Fall

...the world burst into color and I was left holding the sun.

Animal Love

Joan leaned against the gray chicken’s cage, cooing quiet comfort to the interested bird. As the bird grew closer to her, I reminder her of the time the llama had spit in her face because she had overstepped the boundaries and suggested if she wasn’t careful we might be rescheduling her upcoming eye appointment from November to an emergency room visit. She backed away, but not before clucking one last “sweet nothing” to her new-found friend.

That’s what going to the fair with Joan is like. You can’t really talk about animal love without bringing up her name. For me the two have become synonymous. Not everyone would live the way my friend does. A former concert pianist, Joan has let her house go to the dogs literally, having one in every corner of the house and many more on her bed at night, where the climb upon her hip, curve into the crook of her neck and the small of her back and on top her head, making it impossible to turn.

Also a former nurse – she’s had many careers – she helps her animals through to the end of their days, nursing them when others would choose to give up. Before I met her and in the beginning, I was sure I knew what it meant to love an animal – limited numbers, vet care, a peaceful goodbye when the pain gets too bad – and, there’s wisdom in that, but now that I’ve known Joan I’m no longer as sure my way is the only way. I have been with her when dogs passed on car rides to pug socials and while I would have rushed them to a medical end, she has wrapped them in towels and blankets, placed her palm on their brow and sat with them until their labored breathing ceased. As I look at her with blind, failing Ghanny and see the deep affection pass between them, I wonder once again, is it the worse thing to die where you have lived – in Joan’s bed or in the car where you rode as a pup, head hanging from the window? If you could talk would you choose the comfort of that palm and the familiar smells around you to a doctor’s needle?

Ghanny and Joan

But, this story is not about death. It’s about life, with Joan it always is and that’s why my beliefs expand. I see the life all around her and the love pouring out of her. She can’t pass a dog, donkey, chicken, goat or frog without stopping to caress and chat with it. For a while, she volunteered, helping during rainstorms to move frogs safely off the roads. She had a pet toad that hung outside her door and she would occasionally have to save from the pugs. She once brought it inside and placed it on the bed beside a litter of puppies, so I could take pictures of them both. The toad was bigger than they were. She has even been known to leave spider webs up in her home so as not to disturb the creatures.

But what I love most is seeing the immense and simple joy these animals bring Joan each time she meets a new one. Her face lights up, her blue eyes literally twinkle, she puckers her lips and begins chattering away. The story goes that she received her first pug from Prime Minister Clement Attlee after she burst in on a meeting he was having with her husband. She had just been outside Harrods in London and saw her first pug on the street. She ran into the meeting breathless, exclaiming, “you wouldn’t believe what I saw and describing in detail the little fawn pug on the street.” Shortly after she returned home to the United States to be greeted by Attlee’s gift of her own fawn male, Harrods Bugle Boy, who came with a mile-long pedigree that unrolled like a scroll.

When I see Joan interact with an animal, she experiences pure, unadulterated glee and being witness to it, I feel a little bit rub off on me. Joan’s unconventionality, her child-like joy reminds me to open myself up to wonder, to crow with the chickens and howl with the dogs. She may not be right about everything, but she is right about this and so, I learn to open my mind, but mostly my heart to possibility, to move beyond judgment to awe.

Joan and a sheep

The Reason I Love Dogs

I saw two dogs today. The first was dazzling – a small terrier with ombre fur that bled from chocolate on the muzzle to Farrah Fawcett blonde on her chest. I had never seen a terrier that particular shade before, so I stopped my car to ask the woman walking her the breed. “Cairn terrier,” she answered and we chatted amiably about the little dog and her beauty before bidding goodbye.

The second was a retriever – gold and longhaired. She accompanied a woman in a pale blue sweater who held her by a lead and color with tinkling jingle bells. As the woman asked for help at the copy counter, the dog grabbed its leash and shook it, making the bells ring in a cascading chorus. I smiled and I stopped to snap a picture.

