Dogs

My Dog, My Hands, My Buttery Butter-Stick Fingers

I know when my dog, Lexi, is happy. I know when she’s sad. I know when she wants to be tickled. I know when she wants me close but doesn’t want me to touch her. I know when she’s waking me up because she’s scared versus happy versus feeling playful versus wanting a tummy rub versus having to potty really bad.

This morning, my dog had to potty really bad at 5:09 a.m. That was a hard way of entering into today, but I did it because when I have to use the bathroom, nobody makes me wait until it’s convenient for them. And because I don’t “have” a dog, even though I used the phrase “my dog” above: I live with a dog, I love a dog, and I share my life with a dog. She’s family. And my bestest family member had to potty at 5:09 a.m. this morning.

I was sleeping soundly—my mattress and pillows are puffy clouds soundly—when Lexi woke me up. I was dreaming of something. What was it? A subway, glimmering tile, water in the distance, a weaver I know, an unnamable feeling, and some Southern Utah LGBTQ+ community overlord trolling my Facebook page telling me what not to say.

I didn’t want to get up, especially not at 5:09 a.m. in December, which feels the way 1:09 a.m. does in June. So dark. So nightlike it could never pass as anything other than night. Not dusk, not dawn, not the cusp of dusk or dawn.

My hands are cold. My keyboard is loud. My ears are sensitive. My fingers are sliding off keys. I’m writing off-key, too, because I’m typing letters in the wrong order, all of them. (Thanks, dyslexia.) There’s no flow in the writing for me right now, which makes writing unbearable.

My fingers are hard sticks of butter qwertying without finesse. I know my fingers are smaller than butter sticks, but that’s how they feel so I’m sticking with my imperfect metaphor. Do they make miniature butter sticks? If so, all the butter for this hard metaphor spreading across my nearly inoperable fingers at what is now 5:51 a.m.

A writer posted on Twitter yesterday about marriage being for everybody. I thought he said “margarine.” That’s emblematic of the unsolicited gifts dyslexia gives me daily:

Margarine: It’s for all of us, not just some of us!

Hilarity ensued as the writer and I had a good chuckle over the outdatedness of margarine and how, for now, butter has the upper hand, which is funny because we’re back to hands, which obviously makes me think of my hands or at least my fingers. We’re back to my sloppy butter/finger metaphor. (Yes, I went there. Sue me. Puns are a sign of intelligence.) There’s no escaping this metaphor. It’s smeared all over this bleary essay like butter on a slice of toasted bread.

The thing is, margarine has a hell of a story. It rose to fame during World War II when butter was in short supply, so it and other fats were rationed.1 Margarine had been around since 1869, but it had a problem, which was its color.1,2 It was white. It was plain. It was super meh to look at, which made it unappetizing. We eat with our eyes, after all. (That’s actually not entirely true, and it’s an ableist thing to say.) In a word, margarine suffered from oilism.

The solution to the meh-ness of margarine? Dye!3 Margarine was mixed with vegetable dye to make it look sunny, like the butter everyone knew and loved, the color we used to paint our kitchens before beige then gray then greige then white then apparently beige again shouldered color out of our homes.

And here’s the really interesting part: The customer had to do the mixing. Margarine was originally sold in its white state along with a capsule of vegetable dye, which the “home cook,” meaning the woman of the house, had to mash into the margarine until the concoction turned yellow.3

But I digress. I’ll write a proper essay about margarine later. What I wanted to say this morning is that my dog, Lexi, got me up early. I understood exactly why because she came from an abusive situation in Texas where she was bred by an unethical breeder. She’s learned how to overread and overcommunicate with humans in a way I’ve never seen any other dog do. Strikingly, in the year since she’s lived here, she’s learned how to imitate me when she needs to convey something, anything, everything. She can’t use language like I do, but she knows how to use her entire body—from her ears to her eyes to her paws to her tail—in various combinations to say things like, Mom, quit giving me those silly kisses. Please know I still love you, though, and want you here next to me. Just ‘no’ on the kisses, OK?

She talks to my husband and me like this all day long, and it’s the most adorable and endearing thing ever. Dad, why are you close to the back door with that coat on, but you aren’t looking at me like you’re about to take me outside?

Or Don’t you see me lying here like a piece of driftwood, so good and so quiet, but also so hungry? I don’t want to be demanding or anything, but you totally forgot to feed me. You’re at least ten minutes late doing that. Do you want me to be this sad piece of driftwood forever?

Or, a new one she added recently that I had trouble translating: Mommy, mommy, maaaaaaaaaawmeeeeeeeee. I feel weird and have to, like, lie here like this on the rug in the middle of the living room, aimless and foggy. I don’t know what’s going on. Is the floor quicksand? Is it, like, holding me down or something? Am I, like, stuck here forever?

That was the day we gave her one-quarter tablet of trazodone before a visit to the veterinarian to make sure she hadn’t cracked her tooth on a toy that’s not supposed to be capable of cracking a dog’s tooth.

