veterinary clinic under the sign of the hourglass

Gradually and then suddenly, Garth became an old dog. His sight went gradually, his hearing rather suddenly, he started sleeping a lot more. But until very recently the essence of Garth, his Garth-ness, remained in a pure undiluted form: his stubborness, his zest for life, his love of food, his way of looking at you as if he were about to say something. But it is impossible to say that is true anymore. The essence of Garth has gone somewhere, is behind a cloud, is in abeyance.

He walks in small circles around the apartment and tries to hide behind furniture. It is hard to tell if he is agitated mentally, in pain, or both. The only thing that works to calm him down is to hold him in our arms, in a chair; sometimes after a bit of resisting this he will relax and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. But even then, he does not seem to notice us, as his people; it's like we are furniture.

This morning we went back to the vet, two weeks after these symptoms first sent us there. In this time, he has gotten better, gotten worse, gotten better, gotten worse. Today the vet looked at him and shook his head. There was a different quality in the air. With infinite gentleness he gave us our options.

Tomorrow we are going to the dog neurologist in Manhattan. Stories that begin "We are going to the dog neurologist" seldom end happily, nor do I expect this one to.

I am very sad. But not sad the way I was this morning.

In the afternoon, when he woke up after a nap, we went outside. Walks have become a source of torment in the past few days; he walks in circles, lurches slowly, looks miserable, refuses to pee. The pitying looks of passers-by upset me, or the careful pretending not to see, the way one turns away from amputees or the deformed. People with dogs cross the street to avoid us, in case whatever he has might be catching. The trying to pretend things are normal, and the way that normal keeps getting worse.

This afternoon, I don't know why, something shifted in my heart. It was a beautiful afternoon, mild and springlike, with the leaves coming out. Suddenly I stopped thinking about Garth as he used to be when he was young (vibrant, perky, able to jump four feet straight up in the air), Garth as I wished he could still be (affectionate, calm, comic), Garth as I feared he would be very soon (dead). Instead, I just looked at him as he was right then, in that moment. Not five minutes from now, or five days. And suddenly saw it for the gift it was. I struggle to put this feeling into words, but there are no words for it, not even approximately. It is what is.

Once upon a dream

Kathleen knows that, as my husband would say, I am a freak. She knows that I began reading when I was 18 months old, and she knows (I think) that when I was four years old, I used to have dreams about my life and death in France during the Rococo period, complete with French that I understood and know now to have been real, actual French, because I recognized it immediately when I began taking lessons. I never made anything less than 100 in any of my French classes because, quite literally, I already knew how to speak it. I have no explanations, except that I am a freak, and that it’s my best argument for past lives.

What she probably doesn’t know is that I knew when I was a child that I would live in two places*, and one was … well, I’m sure you can guess. I have met one person here who I’m pretty sure I’ve “known before,” as it was less a first meeting and more of a “Where have you been?” on both our parts. (And that’s happened three other times in my life!) And I actually had dreams about that person BEFORE WE MET. The whole thing gives me the creeps.
I drive the streets of Denver with my old companion, déjà vu, riding shotgun. (Too bad a mental map isn’t part of the equation.) And there is no better example than the dream house.

Denver is full of “dream houses” – McMansions, they would usually be called – but this one is really, literally, my dream house. I’ve dreamed about this house many, many times since I was a child. I can visualize its layout in my head without ever having been in it. The first time I saw it, I nearly ran off the road. I screamed, “There it is!” I pulled up to it slowly, my heart racing, tears in my eyes. It’s a funky house, modest and cute, and not a house I suppose most people would call their dream house. But it is mine. I have informed my husband that, if it ever goes on the market, kismet dictates that we must make an offer. Because how often can one say one lives in a house of destiny?

* The other place I always knew I would live is Portland, Oregon. See we shall.

the land that I once knew

The road from my home in Brooklyn to my childhood home (which has been continuously occupied by my parents since 1960) leads through the wilds of the BQE, over the Triboro Bridge (Thank you, Robert Moses) through a stretch of the Bronx and then Westchester, Putnam, Dutchess Counties, then the Connecticut border. It becomes increasingly less urban, then less suburban, until the strip malls and auto body places give way to farms and little downtowns that probably look much as they did in 1810, and you have to start worrying about hitting deer and skunks instead of other deranged motorists. Five miles from my childhood home, there emerges from the rural darkness a flashing red light with a four-way stop. We have taken this road from Brooklyn often enough in the past two years that we could navigate it in our sleep (and late at night, that is often what it seems we are doing), yet for some reason my husband always hesitates at this point.

"Right," I always say.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I am sure. I've seen this corner a million times." I said it most recently two days ago, and was suddenly struck by a thought.

I haven't seen the corner a million times, probably, but it certainly seems like it. For at this corner, if you turned left instead of right and then took the first right, you would turn into the entrance of my high school, which was founded in the 1890s for people planning to send their sons to Yale. It has lots of red brick buildings, elm trees, a 9-hole golf course, and an absurd number of tennis courts. When I was a grade-schooler, in my little town of about 1,000 people, this school (where we went for the occasional school trip, to see dance performances and the like) represented for me all the allure and beauty and sophistication of the larger world, a world I knew only through books and my own imagination. I yearned to go there, and then I did. As a day student, a townie, a charity case, every day I passed through that corner going from home to school early in the morning, straight through the flashing red light, to another world, then coming back again the same night, generally, overworked, sleep-deprived and taciturn. It turned out to be sophisticated all right, but full of misery, at least for me, and the one happy day I spent there was the day I graduated. Yet for better and for worse, my years at that school made me the person I am today. When I left that school, it was for college in New York, just 100 miles as the crow flies but a much longer distance in ways that matter; I never looked back, or thought about it much again. Then I lived other places, other lives, and thought of the school even less; its poison gradually worked its way out of my system.

Now I am back, and at this corner, the other night, it suddenly seemed to me that time had made a circle. If I could only have known, more than two decades ago, stuck at that damn school, hating life and myself, where time would take me: to the corner, right and south, south, south, to the lights of the city, to a job I love, a life I am lucky to have. Would I have felt better about things? Would I have even believed it possibe?

How strange, the change from major to minor

I have had to let go of a dream.

That first fall, when I felt bleak about pretty much everything, a friend asked to help plan our choir’s trip to France and Spain. And, having been in on the ground level, I can tell you this is going to be a glorious trip. The concert venues are stunning, and who can possibly beat the idea of June in Provence? It was the trip I had always dreamed of, and I helped create this dream. And when we had no money, having a dream wasn’t so bad.
Now I can’t go. That lack of money helped do it in, but a last-minute childcare cancellation was the proverbial nail in the coffin. It’s been a long time since I wanted something so badly, and I find that, even as I sit here feeling a little sorry for myself, I am lucky that there is so little I’ve had to want, mostly because I’ve gotten almost everything I’ve ever wished for. And that’s an amazing realization.
And the reason why the money wasn’t the ultimate deciding factor is because my dear friend (the one with whom I helped to plan the trip) gathered pledges from people to help me go, and he managed to collect more than I pay for a month’s rent. I am stunned and overwhelmed by the generosity of people, and of my friend, for wanting this for me nearly as much as I wanted it. Never again will I complain about this place, because I don’t think I have ever felt as much love for a group of people as I do right now.