Learning to Walk on Broken Glass

"One day, some people came to the master and asked, 'How can you be happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness, and death?' The master held up a glass and said 'Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably, and it glistens in the sunlight. I touch it, and it rings! One day, the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.'"  - Achaan Chah Subato  -  Theravandan meditation master

In my Facebook feed, I saw a snippet of a post from 10 years ago.  A photo of Barkley that had been posted in remembrance on that first Christmas after we lost him.  So many pictures from those happy times.  Happiness is still found, but the people and souls who made up our lives then have changed drastically. In the last few years, I've said goodbye to Barkley, Abby, and Lorelei Lab, my brother, my dad, and my stepbrother.  Now my little sister (biological) is fighting for her life with Stage IV cancer.

As children, we view the world as if it will always be as it is that day. Mom and Dad will always be there; the dog will live forever. There is little that cannot be fixed with glue, a bandage, and Mom's chocolate chip cookies. As we get older, those perceptions sometimes remain: that we will live happily ever after; that we will have children, who will have children, who will have children, the family living forever, in a defined order of aging and passing. We go into adulthood believing what is useful for us to believe, or rather what is intolerable for us NOT to believe.

After Barkley's death, we went out to see my Dad to laugh and remember much more than just the life of a dog.  While I was there, I took Dad and my new husband one day up to the cemetery on top of a hill, where we could watch our shadows upon two small graves. My brother did not go; still weary from both chemo and radiation, but helping us prepare flowers to take to those graves.

I remember standing there, shafts of sun hitting that small stone, listening to the short song of a hidden bird who sang four short notes, then ceased, as from a distance came the incurious, calm sound of bells. As my Dad did, I realized long ago that one must sometimes don that shirt of flame, which we do not have the power to remove but only to bear, without being devoured by the blaze.

There is no perfect order, there is no guarantee, but there still is, and always will be beauty. If we didn't learn that, we'd only move without living and grieve without weeping, neither worth the toll they take on that which remains.  For myself, I chose now to weep, and with that, remember.

I think again of those beliefs peculiar to childhood, namely those things we believe simply because we are too young not to believe. The first was Santa Claus.  I had my doubts the first year I sat on Santa's lap at the hardware store, and he was wearing black geek glasses. Santa should look like Santa, not a 30-year-old CPA. Still, I kept quiet, buying Mom's explanation that he was just Santa's stunt double, Santa being busy that day. Certainly, Santa was real; he had to be real. 

Then there was the Tooth Fairy. Dad still has this little note, written in my handwriting, an affidavit to the Tooth Fairy attesting that indeed I did lose my tooth, but I swallowed it with the piece of apple that pried it loose. It's wrapped around a little plastic box filled with baby teeth. Big Bro was a little less subtle. One night, long after I was asleep, Dad was alerted from the bathroom where he was preparing for bed with a "Dad, I caught the Tooth Fairy," and he had Mom by the arm and was tickling her, and they were BOTH laughing. 

The Easter bunny had just a slight role at Easter, being a tradition to bring sweets to celebrate the gift and the Sacrifice of Jesus, rather than being the reason for the whole holiday. Still, before church, we loved to find the little baskets outside the door, with candy eggs and a chocolate bunny.  Until one day, when we got up, and there was no basket.

 Mom and Dad announced we were too old for the Easter Bunny.  Instead, they were taking us on an outing tomorrow! To the State Capital! Yes, children getting to visit a government building instead of a basket of candy! You can only imagine our excitement. On the drive there, we whispered intricate conspiracies from the back seat to get out of this to no avail, not wanting to hurt our Mom's feelings. So we learned what a rotunda was. Dad finagled a tour at a local brewery on the way back, likely needing a drink after watching our tax dollars in action.

Watching the cans getting processed was a whole lot more fun than politicians in suits, and as we drove home, Mom did stop and get us some ice cream, realizing the day hadn't gone as she'd hoped but appreciating that we at least tried. I think deep down, we had known for some time the Easter Bunny was our Mom and Dad. But we were not yet openly willing to admit to another fractured fairy tale.