The most intriguing part of all this is that she acts like me. These aren’t generic communications. She tilts her head the way I do. She puts her paw on my chest the way I put my hand on Jon’s chest when he’s rushing up to me too fast and I need to whoa-nelly his overly enthusiastic approach. She mopes the way I mope and lets joy flood her body the way it floods mine. She even dances like me.

Lexi’s asleep now on the flokati rug in the living room that we call her Floofer, not to be confused with my electrophysiologist, who I call Dr. Flvoolr because that’s what I called him right when I came out of anesthesia the other day. (Dr. Flvoolr is not his actual name, but it’s sort of close. I got three of the seven letters right.) Lest you think we’ve relegated Lexi to the floor, that Floofer is on top of a fluffy dog bed which, in turn, is on top of our moderately uncomfortable mid-century-style sofa. It’s nearly a princess and the pea situation, Lexi’s Floofer setup.

My hands are warmer now, but they still aren’t serving me well. My ears are ringing. The keyboard still sounds like someone rummaging around inside a drawer full of Legos. The lamplight interrogating my desk is as taxing as the first general income tax ever imposed in our country, which occurred during World War II, when the number of Americans required to pay federal taxes rose from 4 million in 1939 to 43 million by 1945.4

(All that taxation and a gal couldn’t even get her hands on a stick of butter. I know, I know. It was a war. A big one. I get it.)

I want to go back to sleep like Lexi has, but now I’m staring the day right in the eyes. It’s staring back. I tried turning my head slightly the way Lexi would as a calming signal. The day isn’t averting its gaze. I’m trapped here among the wakeful, at least for now. Time to putter around the house, grab some breakfast, and catch up on the news. Kyrsten Sinema! Britney Griner! Elon Musk! President Biden and Title 42! Fourteen more books designated as “pornographic” by the Washington County School District in Utah—including several by poet and novelist Margaret Atwood! There’s never not news these wide-eyed days. My new favorite pastime is reading the news before my husband or my friend José has, then being the one to break it to them, especially when the news is salient, good, strange, or all three somehow—the perfect news trifecta.

Below, I’ve included a poem I started writing in 1995 about margarine when I was taking Robert Stewart’s poetry class at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. It’s not the best poem, but I like it and it’s relevant, so there it is. It’s my one-thousandth version of the poem and is the best shape I could whip it into. I may not have whipped it like butter, but I like to think I at least whipped it good.

—

Margarine During War

Women keep settling
(oleo, factory jobs)
though they pine for sex
the way they long
for butter on their lips.

After war, they dab
eye shadow and rouge for men
whose war-whores
didn’t teach them to kiss.

But the women
hoist skirts, drop stockings,
for soon the bread they’d break
would be kissed with butter
(real butter).

—

Sources

  1. Yglesias, M. (2013) Guns vs. Butter, Slate Magazine. Slate. Available at: https://slate.com/business/2013/07/butter-rationing-guns-vs-butter-in-world-war-ii.html (Accessed: December 9, 2022).
  2. Vaisey-Genser, M. (2003) “Margarine, Types and Properties,” in B. Caballero (ed.) Encyclopedia of Food Sciences and Nutrition. Second. Elsevier Science Ltd.
  3. Magazine, S. (2011) Food Dye Origins: When Margarine Was Pink, Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution. Available at: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/food-dye-origins-when-margarine-was-pink-175950936/ (Accessed: December 9, 2022).
  4. Tassava, C.J. (no date) The American Economy During World War II, EHnet. EHnet. Available at: https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-american-economy-during-world-war-ii/ (Accessed: December 9, 2022).

Lexi the Healer

To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring—it was peace.

— Milan Kundera

I dreamed about my dog, Lexi, this morning, as she was pressed against my back, sleeping alongside me. In the dream, I was holding her. We were in a park. She saw an older woman in poor health and began wagging her tail. I carried Lexi over to the woman. She angled her head downward and pressed the top of her muzzle against the woman’s cheek.

The woman began to cry. Lexi intrinsically understood what the woman was feeling. She was there for the woman in a way humans hadn’t been. Tears streamed down the woman’s face and landed on Lexi’s wispy facial hairs.

Others from the park gathered around. In silence, they entered the space Lexi was creating for the woman—a space of loving without words, of existing fully and selflessly with someone in need. A kind of joy emerged, not unbridled happiness, but the deeper joy that suffering makes possible.

I heard a “thump, thump, thump,” as rhythmic as a healthy heartbeat. It was Lexi, not in the dream but beside me in bed. Each morning when she wakes up, her tail starts moving before the rest of her body does. The “thump, thump, thump” was her signature wag. Good morning, Lexi, I responded, as I do each day. Those three words invariably set the rest of her body in motion. She wriggles up to my face, plies me with kisses, then curls up in the space between my shoulder and head while I tickle her tummy and tell her how much I love her.

I had other dreams last night—recurring nightmares whose subjects and plots are so similar they’ve worn ruts in my mind. A house with missing walls, no locks on the doors if there are doors at all. Strangers inside with me. Men, mostly. Sometimes complicit women. More of them coming. More and more, so many they resemble debris-filled floodwaters. Me, half-naked, running. A bare mattress in a basement. No way out.

