![]() ![]() ![]() You could read any number of theories about attachment and loss and grief. You could read Freud, you could read Klein. You could explain what it was like by running to books and papers. Some days I lay in bed in so much mysterious pain I began to believe the only explanation was a terminal disease. Out on the hill I fled from walkers, dodged behind hedges when farm vehicles drove up the track. I jumped in panic when the postman knocked on the door recoiled from the ringing phone. Is she overkeen? Is the weighing machine broken? I spent a good quarter of an hour fussing about with piles of tuppences, trying to calibrate it. I was sure I’d done nothing to provoke her. Why has she footed me? I thought wildly, after she released her grip and continued as if nothing had happened at all. The pressure was immense, but the pain, though agonising, was happening to someone else. I had to wait until she decided to let go. One afternoon Mabel leapt up from her perch to my fist, lashed out with one foot and buried four talons in my bare right arm. My subconscious was trying to tell me something and though it was shouting very loudly indeed, I didn’t hear what it was saying. I’d think of it at odd moments-while taking a bath, scratching my nose, leaning to grab a mug of hot tea. Copyright © 2014 by Helen Macdonald. All rights reserved. Used with the permission of the publisher, Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, Inc. Published March 2015. ![]()
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