 Still, though, our parents let us hold on to the perception that the world was unbroken as long as they could. Some things, though, could not wait until adulthood. One was finding out we were adopted. So many people, then, and even now, ask me about biological parents, and I have no answers for them. But for the reason of the severing of that tie, which is not the concern of the world, neither of us sought to find them, outside the scope of our hurt or their harm, even if we refused to pass judgment for the reasons we ended up where we did. Or perhaps we did pass judgment, but were simply unwilling to pronounce sentence.

All I can truly say is my brother and I came into the best possible family.  Disciplined, loving, hard-working people who came from nothing by way of material means or privilege and still crafted a life of learning and beauty. Our clothes were handed down or handmade, our food from the garden, pasture, or forest behind the house, and our bikes were used.  But we had everything that was truly important, and that was a deep appreciation for every day, even those marked with illness or imperfection, easily forgotten when we were greeted upon returning home by our Mother's smile and the joyous bark of a dog.  

This was the beauty of family, simultaneously fragmented and undefeated, emboldened and afraid, yet still seeing the good in the world around us.  So we carried on, my brother and I, as we told our stories.  "Remember when Dad was told to give me the 'birds and the bees, boys and girls are different talk’ because Mom was sick?  It consisted of a photo of a boy from the Sears catalog in his underwear, a finger pointed to a critical area, and the admonishment "Don't kick your brother there!"  He would then laugh and remind me of something silly I had done in school, memories that shone in the sunlight on the telling, his laughter still ringing like a touch on glass. In our stories, we were children, and our favorite dog was always with us. We were not just immortal; we were invincible. We would run and run until our bones turned to water, and we fell in a puddle of arms and legs and barking dog, forever joyful.

On the den wall is a family tree my aunt drew with careful calligraphy, giving us each a copy. I note many branches, some ending abruptly as some died young, some were widowed, some childless, a lifelong bachelor or spinster among them. Now, on a branch, which had ended abruptly, is a name, next to mine, something I owe in part to a dog named Barkley.

For Barkley was indeed my family: his story, joining these others, each entwined into a family history of black sheep, white knights, the victors, the vanquished, each carrying with them loves and burdens and more than one four-legged companion with whom they shared the journey.  Each name, name by name and page by page, will be laid down until inevitably, only one name will remain, for that glass is indeed, inevitably broken. That person will, I hope, trace the names and whisper the stories that haunt the winds, even if no one is left to hear, but ghosts on the page, with no earthly house in which they wait for us.

As I start to weep, a hand reaches out to touch my face, in benediction, in blessing. That is the true beauty which sustains us; a birth and sacrifice on which the world was saved is re-enacted here in this world every day, in the saving grace of a small, imperfect family and the memory of a dog.

 - LBJ

Sunny D. Lab's Favorite Christmas Carols

Bark the Herald Angels Sing

Silent Night – While I Quietly Ate YourNew Italian Pumps

Toys to the World – The Stuffies Rain

Away in The Crate – Because I ate Mom’s Shoes

We Three Kongs

I'm Dreaming of a Dog Biscuit

Shepard’s Pie Carol (Beef!)

O Come All Ye Faithful - (only if there is a treat involved)

Angels We Have Herd on High (for our Border Collie Friends)

O, Holey Night, (I Chewed Through Your New Slipper!)

Hall-eluia (Mom left the baby gate blocking the bedrooms open!)

I Saw Mommy Kissing the Cat

All I want for Christmas (is whatever you're eating)

I'm Pooping in the House (Baby It's Cold Outside).

Sleigh Ride (Argghhhhh To the VET!)

O’ Christmas Tree, O' Christmas Tree, How tempting are your branches...

Let It Snow (I've Shredded Your Couch Cushions!)

Do You Hear What I Hear? (No, You Can't Because Dogs Can Hear Four Times Better Than You).

So Much For a Quiet Retirement :-)

>

After 17 inches of snow, the rain began last night. The backyard is now a slushy mess, which Sunny loves. But drying her off with a beach towel requires 4 hands, so I got a "Chicken Stick" out ahead of time (her "let Mom write" bribe snack).  I then placed it on the counter before she came in from the fenced yard.

Coming inside, she gets a small, hard, round sweet potato treat for staying still while being dried off on the enclosed porch.

