Two universes mosey

down the street

Connected by love and 

a leash and nothing else

Howard Nemerov

The book I'm taking on my flight today, a birthday present from Bob and Jocelyn, is called The Book of Dog Poems, a compilation by Sarah Maycock and Ann Sampson.

Yesterday in Whole Foods, a customer squatted on the floor and took pictures of Luci.  "I'm sending this to my son," she said.  "We send each other pictures of dogs we fall in love with." 

Luci is not what you'd call a classic canine beauty.  She's scruffy, one ear up, one ear down, not a dog show candidate by any stretch, but she's a show-stopper in grocery stores, hardware stores, McDonald's windows, or anywhere dog lovers happen to be.  

Reading these poems, written over the centuries, is a reminder that dogs of all eras have been loved by their masters and are uniquely wonderful companions.  I'd be happy to walk all over with Luci without a leash to connect us--if she were properly obedient and if we didn't have so many cars in the neighborhood--but a leash is necessary for a fast-running pup.

A neighbor just came to bring banana bread and Luci gave an awesome bark when she heard him at the door.  There is no bite to back up the bark, but she's doing her part.  

Will is coming in a few minutes for breakfast and will take Luci to his house for the days I'll be in Georgia with. my "bookends," as Betty calls them--my mother and my daughter, for a few glorious days in the North Georgia mountains.  

Matters of Size

My two suitcases are small, perfect for road trips or overnights.   

All week, I've been mentally packing just enough for four nights in one of my them.  I considered taking both, but when I pictured myself with one unreliable leg pushing two in the packed Atlanta airport, I go back to one. 

The sweater Day gave me for my birthday has to go--a bulky kimono-style sweater; it can get chilly in the mountains.  The camera, the laptop, four days' worth of clothes with alternatives for layering if it gets cold.  Chargers, medicines, toothpaste.  Bags of Apple Cider Pretzels.  My only boots.  

And then one night, after editing the list over and over, the obvious occurred to me like an epiphany.  I could buy a larger suitcase, go right into a store, not Amazon, people do it all the time, and get myself a brand new suitcase.  

I went to TJ Max and picked a teal one with orange zippers.  I opened it on the living room floor and put the sweater in, the pretzels, some clothes, my boots.  I left it open so that every time I think of something I might need, I can just put it in.

Luci, awake, is so lively she seems big.  If you open the back door in the night, she runs fearlessly into the dark, flying almost, toward some thing (or some one)  that needs scaring off.  She always runs to the same spot, as if all past intruders are still right where they were when she first spotted them.  Unlike me, she never looks cautiously before she leaps. Nor does she ask a stranger, "Do you mind if I jump on your legs?" 

But when she sleeps, curled up like a fawn, her size always surprises me.  Limp as a knot of rags, she's tiny enough to cup in two hands, smaller than most cats.

Folding washed clothes to go into the new suitcase, I notice that Luci is curled up inside between the boots and the Apple Cider Pretzels.  A canine Goldilocks, she's found the just right place for a nap. 

5615 Steps

An app on my phone counts my steps.  Yesterday,  according to Appie, I walked 5615 steps.  Half of those steps were in the neighborhood with Luci.  Half were walking through a huge packed parking lot to the football field and back.  5615 steps, Appie said, equals 2.3 miles, my record on my fake knee.  

Does everyone do this: walk around and watch yourself walking--as if you are your younger self looking?   Or paying for popcorn and watching your fingers, not as nimble as they used to be, and thinking, "Whose hands are these?" 

My gait is not yet what I'd like it to be, the left leg a tad wooden.  To top it off, last night was what I've started calling a leg night--burning gnawing pain in the left leg.  Will met me and helped me into the stands and  by the time the halftime show was over, I couldn't get down the last steep step without putting my arms around his shoulders for a swing down.  

The popcorn girls are sweet, maybe fourteen.  I'm wearing a gray shawl and a denim skirt and one tells the other about me: "She's so cute."  Cute is a word the young use for gray-haired women who are still upright and mobile, possibly more agile than their own grandmothers, possibly alive and their grandmothers aren't. 

I look like a little old lady in their young eyes.  I know this because I was once fourteen.  

The younger women working the windows at the drive-throughs have started calling me "Mama" or "Sweetheart"--which has started to be just fine.  All words of affection are welcome. 

Here's what 50 looks like at Day's House

 

Here's my sweetheart daughter, Daisy, with Tucker, all ready to open her birthday presents and go to school.  

Here she is, six years ago, last time she and Carlene and I had a We Three Trip to the North Georgia mountains--as we're about to do again in two weeks:

Happy happy birthday to Day Anna, my beautiful girl at 50!

Four generations, all 23 year apart, Mimi, Daisy, Carlene, and me--about 25 years ago.  

