the wheel.
I wish there was some way we could better emotionally invest ourselves in new events and encounters so that they become unforgettable. The night I drove the streets with my baby girl was beautiful, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that, like everything else in my life, I’ll never be able to go through with such excitement again.
What a let down.