I only remember the nightmares as I sit down to write this. The dream of Lexi is what got me through the night. The reality of Lexi is what gets me through each day. Lexi and her wagging tail. Lexi curled up beside my head, her soft, disheveled fur tickling my face. Lexi and the space she creates for deep joy within deep suffering. Lexi, the healer. Lexi, my healer.

Today, Lexi and I will sit at the base of the sandstone slope that rises, unreal and dreamlike, behind my home—its strata twisted by profound geological events during a time scale humans can barely fathom. It will be a glorious afternoon. We will do nothing. We will feel peace.

Telling Lexi’s Story

If you meet me when I’m with my dog, Lexi, chances are you’re going to hear her story. The story of how she lived during the first nine months of her life. The story of the woman who bravely stepped in when nobody else would and carried Lexi and her littermate out of a deplorable situation while both she and the dogs shook with fear.

The story of her frail, failing body. Her lack of food, water and shelter. The way she was locked in an outdoor pen with other breeds—some much larger than her and all of them puppies. Lexi was deemed unsellable, so she and her littermate were forgotten, left to fend for themselves when they didn’t even have the freedom to roam in search of shelter and sustenance. Lexi and her littermates were left to die. Some of them did. Around them, dogs barked and wailed. They slept on ground soaked with urine and excrement. The business of selling went on.

Lexi was born into the life of backyard breeding, a practice that’s ubiquitous in the United States. Like many states, the one in which Lexi was bred — by a person who saw dogs as a source of quick cash—provides insufficient legal protection to companion animals. What Lexi went through is not unique or unusual. It’s built into the business model for inhumane breeders whose cramped pens and suffocating buildings litter the country from coast to coast. Slow death and immeasurable suffering are a feature of these businesses, not a bug.

When I try to tell Lexi’s story, trainers almost invariably interrupt me early on to say something like this:

Dogs are resilient. If you hold onto that story, your dog won’t be able to move past it. You need to think about your dog’s future, not what they went through.

Agreed. But I’m not “holding onto” Lexi’s past. If anyone is aware of her resilience, it’s me. I see evidence of it daily, hourly, and minute by minute. What I’m doing is this: Raising awareness wherever I can about the horrific abuse and neglect that occurs in backyard breeding operations and puppy mills. I’m educating those in my community about dog abuse and neglect, as well as the effects of irresponsible breeding and pet overpopulation. Most people don’t know about any of those issues, especially not in sunny Southern Utah, where the scent of yesteryear still permeates the air and, on the surface, everything appears to be good and right and noble, always. Here, the unthinkable isn’t just unthinkable. It’s literally not thought.

Here, the unthinkable isn’t just unthinkable. It’s literally not thought.

Teaching the public through education and outreach programs is essential to getting the message out about dogs like Lexi, but so is giving those stories a face. Lexi is that face. While someone is marveling at how sweet and wonderful Lexi is, I can tell them a story they would never have imagined while all their senses are engaged. The listener can feel Lexi’s fur, gaze into her beautiful eyes, and smell that signature Cheetos odor wafting from her scraggly paws. The listener gets a serotonin boost while learning what Lexi and other dogs have to endure. Engaging the heart and mind together makes the teachable moment that much more powerful.

This is immersive education and storytelling at its finest. The subject is right there. She’s not a statistic or an abstraction. I’m able to make inroads with folks who might otherwise drift into local pet shops that source puppies from unethical breeders when they decide it’s time to add a dog to their family. Those stores’ pretty plexiglass display cases won’t hint at where the puppies came from. Their owners and employees won’t tell the truth. Instead, they’ll spin some yarn that has no veracity.

Lexi has to tell the true story. And because she can’t speak, I have to tell her story for her and with her. So I’ll continue talking about her trauma, as well her resilience and recovery. It doesn’t mean I’m living in the past or locking her into a figurative pen. Quite the opposite. Our stories can free us. They can also free listeners from ignorance, misunderstanding, and a lack of awareness. Lexi’s story is designed to ensure there’s no next Lexi. Mills must stop churning. Backyard breeding operations must close. Neither will do so willingly. Their market—folks like the ones I share Lexi’s story with—needs to dry up. Without demand, there will be no supply.

I’m concerned that some trainers are myopically focused on the client and dog they’re working with. They fail to see the bigger picture. They speak before they listen. How can they not understand the importance of telling stories like Lexi’s? Is it because they work with clients who have purebred dogs? Do they feel pressure from breeders in the community? Do they just not like hearing unpleasant stories? These trainers don’t recognize the implications of discouraging adopters from sharing their dogs’ stories, especially stories of trauma. I wish they’d reconsider shutting folks like me down.

Lexi is part of my family now. That means her story is my story. We walk through this world together, each of us with our own histories of trauma, each on our own healing path. Together, we’ll tell our stories in our own ways as long as we walk this earth.

