Two Haiku Written While Sitting with a Dog

Beagles know their mind

Maybe you have your own plan

Sorry, stop right there 

*

What's that tall thin weed

that scattered my childhood’s grass 

with efflorescence?

Two “She’s”

Dog park 8 pm
all she wants to do is sniff
I plan my dinner

*

On Mother’s Day eve
I was in an antique store
full of things she loved*


*Literally. This store is closing after 72 years. Mom shopped there since I was a kid. Our home had numerous pieces that she  bought there. And the shop bought back many of them as well as other items of hers after we cleared out the family house. I have, in turn, bought a few back myself over the last few years. The store still has some, and who knows where they will go after it closes next month.

Vet

I need help she called
my dog is throwing up blood
the room turned red tears

Urban Haiku

Winter walk to work, 
listening to a novel.
Death at a stop sign. 

*

Salt on the sidewalk, 
paw raised in the icy air.
Emergent silence.

Not All Haiku Are About Nature—Especially Mine

I’m still using the 5-7-5 syllable structure, which I know is passé, but I like the constraints for now, even though they seem positively wordy by comparison. 


Dog park, 9 pm. 
Lamplit, ice cold, just us two. 
Then—the gate. Why now?

*

No longer a son.
I’ll always be their son, yes.
But a son? A death.

Haiku Trio

Sunday afternoons,
I held my mother’s hands, smiled.
In her eyes words, words.

*

A mug of black tea, 
hand-thrown. I want to touch it, 
hold it, now empty.    

*

Her nose burrows down,
the dirt a Petri dish for 
the culture of dog.

Five Haiku

Which brings more peace—dog 
facing me or curled away?
Never mind. That snore.

*

I walk home from work,
Listen to news as I think:
Pasta? Stir-fry? Luck.


*

So: “the first dusting.”
Memories, hope, fantasy—
the real snow report. 


*

All those men, naked, 
having a party somewhere 
without me. That’s right. 


*

A stranger, a chat
about singers I once loved. 
Still do. But . . . what? Time. 

Brief Encounters: A Ramble

Today I had two surprise encounters: one in the office, one on the street; one from a former relationship's circle of friends, one a former (different) relationship himself.

It was a lot for one day.

The old boyfriend happened first. 

"Billy [not Kristofferson]!" 

I was coming out of the Gap (or, as I understand it's actually called by millennials—an example of successful, albeit pointless rebranding—Gap). He and I dated for several months a decade ago, kept up as friends for a bit, then have run into each other, warmly, a few times since. He's married now, I knew from our last run-in. This afternoon, he deflected a cheek kiss because he had a cold, so we fell into a clumsy gay-modified bro hug. (Strangely, on a break from writing this, I just did the New York Times mini crossword online. 3 down: "Awkward people to meet on the street"—EXES.)

Back in the day, he had a dog, I had two, and one night in my apartment, all five of us shared my double bed. There was some awkwardness then, too, till we all settled in. 

On the street, those three animals now deceased, we talked about dogs—his new one, an old guy he recently adopted from a friend of a friend, and the one I've been searching for over the last couple of months since the death of my dear P. The truth is I always get the sense he still has a little candle burning for me (I'm afraid I did kind of break his heart), so I'm wary of getting too close. 

Our conversation ended with ellipsis rather than, as on previous occasions, vague talk of a dinner party with our current partners. But I walked away smiling, glad to have seen him. Ten years ago, I was so lost in so many ways; it's nice to know there's someone I met during that time who recognizes the person I was then in the person I am now, and seems pleased to see both.

A couple of hours later, an old friend of my long-term-relationship ex (the one whose breakup with me triggered the aforementioned lost period) appeared at my office door. She was there to see a colleague of mine who has, coincidentally, become a friend of hers. 

This woman was one of my favorites of all my ex's friends—they'd known each other since college. Shortly after the breakup, she and I got together for lunch once, at her initiation, a gesture to let me know she liked me independently of the painful thing that had happened and she hoped we could stay in touch. What surprised me, at the time, was how painful it was to hear her breezily chat about going to a wedding with my ex, or simply to hear his name come up casually in conversation, as if he were merely a mutual friend and not someone who'd ended our relationship. (Okay, yes, the relationship was ending on its own.) So I didn't actively pursue a friendship with her after our lunch. I assumed, under the circumstances, she was leaving the ball in my court, and I didn't pick it up. 

