Flying Towards the Sound of Thunder

What is the first sound you can remember? Most might say their mother's voice. I struggle to remember her voice; she died when I was just entering adulthood.  But I do remember her smell, a mixture of clean rain and Chanel No. 5. It's a smell, like that of sandalwood, that I can't catch a whiff of now without going soft and quiet, with this little echo in my chest.

Dad kept a few of her things around, her light blue sweater draped over the armchair where she read all of her books, her robe.  It was as if the presence of her things somehow compelled their home to remain that, more than brick and mortar, but the place that held the sentience and character of the woman who graced it.  Instead, just looking at them in the silence was simply an affirmation of emptiness, and soon, they, too, were put away.

I still have the sweater and the robe, but I do wish I could remember her voice.

One of my earliest memories of hearing comes from the sound of the ocean during summer vacation, flirting up against the sand while I played with a little bucket and shovel while gulls cried around me like mewing kittens. So many sounds as I grew, the clatter of my mom juggling pots and pans, making us dinner every night, the spray of the garden hose as my father washed our station wagon every Saturday, the wind pouring through the masts of trees, and later; the sound of an airplane.

When I travel, I hate sitting in the back of the plane: it's noisy, but what makes it worse is that it is the noise of strangers. Give me the cockpit any day. A cockpit is rarely quiet, but it's a symphony of familiar sounds. The air traffic controller's voice, a reassuring sotto voice, confirms that the two minds are in agreement and that all is well with the world. The sounds pick up as you descend, the gear coming down, the reading of the checklist, and before you know it, there is the ground. It's solid underneath you and hard, and if you flared too high, you'd break your aircraft against its incontrovertible passivity. But sometimes, the earth acquiesced, and the wheels kissed the pavement like lips against a warm neck at dawn.

Aloft and level, though, airplane sounds stabilize into a gentle song with just the occasional background chorus of the air traffic controllers, and you would have time to think and perhaps chat a little. Pilots talk of many things aloft when settled into a long cruise on autopilot, and the adage is true, when with the opposite sex, pilots talk about airplanes, and in an aircraft, pilots talk about the opposite sex. We talk of the spiritual, and we talk of the mundane. We talk about families and jobs, spouses, children, food, pranks played, food again, and surprise—we talk more about airplanes. Then, on descent, the time of “sterile cockpit” with no non-duty talking allowed, we would work in conjoined silence, only the callouts from the checklist heard on the air.

There were nights when we got in a long enough layover to play tourist or simply catch up on relaxation and sleep, carrying the cockpit conversation over to a bar or a little restaurant.  Such were the nights where on a very long layover, we'd have a spot of whiskey, telling tales of adventure of some pilot, who could have been any of us, or none of us, a story that was not boasting but simply a telling, stories that had been lived or inherited, those stories that have been told over whiskey since time began. There was just something comforting in the voices, the words, the recognition of sound in the air, the clink of ice, and if you were in a really low-rent part of the world, the cluck of the basket of live chickens hanging from the ceiling.

Then, there were the days when sleep was hard to find, the day grinding into the night, when the only words spoken outside of flaps and slats and EPRs were, with a quick look at your ‘dinner,’ Hey, I bet this would taste good warm.‘On such days, we simply continued on in silence, surrendering our misfortunes and our joys to God and Pratt and Whitney, which sang to us outside like a Mockingbird in the moonlight.

I think of a flight back before I hung up my professional wings, one long flight over foreign lands.  Up at altitude, across that vast stretch of blue, we laughed and shared. Much of it was happy, but occasionally a story would come back from a compatriot Gone West, and through the laughter, tears stung our eyes as a familiar awe-filled sadness enveloped our little space and we grew silent, remembering him, sounds of mourning and respect. Airmen and soldiers are a small community of thousands, and we never forget our dead.

It was still dark as we flew over the Prime Meridian after stopping for fuel in Greenland. The Prime Meridian is the common zero for longitude and time reckoning throughout the globe. It is the one place where we are all at one point, and the moment stands still, an infinite place where, for a second, time and motion are tethered to our aircraft like a careless rope.