Yesterday, my uncle and grandmother came by the house and paused by the kitchen window to observe my two pugs dance across the pool cover in their daily game of tag. Soon my relatives were laughing, as the pugs almost seemed to be. Last night I fell on the floor with the same two pugs, collapsing into giggles as they kissed my face and barraged me with toys and bones and a tangle of doglegs, tails and tongues.

I think about the smiles of the men earlier this week, who took the time to check out Ghanny and his other elderly companions and cast a warm glow on our day and the faces of the passersby who seemed a little happier after reading my pug bumper stickers. Books have been written about the role of dogs in modern life – the prominence we now give them. I read an article about an author who recently wrote about the death of two family members and his dog. The death of his dog he felt acutely. When asked why this was so, he answered something to the effect that they are the only ones who truly see us as we are, all our facets.

I’m not sure about that. It may be true. It is certainly interesting to ponder. It got me considering why I love dogs and these smiles and conversations came readily to mind. My pugs, like my license plate that bears their name, elicit smiles. They start conversations. They help me connect. They bring me out of myself to seeing others.

Some people worry because those others aren’t always human, but I think its good to start small. It’s a sign of evolution of our souls when we can feel for something other than ourselves. I think of Spock in one of the original Star Trek episodes discovering that a rock-like object was actually a sentient being. By learning to acknowledge another living creature as important we learn to recognize ourselves. We begin to connect the dots and see each other.

And, my dogs get me talking – stopping cars, rolling down windows and darting from vehicles to talk to people. Without my pugs I never would have met my friend Joan. To me, my dogs are all about connection – to life, to joy, to something beyond myself. It is this connection, I believe, that is the gateway to love.

A Part of It

“The party’s over,” the white-haired woman carrying the bag to claim her good said to me as we passed on the bridge between the parking lot and the fairgrounds. I carried my entries and my ribbons from the fair and I nodded in agreement. “It certainly is.”

We were referring to the close of the Tunbridge Fair. The buzz has died. Few animals remain. One sole tractor relocates the remaining hay bales. The merry-go-round is all packed up. A few stragglers, like me and the white-haired woman drop by to collect our entries.

The fairgrounds had been booming with excitement only the day before. Four days earlier I had dropped off my photographs and drawings in Floral Hall, walking past oxen drinking from the river and farmers hauling hay. I felt a part of a working farm. On Saturday, two days earlier, the fair was in full motion. Ferris wheel, merry-go-round, beer hall, carnie games, blooming onions, roasted corn and cotton candy dominated the fairway. I saw friends and acquaintances, caught up with the former manager of Borders and then of BAM (Books-a-Million) who had finally left to go elsewhere. We even chatted about Obamacare before parting paths in search of food. I perused the photos in Floral Hall, looking for names of fellow artists, finding few I recognized.

I like being a part of the party. Some could say going back to the fair is akin to going back in time – to a day when we were closer to the land and to each other; when neighbors conversed while haying instead of over Facebook, but I have a feeling that for many of these people, the fair still represents their way of life. They pickle and bake pies, knit, crochet, sheer sheep and plant pumpkins in their gardens. They still know that Carl Adams field is called the flattop and remember when Dan Riley used to mow it.

This weekend my best friend visited her family of Vermonters, whose grandfather had left his farm in trust. She remarked that some of the siblings were chatting over a piece of land called the Porkchop, “whatever that is,” she said, and I had to laugh because my family has names for my grandfather’s property such as the rounded piece of hill known as the Hogback. Next door from my brother’s house sits the pristine field called Sugar House Flats. Much of the land has these names, but I have become disconnected from them. I visit the farm where my Dad grew up. I do not live there. Only recently have I realized how tied to this rural world I really am – that I, like so many of my friends and all of my family, have never strayed too far from home. Today, I met a new student who proudly proclaimed he had grown up in Tunbridge and had returned there to the fair yesterday. He was slow to speak and once he finally acknowledged his origins, I saw the Yankee in him, realizing his reticence came naturally.

“My dad and grandpa grew up on a farm,” I told him.

“Where ‘bouts?”

“East Randolph.”