Many years later, I e-mailed her to explain why I'd fallen out of touch, that it had just hurt too much then, through no fault of her own, but that I enjoyed hearing about her from my colleague over the years and hoped she was well. She never replied. 

Then today happened, and she was as lovely as could be, filling me in on her life, asking about mine and whether I had a partner. I told her about D.—whom she probably already knew about, but it was sweet of her to offer me the chance to tell her about him: no hard feelings or awkwardness all these years later.

She has two sons in college (little kids when I first knew her), recently took a buyout from her longtime employer, and is starting a new career. She said she was sorry about my dog P.—my ex's and my dog P.; we adopted her together and shared custody for far longer than we were a couple. She told me he has a new dog now. 

I'll have a dog of my own soon. And we'll probably run into him someday in the park.

The Last 15 Years

A DOG ON HIS MASTER
by Billy Collins

As young as I look,
I am growing older faster than he,
seven to one
is the ratio they tend to say.
Whatever the number,
I will pass him one day
and take the lead
the way I do on our walks in the woods.
And if this ever manages
to cross his mind,
it would be the sweetest
shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass.

In memory of Patsy, who passed away May 8, 2015, age 17 or 18

Making Sense

As I walked my dog yesterday, a guy called to me from across the street, "Excuse me, may I ask: Is your dog walking that way because he just got fixed?"

I said, "It's a she. And she's walking that way because she's 17."

That way is haltingly, slowly, crookedly, seemingly a little drunk. Often I have to boost her hind quarters at a curb, sometimes even use an improvised (vet-recommended) "sling" on her back end, fashioned from a cloth grocery-store bag with the sides cut out. I carry her up and down the stairs.

The other day, someone asked "Is your dog okay?" 

I said, "She's old." 

As if I would would be blithely walking her, oblivious to some problem that made her "not okay," waiting for a passer-by to point it out.

"What's the matter with his legs?" is a very common question. 

"It's a she," I say, again. "And she's really old." (It honestly seems not to have occurred to the majority of the public that there's the same proportion of female dogs as there are female humans. How about starting out with something like "Oh, how cute—is it a boy or a girl?")

One guy who asked the legs question walked on, then stopped, stood stock-still, and stared back halfway down the block as I lifted her up from a pooping position—the look on his face not sympathetic but almost suspicious. 

I said, "Is something wrong?" He shook his head and walked on.

She has had a rough summer, with a sudden lameness in her back legs coming on in mid-June—she couldn't move at all on her own. On more than one occasion, she has seemed to be near the end, but now she's on excellent medication in the right dose for the pain caused by arthritis and a slipped disk in her spine (which is healable, and in fact healing, so there actually is a point to it) and is walking again, and while she has bad days when maybe her stomach is bothering her and she doesn't have a lot of energy (she takes Pepcid and a probiotic every day for her tummy) or when the heat is so oppressive that walking is the last thing she wants to do, she still usually enjoys sniffing around outside, eating her 97-percent-lean ground beef served to her by her 97-percent-vegan dad (she won't eat canned food anymore), snoozing on the couch, cuddling up in bed, and fully being just a very old dog. 

It is hard to imagine a world without Patsy—and I've said goodbye to three dogs as an adult, so this is not a new experience for me. Putting her down this summer, had it come to that, would have felt very abrupt and uncertain. Now when the time comes, as wrenching as it will be, I think I (and her other dad, my ex) will more confidently feel it's the right time because we did all we could. And I'm glad we did.

A vet has mentioned the word "dementia," and Patsy does sometimes walk into a corner of the room, uncertain what to do or how to get out of it. I know dementia. I pick her up and turn her around.

Amid all the "How old is he?" and "What's his name?" and "Why does he walk funny?" —she's not a he, people, really!—there were two encounters.

As I walked along with the sling supporting Patsy's back legs, a man stopped and said, "That's beautiful." 

Thinking he might have been talking about her beauty (she is beautiful, in her kooky, scrappy way), I said, "What's beautiful?" 

He clarified: "Just that. So many animals aren't loved."

Another day, a woman who had just parked her car toddled over to give Patsy a pat and a hug. "I had to put down my dog a few weeks ago," she said, smiling.

"So you recognize that stage of life, huh?" 

Yes, she said. 

It made perfect sense.