As we crossed over, I synchronized my watch with my copilot’s and attempted to capture that time, to somehow gather it for us. Only then did it hit—all we have experienced from this cockpit: different languages and sights, smells, and sounds; the roar of a turbine engine, as it started with that artistic endeavor of curse words and meditation; the underlying scent of jet fuel, oily and dark, that hung in the mist on an early morning ramp.

This morning’s air had burned with cold as we traced the soft scratches in the panel with gloved hands, trying to keep them warm while we waited for orders—the red “remove before flight” tags on the gear pins lying like frozen icicles against the landing gear as the crew chiefs finished their tasks.  Yet such thoughts disappear as the sound of the engines brings us back to our tasks; we're still at the Prime Meridian where there was precision and accord, spoken with the deep anesthetic hush of sameness.

We sat in that quiet hush, veins flowing with need, the nourishment of salt that comes from flesh and our eyes, that old blood that has explored new lands and ancient skies, the hardships of separation and the circumstances that lurk, to hurl us into wonder, or to snatch us from that blue, into the dark.  We've seen glory, tears, and abrogated peace from this windshield.  Though we missed being home, we'd not have missed this day aloft, given a choice.

The sun began to awaken as we neared our destination, the shadow of our craft skimming the clouds. The descent was at hand, and the day surged towards sunrise, or would if we could see it through the prevailing, thin mist of a foreign world. The sound of conversation ends there. We simply basked in the hum of the engines and the view out the window to our world. The clouds gathered up in a huddle of virgin thunderstorms. Up above, through a small portal of light, the trail of another aircraft 1,000 feet above fades into the blue as we started the ballet of preparing a jet aircraft to land, staring mutely through a spattered windshield across which the wipers swung like metronomes. We fly towards the sound of thunder for it's all we know.

The morning sun hits the windshield, an explosion of white light that leaves nothing—no bone, no ash—just a vast, deep plane of blue, the altar onto which we lay ourselves down as the flaps are lowered for the approach. For just a moment, I leaned my head wearily against the left side wall of the cockpit as the sun, my ship, and I were, for a moment, joined, an eclipse of light, sound, and motion.

Up ahead is the outline of land, there in the thin clouds, dissolving away beneath unfettered rain as if eroded by the sea. I sensed, more than heard, the steady hum of the engines outside my window. It's at once, the sound of an ocean, the laughter of a young girl, all wrapped into a bright continuous hum; the music of motion that pushes us towards home. - Brigid

Until I return - a Pictorial

I'm on vacation this week, so I will leave you with this in memory of not-so-pleasant weeks.  

My work week if I were a dog  - A Pictorial

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY

FRIDAY YAPPY HOUR

To Have a Book

I don’t own a TV – having given the giant flatscreen to AmVet years ago.  But I don’t know what I’d do without my books. Remember the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury? It was set in a dystopian future in which firefighters intentionally burn any house in which a book was located because it’s illegal to possess them. Ultimately, a fireman who secretly grew to love books escapes the city of big screen, reality-based entertainment to find a small group of book-loving refugees banded together. Each person was assigned to memorize one complete book—including Plato, Dickens, James Joyce, and more—so the books would survive until society was ready to possess them again. I loved that book when I was in high school. I did not read many popular novels, though I had a rather large collection of classic literature while growing up. When my grade school classmates were reading and loving their mysteries or the Captain Underpants series, I was reading Jane Eyre and Henry David Thoreau, and a whole world beyond my quiet, hushed one at home opened up to me.

Reading is, for me, not just intellectual but physical. I love how the spine of a book feels in the crook of my fingers; the smooth, hard-end boards snug on either side of the pages sewn together, their edges flush and perfect. I totally lose track of time when I read. I read somewhere that time, as most of us think of it, is an illusion; the past, the present, and the future are here, now, captured in a touch, the blink of an eye, or perhaps, simply between two pages of a novel. Today, between two pages of a favorite book, I found a photo of Mom in her garden. Outside the window here now, a plant waits for spring, when it can spill forth its seed onto the soil. I remember days of working in the flowerbeds that my mom so lovingly maintained.

