FIRST DAY

San Diego, CA

14 Years Ago





"Oh, he's cute."

I am standing next to my friend, Bob, in the parking lot at work. As is usual in San Diego, it is an extraordinarily beautiful day, so the sun is reflecting off the windshield of Bob's friend's car, the one that holds the puppy he needs to find a home for. White, long-legged, about a foot tall, the dog I see peeking out the window looks more like a lamb than a dog.

"No, that's his aunt. That's the puppy," he says.

He points.

I squint.

And then I see: the white kitten I begged for as a child; the baby white seal I always wanted to protect; every stuffed animal I ever loved. Only this one was real, all rolled up into a white puppy the size of a pomegranate.

"Oh! Oh!" I cry, rushing over to the car like an idiot. "I'll take him! I'll take him!"

"He don't have no papers or nuthin'," Bob's friend says, sauntering over.

"Oh! I don't care!"

I shove my endorsed paycheck at Bob and scoop the little wagging ball out of Bob's friend's hand.

"Uh....Sold?" Bob says to his friend with a shrug.

I rush the puppy back to our apartment a few blocks away. David's gonna kill me but I don't care, I think happily. (David is my live-in boyfriend of several years who does NOT think we need a dog, and certainly not a "wimp dog").

I dial my mother at work and set the puppy down on the rose-colored livingroom rug.

"Department of-"

"MOM?!"

The puppy wags and rolls over like a happy Weeble.

"WHAT'S WRONG?!" My mother shrieks. Because I am shrieking.

"I GOT A PUPPY AND OOOOOOO HE IS SOOOOO CUTE!"

I can't stop giggling. I sound like a lunatic. Or a little girl.

"Oh, Mother of God I thought someone died," my mother gasps.

"No! No! Wait 'til you see him! He's soooooo cuuuute! Oh, I just LOVE him!"

****

Walks With Woody

I am in the backyard, weeding. The lady from the Post Office - the one who bought those "ugly LOVE stamps-" is saying, "C'mere. You'd better look at this."

I follow her to a small rectangular hole in the dirt near the plum tree that Woody loves to stand under to do his most aerobic activity lately: sniff the air. She points down and there in the hole I see Woody, lying on his side.

"Oh, Woody, silly boy," I say, bending down. "What are you doing in there? You're going to get all dirty."

The Post Office lady is suddenly my sister, Jen, and she is looking at me, troubled. I look at her and say, "He's just sleeping," and I scoop him up and carry him inside, back to his green blanket in the living room.

*

You could say there are two types of people in the world:

(1) Those that say, "It's just a dog," and

(2) Those that look at you with sad, screaming eyes that say, "I understand."

But, really, there is only one kind of human: the kind that feels pain. The kind that realizes Grief is a form of insanity; that Loss actually feels like a stabbing through the breastbone; that abandonment is nothing short of an emotional mauling.

That, to love a life is never "just" anything:

It is everything.

This Blog is for you all.