She gently takes the treat in her mouth, then spots the Chicken Stick as she enters the kitchen.

She SPEWS out the hard treat in a 60-degree arc towards my kneecaps at 1200 meters per second like a Canine Claymore. 

Sunny then stares at the chicken stick til I hand it over.

Then it's time for a zoomie in the living room before passing out to snore on the couch.

 I don't think I'm going to get any writing done today.

Every Fire is the Same Size

A wise elder of the Seneca tribe once said, "Every fire is the same size it starts".

All of us have that fire within us.  But what makes it grow is so much more varied than simply fuel, heat, and oxygen.

Of course, there are some of us who literally and figuratively "play with matches". I remember being a kid, we'd go to the Oregon coast regularly, where we had a little rental cabin, now an eyesore of a condominium complex. I loved that area, the mysterious forests, the open shore, and those times when the fog rolled in, blurring the edges between safety and peril.  

On one particular trip, the beach was covered with driftwood, left by a storm, cast well up from the tide line, where it had dried out. My brother and I built a little bonfire to roast marshmallows and apparently set (according to Mom) "The entire beach on fire." It didn't get the press that the detonated, dead whale did, but after the fire department left, and the small blaze was put out, I think my matches were taken away.

That fire was always smoldering. Growing up in a small town, I couldn't WAIT to get out, to get away from a future that for most was the pulp and paper mills with life's ultimate goal, a bigger boat in the driveway. That fire lent itself to music, to motion, and eventually, as all budding hearts know, to that first love. But between us was that inevitable veil, woven of sunbeams and shadows, and I instinctively stepped back and away, so as not to catch it ablaze.

The years passed by in a blur, thousands of miles of charted and uncharted skies, bad airline food, and dispatchers who argued with you about whether the flight was safe to make; my one shining moment there, when I said "we're not launching, the thunderstorms are bad. . . look, the control tower just caught fire, we're going home". I then slammed the phone down in his ear, a joyful noise that anyone born in the last 30 years is SO missing out on. 

I have looked at more than one sky over the years, and adjusted my course, seeing something in the portent of the clouds that meant something as strong to me as God would be to a believer, filled with wonder, and more than a little afraid.  For I was just one lonely sinner, and my craft was held together by pre-war engineering, aged metal, and more relays than should be allowed by law.

There are short periods in our young lives that hold no fixed place in memory, but only as the recollection of emotion. We are so focused on the contemplation of something worth rejoicing in or suffering over that we barely notice the body breathing, the instinctive urge to run away, or, less instinctively, to fight the darkness, the shadows, and the silence. Days pass, the feelings fade, we have found that living through all such moments is a high and rare favor, a divine grace we have no true appreciation of until looking back on it many years later.

Those moments of recollection come when least expected, there we are faithful to the illusion of life's stage, waiting for either applause or the final curtain, when it happens. Wandering feet stumble upon the blackened remains of extinct fires, kicking up the pale, dark dust of cold ashes. Sometimes it's someone's words, it may be an old photo, or it may simply be the life that is a play of light and shadow. As Blackfoot Warrior Crowfoot once said, "What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset".

In those moments, frames of the past come back, and just as suddenly, leave. The night, filled with the glittering confusion of stars, is stilled by a shadow, sounds cease, forms vanish, and the reality of the universe alone remains. I recall a flight over the Prime Meridian after stopping for fuel in Greenland. The Prime Meridian is the common zero for longitude and time reckoning throughout the globe. The one place where we are all at one point and the moment stands still, an infinite place where, for a second, time and motion are tethered to our aircraft like a careless rope.

 As we crossed over, I synchronized my watch with my copilot’s and attempted to capture that time, to somehow gather it to us. Only then does it hit all we have experienced aloft. Different languages and sights, smells, and sounds; the roar of a turbine engine, as it started with that artistic endeavor of curse words and meditation, the underlying scent of jet fuel, oily and dark, that hung in the mist on an early morning ramp. Yet such thoughts disappeared as the sound of the engines brought us back to our tasks; we're still at the Prime Meridian where there was precision and accord, spoken with the deep anesthetic hush of sameness. What was ahead was unknown, what was behind, we could never reclaim, outside only the glitter of stars pouring their light, ceaseless and proud, as time paused in the brief dark stillness of night.

