Every 8 years the cells in your body are replaced with completely new cells

In the few months before I moved back home, there must have been a stray cat who had a litter of babies. The Casa de Oro hill was populated with one, two, three black cats. Local shelters encouraged adoptions, posting advertisements of sweet black kitties looking for loving homes.

We named the black cat who came into our lives Lester. I thought Shadow or Knight would be more appropriate of a name, but the patriarch of the family made the final decision and Lester slowly began to make our home his. 

I don’t know what happened on the hill during the seven years I was gone. The grasses still grew tallest and greenest in February. The weeds with yellow flowers still puckered your lips when sucked dry. The crows still loitered on colter pines. In the summer when grasses dried up and land browned over, the crows would take residence on the hardened crust of earth and caw from the ground up. 

The only two things that were new and unexpected was my homecoming and Lester settling in shortly after I did. We met outside in the mid heat of summer, where I spent time lizarding myself on the driveway and watching the crows watch me. Lester would slink up, meow, accept food and a few cuddles.

Maybe it was for the best I didn’t know his birthday or age or zodiac sign so I could learn from what he showed me rather than project an archetype onto a stray cat. He already was an archetype and so was I – the two strays who had found home. 

I hadn’t wanted to move back to the Casa de Oro house before my eight years were up. Somewhere, I had read that all the cells in your body died and were reborn every eight years. Every eight years, you were gifted a completely new body. Down to a cellular level. I wanted to move home when every cell in my body had been transformed, but destiny or decision brought me back before my entire body hit the refresh button. Someone once told me this was a false fact. But the patterns and habits of home swallowed me up too easily enough for me to believe that my cells weren’t preconditioned for the patterning. 

I moved home anyways. 

Lester purred on anyways. 

The backyard moved through its cycles anyways. The winter-moistened dirt beneath the green grasses releasing and absorbing water as it moved through the rainy season. High noon’s evaporation and the condensation of the marine layer that snakes its way into the east county. The tall green grasses and sweet yellow flower weeds of an early spring. And the sudden death by summertime heat & browning over of the once rich land. The seasons moved on anyways. 

Lester purred on anyways. 

Me and my not yet obliterated old cells observed on anyways. Cycles were meant to repeat themselves – it’s in the coding. It’s that which defines them. Nature keeps spiraling. Maybe in 500 years, that uncultivated plot of land outside my parents home will be paved over, or caved in, or the cycles will have shifted to be unrecognizable. But in Earth’s lifespan, those 500 years is equivalent to a second of my lifespan. A blink of my human eye. And whether cycles continue with or without me, or when patterning reaches its fingers from the past, all I can do is shut my eyes and let the moment in time blip past my perspective. 

Lester would agree.