Love is Not Enough
I knew a woman once with lots of animals and lots of love.
She loved them all.
The birds.
The dogs.
The cat she did not know was inside the engine.
Ketri.
Nicco.
She loved them all.
Her love did not kill them.
Of course not.
Because she didn’t mean to hurt them.
Intent.
She didn’t mean to hurt them.
She cared for them even. Extensively. Giving the food. Shelter. Vet visits.
She cried when they died.
Even the white Rat she had rescued from the store so it wouldn’t become snake food.
A rat named Charlotte.
But she did not seem to understand that love had to reach far beyond possession.
Beyond feeding.
Beyond keeping.
Beyond grief after the fact.
Ketri the parrot had been hand-fed as a baby.
Hands meant food.
Warmth.
Life.
Then he was left repeatedly with her man, who yelled.
“SHUT UP!”
Bang.
A shoe across the room.
Again.
Again.
The bird learned hands differently.
No more touch.
Never.
Never.
BITE.
He pulled out his own feathers.
He became nearly naked again.
The little baby dinosaur.
Featherless at the beginning.
Featherless at the end.
He got cold.
He died.
She had loved Ketri.
But her love had never been enough.
“I didn’t know!”
There was something strange inside that kind of love.
Something twisted? Or was it just capacities? Reduced by stress? Reduced by survival?
Because her love did not keep him safe.
It did not keep him warm.
It did not protect the creature she said she loved from learning to fear the human hands that had once kept him alive.
Then there was Nico.
A Doberman Pinscher.
Glossy.
Short-haired.
Beautiful.
He ran between two tall pine trees on a line.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
He barked when someone came.
He guarded the property.
He did his job.
But he was never taken for a walk.
Never unclipped.
Never allowed to wander beside someone and smell a world beyond those two trees.
Years passed.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Then one day the line wrapped around a tree.
After all those years.
After all that running.
After learning every inch of his confinement.
Nico died on that short line.
She loved him.
She cried about how much she loved him.
“I didn’t know!”
There was another dog in a pen.
A beautiful dog.
Long hair clumping in the dirt.
Fed.
Yes.
Watered.
Most of the time, I hope.
Contained?
Certainly.
Until she died.
And then there was the cat.
One of a few.
Left outside on a night cold enough that she crawled beneath the hood of a car looking for warmth.
No one knew she was there.
“I didn’t know!”
Absolutely no one.
Morning came.
The key turned.
The engine started.
She loved animals.
SHE LOVED THEM.
Everyone would have said so.
She would have said so.
And afterward there was horror.
Her horror.
Her grief.
Her story of the terrible thing that had happened.
But somewhere inside that horror was an animal who had been left outside in freezing weather, searching for enough warmth to survive the night.
The cat had a story too.
The cat just couldn't tell it.
Maybe that is what frightened me most.
Because love was there.
Wasn’t it?
The feeling was real.
Wasn’t it?
The grief was real.
Wasn’t it?
The attachment certainly was real.
She could even judge other people for failing at love.
Couldn’t she?
And still, something fundamental was missing.
Something I have seen missing in more people than I ever wanted to.
The ability to imagine life beyond the limit of their love.
The other side of their possession. Beyond attachment.
What does the bird hear?
What does the dog know?
What does the cat need?
What does confinement feel like after a year?
Five years?
A lifetime?
We all grow familiar with our leashes and cages and pens.
She loved them all.
She clipped the bird’s wings so he wouldn’t fly away.
She leashed the dog so he couldn’t run away.
She latched and locked doors so no one could get away.
And she left the cats to the cold so they could be free.
Love has limits.
Love did not open the cage.
Love did not unclip the line.
Love did not enlarge the pen.
Love did not make the house safe.
Love did not stop the shoe.
Love did not bring the cat inside on a freezing night.
Love did not even stop long enough on a cold morning to wonder where the cat might be.
Her love felt like love from inside her.
It lived inside her chest.
Declared.
I LOVE THEM. I LOVE YOU.
That was where it stopped with her.
It wasn't enough for them.
It wasn't enough for me.
She loved them all.
She loved me, too.
Of course she did.
But after watching what her love meant for the creatures who depended on her, I eventually had to ask a different question.
Not:
Did she love us?
Sure.
She did.
The question for us was:
What was it like to be loved by her?
Ketri knew.
Nico knew.
The long-haired dog with the matted fur in the pen knew.
The cat beneath the hood knew.
And eventually,
so did I.
Eventually, perhaps, we understand.
We look at a well-fed child.
A housed wife.
A paid employee.
A beloved animal.
And we understand that being provided for is not the same thing as being cared for.
Words like love, family, and community mean what they mean to the person who says them.
The words do a lot of work, a lot of heavy lifting, even when the person saying them does not.
They do not necessarily mean the same thing to the person receiving them.
We live as though words themselves create agreement.
They do
not.