My wings long since hung up, the fire within me has settled into a gentle, steady warmth, larger than the fire that it started with, but without the heat that can damage beyond what can be reclaimed.  I have traveled much, suffered a little, loved, and fought. I see the world for what it is: a place that contains both darkness and great light, both because it is inhabited by man. But without the darkness, though, we can't recognize the light.

We recently took down the remnants of the ramp built for our rescue dog, Lorelei, to access the motorized elevator my husband built for her to get in and out of our Mission Bungalow. The main portion of the assembly was carefully stored for future senior rescues. But the ramp, hastily treated when we redid it for her few, final days to lessen the incline, was rotting, and there was no saving it. I could picture her, tail wagging as she walked up it into the enclosed platform that would take her to the top of the steep stairs, and a sob broke from me as I took in that place where she had been so happy.

But I'd not trade that time, including the tears, for any amount of gold. As I write, I smile as I think of other things, a name that wakes up memories, a young woman writing in a journal by firelight, the small bonfire that glints like a jewel, the words scented with the smokey atmosphere of future regrets, the subtle perfume as the wind breathes through the trees, the advanced sentry of the dark forest that stands watch over the open water, She puts the journal down, as a line of surf thunders on what would otherwise be an empty beach, ignored between the hills and the sea.

There is no longer an ocean outside, but a Great Lake, the waters sleeping unseen, unstirring and mute.  As the subtle light from the east blooms in my window this morning, I simply pause and take a breath.  At that moment, my world centers, no thoughts of memories or regrets, just this single sunrise, a blazing act of special creation, disconnected from today and tomorrow. In this timeless moment that is the forerunner of sunrise and thunder, the world stills, but my heart remains a kindled bright spark.

Still Life:

I snapped a picture of Sunny sitting on the couch, contemplating the flowers.  So I couldn't resist . . . . 

Still Life With Sunny

Snow Daze

 

The first snowball throw (you can see the snowball at about 1:20 by the lawn chair).

I know it's here somewhere.

Helloooo?

Hey Dad, Hey Dad.  I gotta go, can you shovel out my bathroom over there in the corner?

Come on, Dad, while we're young here.

Now it's time for. . . ZOOMIES!

And we're off to the races!

Home stretch!

The snow was fun, but I missed Lambchop.

Harlow has Left the Kingdom

Princess Harlow surveying her kingdom - Photo from How Sam Sees It

Our friend Christine from the How Sam Sees It blog (https://howsamseesit.blogspot.com/) had to say goodbye to her longtime companion, Harlow, this week.  Harlow's brother Ramble left for the Bridge in early summer, so this has been so very difficult for their family.  I remember when Harlow came to live with them, 13 years ago. So many smiles, so many memories.  Christine hasn't blogged in a few years, but she is active on Facebook. Several of us have maintained a friendship with her, and Harlow became a big part of our daily lives as well, welcoming her younger siblings, Ed and Jane, into the family and showing them what being a good pup was all about.   She will indeed be missed.

From The Book of Barkley - some words of comfort and hope for solace.

CHAPTER 48– Goodbye

The drive from the Vet to home was as long as a lifetime, a collar and leash, lying on the back seat where only hours ago, lay someone so excited to be going to the Vet, never afraid of that place, only happy for the extra attention and special treats.

Can I live with the drive, knowing he would never return?

There is no pain, no regrets.  Everything I gave him, he gave me back tenfold, listening to me chat away about my day, things that by my oath of duty, I couldn't tell anyone else. He was my black knight with the wagging tail, the fur-covered Kleenex when I cried. He was the finder of slippers and the keeper of hearts.

He was a dog, but he was much more than a dog.

He was support, he was patience.  He was the promise that even with the worst mistakes, he still loved me.  He was that fire that cauterized me against loneliness and fear, the thump of his tail like the sound of a heart in the womb, creature comfort there in the dark and unknown.   He became the unevictable place in a heart so bruised; it had pushed everyone harshly away who got too close, teaching me to trust again. With that trust, I found my heart's twin, who happily became his family, as well.

