I spent my first 30 years trying to be the "good daughter." While my sister rolled up her skirts to make micro-minis and ran a business in counterfeit hall passes, I worked to live up to the unfortunate sobriquet Sr. Mary Andrew bestowed on me in second grade: Angel Child. Back when I still believed everyone had a permanent record, I thought that's all one had to do to make one's parents happy.
But
then my sister managed to turn my world upside down with one simple act of reproduction.
Okay, maybe it's not so simple an act, but the point remains. With a single
brilliant stroke she more than compensated for decades of rebellion. It's like
the prodigal son or the workers in the vineyard or one of those other horribly
unjust parables. (Of course, I didn't help things at the time by dating a divorced
man old enough to be my father, but that's another story.)
All my good work seemed lost. What could I give my parents that would provide as much pleasure as they derived from pulling out pictures of amazing grandchildren to make their friends realize how woefully inadequate their own grandchildren were? Bragging about how well I was doing in school must have begun to grow old somewhere around year 27.
So I got a cat.
Actually, that's not why I got a cat, and initially it had exactly the opposite effect. It was one more piece of evidence that I was becoming the weird daughter. People in our family didn't get cats. It was crazy. My father considers animals to be carriers of plague and, even worse, allergy. He could see no reason one would want a cat, so it was obviously evidence of a breakdown. He was terrified that I was becoming a cat lady (and, as an overeducated spinster, I must admit I looked like a prime candidate).
My mom, on the other hand, had had dogs growing up. In our animal-free family, this was always wondrously strange and incomprehensible to me as a child. Much like the fact that she had been Protestant. But Odin was immediately able to leap over 40 years of petless marriage and tap into that mysterious past life. He won her over from the moment he met her. At the time, he was still painfully shy of strangers and usually disappeared until they left. But not with her. Within minutes, he rubbed up beside her and they were set.
Odin
somehow seemed to sense that my family was his family. By the end of that first
weekend, he was sitting on their laps and my dad--my dad who never touched animals--was
stroking him calmly.
Since then, the bond has grown stronger. It doesn't hurt that my nieces have gotten older and are reminding my parents what rebellious daughters are all about. Odin has become the good grandchild. The quiet one who never talks back and is always affectionate. They tell stories about their grandcat to friends at church. At Christmas, Grandma hung a stocking for Odin alongside the girls'.
Odin loves to visit his grandparents. While I was moving to Ohio, he spent 10 days at their house, most of it without me. He ate more for Grandma than he ever eats for me. He drove with DinDin all the way to Ohio without a complaint. And when he's at their house, he knows to stay off the furniture (most of the time).
Now, if I go home for even a day, they ask, "Are you bringing Odin?" And recently they went on a special mission to buy Odin's favorite treats, unavailable in Ohio, and mailed them to him.
Odin is lucky to have such good grandparents.