“ ‘bout four or five roads lead there,” he said.

I’m beginning to see more and more roads lead back to my roots. I may not be a farmer, although I have owned a horse and shoveled my share of manure in my time, but I take my pictures to the fair, every year! And, I bear my first and second and even third place ribbons with pride. I walk the dirt roads and covered bridges near the homes my grandparents forged and buy my milk downtown. I have written for my local newspaper and proofread its pages. I help Joan haul in her wood and I have become adept at following moose for long stretches down her road. The party might be over for now, but I celebrate rural life each day. I am a part of it.

Puggies

My license plate reads “Puggies” to the embarrassment of my brother and likely any other family member who has to drive it. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if it simply said “Pugs” although I have a feeling they’d turn their noses up at that as well. But “Pugs” and “Pugz” and “Pug” were taken when it came time to register my car with the state, so “Puggies” it became.

“Puggies” is in homage to a statement my mother and I heard years ago at one of the joint concerts and dance recitals my friend Joan would host with her daughter, TDB, and her students. I hadn’t known Joan long, when she invited my family to attend. I had recently bought my pug, Vader, from her and she thought I’d enjoy it given that one of the musical numbers would feature Joan’s cast of pugs being pulled in wagons and on leashes by her littlest students.

At intermission, my mother went to use the bathroom and found a roomful of giggling, little girls in pink tutus and ballet flats squealing, “the puggies are in the building.” It was cuteness personified and so the memory stuck, as did the name, which popped to the surface, when scouring my mind for possible pug-themed plates.

To complement my license plate, I have adorned my car with an array of bumper stickers – a bone reading, “I love my pug” and a round car magnet declaring “I work hard so my pugs don’t have to.” I also have a yellow and red sticker reading “Thank God for Hana” and a silver "HI" logo for my beloved Hawaii, as well as a small stuffed, tuxedo-clad pug that hangs from my mirror.

All this paraphernalia has been there since I got my first Versa in 2009, but they show up ever so better on the brand new royal blue Versa I purchased last week. Until the license plates are officially changed, my father, who kept my old car, has had to ride around in the former “puggie-mobile” as has my brother, who borrowed it. My new car awaits its new moniker, but that hasn’t stopped passersby from pausing by my car to read the transferred bumper stickers. I know because I’ve been watching this interaction from the windows of Books-a-million as I work. So far this evening there have been several. They pass my car only to hit reverse, backup and smile. The other day in Waterbury I parked next to a man in the exact same car, color and all. I jumped out declaring – “We have the same car!”

“We also have the same dog,” he shouted back, nodding at my pug bumper sticker. “Ours is a blonde,” he noted. We stopped and chatted, walking away with huge grins on our faces.

I know my family humors me. My siblings probably seeing me as the doddering, childless aunt to their children, who projects her affections onto her two somewhat annoying dogs. “Puggies” is silly, but harmless, they seem to convey while I try to argue it’s only good branding for when I finally write my dog book. Truth be told, my car and I sport the title with pride. Yes, I love my dogs and the enjoyment they bring and yes, I was serious about the branding, but the real reason I’m glad my car doesn’t read VT 4342 or some other banal number is the same reason I remember the squeals of those girls. Puggies conjure up smiles, glee and grins, if also an occasional shake of the head.

A Wink and a Nod

 

I saw a lot of animals at the Tunbridge Fair -- couldn't resist snapping a shot of this chicken who seemed to be winking at me.

Blues and Reds

I did well at the Tunbridge Fair and while I managed to remain cool enough when we approached Floral Hall for Joan to say, “you’re mighty calm. You don’t even seem excited to find out how you did,” I was pretty eager to learn. The photo entries in particular were plentiful so it took some time to find all my shots, but I was happy to have received two blue ribbons – one for my black-and-white entry of Joan’s two old “guard dogs” TarBaby and blind Puddleglum and one for my picture of Alfie gently pawing Waffles face as they playfully battle over a rose petal. This won a blue in the color other category. My picture of Gretchin lifting Ellie into the sky won a red ribbon in the color portrait category.