As a family, we take care of each other.  Having a pet is a commitment just as is any bond, either visible or invisible with another living creature, is.  It's not just being a good friend during the good times; it's being a friend during surgery, explosive diarrhea, and that pile of vomit in the corner on the one square of carpet that wasn't protected by a cheap throw rug.

You do what you can to help them during those scary, shadowed times, with tender, soothing words. You don't lay your hand upon them with forceful curses and belittlement.  They look at you to be the strong one, the better one, even if it's difficult to do.  They trust you to act from your heart and not from the infinite, internal voices of human fear and angst.

They pay it back in ways that can't be captured, but by the measured beat of a tail.  On those nights when you come home really, really late from work, your soul weary, the house dark, they will quietly come up to you, leaning into you, drawn from their slumber to your side like steel and magnet. At that moment, there as both your hearts beat in the silence, you realize that every measure of sickness and health was worth it.

For there is a great measure of trust and love contained in that warm web of bone and fur, the eyes that can commandeer your pancakes and the tail that wags for you as if you were the only person on the planet for them, and maybe you are.

Their time is so short, indeed, but that does not mean you should not love.  In "people" years, Barkley was probably sixty-something. But they were years condensed down into their core elements, as if a simple, ordinary succession of days were not enough, as if the love and all of that faithfulness, the freedom of the field, and the tug of a leash towards the horizon were compressed down into something as hard and brilliant as a diamond.  Everything, every single element of so many long days is there in that short span of time, compounded into that one leap, one surge,  towards the lights of a vehicle in the drive, one joyous bark that contains within it simply  "My person is home.”

He cared nothing about where we lived, how I looked, or how much money was in the bank.  All he cared about was how to bequeath that which sustained him, in his too short life, his faith and his love, as he patiently waited for my return.

When he greeted me, he seemed to know when I just needed to sit in the quiet.  He seemed to know when I wanted to play.   If there were a ball to be thrown, he would abandon all restraint and give every fiber of himself to reach that which was before, only a dream; unmitigated glory.  His life was not deadlines, or deals, or caring about the things that in reality will not matter at the end of life.  His life was simply a joyous run ahead of that avalanche of time that would be his enemy had he any concept of it.

But time caught up with him, forcing a decision that I hoped wouldn't have to be made. But meds could not keep the pain at bay, and amputation and chemo were only going to buy a very short amount of time, at the expense of his comfort. I could not in good conscience make him go through that, for there was no cure, only a continuation of pain. So I was there, by his side, not passing on the burden solely to someone in a white lab coat, loving and caring, but not his "Mom". Although he never formally took an oath, paw placed upon a revered document, flag on the wall, an oath was taken.  When he came home with me as a puppy, he swore his life to serve and protect.  That was his duty, as it is mine.

He had enough medication to briefly take the pain away, a big bowl of food that wasn't kibble, and all the treats he could happily gobble down.  There was no fear in him, no pain, and no anxiety. Dad and Mom said goodbye as I placed my cool hand on his warm flank and talked to him down at floor level, in all those murmured words that meant something only to us.  Where else could I be but to just be there as the needle quietly slipped in and he was free from all burden, one surge, one leap towards the light so easily and joyously, so as to lose all sense of restraint, weightless upon the warm, invisible air.  He was free, the pain of bone and flesh departed, only one long, joyous, soundless bark as he went Home to wait by the Rainbow Bridge until we can catch up.

He was more than a dog. He was love that crept in on four paws and remains, as long as memory lasts. - LBJ

Garden Tools- a Holiday Book Suggestion

Poetry isn't something I usually read.  I've enjoyed "When the Plow Cuts" by Katie Andraski, a former professor at Northern Illinois University, as well as the works of Thomas Merton and Denise Levertov. Otherwise, I'll usually "pass go, do not collect $200".  

Then I got

• Garden Tools by David W. Berner

The author uses nature as a vehicle to explore attachment, history, and memory, much of which resonates with me now that I'm older.

I absolutely loved the earlier work of this award-winning former Writer in Residence at the Hemingway Birthplace House in Chicago.  I got hooked when David asked to be a beta reader for  "Walks with Sam", written not long after the Book of Barkley was published.  

And I kept reading.  

