hazelnut

It is incredibly strange to have little, furry creatures wandering around one's home. Curled up into balls, eating from bowls, never leaving...like plants that meow and poop. Inside these little creatures are miniature hearts and lungs and bones and stomachs. They sit next to us, try to talk to us, follow us around. They have personalities, temperaments, weird ideas, and sometimes, problems.

Just this week, Hazel, my scrawny, crabby companion of 15 years, went into the animal hospital for a two-night stay. During his absence, part of me relished the lack of whiny cries, but another part of me really missed his rumpled presence. Thinking back on the past 15 years, Hazel has been omnipresent. I have probably said his name 20 times a day.

It all started in my mom's tiny house in Lake Zurich where I fed Hazel with a bottle. I would put his pint-sized body in the bib of my overalls and carry him to the record store where I worked summers. He would stay behind the registers, blocked off with big pieces of cardboard. Back to college in the fall and he lived in my bedroom in a dirty house shared by 10 people. Hazel's flea ridden body was washed in the bathroom sink until he looked like a soaked hamster. Then the apartment in Evanston with Nübie, a peevish cat given to me in high school who, after less than a year in the Evanston apartment, promptly moved back to Lake Zurich. Then, various places in Chicago as I progressed through grad school and into homeownership. First came Piggie, the energetic buddy - always wanting to play, but settling for a few licks and sniffs, maybe a roll around. After that, Egon, the squishy, loving teddy bear - Hazel was not amused. Finally miles and miles away in Brooklyn where now there is a new, arch nemesis, Carry, the giant panda cat.

Hazel's a weird animal. Picky and skinny and loud when he wants to be, fluffy and regal and hard-nosed. But every time I bury my nose in his belly, he purrs. When he sits next to me on the couch, he'll reach over and lay his paw gently on my arm. There have been times in the past when he literally climbs into the shower with me and runs out, soaking wet, but happy. With the exception of long distance bystanders, family and such, Hazel has been the only constant in my life for the past 15 years. It is an interesting relationship, a mute, yet loyal witness to my life thus far.

disobedience

When I was 19, in college, surrounded by leisure and debaucery, it was easy to rid oneself of responsibility, lay back and revel in the absolutely interminable conversations of youth. What do you believe in? Are you religious? Are you a virgin? Can you make me a mix tape? Let's order pizza.

I have always been on the cusp of extreme rule following and minor rebellion. My friends were obnoxious, opinionated, dogmatic, perhaps. There were a lot of males - really messy, sloppy, loud, lazy guys. Drinking forties, wearing the same jeans for weeks, throwing trash into the backseat, wanting to light things on fire. I was the voice of reason. Maybe not a good idea right now, guys. There's a cop right there. I want my security deposit back eventually.

It has always boggled my mind that I decided to encompass myself with such different personalities from myself. I can't say that I didn't think their behavior was funny at times; they were hilarious. I found great pleasure in making the people in my life more straight-laced than myself gasp. It was even better that it was them and not me. At the same time, I was driven by a force...a force ruled by obedience, aquiescence. The feeling that something really bad could happen if we got out-of-line. As I progressed through life after college, I drifted further and further away from such people until I found myself responsible, calm, a member of the working class with health insurance and a clean apartment.

Obviously this is the path of many. Buckle down and get it done. Go through life and follow the straight and narrow. Pay your bills, do your laundry, call your mother, eat a balanced meal. But I think that with the rigid adherence to these rules comes a feeling of loss. Too much rule following and you lose the spontaneity of human connection and dare I say, the sloppy mishaps that lead to the greatest stories and affinity for your compatriots. I am not saying that loving relationships happen only when the scales are unbalanced or that a full life is one that is fraught with disobedience. I wrestle with the monotony of daily life and struggle to find inspiration, but I also can get inflamed by disorder. I need to remember that sometimes inspiration comes from hours alone thinking or cleaning our apartment or calling my family or some other wholly predictable, rule following activity. But sometimes that inspiration comes from a night on a rooftop until four in the morning with my obstreperous husband and our sloppy compatriots.