Lexi

A few weeks before Thanksgiving, a couple surrendered three small dogs to a rescue where I volunteered. One of them was Lexi, a too-thin balding terrier mix. She was sweet but understandably confused and scared. The rescue was en route to Zion National Park, where the couple was headed as part of a multi-year RV trip they’d embarked on two months earlier. Their plan was to take all four of their dogs with them on the adventure. Something made them change their minds about traveling with the dogs. I suspect the endeavor was more difficult than they anticipated. Not all dogs like to travel. The constant motion, fluctuating temperatures inside the RV, and stress of being uprooted from their home may have caused the dogs considerable stress. Add to that the difficulty of managing so many pets throughout a long trip. I don’t think the couple knew what they were asking of their dogs or of themselves.

Lexi came to our home to spend Thanksgiving weekend with us. Another family had been fostering her, but they had a guinea pig. Lexi’s strong prey drive made that situation difficult for the fosters to manage. The day I picked her up, Lexi was dressed in a pale pink sweatshirt with the words “ROYAL FASHION PRINCESS” printed on the back in fat, glittery black letters. The acrid smell of floral laundry detergent wafted from the diminutive garment but failed to conceal the pet odors permanently embedded within it.

This is just for the long weekend, I told myself. When I learned about what Lexi had been through, I wanted to give her the best Thanksgiving she could have under the circumstances. Our home was calm and quiet. My husband Jon and I could give Lexi our undivided attention. I could focus on getting her to eat—she hadn’t eaten well since being surrendered—and I could begin assessing her apparent health issues. Bouba and Kiki had only been gone for a few days. It was, at once, too soon to have another dog in the house and exactly the right time to have another dog in the house. I don’t know how to describe our home without dogs other than to say the space feels heavy, lifeless, devoid of resonance—like someone playing a piano with one hand while muting the strings with the other.

It was, at once, too soon to have another dog in the house and exactly the right time to have another dog in the house.

Who do we have here, Jon asked when I got home with Lexi. He found her sweatshirt amusing, especially because it was far too small for her. Most of her long body was left uncovered, giving her the appearance of a teenager who’s shot up suddenly but is still wearing their old clothes. In fact, I had something similar as a teen—a pink Oklahoma Joe’s sweatshirt whose coverage of my arms and torso became increasingly insufficient during a growth spurt, but I loved it so much I had trouble parting with it.

We settled in on the sofa. I wrapped Lexi in a blanket and turned on the news. She fell asleep. The back of her ears, head and neck were bald save for a few scraggly hairs. I cried silently as I thought about Bouba and Kiki and about the scared but trusting little girl dozing on my lap. For two days, we spent the majority of our time like this. When I wasn’t walking, feeding or grooming her, Lexi and I were relaxing on the sofa watching news programs. (Russia hadn’t invaded Ukraine yet, so the news was still relatively palatable.)

My feelings vacillated between happiness tinged with sadness and sadness tinged with happiness. I think Lexi had similar emotions. Her naps were punctuated by bouts of whining, crying, and exploring the house as if she would find her old life in one of the rooms. Incrementally, she came to understand that she was in a new place. Her other life wasn’t behind a closed door. Her former guardians weren’t going to pull up in the driveway, eager to see her again. The dogs she lived with and adored were somewhere else. The familiar sights, smells and sounds of her home in Texas were nowhere to be found. By the third day with us, she had stopped searching for her past. She had also started eating, which was a relief.

We began going on outings so I could do informal temperament testing with Lexi and see how she reacted in different environments. How would she do with people, with other dogs, with cats, and with wildlife? Would she be comfortable in expansive natural areas and in congested suburban spaces? Did she like water? Was she afraid of cars, side-by-sides or scooters? Did certain situations scare her? I created a spreadsheet to keep track of my findings. I hoped to provide potential adopters with information that would help them determine if Lexi was the right dog for them.

We took Lexi to Home Depot, Petco and Star Nursery. We visited Red Hills Desert Garden, Confluence Park, and a busy city park whose name I forget. She navigated every situation we encountered with ease, and people gravitated to her wherever we went. There was something uniquely lovely and disarming about her. Folks became emotional and opened up in her presence, mostly about dogs they’d loved and lost, but also about their lives and experiences, their hopes and fears. It was beautiful to watch Lexi bring that out in people.

We got her toys. We got her clothes. We got her puzzle games. And treats. And dog beds. And blankets. She could take them all to her new home, we reasoned. We discovered that she loves bully sticks and yak chews (a hard-cheese treat) most of all. She plays with them like toys, throwing them across the room and retrieving them before gleefully throwing them again. She even sleeps with a yak chew every night, cuddling it like a baby.

We learned that she likes to tuck herself in beneath a small blanket. We learned how tiny she looks when curls up to sleep. We learned that she loves smelling the world more than anything. When she seemed anxious, a slow sniffy walk immediately lifted her spirits. Wildlands surround our home in Southern Utah. There were myriad scents for Lexi to experience—many for the first time in her life.

