Is striving worth it?

A holiday spent with a teenager is different. So is a holiday with a sick cat.

On the first front, the challenge is getting the kid to reach out of his age-appropriate narcissism enough to really work on making a card, say, or cooking brunch (strange how much easier such tasks are with a child). On the second, the trick is balancing patience with the new pandemic protocols while simultaneously working not zoomorphize (reverse anthropomorphize) the situation.

There was cat vomit by the cat’s dry food bowl. The cat’s right eye was red and pus-drenched. There was something gray and strange in both eyes. Our region’s 24-hour vet told us over the phone to pay particular attention to feline sneezes.

I’ve had enough of finding all symptoms inside me I’ve read about for months. Part of me feels immune as I touch my face when I know I shouldn’t. The rest wants to schedule new tests for the disease and its antibodies, or just hook up pronto to the nearest ventilator.

“Your cat, and your dog has a second eyelid under the first, That’s what looked so weird,” the vet told us after we sat in their parking lot for a couple of hours. The cat eventually went in, under a masked vet’s assistant’s care, for a checkup. The dog, in the car with the rest of us, cried as she was carried off.

“Why does everybody insist on doing one’s best all the time when it never really matters how well you do?” asked son Milo, out of the blue.

Later, I wondered what writing a daily blog such as this one might have to do with my son’s question. Should I strive for understanding or render what I observe, including the confusion of all striving?

Good question.