After her death, I kept it going as long as I could for my dad until he, too, was called away. As I toiled in the garden, the sun kissed the top of my head, the touch a benediction, a blessing.

I missed having a used bookstore a bicycle ride away, the owner having retired and closing it.  But there were often yard and garage sales here in the Village, and I could usually find old books for pocket change. The last time I was at a used bookstore, I found an old cookbook, two generations old, that I opened to browse and purchase. I could picture my Mom using a book like that, and it would look nice on the shelves with her books that remain in my house. In it was a dried flower carefully pressed within the pages so many years ago, a story untold within that small remembrance.

 I've many books like that old book, purchased from stores that contain more light than dust, containing within them things old and forgotten, things that in the wrong hands would only grow older. Finding the right one was like finding treasure. Fingers trace the spine, fingers that are gentle and forgiving, not wishing any further scarring upon that which binds. Such books find their way home, where they are pulled out to be read on late nights, the mind marveling that other minds marveled; the mysteries and the mistakes play out across the pages as if they were penned today. They tell their stories like some old and lonely shut-in would do to anyone willing to listen; lessons are given without rancor or heat. So many words need to be said while they can still be heard. I always make sure I have a book with me when I travel.

The last time I took a really long trip overseas, I had to downsize a bag as the little turboprop airplane piloted by who I believe was The Incredible Hulk was weight-restricted. My books were left behind for materials I had to have for the trip. Instead, I would have given up my lunch, poncho, and hiking boots instead of my little collection of paperbacks and a small leather-bound book of Shakespeare sonnets. Let the weather wreak havoc on my itinerary, let the grocers sell the last chocolate bar, but if I were to end up alone in the middle of nowhere after I bust a move down the Himalayas and break my leg, I wanted a book.

Curled up in strange places next to an artifact of the family that is toted around in my suitcase, I might be lonely, but I would be content. For I have a book. It’s a big old, paper-made, dead tree book. I want to hold something in my hand that feels alive to me, even if a living thing died to create its pages. Some words form pictures laid out upon a living thing that never slept, never dreamed of the soft perch of birds or the sharp blade of the ax, and never mourned the tender leaves that it nourished and abandoned. It’s a piece of wood that could be warmth, support, shelter, or the perfect, pristine bed of memory laid down bare.

My house is empty tonight, but I am not alone. In my head are history and the cries of warriors, rushing forth immortal beneath disported sabers and brandished flags, and men were rushing forward into time, propelled by gunpowder and righteousness, underneath a sky of thunder. I have a book. I am caught up in battles and loves, both forbidden and forgotten, coursing like blood as long as the words will—that immortal, fresh, abiding blood that bears respect above regret and commitment above the ease of dishonor.

My chores are going to be put aside for at least an hour or two before bed, and I’ll pick up a mug of hot tea and that book. I’ll let it transport me to somewhere far away until a chime will toll for warriors, for battles won and those so easily lost. As my hand turns the pages, I will move among people who lived and died, or perhaps never existed at all, their shadows not of flesh or blood but imagination, shadows as strong as finely-honed steel, and shadows as quiet as murmuring breath, forgotten until they were put upon paper. Then, upon hearing the sharp, clear, and quiet blade-like sound of that chime, perhaps a clock, perhaps something that just travels within me, I will fall off into sleep. The book lies prone on the nightstand next to me. The book and I are two forms, creating one shadow. The stories in both of us never cease, even at rest. Outside, the world continues in that illusion of change, the sky letting go of its tears, washing a parched landscape anew. 

Simple Things

Amount spent on fancy puppy toys to keep Sunny from eating the sofa:  $397

Amount of interest in said toys:  Less than 10 minutes and that was for the $9 "Hurl a Squirrel".

New Favorite Toy:  Abandoned Rubbermaid trash can.

The Weights of the Journey

It’s common human behavior, the need for validation, be it through action, written word, or selfie sent to the masses.  No age is immune to it, which I witnessed recently in the local doctor’s office. One person states, “I had a double bypass!” to which someone else chimes in, “Well, I had a quadruple bypass,” and so it went, some of the seniors comparing ailments as if whoever had the most artificial stems and valves and joints will win. I could not help but think back to a story of the Christian Desert Fathers who tried to outdo one another in self-mortification to die unto oneself, and a monk boasted, “I’m deader than you!”

