Cat's Cradle

Working on straightening out long-neglected piles of books, I find something my younger daughter Kat bought for me years ago: a copy of the Klutz Press Cat's Cradle book, complete with an unused rainbow nylon string. Prada has been home for two days, having no school early in the week, so she comes home sometimes to take a yoga class with me and to recharge and eat homecooked meals.

Prada saw the Cat's Cradle book and we spent hours remembering all the patterns from her childhood: Cup and Saucer, Eiffel Tower, Siberian Houses, Witch's Broom. My son Riff wandered in, said, "Hey, I used to know all these," and spent time recreating the intricate twisted ladders and loops of The Jacob's Ladder, the one he told me is the pattern everyone wants to remember, because it seemed hardest. Kat came home from work, took one look at the cat's cradle string, and without hesitation, whipped through every pattern as if a whole ocean of years had not passed between the time of her childhood and her young adulthood. Mr. Strega walked in and did the actual game of Cat's Cradle, moving from "Cat's Cradle" to "The Soldier's Bed" to "Candles" to
"The Manger" to "Diamonds" and finally to "Cat's Eye." He said his older sister recruited him to play Cat's Cradle, time and time again. Mr. Strega has only his sister as his immediate relative--his fiery, red-haired mother, who knitted and read, who was a physicist, who cooked from the I Hate to Cook Book, died before he met me, as well as his dad, the one who built him a sailboat (the "Porous Icthyosaurus") when Mr. Strega was little; he learned to sail it solo by the time he was eleven.

These last few days, I have been telling myself to try not to regret the times I should have been better as a mother, in the years I made other people my Higher Power and listened over and over to what they thought was good for me, nodding my head in blind belief. I am glad for the years in which I had no relationships, even though I was lonely; after having left an unbelievably toxic and dysfunctional post-divorce relationship, I spent many years on my own, caring for my kids, concentrating on getting physically and mentally healthy, working on my writing, ultimately gaining the self-esteem to get my MFA, and, at the beginning of grad school, to finally find Mr. Strega, the absolute love of my life. And now Prada says, "You are the best role model for me, Mom," and I feel better, though I can never undo the past and still wish I had done things differently--I wish, for one thing, I had not had any relationships at all after my marriage ended, but had spent time instead finding help through the channels I use now. I did not know I would be targeted by the very nature of my own vulnerablity and my willingness to blindly trust.

I don't know why doing Cat's Cradle brought all this up, only that it's an old game for my children and me, the patterns and shapes that emerge like magic from one simple unbroken string, reminding me of the complex ties that bind us as parent and children, the fragile Jacob's Ladder of our lives.