As for my artwork – my pencil sketch of Lorelei scored a blue, while my mixed media work of Joan snuggling a puppy and my ipad drawing of me and my guardian angel pugs both received red.  It was fun to see all the work of others. There were some great dog shots.

"Say Yes!"

Writing Prompt: Write about a time you said “yes” – to anything…your job, your spouse, a new opportunity? Did it go right or wrong? What did you learn?

I am reading a book by William Shatner (Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame) called Shatner Rules.  One of Shatner’s rules is “say yes!” Whenever asked say yes, because you never know where the opportunity will lead.

Funny, I try to follow this advice as well as his advice to stay busy, hence my declaration to my best friend yesterday that I may be William Shatner – she didn’t even blink – she was probably not surprised as she has seen my tricorder and uniform. But this isn’t a post about William Shatner, it’s a post about being comfortable and realizing that as much as I try to follow his advice to always answer in the affirmative, I often wish I didn’t. I’d rather not say “yes” to things that make me uncomfortable. But if I only said “yes” to things that made me comfortable, I’d be saying “no” to an awful lot. And, I likely would have missed out on the things that make me the most – me!

Like teaching, for example, no matter how good it makes me feel afterward, no matter how wonderful that moment in the middle when everything kicks in and I think “yes” this is what I was made to do, I never, once look forward to it. Not once! I never feel comfortable going in.

A mentor and friend once told me that a little anxiety is a good thing, so I guess I should have known I’d be good at teaching; it always makes me feel anxious. Up there at the front of the classroom, I feel like that guy who just walked a tightrope across the Grand Canyon praying all the way. You never know when you might fall and there is no safety net; like a standup comedian whose joke falls dead, all the eyes are upon you. And, even when you suspect that it will turn out okay, even when it has a 100 times before, you never quite believe it, you know the risk is there. Until that moment when it’s not, when you know that it’s safe to stop praying and you can just go with the flow.

I think it may be this very anxiety that makes me good at what I do. Consider if the tightrope walker just barged on out across the rope, unconcerned. He is right to be anxious, putting himself smack dab out there on the precipice – past the precipice in his case – is a scary proposition. And, that’s how my students feel every time they read their essays. And, that’s how I feel, too. Putting yourself out there not only opens you up to failure, but to criticism and insecurity and all the ghosts from the past admonishing you to keep your mouth shut!

I can’t listen to those ghosts because I’m the teacher. If I remain quiet, it would be a pretty boring classroom, but because I understand that feeling I can empathize with my students, encourage them to find their voices and soon I hear the whispers rise in all of us – “yes.”

The woman in my assisted-living class, the one who said she couldn’t write anything last week and sat there until we encouraged her to just talk to us about her memories, wrote a wonderful piece this week inspired by our conversation. Yes, she began with an apology – “I’m just a beginner, I don’t know if I did this right” – but then launched into a beautiful piece about being an English speaker growing up with Czech grandparents. Her style was easygoing, amiable, a pleasure to listen to and follow along. I trusted where she’d lead.

A new student showed up, a reticent New Englander, who didn’t want to share much other than his name, but who I saw jotting down a list of memories after listening to his classmates.

Even crashing can be a good thing. Living on the road where I grew up was dangerous for the family cat. The only one that ever survived it was my cat Mime, who as a kitty got hit by a car and came back kicking. We always attributed her subsequent old age to the wisdom she learned from this event. I bet she never felt comfortable when crossing the road, yet she put her anxiety to use, learning how to negotiate the dangerous terrain. Once she followed me down the sidewalk when I needed to cross the road to the neighbors to deliver a package, batting me with her paw the whole way, like a mama cat, warning a stray kitty to stay in line. She didn’t seem to want me to veer from sidewalk into road.

My anxiety about sharing, about being up in front has become my greatest tool. It allows me to understand, not criticize, to encourage and bear witness, because out of the whimpers and apologies, despair and discomfort, if we stay with it and see the tightrope to its end, the whispers turn to hallelujahs, and we find ourselves shouting, comfortable or not, “yes, here I am” to the world.