We all have those moments when someone says, “Oh, I did this, or I did that,” and we immediately jump in with our story. I’ve been as guilty of that as much as anyone; the whole “been there, done that” was probably invented by a type A personality. 

Then you had those moments where what you see and witness were so beyond the pale of anything man could dream up in his personal darkness that trying to compare was impossible. It’s chaos and blood. It was the sound of screaming until the voice was spent, and nothing was left but the ghost of that scream. It’s fate, history, man, machinery, and microbes, and sometimes it’s simply a losing battle with physics. It could be a steep slope that you tumbled down in a flurry of words, or it could be a precarious balance, that moment where you came up abruptly to the precipice, only to stop and find you have no speech.

At that moment, you understood what faith was made of, its severity, its saving grace, and the power of its secular right to your fidelity.

Sometimes it’s the smallest of things, that person on the corner with the sign who may well be a con artist in beggar’s clothes, or someone genuinely sleeping on the streets, their broken bearing sometimes only visible in the eyes, which you would see if yours were not half-averted. It’s shouting at the bathroom door that was sticking as it opened, making a sound wood just should not make, and then walking outside to see someone’s home at the end of the block burned to the ground. It’s complaining to a freezer full of food that there’s nothing good to eat when elderly people who served their country and worked most of their lives go to bed hungry. It’s whining that your welfare check doesn’t allow you to have an even bigger TV and a new car when across the world, where some people who know neither Christ nor comfort sleep on dirt floors among the vermin and the predators, with no handouts and even less hope because that’s what being poor truly is.

Sometimes it’s those big moments. It’s getting up before dawn to grab the bag and head for the flashing red and blue lights when you’d rather sleep in, get in a vehicle, and transverse miles that might as well be days to do what you are expected to do. It’s standing there under a weeping sky that amplifies what now lies beyond your power to heal; it’s accepting that which you have not elected. It’s broken skies and broken limbs as if bent by an invisible hand. It’s harnessing without hesitation the armored heart that lies within a web of flesh and bone, in which you walk, search, and fight the raging fire with little more than your eyes and mind. 

There is no badge in the world, Scouting or otherwise, that could be granted for this experience and the understanding of what it means. If there were, it would be much like the badge we call Faith. Such times make one more fully aware of just how precious this humanity we bear and how easily it is lost (and not just by outside forces). You become aware and grow stronger, like lotuses blooming in a fire.

When such a day is over, it’s hard to turn the mind off; the visuals are imprinted on the brain, a sudden wheel running downhill, a lantern dashed against the wall, the rending of a sheet of paper. It’s hard to get to that quiet place, and when you do, invariably, someone asks how your day was. You didn’t even want to make eye contact, as you have no words for what your day was, what you have witnessed, how you have hurt, and what you have learned from it. There is little to offer up by way of comparison to any other act of Man, God, or Fate that could go against what one heart could witness.

“So, how was your day?”

I remained silent. If someone wanted to go on about their day, illness, money issues, fears, or whatever in my silence, I would resist the urge to speak. For to them, what they were dealing with in their world that day was as important to them as anything that Fate and Earth could proffer elsewhere. Their fear was not unfounded, for it is their fear, and by telling their story, they are seeking hope as well as safety.

Let them have the last word, for there is never enough time to say the last words of our love and desire, of our faith and regret, of our submission or our revolt. To speak them is to shake both Heaven and Earth.

As I drove back from a trip into the city, I saw a man in tattered clothing standing at the corner with a cardboard sign under a sky that had lost its vivid hue, fading from blue to a grayish-green, the color of old glass. As I grabbed a bite at our local diner tonight, I looked at the crucifix worn around the neck of the waitress, laying sharp against her skin as she moved, leaving in her wake the scent of spent flowers. I looked to the people around me in my little community, all carrying their own joys and burdens, which to them were as real as the bruises that remained on my heart. My journey, however difficult, was no more difficult than theirs, our burdens all of different colors but carrying the same weight.