Two things quickly emerged about Lexi: the first was her curiosity; the second was her fragility. I remember the day I first bathed her. I removed her sweatshirt and was afraid I’d break her in the process. I ran my fingers along her protruding ribs, her knobby vertebrae, and her soft, concave stomach. Energized by static electricity, the scant hair on her back pulled up and away from her skin as I coaxed the sweatshirt over her head. Overcome, I pulled her close and held her tight—something dogs don’t always like but she seemed to welcome—before carrying her to the bathroom.

Her fragile body made her curiosity even more remarkable. Despite her health issues and what she’d been through, she met the world with great interest. Even when she felt nervous or unsure, she wanted to know more about whatever she was encountering. Her curiosity helped her transition from her old life to her new one. Jon and I delighted in seeing her experience the world she was in now, the one we were helping her navigate.

Despite her health issues and what she’d been through, she met the world with great interest.

After the long weekend, Lexi stayed a few more days so she could see our veterinarian. We hoped to learn the cause of her weight loss and hair loss. During the appointment, we learned that her health issues might be more complicated than we anticipated. I wanted to keep her long enough to pay for additional medical assessments and treatments, but I realized that was beyond our role as fosters.

We discussed adopting Lexi ourselves but felt like it was too soon to make that commitment to another dog. We decided to pass Lexi’s medical information along to the rescue and continue fostering her until she was adopted. I took photos of her for Petfinder and emailed them to the rescue. Five minutes passed. I paced around the room. I looked at the photos. I looked at Lexi, who was attentively perched nearby. She resembled a troll doll with her wispy, cobweb-like facial hair and short, fine body hair. Her eyes were especially striking. Central heterochromia gives her irises the appearance of two chestnuts whose skin is catching the light on a sunny day. Dark pigmentation on her upper and lower eyelids resembles thick, almost goth, eyeliner. She stared at me with those dramatic eyes and with such clarity, innocence and trust my heart nearly burst.

I sent a feverish email to the rescue, then bolted out the door with an adoption form and a check. I drove straight to the rescue’s adoption center and said we wanted to adopt Lexi. It may have been too soon, but I didn’t want her to go to a home where her medical issues might not be addressed. I didn’t want her to go anywhere. I knew we could help Lexi in ways we weren’t able to help Bouba. It felt right for her to stay with us.

When I got home, I made a beeline for Lexi. Jon asked if she was ours. I said yes, but the truth is we were hers. We still are.

A Secret Order

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

— Carl Jung

This morning, my chihuahua threw up on me in bed. I was curled up in the fetal position, and she was behind me with her chest against my back. You could say she was the big spoon and I was the little spoon, as preposterous as that might sound, given that I am approximately eighteen times her size. But there it is: big spoon = chihuahua, little spoon = human.

Understandably, being woken in this manner led me to believe I might not be in for the best of days. As I took care of my dog, got myself cleaned up, and cobbled together all the linens that needed washing, I felt defeated before I’d even brushed my teeth. Then my centralized pain set in, along with intestinal distress because I dared to eat out yesterday afternoon. As if that weren’t enough, I felt like I was being strangled. Yesterday, my new thyroid surgeon examined the scar on my neck from the thyroidectomy that my old thyroid surgeon performed last fall. He needed to assess how much scar tissue was present. Turns out, there’s a significant amount of scarring, and manipulating the area has made it extremely tight and painful today.

I needed to get it together, and fast. My first session with a holistic therapist was scheduled for noon. This meeting was important to me. I didn’t want to arrive at the therapist’s office sweaty, whiffling, and redolent of dog vomit. I needed to be lucid, solid, maybe even likable. (The last one is always a longshot for me, but I hold out hope with every new interaction.)

I made it to the session with my pestilent body in tow. A sack of pain I was. The therapist put me at ease by pointing out her Carl Jung action figure and saying, Not everyone has one of those.

They don’t, I thought. But they damn well should.

She also had a stuffed Yoda on her desk. He was wearing spectacles. I should probably show her my bright orange, 3D-printed Yoda head at our next meeting. I don’t have any Jung tchotchke to share, but I do feel Jung at heart, so at least I have a pun lined up for next week’s session.

The therapist knew things were serious when she began charting my immediate family, and I was in tears by the time she asked me what my father’s name was. I would have totally lost it if she’d asked my mother’s name. (It was Merry, which is heartbreaking considering how much trauma she was born into and lived through. Given her life circumstances, my mother’s name was a cruel, impossible demand—a mirthful adjective that would never find its occasion. What were my grandparents hoping for, beyond hope, when they fitted her with that albatross?) In short, I wasn’t able to mask my physical or emotional pain, and that made me feel as vulnerable as a fledgling swallow leaving the nest for the first time.

The therapist asked how I was feeling. I told her I was a burning tumbleweed careening down a hill, setting the countryside on fire.

She seemed to understand.

I asked her if she thinks there’s more merit to the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress than other DSM diagnoses. She said she doesn’t give a hanging chad about diagnosis. She only cares about hearing and seeing the person in front of her.

