Skinning the Cat

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” my mother says in response to my frustrated whine after I get my brush stuck in my hair.

Defeated, I hand her the brush, and she shows me on her own long hair. “Start from the bottom and work your way up,” she says, pleased that I, her headstrong daughter who believes she knows more about everything than anyone, am open to a nugget of wisdom.

As a firstborn, I wanted to nail every task on my first try, but Mom’s skin-the-cat trope lodged itself in my brain, allowing for do-overs. I doubt I ever thanked her for that and other gems she stitched into my personality.

When I wonder how I came to be so outgoing, again, I have my mother to thank. I was ten when we moved to a neighborhood ripe with large families. Norwood Park was once “An Exclusive Summer Cottage Colony” built in the latter part of the 1880’s for the rich and famous in Long Branch, New Jersey, then America’s most popular resort destination. But by 1964, the cottages could be bought on a professor’s salary, and my father secured our 6-bedroom, 4100 square foot home for $18,000.

In an attempt to get some of her five children out from underfoot, Mom told me to take a couple of my brothers and go make some friends. I dutifully rounded up two of the boys, straightened my shoulders, and headed east along a thick privet hedge and up a short sidewalk to the first house, a modest ranch, out of place among the giant, old cottages.

I knocked at the door, smacking one of my brothers for picking at a scab on his arm, and when it opened, I said, “Hi. We’re moving in down the street. Do you have any kids our age we can play with?” The teenage girl looked surprised, then turned, and sent out a girl my age and her younger brother.

Whew, that was easy, I thought as we scampered off to climb up trees or onto shed roofs. We quickly became good friends and, through them, met dozens of other kids along our street.

So I guess my mom taught me how to bluff. To take charge and ask for what I wanted. To fake it ‘til you make it.

Years later, I got a job grooming yearling horses at a Standardbred breeding farm. My team’s first big challenge was bathing youngsters who had never been sudsed up. We hosed them down, rubbed shampoo into their coats, and submerged their tails in a bucket of soapy water. When it came time to comb out the knotted tail, I knew exactly what to do, thanks to my mom. Start at the bottom. Work your way up.

Several years before she died, the “skin the cat” phrase slipped from my mother’s lips, and then, giggling, she said, “Oh dear, what a terrible image I gave you poor kids. I might have scarred you for life!” We both laughed, and I told her that I’d truly never thought anything of it.

What I wished I had said is, “It’s because of you that I learned the wisdom of plan B’s and workarounds. Thank you, Mom!”