The Scent from the Jar

The last time I blogged was five months ago—yet another wide gap in the Mantelpiece's well-meaning smile. Two weeks after that last post, I was in a serious bicycle accident of unknown, and irretrievable, cause (though I'm lately pretty sure it was a mechanical mishap, evidence of which got pushed aside in my mind in the initial aftermath). It was not life-threatening per se, but it could easily have been life-ending if, say, I hadn't been wearing a helmet (which I always did) or had fallen out of the bike lane and into the adjacent car traffic. 

I have no memory of the incident itself, just the moment I was surrounded by EMTs and everything else that followed.

I'm not going to recount the details of my recovery here—and I am mostly recovered (though still a member of the doctor's-appointment-of-the-week club: only a slight exaggeration and, yes, I do have one tomorrow morning at 9). It would take too long.

What would take even longer would be to describe how the accident changed me, because I'm still figuring that out myself. The bread is still rising. 

One thing it's been very hard for me to even contemplate doing is write. (And not for the first time—see previous gaps.)

It so happens that next to me right now lies a softly breathing dog whose final days are very likely upon me. I cannot grasp this. I try to talk about it intellectually, calling upon earlier deaths of loved ones I've survived, human and animal. 

Can't beauty and sweetness—the steady rising and falling—withstand anything? Have we really covered this before?

So I'm unable even to document my survival, it seems, without introducing impending loss. I've opened the jars, but they go back on the shelf. That act I've survived.

Autumn Sonata

Fall—true fall—has come relatively late. On Thursday, I wore gloves for the first time while biking to work; this morning I put on a fleece hat to walk the dog. I haven't given up hope that there'll be a few more chances to wear shorts.

I recently had new windows installed, finally allowing light to enter unobstructed by scratches and corroded screens—although a new building across the street means less light for the bedroom through those expensive new panes. Still, I'm happy.

I have my second cold in a month. This time, except for vitamin C, an occasional hot ginger-lemon toddy, and something to treat the symptoms, I'm letting it run its course rather than trying to fend it off with Cold-Eeze or Zicam or Airborne ("invented by a teacher!"). It always comes full-force eventually—why delay the inevitable?

My dog is moving slowly but hanging in at age 15 or 16. There's a crisis every so often—the latest being what appeared to be a broken bone or joint problem but turned out to be a  treatable hip-muscle sprain. I carry her up and down the six brick steps to the street; she can walk fine, but I don't want to push my luck. Someone is often going by just as I'm scooping her up or setting her down with a pat; sometimes I have to pause in the middle of our descent, holding her in my arms, to let a pedestrian pass. I usually get a look of one kind or another. I'm sure some think I'm simply a coddler—which would be more believable if she didn't weigh 40 pounds. Most often I get a sympathetic smile.

This time of year, as the light slants through clear or clouded glass, perhaps we're being asked to bide our time, to wait for the frail to pass or be borne up, to attend with compassion, even joy, the colors' late burning.

Green Day

For my dog P. and me, the last couple of weeks have been an odyssey of symptoms, vet appointments, emergency-room visits, and long-distance communication with her other dad, with whom I've shared custody of her for the last decade (we broke up exactly ten years ago this month) and who has been traveling in the Far East for the last 16 days.

Long story, but what initially looked like kidney failure has transmogrified into a likely slipped disk in P.'s neck that is probably treatable with rest and "heavy duty" pain medication. Her kidney values, the cause of so much initial alarm, have "resolved." She's spending her second night in the hospital tonight to get her fever under control, but I have high hopes she'll come home tomorrow. 

Mysteries remain (why the apparent incontinence episodes? why the fever? how could we not have noticed a neck injury?), but the situation now seems manageable and not so dire.

As I send S. lengthy e-mails with the details of each communication with a doctor (several  have been involved, as her regular vet practice is also a 24-hour hospital), I admit there's  satisfaction, even enjoyment, in feeling so . . . competent.

Part of my sensation of being in control has to do with my ex being 10,000 miles away—a situation that I know is not fun for him, as he is deeply attached to P. There has been little disagreement, no phone calls with the two of us talking over each other or being self-consciously cordial. He has thanked me more than once for taking care of things, and I have acknowledged how hard it is for him to be so far away when P. is ill.

But I'm also aware, or became so this evening, that—at this particular time—it probably feels fulfilling for me on some level to be a caretaker again. What I mean is that I'm realizing what may be going on: that is, I've missed feeling that someone relies on me in such a vulnerable way. 

I've always cared about—and for—P.; doing so now is nothing new. But she is "old-old" (15 or 16), and this stage of her life, particularly this recent crisis, has a familiarity to it—not only because of this week's anniversary but because of other animals in my life I've helped see through to the end. 