Why not try saying “yes” to the writing prompt above. I’d love to see where it leads you. Feel free to share your responses in the comment section or use the contact form to send them to me privately.

Grace

Love doesn’t always look like we expect. Today, it looked like three old dogs. None are pretty. One is blind, bitten, unable to sit up on his own. Another looks like the Creature from the Black Lagoon – all folds and skin and gaping mouth. She breathes like a labored guppy and hops on three feet like a rabbit, holding her right, rear leg in the air. She has a luxating patella; her knee pops out. The third’s tongue hangs from her mouth where a horse once kicked her in the jaw. If her youthful luck was poor, age itself has caught up with her and her legs are now crippled and buckled. Still, she moves with the speed of a slithering sci-fi alien, clearing an expanse with surprising grace. They are not the dogs one would choose to bring home. No cuddly puppies, here. The ears of two are bitten from rambunctious play and pack rumbles gone awry. Some would say these dogs have seen there day.

Narnia

My friend Joan doesn’t think so nor her friend Norma. Looking at Norma with fractured hip hobble ever so slowly to and from the car, one might suspect she has seen her day as well. She has suffered strokes and broken bones. Yet, Norma shuffles and picks up blind Ghanny to take him in the thrift store, to show him off to her friends. I worry as she lifts him with shaking hands that she will drop him. I worry she will slip on the wet ramp and fall. I worry she will hurt him. I worry she will hurt herself. She lifts him anyway and I hold my breath and scurry out from the car to spot them both. “Who do I catch first?” I ask Joan.

But with a luck reserved for fools and children, both make it inside. Norma falls into a fading upholstered chartreuse chair amidst other furniture that has seen better days. Ghanny buries his head into her shoulder. He cannot walk any longer. Joan thinks he may have had a stroke. If he were my dog I would scoop him up and take him to the vets. Spend the hundreds and thousands on tests and medicine. She does not. She nurses him as she has done many before him, cleaning his sores and soiled bedding, letting nature take its course.

Ghanny

He is limp and ungainly like a pile of wet laundry spilling out from a hamper; he spills over the lips of Norma’s folded arms. She announces him her “grandbaby” and I monitor the reaction of the chunky, bearded twenty-something store clerk. He approaches to see “the puppy.”

“He’s not a puppy exactly,” I warn. I want to apologize, embarrassed for Ghanny, for Joan, for the young man. “He’s an old one. He doesn’t exactly look good.” And, then I wait, watching for any look of distaste – daring him to make one, expecting it at the same time. And, I am disappointed and simultaneously made happy when all he says is, “Aww, sweet puppy and smiles at Ghanny and at Norma.” He is a good young man.

He even stands and chats for a few minutes as Joan peruses this palace of discarded items for a few finds. She debates over two seven dollar molded chairs, considering them for the kitchen of her new house. I survey them for stains. Was the tan molding once white or always tan? Joan and Norma both deem them “wonderful, a good price.” They lack disdain for the worn; they don’t seem to need everything to be in good shape.

Still, we slip from the store without the chairs amidst a friendly goodbye from the young man and a declaration from Norma that “that place has everything.” We make our way to the feed store where Joan debates over dog food, comparing prices while I offer to buy Ghanny a can of grilled salmon and chicken and Norma throws in a stick of beef jerky. We split it among the other geriatric dogs. They gum it down, drool dripping from the side of their mouths. Each squeals for more.

Tar Baby and Narnia

Dogs fed, it’s our turn and though Joan parks as close to the Chinese restaurant as possible, we still have to walk a block or two. If Norma were my mother, I wouldn’t have her go, but she stifles our protests and makes her way out of the car. We totter down the streets and I remind myself to exhale. We will get there.

We do. We feast on curried chicken, wonton soup, fried rice as Norma struggles to hold her quivering cup. Joan makes a not-too-subtle jibe in my direction about eating out too much. Norma offers to start crocheting a blanket for Ghanny – an undeclared death shroud because we know his days are numbered. We chat about pleasant things, too. It is not how everyone would describe love, but as we return to Norma’s apartment and let the two old-lady pugs out to do their business, another young man awards us with smiles.