You are not a diagnosis. You are a human being, she said. What I’m hearing and seeing is you.

I tried not to cry because I don’t want Therapy Dana to be someone who is weepy throughout an entire session. But I’m not sure I’m in charge of who Therapy Dana is or isn’t, let alone what she does and doesn’t do.

I chose the Jung quote above because it makes me think about the DSM and its litany of disorders. The DSM is a dead end that never leads back to order. How do you make your way out of that book once you’re in it? My therapist says you have to stop looking at the disorder and start looking at what will help you heal.

I don’t always know where to cast my gaze, but I’m looking.

Writing: The Measure of a Breath

Two days ago, we learned that Hayden, our beloved chihuahua, has kidney damage. There are things we can do to help her retain enough kidney function to live out the rest of her life before her kidneys fail. This is very encouraging because it means we can do preventive care rather than simply engaging in palliative care. However, there is no guarantee our measures will work. Serious illnesses like this take their own course. Sometimes intervention can’t change that course.

Hayden has done so much for my husband and me since we adopted her just under two years ago. I tell people she saved my life. They think I’m being hyperbolic, but I’m not. We adopted Hayden in part because we knew dogs provide excellent therapy for people with depression, anxiety and other chronic health problems. Now that we have her, I never feel alone. By that I mean I never move into an emotional state in which I am completely inaccessible, one in which I don’t know how to reach out to anyone for support, even myself.

Hayden tethers me to this world—and to her heart, my husband’s heart and my own heart. Each day, she shows me how to be gentle, playful and kind. Because of her, I feel more open. I trust the world more and want to fight for it more passionately. In her eyes, I see the beauty of all living creatures, and I understand the need to protect the environment that supports us all.

I still have so much to learn from Hayden, but right now I need to turn my attention to supporting her to the best of my abilities. I need to remain in the moment so that I don’t impose my own suffering on her. I don’t want my knowledge of her illness to cloud our time together. I need to remember that if, at the end of the day, Hayden has had a good day, that’s all that matters. At the same time, I must think about the future so my husband and I can intervene now on Hayden’s behalf. I can’t just be in the moment or her future could be compromised.

I have a lot of learning and growing to do in order to meet this challenge and be the caretaker and companion Hayden needs me to be. I hope I can do for her a fraction of what she’s done for me. Right now, she’s taking a nap and looks perfectly content. It’s hard to believe there’s anything wrong with her. Earlier, she ran and barked in her sleep. I like to imagine what she might be dreaming about: perhaps a warm day in the park, chasing squirrels up trees; or maybe a scene from her life before we adopted her, a place she only returns to in her sleep.

A train moves through the city; its hollow notes ride the air. This is a dark day, a cold day. Rain pads the windows like fingertips. Even the birds seem to be complaining about the weather in curt and muffled tones.

I’m going to join Hayden now. I will lie by her side and breathe with her. Measured in breaths, even a short span of time feels nearly infinite. I will count every breath and remember that each is a miracle, one we all share.

Cold Sun

The cold sun of fall woke me early. I’m thankful for that. Sometimes I believe I can do more waking than sleeping. Other times I admit the truth: More goes on in my life when I sleep than when I am awake.

Unbridled joy is just that: untamed, messy, imperfect. It falls. It gets up. This is how I learn from an eight pound dog.

I have a small window, not in the main bedroom but in a closet whose door I keep ajar because I like to see some of what’s in there, but not everything. I like to see the bookcase, the yellow one, and the clear containers full of poems (mine, those of friends and strangers). I accumulated the paper back when the world was paper, when I thought thin sheets organized alphabetically could help me tame, or at least take part in, the world.

The window is positioned high on the wall, right below the home’s eave. It’s only purpose, I believe, was to let cool air in before there was air conditioning. Now it’s stuck shut, like most of the windows in the home. It didn’t do anything all summer, didn’t seem to do anything. But two days ago, when the cold sun of fall was created anew this season, the small window, the small high window, took its opportunity and caught that light. The sun is lower now. Low and clear. The eave can’t hold light back, and so it comes in, thanks to the window—not in a stream but as a single rectangle, a slot, which lands on my face, framing my eyes. The rest of the room remains in relative darkness.

There couldn’t be a more direct wake-up call. So I woke. What was I supposed to do? I can’t remember last night’s dreams. That must mean things are going OK. The dreams come—lucid dreams, night terrors, false awakenings, the half-dreams of hypnagogia, out-of-body dreams in which my dream self hovers over me threatening to float through the wall and stay on the other side forever, long long endless long dreams in which I obsessively play out scenes from my life—when things are not going OK.

We can’t wipe someone off with a towel in this poem. It’s so boring, I tell the children at Farm Labor Homes. Poems are fun, exciting, they don’t do what we expect them to do. I watch as a look floods their eyes the way ink does when it’s injected into water. A crazy look. “Chicken noodle soup,” one of the kids exclaims, jumping out of her seat. The others lean into the table, waiting for my reaction, expectant.