This is what 73 looks like in my house

I've had an amazing 73rd birthday, and I'm SO grateful to my friends and family!  A lunch at Fredricks on Tuesday with Kate, Charlotte, and Janet (so busy catching up after so long we forgot to get a photo);  

a soup supper and dog-watching party with Jan on Wednesday, 

Cappy's last night with Will's family (all but Nathan who's at his other house this week),

and continuing tomorrow with a meal at Le Jardin with Freda and Bonnie and Mary Locke.  I like to stretch it out and absorb every precious moment, enjoy every phone call and surprise visit, every text and email and card.  

A great big thank you to all of you who have made turning 73 painless--in fact,  SO a feast of happiness!

Jan's soup kitchen next door

Elena and Luci in her Halloween 
costume sent by Jocelyn and Bob

And in her four new socks sent from Linda Kot

Who's Luci's Mama?

Luci is rolled up in my blanket like a burrito. All I can see are her eyes and the top of her head.  

She weighs 10 pounds. Imagine being in bed with someone 15 times bigger than you and not worry that she could roll over and crush you.  Yet, she sleeps as close to me as she can. 

When she's sound asleep, I can pick her up and plop her anywhere on the bed, in any position, and she'll stay exactly where I put her like a stuffed animal.  Sometimes in a dream, she'll growl a muffled growl, scaring some imaginary monster that only she can see. 

If someone knocked on the door right now, she'd spring into action and run, barking.  If she recognized the person through the glass, she'd whimper and wag her tail, Wake up, it's our friend!

After saving the day, little guard dog returns to her warm position on the bed.  But first she flashes what I'd call a triumphant look in her eyes: I did my job, I did my job, I saved us from danger!

When I watch a movie in bed, she burrows under the covers all the way and snuggles up against my leg.  She doesn't care for lights on when it's sleep time. 

Luci is generally obedient, but she takes her own sweet time. She's an independent girl, she has to think it over.  If she's having a good nap under my driver's seat in the car, she prefers to stay put and I have to pull her out. 

She loves to run so much that if a runner happened to be passing, she wouldn't be able to resist the chase and could get hit by a truck. As chill as she is with me, she can go from zero to a hundred in a flash when she and Carma chase each other around Carma's yard. 

I wonder about her mama every day.  I wonder what mama dog looked like. Was she big?  Was Luci the runt of the litter and she loved her most for being so little? Her mama must have doted on her because Luci loves affection--licking (her me not the reverse) and tummy rubs (me her). 

Being separated from her mama and sisters and brothers was probably traumatic, and she never wants to be left alone again.  When I leave her home alone for a couple of hours, Jan says she sits in the window and howls pitifully the whole time. She only has me and she doesn't have language to understand when I tell her "I'll be back."  

I've never heard her howl. 

When I return, she greets me with unabashed adoration, relief, and happiness, jumping all over me. 

In the first thirty years of my Texas life, we had lots of dogs, usually dogs dropped off or lost who found their way to our door.  Not being a universal dog lover, I didn't love them all the same.  But the ones I loved most I eventually had to grieve longest when they died. I'll never forget a single one of them--Tony, Sasha, Black, Cookie, Pollo, Ivan....

Luci to me is not entirely dog. She's my baby, my companion, my daily source of laughter.  

If she went missing for two hours--as I do when I get in my car and go someplace she can't go--I'd do my human version of howling at the window.  When she came back, I'd do a rip-roaring happy dance like she does. 

 

Rodeo Girl

Yesterday I wasn't able to go to the rodeo, but Will sent me this video of our girl--who won her event and a "Champion" belt buckle she's so proud of she called and showed it to me on the phone. 

I haven't figured out how to transfer the video, but picture this: eight poles in a row, the rider and the horse threading the poles, in and out, very fast, then doing it all over again with her mom and Papi calling out cheers in English and Spanish.  

She's ridden horseback her entire life and it shows.  Our girl was amazing, if I do say so myself--which I do say at every opportunity.  

Music, drumming and a pig named Gus

The O'Connor band yesterday afternoon was spectacular, the choreography flawless.  The band instruments tugged at a place I rarely go--back to high school--where Betty was the solo twirler, captivating the audience as she threw lit batons into the night of the darkened football field.  

Nathan's band was far better than that band of the 1960s, but Betty's twirling was what I went to football games to see.  My best friend--not only twirling fire batons but tossing them in the air and catching them!  (I had tried out for majorette, but never quite got the hang of twirling and dancing at the same time, never mind twirling fire!)

Bands competed all day yesterday and the parking lots were packed.  The O'Connor band got second place with a special first place award to the percussion section--Nathan's section!  I kept my eyes on the percussion section of the front row, our guy in his sunglasses and his friend Ava, both so into it that it brought tears to my eyes.

