Dog

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 World of Wounds

I enjoy feeding the birds.

A murmuration of starlings buzzed the cars on I-35 today.

The female northern flicker appears to have selected one of two suitors. The rejected male spent the day looking for the female. He sat in my yard calling for her. “Kyeer, kyeer. Kyeer, kyeer.”

The red-tailed hawk returned to the yard this afternoon. I have a crush.

These birds are my commitment remaining in the present.

I heard a blue jay cheep like a small songbird at the red-tailed hawk today. I’ve never seen that approach before, and I have no idea what informed the behavior.

I just played Vivaldi on my flute for the house finches.

Many people have an idea of what a bird is, but because they don’t pay close attention to birds, they don’t know what an actual bird is.

If you don’t pay close attention to birds, don’t write about them. Certainly don’t snare them in your nondescript haiku. Real birds deserve better than what you have to say about them.

I like men who walk their dogs in the woods.

Two paths trisect the snow-mantled yard: one to the birdbath, another to the bird feeders.

Juxtaposition: a brown creeper on the sweetgum, a bald eagle in the sky.

When I grow up, I want to spend all my time with birds.

Light-Catchers

A staircase of shelf fungus scales the side of a hawthorn tree.

All around me, the ground undulates. Robins shovel leaves in search of food. “Do what you want to do” floats into my mind as clear as birdsong.

A Carolina wren sings a medley that includes the song my wren at home sings. B-flat followed by G-flat, repeated five times.

A female hooded merganser sleeps on a sheet of ice, her mate nowhere in sight. Upstream, a great blue heron squats low in the water, drenching its chest.

I like talking with the old men who don’t seem to have anyone.

Hawthorn tree: Your fungus is soft, your spikes hard. This is life.

At home, I get out my piccolo and play along with the birds.

A child screams like a hawk—or maybe a hawk screams like a child.

Frozen water droplets hang from the branches like thousands of crystal balls. Light-catchers, these drops tell our future.

Trees shred the wind. My dog sleeps.

I feel like the dark-eyed junco in my yard who has the excreta of another bird stuck to its tail.

Language is in my fingers these days, not my mouth.

I am ill and screaming like a starling.

Even the noisy house sparrow calls me back to the present.

My thoughts yellow like old paper.

Winter: Snow remains in the shadow my house casts.

Life: looking down to see the remains of a dead bird at your feet.

Bare tree limbs speak to each other in Morse code.

Life is better since I started pointing my camera away from me. By camera, I mean mind.

Red Birds

Church bells, and two mourning doves flying toward them.

These birds are using me for my birdbath.

A blue jay flew up to my kitchen window and looked at me as if to say, Do you want your life to be wild, or do you want it to be precious?

I am a screen for the shadows of birds.

The birds are the sky’s shadow puppets.

Now a butterfly is at my window. And a stink bug.

On Nextdoor, my neighbors are trying to pair monarch caterpillars with the milkweed plants they need to survive.

Today is a long drive behind a garbage truck.

I am thankful for trees, which provide homes for so many animals.

On the water, twisted leaves look like origami swans.

Fall: An American white pelican circles a small lake in Kansas.

Nostalgia: missing the bald eagles I saw yesterday.

My fingers are still purple from cutting fresh beets.

I love a red bird on a brown fence.

It’s enough to hear the songbird. I don’t turn my head.

Earlier, I saw an old man carrying a large stuffed dog. I like your dog, I said. Don’t touch him, he replied.

Suffering is a dwelling with a large doorway but very little interior space.

The female cardinal is the color of the red maple’s turning leaves.

Tack Coat

The tack coat of dawn gives way to the scumble of morning.

Dawn. Hot pink rubbed over midnight blue. Sudden lightning. My dog in my arms, trembling.

A rabbit appears out of nowhere like a lost thought. I think of an old friend.

Some folks decorate their porches but never sit on them.

Little man down there putting away your grill, come out of your garage and look up.

Some people kill birds. Others put out bird feeders.

Tonight’s sunset turned the sky into a cauldron. Below, a thrasher the color of depleted soil foraged quietly beneath a sapling.

Birds define the air.

How do you see the air without the bird? Assume there are no trees.

In the sky, a great heron goes unnoticed by lovers on a picnic.

A tender young boy watches a pair of red-winged blackbirds as his friends taunt him.

A scissor-tailed flycatcher perches on a stop sign until I get too close with my camera.

The verses are in the land, in the trees before they became paper, in our hearts before they were rewritten by language.

I just saw a man texting while driving a tractor down a major thoroughfare.

I might be getting too involved with the animals who live in my yard.

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.