They get it, they get it, I think, relieved. Yes, I squeal. Now that’s more like it. I complete the line of the poem we are writing together: And then the girl who fell / in mud gets wiped off with / chicken noodle soup.

They all laugh. They laugh and laugh and beg to write another poem. I tell them that they made this, emphasizing the word “they.” It’s a poem and they made it. I try to tell them how important this moment is, but they are too busy laughing and grabbing the poem so they can read it again.

My chihuahua was overcome last night, as she sometimes is, with what I can only interpret as joy. She ran as fast as she could through the living and dining rooms, making the same lazy circle around the seating. Every time she hit the wood floors, she fell: hip into floor, side against floor, legs behind her, crisscrossed. Her nails made a “schrwish schrwish schrwish schrwihsch” that would have frightened someone who didn’t know what was going on. “Schrwish schrwish thump.” “Schrwish schrwish thump.” The thumps are the falling, obviously.

I love how my dog slips, and how she gets back up, her joy intact. Unbridled joy is just that: untamed, messy, imperfect. It falls. It gets up.

This is how I learn from an eight pound dog.

I remember my dream, the one I had last night. He and I lived in a basement apartment that had never been fully converted. Concrete walls painted red. Low ceilings. No real plumbing, only a drain in the middle of the space into which everything—bath water, kitchen sink—flowed.

What happened next? He left. We had just moved in when he moved out. Left me there. Took everything. I didn’t have a bed. I would lie on the floor each night and think about how we used to lie in the bed together, with sheets and pillows and a gentle breeze coming from somewhere. Suddenly, I realized I wasn’t living in a house; I was living in a cell and always had been, even when he was with me.

I wanted my home. I mean my mother’s home. I cursed him for not letting me move into it when I had the chance. What I really wanted was her. I went outside, dug in the dirt. I was looking for her, meant to bring her back the way one might bring a radish back from the garden.

Then he appeared. He held me and I screamed.

I just looked outside. Evidence of first frost—a thin semi-frozen mat over grass. Sun and window woke me early to see this.

All summer I thought the summer sun was clear. It wasn’t. It was overdoing it, trying to impress. Fall sun. That’s where the real light is at. When you have sun without heat, you’ve got something special.

I don’t live alone, though we all live alone in some ways. I live with a man who is a great love, a great love who moves inside the great love of the world.

Lame Skills and Dreams and Being and Doing (and My Dog, Hayden)

I am sitting here, staring at my screen. My dog, Hayden, snores at my feet in her puppy bed, which we call her butt nest. The term is a misnomer, of course, since her entire body is in the nest, not just her butt, and since it’s technically not a nest.

What I’ve been thinking about lately is the difference between doing and being.

I don’t know. Maybe it qualifies as a nest. I suddenly realize I don’t know the actual definition of “nest.”

I’ll have to look that up.

Later.

I feel like I should write something, since I am here at the computer and all. I can’t go anywhere anyway. Hayden just had surgery, her second procedure in three weeks. I have to watch her until she feels better and gets over her predictable but still unpleasant post-op constipation.

I’ve never cheered for poop the way I’ve cheered for poop with this dog. I’ve been cheering all day to no avail. In response, she looks up at me and wags her tail, as if her very existence is worthy of applause—which it is. She doesn’t have to do anything for me to sing her praises.

I also feel like I should write something because I am a writer, or at least consider myself a writer. I certainly don’t consider myself someone who stares idly at the computer all day, fingers curved over the keyboard as if on the cusp of writing, without actually doing any writing.

But the thing is, I don’t know what to write. And when I don’t know what to write, I usually begin aimlessly and somehow end up with a five thousand-word essay on some unexpected thing that wells up in the not-knowing-what-to-write moment.

I don’t have time for a five thousand-word essay today. That’s not true. I have time. I have nothing but time. Time and love and capacity. That’s all I have and all I will ever have. Even on my deathbed, I will have time. Just not a whole lot of it. But technically I will still have some of it. I hope I will have love and capacity then, too. We’ll see.

I just don’t feel like writing and writing and writing, namely because that necessitates proofing and proofing and proofing. Proofing is not fun, especially when you’re proofing your own work, and you’re dyslexic.

Don’t get me wrong: I proofread like a champ. If there were an Olympic event for proofreading, I would take at least the bronze medal, maybe the gold. I have consistently out-proofed every candidate on every editing test I’ve taken for editorial positions. I even find unintentional mistakes in people’s tests, scads of them. At a large publishing company I worked for, one that produced more than ninety magazines and had an editorial staff in the zillions, I was recognized by the group’s managing editor as the best proofreader he’d seen in his decade with the company.

My ability to proofread is, apparently, only outpaced by my ability to brag about my ability to proofread. It’s not even that hot of a skill. Why can’t I be the best planker or illusionist or dog whisperer? Why can’t I invent some awesome new bobby pin-based hairstyle-enhancing device that sells millions? Or a self-folding handkerchief? Heck, a self-folding everything-that-is-meant-to-be-folded!