My relation to P. has undeniably deepened in the last few weeks—I feel her preciousness more acutely. For now—rather, when she returns home—there is this: taking in the breezes, together, on a warm, green day.

Fake and True

Dog walk, November 13

Walking Patsy on these autumn-dark evenings, I’ve already seen two Christmas trees in windows—the first on Monday, November 12, the second on Tuesday. Nothing last night, though Au Bon Pain was playing Christmas music yesterday at lunchtime. Tomorrow, November 16 (I checked), that radio station will start playing my least favorite kind of holiday music 24/7 through December 25. Just hear those sleigh bells ringin’.

There’s still some gold and rust and green jittering on the trees this afternoon, and the sky has unfurled a tightly woven blanket over the sun. I biked to work today despite the turn toward cold. It’s not even late fall, let alone Christmas—it’s just fall.

On Saturday my brother and sister and some of their family members will come for dinner at D’s house, as he and I will be in London next week. (Fortuitously enough, I happened upon a vegan restaurant hosting a Thanksgiving dinner on the 22nd—who knew?—so that's where you'll find us.) 

Saturday's party here will be our Fakesgiving—a term I learned yesterday, and love—with veggie pot pies, baby-kale salad, baked apples with mincemeat, and some other surprises in the works. This will be the first Thanksgiving since Dad’s death, and though he hadn’t attended in at least a couple of years anyway, I wanted to facilitate some sort of coming-together of kin. It’s a chance to say, in a way that in fact can be more celebratory than mournful: This is what it’s like now.

Christmas-creep is the opposite of now. 

 

Illusions

Spring is slow in taking hold this year. 

It's been quite chilly, so much so that the last couple of evenings I would have lit a fire in the fireplace if P. (the dog, for anyone who needs a reminder) and I hadn't gravitated to the bedroom both times, as that is where she seems to prefer to hang out. When I can—which is not always, as I have things to do—I indulge her and we stretch out on the bed together. Or I work at the desk nearby (tonight I needed to file amendments to my tax returns, as I discovered an error in my favor).

Last summer I actually started running shirtless. Yes, you heard me. Mostly at night, with the illusion of darkness (I run on brightly lit city streets). But sometimes during the day I would run in the park, with the illusion of anonymity.

The sensation, both physical and otherwise, was one I'd never experienced before in my life. Air on my torso somewhere other than on the beach. (And eyes. There was that.) It was addictive, thrilling. I ran and ran, more than I had in years, both in frequency and distance. So much so that I gave myself sciatica, which I'm still dealing with.

I'm waiting for the warmth to return.

"Good Night, Prosecutor": Ten Good Things

As I slowly resurface . . . ten good things since late March, the point at which my life reached overload:

1. Riding the Vamoose bus back from NYC on a Sunday night in April, D. and I eating still-warm H&H bagels with vegan cream cheese and scallions from, of all places, Zabar's (who knew?) and doing the Times crossword. As D. said, speaking for me, "It doesn't get better than that."

2. Please Give.

3. Finding four perfect-condition Stangl "Fruit and Flowers" teacups and saucers with a creamer and sugar bowl for only $26 at the Bethesda Op Shop, my first pieces in that pattern. The fact that I found them not in an antiques shop but in a mostly junky thrift store—and on a day when I was actually thinking I probably shouldn't even bother going in because this place only has junk—was a sign that I should get them. So now I seem to be collecting two patterns—I already had a Bachelor Button coffee service. D. has an almost complete set of Thistle. Though he introduced me to the line, I was the first to buy, last summer in Provincetown. I said to him, "It's the only thing we're competitive about."

4. Great Sage.

5. Taking Dad to a real barbershop for a haircut (instead of waiting for the next time someone comes around to cut hair at his assisted-living facility), putting an extra cushion we brought with us on the seat, telling the barber how to cut his hair . . . and remembering that about 45 years ago he he did much the same thing for me. And seeing what a pleasure it could be, amid his daily existence of mostly tedium and dozing, for him to be out in the world surrounded by male voices and be matter-of-factly yet expertly groomed.

6. The trip to New York itself.

7. During a mostly agonizingly dull eight weeks of grand jury duty, volunteering one day to read the role of the prosecutor when we were hearing the transcript of previous testimony in a case we were considering (the actual prosecutor read the role of the witness), and not only enjoying the heck out of it but receiving numerous compliments from fellow jurors. "Good night, prosecutor," one said to me at the end of the day. It reminded me that several years ago I thought about volunteering for an organization that records books and articles for the blind. Maybe I'll revisit that when things calm down more.