“What’s wrong with them? Poor puppies,” he says, watching them hobble, but still reaching down to pat their heads and chuckle.

“They’re old,” I offer, resigning myself to the fact that not everything needs to be fixed. Sometimes love looks like three old dogs. Sometimes it is about letting go and experiencing grace.

Welcoming Tribes

Every semester I give my students the assignment to write about their tribe. It is a great writing prompt because it can be interpreted in so many ways  -- one’s family, one’s friends, one’s co-workers, there are a myriad of possibilities. Today, I found myself amidst two tribes. The first I experienced when bringing the photos and drawings I am entering to the Tunbridge Fair. For those of you not in the know, this fair in Tunbridge, Vt. is billed as the World’s Fair and I had to smile at the sign announcing this as I do every year when I approach. Tunbridge is far from a budding metropolis and while the whole world may not make its way to the fair, almost everybody I know will find themselves there over the next four days.

It was beyond hot this afternoon when I showed up at the fairgrounds, but the place was bustling. Farmers toted bails of hay from trucks to stalls, handlers led their cows to water, pickups carrying livestock whirled by. Inside the Dodge-Gilman building women brought squash and pumpkins to vie for ribbons and at Floral Hall, where I was headed, others had already brought their artwork for judging. People moaned about the heat, assessed each other’s entries and exchanged friendly jibes.

“Hot enough for you?” a white-haired man crouched outside the hall asked. A round-faced woman shone a toothy smile in my direction as she took my art. She wore a shop apron and moved with the busy efficiency of one of Santa’s elves. The whole place whirred with activity, like a giant engine kicking into gear.

“Whose trailer is that?” one farmer shouted to another. “Lambert’s,” the other answered. “Be nice to Lambert,” he warned. They all laughed, an inside joke.

And, I was a part of it, too, inside the warp and weft of this rural existence.

I found myself part of a different tribe only a few hours later as I set up shop at Books-a-Million’s café in preparation for working on my Obamacare article. My house is too chaotic to work there and as freelancer, I have no office, so the bookstore has to do. But, I am never alone. A community gathers there. There are always familiar faces, but the small café seems to be the home office to at least two others. One has been there for almost as long as me. We are on the same schedule. Short and round with a soft, friendly, almost feminine face and large brown moons of eyes, he always sports a cap and sits two tables down from me, where he reads and works on his computer.

A new man has joined us -- tall, bearded and dark-skinned, he wears headphones and works even more diligently on his laptop than the other man. He has been there for the last several weeks. I round out the third of the trio. I arrive, claim my space, fire up the laptop, grab my pomegranate green tea and spread my notes out in front of me. Open for business. The friendly man nods at me when I come in and I wave in return. We both smile, our eyes twinkling. The other man looks up, noting my presence, but continues his work. I don’t know their names, I don’t know what they do, but I log their behaviors, which now are as familiar as my own. Books-a-million offers only three coveted tables near outlets, and so we claim our same three each time.

“What do you do if someone else is there?” my mom asked me today. I laughed because I had just witnessed this happen.

“We sit a one of those tables nearby, glare and talk loudly about needing an outlet until somebody leaves,” I answered.

It is true. I had seen the friendly man do so and I had done the same. In many ways we are strangers, in others kindred spirits. Tonight the humidity of the day gave way to thunder and lightening. The two men and I, alone with the bookstore barista, watched the spectacle from inside. The lights flickered, the wind blew and water teamed down from the sky. We pondered it all and then simultaneously looked back down at our books and laptops as if programmed to do so. We worked for another half-hour until just before the bookstore closed as one by one we stood and gathered our laptops, storing them in backpacks and bags. We are likely to return again tomorrow or the day after, each to his or her table with a nod and a smile. But tonight we leave without a goodbye. It is not your typical office, no water cooler chatter here, and yet, I realize I am part of this, too, this company of strangers, a peculiar, but welcome tribe.