Month: September 2009

Dear Boone, Part 2

Dear Boonie,

Tomorrow it’ll be four months since you died.

My friend Kate?  At work?  The one whose mom would have said, “Get another dog”?  Anyway, her sixteen-year-old daughter just got her heart broken.  First relationship, like two years, and he went off to college.  And lasted a month.  Anyway, the daughter’s doing a lot of crying, apparently.  Yeah.  And she said to her mom, “I’m not ready for it to be over.  It was the one good thing in my life.”  Looking at it as a 34-year-old, I can see the statement is teenage histrionics, but the histrionic teenager in me can really relate because that’s how I feel about you.  I’m not ready for it to be over.  I wasn’t done loving you.

Love,

Amy

Show, Don’t Tell

I’m trying to teach my students the whole show-don’t-tell thing so I wrote this little story…can YOU tell how I was feeling?  (I know it’s vanilla, but remember, my audience was 9-year-olds.)

“Let’s go on that one,” said my friend Geoff, pointing at a metal tower that stretched about a hundred twenty feet in the air.  We had decided to spend our last day of freedom before the school year started at Carowinds, wringing every ounce of fun out of our summer vacation.  The sign in front of us said ‘Drop Zone’, which pretty much summed up the ride.  Surrounding the giant pole were sixteen outward-facing seats.  The passengers were pulled slowly up to the top of the ride and then released to fall sixty miles per hour toward Earth before the airbrakes screamed on.  Geoff and I had had a discussion in the car on the way to the amusement park about rides.  “I don’t understand people who don’t like roller coasters,” I had said.  “They’re so much fun.”  Now as we stood in front of this towering colossus, I was having second thoughts.


For all the previous rides, I had shifted from foot to foot, sat on the handrail, and urged the line on quietly, “Come on.  Come on.”  I couldn’t wait to get to the front.  Now I found myself dragging my feet, whispering, “Slow down.”  In no time at all, we were at the gate.  It swung open, and Geoff and I stepped through.  I let my eyes wander up the shaft and almost fell over backwards.  Could I tell Geoff I didn’t want to go?  Could I lie and say I wasn’t feeling well?  Come to think of it, I wasn’t feeling well.

My brain didn’t work fast enough, and I found myself sliding back into the hard seat.  The u-shaped brace lowered itself toward my belly button.  I grabbed onto it and felt it click into place.  There was no turning back.  The operator’s voice droned a welcome and some safety instructions, but all I could hear was a rushing roar like a space shuttle engine.  The seats raised about two feet and stopped.  My legs dangled like a kindergartener’s in a big chair.  I pushed myself back into the seat and grasped tightly to the safety bar. No, no, no.  This was a bad idea.  I turned my head to the side.  Geoff was staring straight ahead and smiling.

The seats began to rise steadily.  First, I saw the tops of people’s heads, then the roofs of the ride pavillions, next the tops of trees, and finally the skyline of Charlotte in the distance.  I could see for miles.  I had a vision of my safety bar popping up. Don’t think about that, Amy.  I squeezed my eyes shut.  That made things worse because all the swooning in my head shot to my stomach.  My eyes slammed back open.

And then it happened.  The brakes were released.  Geoff laughed loudly.  My arms and legs stiffened, but my hair shot skyward as we hurtled toward the ground.  Tears blew upward to my hairline, and a silent scream erupted from my throat. Make it stop.  Eons passed.

The brakes finally screeched on.  We coasted the last 15 feet and stopped with a jerk.  The shoulder braces popped up, and I tumbled forward out of the seat.  My arms and legs had no bones; I wobbled toward the exit.  Geoff was smiling and exclaiming that he wanted to go again.  “No way,” I said.  Never again would I question people who didn’t like roller coasters.  Now I knew how they felt.

Mom

Warm and soft, and even though she hasn’t used musk lotion since probably 1989, I can still smell it on her.  She envelops me in loud hugs.

She rejoices in singing, in reading a good yarn, in dandling her grandbabies on her knee, in filling a garden with mulch.

And when I complain about life, she says, “Do you want me to listen or do you want my advice?”

Jordi

When Jordana and I used to ride the Metropolitan Transit Authority together, one of our favorite things to do was to read the Spanish advertisements that ran along the ceiling of the train.  Or rather, she would read the ads in Spanish, and I would fall into fits of giggles.  See, Jordi didn’t speak Spanish.  Her accent was remarkably good, though she occasionally slipped into a French pronunciation of words like en.  On one particular ride I remember, Jordana decided to raise the stakes and not only read the ads but translate them too.  She read an ad for an ambulance-chaser who specialized in envenenamiento con plomo.  That’s lead poisoning, but I like her translation better: “an environment with feathers”.  I imagined someone calling up this law firm and saying indignantly, “I need an attorney; my environment is rife with feathers!”  After that, she spotted a Washington Mutual ad which boasted “Nuestros ATMs no cobran,” or “Our ATMs are surcharge-free”.  Jordana said confidently, “There are no cobras in our ATMs,” and I envisioned the poor bastards at Chase and Citibank convulsing from snake venom, their cash littering the floor.

