Kindreds

My German shepherd Venus had been the smartest dog I had ever known. Though they shared the same parents, her sister Jamaica was only slightly smarter than a very stupid chew toy. Jamaica's bark was literally an inaudible "woof". Often when the other dogs barked ferociously at strangers, she would be turned in the wrong direction woofing unconvincingly at something random and wagging her tail. She was more of a gatherer than a hunter, and spent a prodigious amount of time collecting pebbles and leaves.

The Shepherds were funny, but our Rottweiler Black had been my favorite. My step dad brought him home, hidden in his jacket during a snow storm. The black fluffy mass of puppy couldn't walk so he scooted around like a baby learning to crawl. We adored him.

Then he grew bigger. Some would say he grew big and menacing. People were terrified of him. They noticed his huge head, and powerful jaw but no one took notice of his beautiful eyes or his gentle soul. He weighed more than I did by the time he was 9 months old but to me he was still the amorphous puppy ball. We wrestled (he held me down and chewed playfully on my shins), we danced to Wu tang Clan(he wiggled his body and shook his stump) and we talked.

Mostly I talked and he listened. Occasionally, I apologized for his stump and chastised him for trying to kill the trampy cat my mother had taken in. I disliked her as much as Black did, but mauling was not the solution. The mauling only made her look like a sympathetic victim, and she wasn't; she was a bully and she started the fight.

It was my first year at the prissy girls high school and things were changing. He listened, and knitted his brows, and he seemed to understand. We were kindred in an inexplicable way. He was the kindest soul I had ever met and by some perversion he trapped in a huge, scary body, and armed with formidable teeth. Back then, I was a ball of caustic sarcasm and angst trapped in a small, scowling body prepared to bare fangs. In retrospect, I was the one they should have found menacing.

Grounded

I delight in teasing the willful logic that keeps me tethered to its side.
Me:
"Let me go strange bedfellow."
Captor:
"What? And let you float away?"
Me:
"Your restraints are chafing me."
Captor:
"You think that everything that is necessary is chafing."
Me:
"But I want to be free."
Captor:
"Free to do what?"
Me:
"Stop asking me that. Told you already that I don't know."
Captor:
"You'll be free enough when you're dead."
Me:
"You don't know that. Besides, I told you I wanna be reincarnated as an flower. Maybe then I'll enjoy being grounded."
Captor:
"Don't get clever with me. Keep talking like that and I'm going to hug you harder."

Learning Happy

Learning happy. It's not instinctive for all of us. Some of us find it difficult, if not suffocating. I drove my son to school this morning, and listened patiently to usual complaints. He's a complainer, and a good one. Most of all I want him to be happy, so I interrupted his tirade regarding his friends telling lies, and about Tae Kwon Do lessons, and asked him to smile.

This request was met with confusion, as it should have been. Couldn't count how many times in the past people have burdened me with that seemingly innocuous request. Frankly, he had been perfectly happy complaining but I felt a maternal obligation to intervene, encourage him to be happy in a less annoying way. The smile was a more of a teeth baring grimace but it stopped his whining. This whine was the vestige of the one that had begun the day before at his grandmother's house.

He had not wanted to leave. I didn't want to leave but I had no desire to stay with the sun no longer twinkling. Plus I couldn't breathe. The dog hair flurries, ignited by the vacuum, irritated my airways. We had been lying down on the beloved new furniture, inhaling the newness that stood out among the weathered antiques. I was on the couch, Mom on the love seat, and boy in chair, or occasionally on the floor next to the chair. Rocko, the geezerly German Shepard, was trying in vain to rub me with his drippy nose; it was craggy from his ritualistic rooting in the dirt, and stones. No sane person would touch that nose on purpose.

"How old is Rocko," I asked my mother. He seemed naive and boyish for a dog his age.
"Thirteen, or fourteen."
"He's not that old. I think he's eleven."
"Rocko's older than me?" The boy interrupted.

I hardly noticed her vacuuming until I heard laughter and felt the upholstery hose pulling at my thigh. I hardly noticed her screaming at the hyper-active dog. PlAtZZ!

The dog seemed to think the command "to stay down" was directed at the boy, so I tried it. He ignored me. The new couch was a perfect place to watch the sunlight twinkling through the trees. A perfect halo for my easy ennui. I seemed to be the only one at rest. At that moment, despite the screaming child, barking dog, vacuum and woman, I was completely at peace, and floating lightly in the chaos. Then the noise diminished, and with it the sun began to wane.

"Come on, time for us to go. Your grandmother is trying to kill me."
"But I wanna to stay." Brows wrinkled, lips set.
"So are you gonna come with me to Atlantic City?" My mother asked. She could not have been more similar to the boy and I was their unlikely common denominator.
"What am I gonna do in Atlantic City? I don't even have a job."
"Can I go to Att-lantic City?" The boy asked hopefully.

I didn't answer him. Instead, I wondered if he would remember that day fondly. I wondered if he would remember that covered in dog hair and chaos, we had recognized happy.