in other news, the cat is finally growing into his face.

there's a caterpillar on the back door, one of those black and brown stripey kind, and i think that he'd just as soon eat me as look at me. according to my local entomologist, he's actually not poisonous, though i remember someone telling me that they were at some point in my youth, quite possibly so that i would leave the caterpillers outdoors.

when i was in ninth grade, we had vocabulary lists like any normal freshman english class. and one of our words was "misanthropist," which the charming kids in my class, when called upon to define the word, defined as, well, me. this, of course, isn't to say that any of this was true, or even that it wasn't, but it's something that i remember. but how can you not have some measure of distrust for mankind when those are the kinds of things that stick out in your teenage memories?

i think about my grandmother a great deal these days, though for reasons that i can't really approximate, though i imagine it has something to do with the season, with watching the trees change for the seasons, with being in love, with both the world and someone in particular. these were always places where my grandmother belonged, where i align my memories, as my mother was a bit 'the effects of gamma rays on man-in-the-moon marigolds,' ever asking in one way or another how it is that one could fail to hate the world.

my grandmother loved the world, despite the sorrow that it contained, despite losing a son, losing a brother, despite seeing wars and falling in love at the exact wrong moment and almost losing the love of her life countless times over to carelessness, to circumstance. my grandmother loved the world and it oozed from her, poured forth from her in everything she did. she filled the bird feeders every day because she loved the world. she tended to my grandfather when he fell down stairs or grew tired, and she did it because she loved the world. she so loved the world that she offered her son to it, offered herself to it, fought daily against anyone who would malign the idea of a greater good. you have to love your mother, she'd say, even when you don't understand, even when she sets out without love for the world.

none of this, mind you, is meant to paint my grandmother as a wide-eyed optimist. she didn't believe in tears and she didn't believe in losing faith, and sometimes that made her seem somewhat hardened. but she loved the world. and the thing about people who love the world is that you never really have to wonder whether or not they love you. aren't you a part of the world?