I miss the MTA, and I miss my Jordi.

Dear Violet, Part 2

Dear Violet,

You’ve always been different from Boone and Redford.  You chewed a few things when you were a baby, but it seemed like you got over that pretty quickly.  (You’ll still collect my things, but you don’t chew them.  I’ll come home these days to find a sneaker, a flip-flop, and a bra in your bed, all perfectly intact.)  Redford’s tail conducts a little symphony of joy all the time, a work of varied time signatures and tempos, but your tail has always had three settings:  side-slapping with joy, the metronome tick, and between your legs.  You’re smart, unlike your brothers, bless their hearts.  You memorize places where I put you back on-leash, and from then on, it’s like I have a force field around me when I hit those spots.  You won’t come within ten feet of me.  Though you don’t always follow the rules yourself, you are The Enforcer and sound the alarm whenever your brother is doing something naughty.

You love having play-dates and slumber parties with your friends:  Jackie, Barley, Raven, and Moby.  One time, I stupidly left Moby’s food bag on the floor.  I walked in to find Boonie sniffing at a giant, slobbery hole in the side.  I started to chastise him, but something else caught my eye.  You, looking like one of Dr. Seuss’s star-bellied sneeches, prostrate on the living room floor.  Sure enough, I took you all out for a walk and, ORP, you barfed up an enormous rainbow pile of Beneful.

From Day One you were terrified of children, and really anyone who didn’t love dogs.  You love to swim and dig your nose under the water (I call it The Bulldozer).  You love wrestling with your brother.  You send me on a total guilt trip when we haven’t been hiking in a few days.  You prefer to be rubbed on your chest and belly and will contort yourself on the couch to make it happen.  Despite my dismay, you insist on digging holes in my yard when I’m not looking, and then stare at me wide-eyed and innocent when I see your nose covered in red clay and give you a talking to.  Redford’s all ADD and will wander away from his food mid-bowl, and you’ll slink over and munch quietly until I yell at you.  If he’s being particularly focused one day, you’ll run to the door and arf as if there’s something he should be aware of, just to distract him.  When you lie down, it’s in full frog pose.  I sent a picture to ihasahotdog.com, so you have been immortalized.

That horrible day, when you popped out of the woods after four hours missing, I thought my body would fall to pieces.  I had never experienced relief like that before, which made it all the more horrible when Laura told me Boone was dead.  For days, I’d tell Wa, “I feel like I’m dying.”  And she’d ask if I was suicidal, and I’d say no, I didn’t feel like dying, I felt like I was dying.  The only thing that kept me going was you and your tragic, confused face.

It’s safe to say you’re the best decision I’ve ever made, Violet.  You are my rock and my guard dog and my shweetie pie.  I love you so much.

Love,

Amy

Dear Violet

Dear Violet,

You might wonder how I could’ve written to Redford before I wrote to you.  Lots of reasons, I guess.  He’s so loud and there all the time.  He’s also my replacement dog for Boonie, whom I’m still mourning.  Mostly, though, I wrote to him first because I feel like I could fill tomes about you, and it’s hard for me to start.  Anne Lamott says to start with a one-inch square and just write about that.  I’ll start with how I got you.

My co-worker Taren had gotten Jake the Springer Spaniel-Lab Mix a year prior and was in LURVE with him.  She thought I should get a dog.  I said thanks but no thanks.  Too much of a tether to my house.  Sometimes I liked to go straight from work to the gym or out with my buddies and not come home until late.  Couldn’t do that if someone was at home in a kennel and going to piss herself.

Anyhow, one Saturday afternoon, Taren called.  She was at the shelter and there were these three little lab puppies that I had to come see.  I begged off with the excuse that I had just walked 20 miles.  (I really had just walked 20 miles; Wa and I were training to walk a marathon.)  She mentioned the shelter was open on Sunday afternoons, and I said I’d think about it.  I did think about it.  That was all.

Monday came around, and Taren offered to go to the shelter with me–good god, she was persistent.  I said OK, but I told her I didn’t want her to be disappointed if I didn’t adopt a dog.  We went inside, and those three lab puppies sure were cute, right there snuggled up in the first cage.  Most of the dogs were arfing, “Take me, take me,” and I died a little inside.  But then I turned around and saw you, a pit bull-lab mix, about 5 months old, brownish-black with a white chest and little white reflector pads on your heels.  The sheet posted on your kennel said in bold print ‘Cruelty/Confiscation’.  You stood up on the cage and stared deep in my eyes and licked my fingers.  That was it.  It was Thursday before I took you home, what with my having to cry to my therapist about it and the shelter’s being closed on Wednesdays and your having to get your lady-surgery, but that moment sealed the deal.  There was no backing out.

Rosie called me on the night I brought you home and demanded, “Nunu, what about the puppy?”

I said, “What about the puppy?”

“What did you name the puppy?” she demanded.

“Well, I haven’t named her anything yet,” I told her.

“You could name her Violet,” she said.  I don’t know where she came up with that, but it was perfect.

More anon.

Love,

Amy