If you are having trouble thinking of a gift for that person in your life who already "has everything", give the gift of words. Newly published, Garden Tools is available through Finishing Line Press or on Amazon (click on the book name in green above for a link) 

Just a couple of snippets of longer poems that stuck with me.

Desert Prayer

If I were to swallow the earth

I would taste cinnamon

in the desert's red rocks

where the light catches

the edges of the heart,

and the table is set for one.

-----------------------------

-----------------------------

Dog Dreams

---------

---------

Instinct has her considering the chase of an ancient wolf, 

but her hopes are only dreams

and her desires only foolish.

She believes in herself, but I know better,

and the squirrels know too, laughing their way

back to the tree

And in the relentless glare of a low sun, 

promises are lost in the distant fire, 

burning the edges of imaginings,

holding yearnings beyond a desperate reach.

Pick up a "hold in your hand and savor" copy of this for yourself or as a gift; you will be thankful you did. - LBJ

Beware of Bears

We were forecast to receive up to 18 inches of lake effect snow from Lake Michigan.  It was more like 2.5 inches, but it was cold.

After she returned from walkies with dad, I looked out and saw Sunny in the fenced part of the yard, and for a minute thought we had a polar bear on premises :-)

Life on a Layover

Little Prince lived alone on a tiny planet no larger than a house.. . .

The suitcase is empty, but it is not. There in the bottom, a small piece of paper with some writing on it.  I read it and I smile.

The bag's opened up, and some toiletries are spread around the hotel bathroom.  Another day on the road.  I guess the wandering spirit runs in my blood, passed on from my Air Force father to me. Ever since I got a control yoke in my hand I've been wandering across miles of land, across rivers and towns in whatever way I can, be it dromedary-like transport plane, raggedly land rover or swayback mule.

I have an anchor, over time it's been a large house, a small house, it's been simply a suitcase and someone I love.  But when I'm there, I am thoroughly happy, for that anchor, instead of being confinement, is simply the base from which I move, a fulcrum that amplifies the effects of my motion, the beat of my heart.

St. Expurey said, "He who would travel happily must travel light". And so I did, the earliest memories little more than the remembered feel of the starched uniform shirt I wore, the dense oily smell of jet fuel lingering on the tongue like smoke. It seems as if all my early years were reflected in the window of those moving airplanes. I see my reflection, my past, through bug-splattered glass that tinted the world bright.

The airplane, the destination, and the years changed, as did the landscape of my career; however, some things remained the same. Days in an aircraft traveling far. Miles and hours spent watching the landscape, silver grain elevators, red-winged birds, mountains formed of ice and fluid need, and rivers without borders, all blending into a bright diorama of life racing past. The world looks different from above, clouds massive and dark, looming up like a target in a gun sight, looking twice the size of an ordinary man.

I have spent half of my life it seems, on the way to somewhere. I have watched a hundred cumulus clouds erupt, the mass assassination of mayflies, and the disappearance of a slice of cherry pie at a tiny airport diner, and the journey was only beginning.

Each day comes another opportunity for adventure. The ride to the hotel was something to remember, in and of itself. A shuttle service, stopping at several hotels on the way. The driver, sullen and demonstrating why driving was his second language. You know how, when most people drive, particularly professional drivers, they brake by applying increased pressure to the brake pedal, allowing for a smooth stop. Not Mr. Shuttle. The only brake technique he used was to stomp on the brake, let up, let the car roll, and stomp again. It would take four or five of these stomps to equal the force of one normal braking action. No traffic, heavy traffic, it made no difference.

I started to feel like a bobblehead doll, and the $ 25 I saved on a taxi was beginning to look like one of those small decisions that had significant, oversized repercussions. But perhaps I should have been more patient. I suppose it's challenging to concentrate on braking when texting while driving in heavy traffic.

I simply made sure my seatbelt was fastened and then bent down as if into a stiff wind, horns of the impatient exploding into the rain-split asphalt that opened and closed with opportunity. Like all traffic in big cities, we carried on, sharp with speed, and then trickling to a standstill, the road dipping into the fog, like a hand cleaving water, the headlights showing the grey bulk of streams of cars coming down the hill like rain.