He almost quit band this summer when summer camp took up every single day.  He told his parents he didn't like it, but when the two of us were alone, he proudly took out his sheets of music and told me (enthusiasm coming through in spite of himself)  about his band director, his new friends, and another drummer named Ava.  Somehow he never got around to quitting! 

Now Ava and Nathan look like a duet of rock stars and Nathan clearly loves it!  He walks like a kid who has found his people and who knows? maybe his passion.

Not only that--he's raising a pig named Gus for his agriculture class.  To practice band and care for his pig, he has to get to school by 6:30--and then do both again after classes, making it home after 8:00.  That kind of dedication in a 14-year-old boy is amazing to me. 

Last Sunday after church, we went to the high school and I got to meet Gus.  

The agriculture department at O'Connor is like something I'd have expected to see on a college campus, big barns, kids walking their steers outside, and other kids--like Nathan and Elena (as often as she can join him)--feeding, brushing and cleaning their pigs. 

Nathan, like so many kids, spent most of the last year and a half doing zoom school at home.  It's especially moving that these kids are now back in school again, able to find and follow what they love

While my grandson, Nathan, was my main focus, I had a lump in my throat watching all these kids, knowing how diligently they'd practiced, and knowing that it indeed takes a village for each one of them.  Parents and families have to forego vacations and devote an enormous amount of time taking their sons and daughters to practice and driving to competitions and games and barns!  

As a member of Nathan's large fan club, and his grandmother, I am so proud of him! 

 

One of the best things Jan and I have done in 2021 was to adopt  these two crazy dogs--Carma and Luci.  Jan usually texts about 7:15 if they are free to play.  Luci and I walk over and the two dogs greet each other with so much enthusiasm that we humans have to stand back.  When Luci hears the beep of the text in another room, she looks at me: get the phone, get the phone, it's Carma!

After running after each other on the grass like maniacs, both are ready to fall to sleep and sleep until morning.  

Dogs have the right idea about just about everything.  If they want what you are eating, they stare at you  until you can't resist giving them a bite.  

If they are sleepy, they sleep--a lot. 

If they don't like someone or some situation (like their person leaving them in a strange place), their ears go back (Luci's do) and their body language says it all.  If she does like the person, which is most people actually in Luci's case, a big jumping and dancing act ensues.

If they haven't seen their human in a really long time, like an hour, they fall all over themselves to greet you with pleasure.  

Today I took Luci for a two hour stay at a "retreat" for dogs.  When after a pedicure, I went to pick her up and went into the Little Dog house there were twenty or more little dogs all yapping and barking.  I, personally, would not have been brave enough to walk into a room of twenty barking humans or dogs, but Luci managed okay.  I won't take her back.  She's such a mild mannered little dog, a female Buddha really, and that's too many personalities to take in at a time.

Or maybe I'm projecting.  Maybe because I'm an introvert and can't bear loud noisy parties, I'm assuming Luci feels the same. 

October

 Sunday, I went to church with Will and Family--for "the blessings of the animals."  I took Luci, Nathan took Charley and Conway, and Elena took her chicken Milly, the star of the show. 

Next week, we'll be celebrating Jackson's 20th birthday, Day's 50th, and my 73rd!  

We've been working for a while on how Day and I can get to Georgia to see Nana (after almost two years!) and Day  came up with a plan yesterday that works.  Instead of visiting at Carlene's house, we're going to rent a cabin in the mountains of North Georgia for Halloween weekend.

I plan to go back by car for a longer visit during the holidays with Luci, but this is the perfect plan for our first "We Three" visit--replicating a trip we took to Hiawasee six years ago.

My leg gets better every day, but it's not yet quite ready for a solo driving trip.   We're trying out Kara's K9 Retreat for a couple of hours this morning--as I've decided not to try flying with Luci just yet. Will's family has also volunteered to keep her.  

October 7

Today is the 70th birthday of my brother, Bob.  Who could have known the last time we were together, Christmas two years ago, that the next time we'd see each other (and so far only in photos) he would have walked off 100 pounds of his former self?  That's an amazing feat, and my hats (all three of them) are off to him! 

This picture was taken in August, about a month before Bob and Jocelyn celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary in Savannah.  

Here we are on Halloween two years ago when the three of us went to a crafts festival in Georgia, candy corn lights around our necks. 

Practicing Wonder

The best thing I can share with you this morning is a link to my friend Chris' beautiful blog.

Practicing Wonder

A taste of Chris' post as she returns to her blog after a hiatus:

Those FGO’s I would not have chosen have taught me a lot. One of the lessons is this: Tears can reflect both sadness and joy at once.

This is because grief and gratitude are compatible. In fact, they can enrich each other, deepening the experience–and the wonder–of life.