I raised my head to listen. On this day, perhaps, I could give that much to them.

 - Brigid

 

Sweat, Words, and Truth - Autumn Days.

It never fails—I take my "use or lose" vacation each fall, which has built up since I'm no longer flying to the West Coast constantly now that Dad is gone.  Partner in Grime will be working, so I can use that time to relax and maybe write.  Each year, inevitably,  a roofer comes along, and one of the neighbors is getting a new roof. Last week, the house was literally next door, so there was no ignoring that. Today, it's a few doors down. I'll have some more time off in late October, and hopefully, then the Village won't be repaving my street.

But living in the upper Midwest, getting ready for winter is as much a part of the season as changing the color of the leaves. We had our roof redone already. There's stain on the wooden steps front and back that Partner built to touch up and seal, and flower beds to clean out one last time. Although it's 85 today, it will likely be snowing by Halloween. These are the days of the false conceit of autumn, where the warmth is still a whisper, a promise, a touch that goes suddenly slack as winter pulls all the promise away. 

Too soon, we will have those days when the AC kicks on in the afternoon, and by dinner, you are contemplating turning the heat on before searching for that sweater you put away last May. On those days, the days seem born, already bored, not wishing to stay long, as the darkness descends earlier and earlier each night. I do love those days, though, walking along paths at the edge of the city, where the city becomes the countryside in a sharp demarcation that's as abrupt as a shuttered door.  People fought, struggled, and died to settle these areas, pushing back the wildness to find a safe shelter where they could grow and prosper, only generations later finding the wildness coming back at them from the very civilization they once fought to join.  

I'm in the city for better or worse, but I've brought my "country" mentality to it, living much of my life in a rural setting, including a working farm.  I still recall my last days there - the glare of the headlights that illuminated the front room. A cattle truck came that night to reach the stockyards in the morning. I had woken alone to the rattle coming up the road. Trying to get a little nap before they arrived, springing like a bow from my bed, aware of my responsibilities. As I donned work clothes and boots, the orange running lights and diesel growl outside the window reminded me of Martians landing, searching the house for signs of human life, and the first smile in a long time passed my lips.

All they would find was a lone woman with boots, a shotgun I knew how to use, and a kitchen that once had smelled of cinnamon.

The driver backed around, turning the trailer with a gentle sigh of air brakes up to the wooden chute at the barn. Within came the muffled grunt of the cattle that were being sold. Besides the lumbering truck and its driver and the cattle, I was alone. No cars, no help, the earth hanging suspended in space, cooling, wearing only a thin veil of wood smoke. The wind cut my face, a blade that only stroked the skin, not cutting it, my hands aching as I rubbed them on my thighs, trying to stir warmth back into dormant skin.

Oh, how I longed to just go back to bed that night, the rustle of cotton, the panting whisper of breath, the predation of the night assuming a hundred avatars of dreams. No cows, no work, simply the house still and quiet as if marooned in space by the dwindling of day. The truck was long gone, and the sounds outside fell to a low fragmentary pitch. A coyote howled at the indignation of clouds that covered the moon; no other sound was made. Prey went into hiding, insects died with cold, and everything else assumed their own mantle of hibernation or hunting. But there was still work to be done.

Thirty years later, there's still work to be done.  The other night, it was in the 40s, reminding me that it's best to be prepared early, bringing out the blankets for a wash and line dry. I'm looking forward to snuggling under them soon enough, the scent of woodsmoke clinging to the fabric. Then, the last of any canning to do, the neighbor had brought over some of their tomato crop - a thank you for occasional loaves of warm bread.

However, I've conceded the fieldwork to the young, no longer wishing to leave my bed at 3 a.m. to flash the badge to get past the crime scene tape to a place of my future nightmares. I've got my own team now, and though I will join them as needed, I'm not on 24-hour call any longer; I'm called upon to provide direction, consult, and expert testimony.

