The buzzing grasshoppers couldn’t drown out the swearing and yelling about whose fault it was that the piano stool had tipped over and now had cracked varnish. I learned some choice words that day, practiced pretending not to listen, pretending not to be there.

It must have been listed in the newspaper, that second-hand Yamaha upright that we drove out to the end of a country road for. The kitten was a windfall though, a freebee thrown in because one of the farm cats had a litter that was nearly wild up in the hayloft of the barn next to the farmhouse.

Inside the cardboard box the kitten hissed bloody murder through the top where the four leaves of the box top came together, leaving a little gap. My mother taught me how to fold the top of a cardboard box closed. My hands still know how, but I don’t think that my tongue does. I was a little pigtailed girl pressing my eyeball right up to the dark slit. Fuzzy Dandelion stared balefully out in terror and rage, tiny paws and needle-sharp claws ready.

Love didn’t come without hurts, in my experience.