8. Slice some onion, sauté it in olive oil till it's soft, add some chopped green cabbage, cook it some more till the cabbage is softened to your liking but still a little crisp (in other words, nowhere near sauerkraut soft), season with salt and pepper, and stir in a little Dijon mustard and a sprinkling of fennel seed. Improvisation transformed into inspiration.
9. For the first time, on one of my days off from grand jury duty (to which I was committed three days a week), coming into work on an intense deadline day when I was just barely keeping up and saying to a colleague, "It's good to be here"—and meaning it.

10. One thing that never changed: that hour or two between Patsy's early-morning walk (usually between 5 and 6 am) and the time I have to get up for work, when the two of us get back in bed and breathe together—even better when D. is there, breathing along—knowing we have just a finite time in that peaceful state, but not yet willing to start the day.

The Blind Side

After this long blogging silence, the first thing I write about when I finally return is . . . Sandra Bullock?

A few months ago, I officially decided I couldn't stand her anymore. (Not that I was that much of an active fan to begin with.) What had started to get to me was that -- at age 45, with no biological children, and likely on the cusp of that unfortunate stage in a Hollywood actress's career when she's no longer "marketable" as a leading lady -- she was making a bit too much of a deal about how she really, really was maternal after all.

She seemed to bring it up in just about every story I saw about her. It came to a head for me in an article in Parade last November, in which she said that before she met her husband (the bandit Jesse James) and started helping raise his five-year-old daughter, "I was too selfish to have kids."

Yes, the old No Children = Selfish equation. What a fresh idea. Thanks for that, Sandy.

But that wasn't enough. She went on: "If you don’t have kids and animals, you don’t truly know what real life is about."

Okay, I have an animal (and have had animals plural), and I now find it hard to imagine living without them. But for many years I didn't have animals in my life (34 years, to be exact), and I'd never be so judgmental and presumptuous to declare that those without them don't know what life is about.

Life is about your life and what you make of it, period.

Sandy, I thought, you're just an insecure clod.

Now, as everyone knows, mere weeks after her genuinely moving triumph of winning an Oscar, she has been publicly humiliated by allegations that her husband serially cheated on her.

And I've felt for her.

In her Golden Globe acceptance speech earlier this year, she said that before she met her husband, "I never knew what it felt like to have someone have my back."
Lord, all of those quotes that have come back to haunt her.

I've been there myself. Do I think he could be seeing someone else? No. No way.I remember seeing a 20/20 segment in the '80s about people who couldn't get over the death of their pets. Who were in grieving support groups, who couldn't stop crying. Get a life, I thought. Anyone who's that attached to animals doesn't know how to deal with people.
Next Wednesday is the second anniversary of my beagle Charlie's death. I still pray for his soul sometimes.

It's probably best not to make sweeping declarations about what constitutes life -- yours or anyone else's. All you'll end up with is reminder of how human you really are.

Not such a bad thing, I suppose.

Winter Weekend

I didn't have to do any digging out during the snowstorm, because I'd taken my car in for service Friday morning and was allowed to leave it there after the work was done (though how and when I'll be able to get it home from the suburbs and find a space to park in my neighborhood, I'm not sure). Others in my condo beat me to the shoveling on and around our property (about which I feel somewhat guilty). My ventures outside have been mainly to walk the dog -- multiple times a day -- so I've seen the snow's nature, in the air and on the ground, change over the last two days, like a a body blooming, coming into its own, slowing down, then yielding to the onslaught of footprint and tire.

I baked and cooked -- pancakes, muffins, bread, pasta with avocado and tomatoes, Irish oatmeal with apples and cranberries. And I ate.

D. and I have been apart, separated by the weather, like lovers on separate continents, though we're only a handful of miles away. He's finally on his way over as I type, having braved the roads, the Metro, and the icy streets.

Mom and Dad's phone service and cable -- their only connections to the outside world unless one of us is visiting -- were out for a time, but they're back up. This weekend I had a good excuse to have no obligations to them, other than checking in (when it was possible). So I had that rare thing: a weekend at home, where I got to walk and sit and doze through full cycles of sunlight and dark; scents of breakfast, lunch, dinner; the intermittent scrape of shovels on pavement, like an animal's insistent pawing to be let inside.