I still take pride in putting up a whiteboard of evidence and diagrams of the wreckage of a life, like some demented game of Pictionary when my expertise is needed to solve the puzzle.  I still find great fascination in the miracle of the workings of the human body and the incredibly messy ways in which it can come undone.  But some things don't change, I think, as I look at yet another cold form laid out on an ever colder surface. No matter how strong I think I am, how tough, I've seen too many times that even in unexpected and sometimes violent death, how strong the will of those bones was, to remain alive, was and how futile that sometimes was.  It doesn't matter if you are strong as an ox or go through life as inconspicuously as possible; Fate will find you.  

It just seems to find the unprepared, the ignorant, and the "let me finish this beer and take a selfie on the edge of a cliff" much sooner.

So call me old-fashioned or simply old. I didn't get to this age by living any other way. I know the merit of hard work, the beauty of quietness, and the wonder of turning that phone off and wandering in empty places, the ski lit by the stars of an eternal heaven, fearful only of the mysteries that I won't have time to explore before I, too, leave this place. 

I'm grateful that I learned about hard work early on in life, facing it like a battle to which you carry ancient wounds. You can’t live on a farm or a ranch without learning that.  I know the signs of impending birth in a heifer. I know how to cut a single longhorn from a herd of fifty with only an ATV and a dog while avoiding the pointy ends. I didn’t compare nail polish colors with my girlfriends because long fingernails get in the way when you might have to grease a cupped hand and naked arm with Betadine and lubricant to help a breached calf make its way into the world. I’ve fallen face first in stuff you don’t want to know about and cried like a child to find a calf still and cold after I spent two days nursing her after her mama died.

It wasn’t Green Acres, though I think we had their house. It had nothing to do with Norman Rockwell and everything to do with the hundreds of different ways a heart can freeze. 

It was a valuable life lesson. Hard work and hard decisions are made on evenings like that, where there are still tomatoes to can, bread to bake, and tools to sharpen, as winter will be here soon enough.  I keep my hands busy, my eyes on the sun, turning my back to the rain, not as sheep and cattle do, but as man will, after getting drenched one too many times.  Even as the rain grows steady, I'll soldier on as the sky and the day itself eventually dissolve without grieving for the warmth soon gone.

Fate may still play with me when I give it a chance, a playful paw stroke, a tentative trifling before the final pounce. But until then, I have my hands, my sweat, my words, and the truths that lie in the quiet. - Brigid

Please Don't Eat the Daisies. . .

Sunny has always loved her sticks, from the day we picked her up from her foster Mom's. . .

to her discovering our Lilac bush, which she was intent on killing.

 So a fence went up around the bush, and a sign.

I don't think she can read, though. . .

Nope. . .

Gotcha Days

Another Weekend at BiteyTime Play Center and Arcade. Partner in Grime still has his opposable thumbs

Sunny D (dog) is adapting to her new home well, considering she spent 10 months penned up in a barn. Spending her days in a too-small crate and likely malnourishment left her with bowed front legs, abandoned by the "breeder" because no one would buy her as a Purebred dog because "she isn't perfect". 

I'm thankful she was given up to a shelter rather than just killed, but it breaks my heart what she went through.  She'll never be a "working" dog, but she's happy and runs and plays with abandon; the Vet said there's no fixing it, but it doesn't cause her any pain (and if she needs it for arthritis in those joints as she ages we still have a doggie escalator).  She is our third rescue since Barkley, after Abby and Lorelei. He'd be pleased we didn't get  "perfect" dogs, but rather, ones that needed some tender hearts that knew of hurt themselves.  

The first night home after the "freedom ride," we woke a little after five a.m. to a plaintive whine from her crate.  It was a barely audible sound as if she had learned that there was no need to raise her voice, the brooding silence of her former world insensitive to her cries in the night.  The only voice she would hear would be her own. At night, that singular sound had to echo alone in the rafters.  But not that first night home - Partner in Grime was sleeping on the futon beside her crate and talking to her until she fell asleep again.