Can you imagine throwing your sheets, towels, kitchen rags and the like—even your undies—on your bed or linen table after they’ve been washed and dried, and all of them FOLDING THEMSELVES while you kick back and sip on some tasty pomegranate juice? Can you IMAGINE that? I can. But I can’t do anything beyond the imagining. That’s because my skill lies in the area of proofreading.

PROOFREADING! It’s like reading, only it’s a specific type of reading of a specific type of document, with specific symbols and notes for the printer and whatnot—which 90 percent of writers, editors, designers and printers don’t even know anymore! (If there even are printers involved, which there aren’t when it comes to digital publishing. There often aren’t other writers or editors, either. So who exactly are my symbols and notes for?)

What the hell? My whole world is caving in right here, right now as I contemplate the boringness of my skill coupled with the outdatedness of it. My ability to proofread is like a beige argyle sweater vest for men or a brick of tofu sold the mid-’80s at The Earth Natural Foods in Norman, Oklahoma. (Mid-80s tofu, for those who don’t know, don’t remember or weren’t alive in the mid-80s, was so bland it possessed a nasty nontaste aftertaste. At least the kind sold in Oklahoma.)

I mean, PROOFREADING? That’s what I have to work with, to show off about? That’s a bragging FAIL.

The problem with proofing my own work is that I like to publish my writing as soon as I’ve written it. (None of that waiting around to see if the work is “quality”—that’s not how I roll.) My tight production schedule gives me very little time to go through the entire editorial process before putting the work out there. Sure, this is a self-imposed schedule. I could give myself overnight or something instead, or as much time as I want.

But no. Once it’s written, it must go live ASAP. That’s my compulsion derangement style.

Now Hayden is looking up at me, with that look that tells me she trusts me completely.

Why is it that almost all the dogs and children I’ve met have trusted me implicitly, while few of the adult humans I’ve met have exhibited the same level of trust?

I dreamed last night that someone I care about, a poet, was living behind a crack house in a hole he’d dug in the earth and covered with a rock. One day, he pushed the rock aside, left the hole and fell in love.

He and the woman he loved rented a studio apartment a few blocks away from the crack house. He bought a folding cot that resembled a hospital bed. She said it was hideous. He said the metal frame could be painted bright blue and that the color would really liven up the space. She told him to get rid of it.

Dejected, he ran off, leaving the cot behind.

Nobody could find him. Weeks passed. I knew where he’d gone. Back to the hole.

I made my way behind the crack house and started shifting rocks until I found him under one, lying next to Charles Bukowski. The soil was carved to fit their bodies perfectly, earthen molds designed to accept them and only them.

They were high. Each had a glassy look. Each was close to anger, but the drugs in their systems prevented them from reaching anger, the way water at the edge of a lake is prevented by various forces from reaching the land just beyond its reach.

“This is what people mean when they talk about being blissed out—this look that is so close to rage but does not permit rage,” I thought.

I pulled my friend up into the world and took him back to the woman he loved.

He never wrote another poem, but he became famous for living under a rock behind a crack house with Charles Bukowski. He was all over YouTube spouting off about Žižek. Everyone loved him, even more than they loved Žižek.

He kept taking drugs. He took up smoking and drinking and abusing. He spray-painted hideous folding cots in bright colors and people called them works of art and put them in museums and bid on them at auctions.

When he walked down the street, long lines formed behind him, like the tail of a comet. This pleased him, but not as much as having the love of the woman he loved. And he had that, finally. He finally had that. And cots galore.

What I’ve been thinking about lately is the difference between doing and being. I find myself shifting into the realm of being, as opposed to doing.

Not that being and doing are mutually exclusive. Not at all. But for me, doing has always been the driving force, with the idea that being comes from doing and not the other way around.

I am inside of being right now, and inside of becoming. From this position, the doing will reveal itself, what I am meant to do—assuming there is anything I am meant to do that my being does not accomplish.

Ultimately, I want to not have to do anything for me to sing my own praises. Once I can do that, I can go back to doing, if that’s what I want to do.

It’s all very confusing. I am confused by it. I am sitting inside that confusion. I am petting it. I am trying to make the confusion feel so comfortable with me, and to feel so comfortable with it, that it rolls over and lets me lightly touch its stomach, its paws, its long, graceful arms. I want it to trust me implicitly, as I am learning to trust it.

Confusion. Confusion. That’s not what it is. Not at all. Not that, not that. There’s the pesky trap of language again, and the trap of culture that led me to the trap of language. Confusion is like the hideous cot before it’s been painted a bright color. What I feel is something else: the hideous cot after being painted the bright color.

Uncertainty. That’s what it is. I am sitting with this uncertainty.

Right here. I am right here.

I have a writer’s dog, there’s no doubt about it. She’s sleeping with one eye, watching me with the other. The click of the keys under the direction of my fingers seems to calm her. He ears are up. Her breathing slow and steady.

I don’t think she’d rather be anywhere than where she is right now, beside her writer. Her writer who loves her.