(You can push a soccer ball, but not people!)
When I want something, which is rarely, I must say, since so much is at my paws all the time (except for that dry kibble that makes me a little…bona), I give a little peep, not a myow exactly, but a peep, peep, sort of like a chicken getting ready to lay an egg or maybe more like one of those baby birds up in our arbousier, but I don’t make a lot of noise.
(That’s a yawn, dummy, not a complaint!)
Now mama, on the other hand, is a bit more forceful, sometimes to a fault. When she has something to say, she says it strong and clear (often changing her mind minutes later, by the way) so maybe it’s just to try out the view, observe it and then maybe move onto the next. But papa says that it’s the way she delivers the opinion or view that sometimes bowls him over. Is it her Texas upbringing in a land where women were pretty forceful and had to handle the circled wagons, the kids, the animals and their own guns when the enemy was up on the ridge.
Or was it her own mama—a pistol if there ever was one, but you had to take both sides of the coin that was her mama: a strong, organized, full-of-opinions-about-everything, sometimes abrasive sort of lady and on the other hand, a thoughtful, caring, sharp cookie who could calm a crying baby even whilst feeding her sourdough, pruning her plants and preparing for altar work at her church! What a mama, my mama says. A really wonderful and interesting brain, even if mama did not go along with many of her ideas about how mama should be…
BUT….and I think that there are some “buts” with my mama. I’ve told her time and again, it’s okay to push but when that shove starts up, just take note and back off a bit.
I think, too, that when there are only two anthros in the house, they talk to one another all the time and maybe it’s best to let some of it spill over onto ME, for example. I love hearing anthros talk—what a trip!
Both mama and papa are trying (finally, at this age! But oh, if the young only knew what the old know now…and all that aphoristic stuff, which I try to avoid at all costs in my humble blogs) to really examine their tendencies to have opinions about everything. I suppose I would rather call them “personal preferences”, which leaves a lot of room for change, and changing ‘preferences’ is always a breath of air when one has held onto the original one for too long.
You may not know this but mama was so in love with Italy for so many years that she simply could not see the riches of France or Spain, and when she dropped that ‘preference’ and just embraced the three very different cultures, she says it was like dropping a heavy weight, opening a window, breathing purer air, having new vistas.
So of course I can have all the pushes I (think!) I need, but when they start shoving into others’ lives, time to review where they came from and if they are really even that useful to me!