The first few weeks were rough. EJ was on an extended travel schedule, and I had my hands full, to say the least, as Lorelei needed palliative care at home.  At one point, I went three days without a shower, promising never to roll my eyes again at someone complaining about losing sleep with a baby. But with the help of some boxed hippie granola, Greek yogurt (OK, I'll share), and coffee, Sunny and I survived.  

Even terminally ill with an aggressive sarcoma, Lorelei doted on her like one of her own pups. She was forgiving and patient, and the short weeks they spent together were full of comfort. Still, one couch is worse for wear, and one small area rug threw itself on the pyre which is the flaming energy of a puppy.  

I wonder if Sunny remembers her past life.  We discovered that she didn't like telephones, sudden bright lights, or the sounds of cars and only reacted to commands in German, which gave us some history of what community her "breeder' came from. So I gently eased her into city life, sitting out in a lawn chair in the backyard on my lunch break and after work as she sat beside me, taking in the sounds of the city, realizing she was safe.  The words she knew from us at the time were few, but they stirred something in her heart on their hearing that quelled her fears and made her realize she was finally home.

A dog's perception of memory is not like ours. We tend to make painful things loom large because strong emotions stand out, isolated from the mundane daily thoughts that naturally diminish over time in one's mind. So, just as I can vividly recall, as if yesterday, moments of heartbreak, abandonment, and loss  - to Sunny, they are just shadows that haunt the edges of what she knows now, soon to be forgotten.

The brief expressions of loneliness and fear you see when you first bring a "rescue" home are hard to bear. But they were so short, soon to turn to looks of "I'm not sorry at all" when caught with a slipper, looks delivered with a goofy grin and the wag of the tail that even the hardest of hearts is not immune to.  Even after being neglected by others, they look at us with love, and whether that's simply the temper of a dog's soul or their eternally forgiving nature, I wonder how we are even worthy of their undying regard.

She knows only joy now, afraid of nothing except the bread machine, which she still will bark at. The backyard is her kingdom, to be defended against squirrels, rogue tomatoes from the neighbor's garden, and the cat that lives down the alley.  She doesn't understand why the people who walk past in the morning on their way to the train at the end of our block, burdened by life and propelled only by a timetable, don't want to stop and pet the dog.  She embraces the power of a slice of cheese.

She greets the morning yard joyfully, the grass covered with dew, like jewels strewn under her feet.  You don't notice anything wrong with her legs unless you are looking at her head-on when she comes at you slowly with a gait like Festus from Gunsmoke, taking your measure slowly, then doing a zoomie around you, a dust devil of motion, fueled by a complete lack of fear.  

She'd stay out there all day if she could, coming in only to nap beside me by my desk as I work.  Nights, she goes out one last time before bed since I don't walk her after dark in Chicago, as my husband will do.  After doing her business, we'll just lay in the grass in the center of the yard as above, the stars fill the skies, flickering down on us like eyes, as alive and enigmatic as the hearts of men.  

Training is ongoing, but she learns quickly when she wants to, having the doggie equivalent of a teenager's brain right now. She still will play a version of "Bite Mom's butt!" (no tooth pressure, but it will get your attention if you're not expecting it), and we've had to hide the smaller throw rugs.  But I can't get angry at her for enjoying being free to be a puppy, if only for these short months as she emerges into adulthood. (Though I'm still finding sticky spots in the kitchen where she bit into a can of Sprite and sprayed it around the room like a Nascar driver after winning a race).

This will be her sixth-month "Gotcha Day" and though she has had her "puppy moments," she's grown into a barrel-chested, muscular 84-pound English Lab of high intelligence. I told my husband that if I ever mention adopting another puppy, please talk me off the ledge. Still, I wouldn't trade these initial memories for anything, all the times we laughed at her antics through the tears as we said goodbye to her big "sis" Lorelei.  As I look at my remaining years, however long the Lord sees fit, I can't imagine not having a dog in them.

She's the 4th dog we've had in the 14 years we've been together.  But like any relationship of abiding love, there are always moments of trepidation, the fears of the unknown, the learning and the knowing, and, eventually, the loss, as we are all mortal.  Yet we embrace it, holding up that love like a match held aloft, grasping it until the flame burns our fingers, never wanting to let it go. - Brigid