All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [201]
We were advised that something was wrong if we were devoting more than ninety minutes per class on homework; in my case, then, something was seriously wrong. But it was what was wrong with the past, not the present. So much old fear kept coming up, I was battling across lifeline time zones. I would have blessed stretches during which I rocked and rolled on homework, ripping through problems, reconnecting especially with anything related to algebra, which I loved in high school and still find very creative. But then I’d hit a wall, and the crap from the past would fill the room like unseen smoke, and I’d be confused, despairing, inept, facing intractable quant calculations. It was definitely consoling to know I was not alone. We midcareers, facing academic rigors in some cases for the first time in decades, would group up in the lunch room and corridors, before class and outside the tutoring hall, comparing notes about our cycles of confidence and doubt, hard work and peace, procrastination and angst. Many of us experienced identical patterns: Satisfied at the end of a long day that we had given it our all, we would lay our heads on our pillows unperturbed (after shoving my school work off the bed; my resolve never to do homework in bed lasted less than a week). But long about dawn, some icy fear would grip us and we’d bolt awake, racked with shame for not having been able to do better or more, and we’d arrive in class exhausted and full of doubt, until some placating professor soothed our spastic emotions and our minds began to work again.
On top of this, I was heartsick because our beloved cat Percy went missing a mere two days after he arrived in Cambridge. I searched frantically for him, my voice bleating his name every moment I was home from school. We put up laminated posters and endlessly called neighbors, businesses. I felt terrible guilt: If only I hadn’t brought him here … if the doggie door had been closed.… I would wake up in the middle of the night and stumble around the neighborhood in my nightgown, crying, searching. Then I would go to class, go to tutoring, and do homework. It was hell for me.
Dario was traveling most of the time on the IndyCar circuit, but I think God arranged for us to be together when I finally found Percy’s remains in a field. I believe the body is but a jacket, a garment we lay down when it is time for our souls to change rooms. I believe the soul, which contains the essence of all I know and love about a person, is immutable, unchangeable, eternal. Yet I am human, and I have a terrible attachment to the bodies of those I love, the home in which I have known their soul. Finding Percy was a crushing, devastating blow. I wailed and wailed in grief.
I called Tennie in the depths of my pain, and when I was able to calm down a bit, she asked me, “What is the lesson Percy came to teach you?” The answer, clearly, is unconditional love. God is everyone’s personal Percy. Totally, beautifully, unflinchingly focused just on that one person. I began to picture every woman, every child, somewhere with Percy, the most beautiful cat in the world, the biggest baby boy, sitting on their chests the way he did mine, paws folded, purring, heavy-lidded, but oh, watching with utter devotion, occasionally reaching up to kiss me. Scraping his cheek along mine is his signature expression of adoration. God as Percy. I loved it. It worked.
My final exams in both econ and quant were scheduled for the day after we found Percy. I was reeling and unsure how I could possibly pass these tests. I had been using my recovery tools incessantly, including slogans such as “First things first,” “Let go and let God,” “Easy does it,” and “How important is it?” to help me organize myself, figure out not just how to move forward, but which foot to put in front of the other. I knew, sadly, I would have plenty of time to grieve my Percy and that it