When the last guest got off and it was just me, he quit texting and had a series of increasingly heated exchanges in his mother tongue with his dispatcher about how he only got 47 US dollars in fares for this trip, and he wanted to get a number one spot when he got back to the airport. (Actually, sir, you got 68 dollars in fares, one that you did not log and pocketed. I notice things like that.)

The arguing got more heated. I am not fluent in languages. I can listen and relate to small things in a number of languages that come in handy, such as Russian, Chinese, and Farsi, just enough to know when it's a good time to get out of Dodge or when happy hour is almost over.  It comes in handy, the knowing, the looking, I think, as I catch quick glimpses of other drivers in the failing sunlight, faces fixed and grim as they fought to get upstream.

The van driver, still yelling into the phone while almost whacking several people on bicycles,  finally stopped in front of my hotel. I paid him the fare plus a 15 percent tip. He did NOT look happy, expecting much more from the American Redhead in nice clothes.

He muttered something under his breath about what he had to do to get a big tip, and I replied -

Вам надо научиться использовать торможения.

He was still standing there, mouth agape, when I went up to my suite.

But I had arrived. The hotel bulked long and dark against the city sky, but inside was golden warmth, a bite of fresh apple, a much-needed bottle of water. Sitting still for a minute, taking care of the aching neck, and soon it was time to meet my partner for this assignment, while we went over notes for tomorrow's business over a light meal.

After a short walk back to the hotel, my partner making sure I got to my room safely, I made a couple phone calls to loved ones, wanting to let them know I was in and safe. My Dad always worries when I travel, even when I don't tell him where I'm going.  So do friends, and I try to keep in touch. Then I took a long bath in a tub so deep that you could hide a Mastodon in it and slept until 6:30 in the morning. Unfortunately, it was 6:30 in the morning where I wanted to be, not where I was at.

So I got up, made coffee, and watched a stain of light snare itself between steel and rain, spreading until the stain grew light and the light became morning.

By choice or not, travel is part of my life.  But travel brings something to you that people who live in the insular world of their hometown their whole lives may miss. It pushes your boundaries. When you travel, you can become invisible if that is what you choose. I like that. I like to be a quiet observer. Walking alone along the edge of another ocean, as it stretches away into space with its illusion of freedom. Strolling through the celestial hush of a square that has seen generation after generation, the sun glinting off marble where the monotonous rain has washed it bright. What stories would that old building tell, what makes these people who they are?

You don't have to understand the language that is spoken, only the language of the streets, the scents, the stone. Without understanding a word around you, the language becomes simply a musical background for watching the water flow onto the shore or a leaf blowing in the wind, calling nothing from you.

You may have work that takes much of your time, yet still, in this strange place, there are hours open to you.  You don't have a lawn to mow or bills to pay.  There is only life, as simple and inescapable as an empty hallway, where you can leave behind for a moment, the burdens that you freely assume and carry as bright and ambitiously as brass. For this moment, you are simply a creature of choice, free to visit stately buildings, savor a cup of coffee, or simply go watch the trains. You're open, if only for this moment, as a child to receive all of the world, not just your own.

It is all there for the taking, multicolored flowers in bright density, the smell of fresh bread baking, laid out like fabric on the ground, which you pick up and wrap around you, drawing in a breath through the scented cloth. This fabric, this essence of a place, that contains both the dead and the living, the blooms of lush flowers, the decay of a building, the smells that are both the death and the birth of a city. You are a historian, a hunter free to explore, seek, find, and then return home, bringing memories to lay on your doorstep.

From the memories come words.  They may be only in your head, or they may be on paper.  But they tell a story, one composed of past journeys on ancient rails washed clean by wind and rain and tempered by time, written to the mournful sound of a train whistle echoing through ancient memories and newfound dreams.  The words strung out like cars, beyond which wait the world and life, hope unrestrained and incontrovertible.  They recall the memory of it all, moving fast now, wind rushing past like a flood, leaving you breathless.

The suitcase is open on a simple wooden stand. It is empty, but in it there is so much, the smell of crushed sage as I bounced across the desert in a jeep, the wood-smoked burnt woods of autumn, the smell that is untouched ground after a rain, the rich earthy scent of something being lit that had for so long been cold.
Love - Brigid

Freedom's Ride

They say only the young have rash moments. You know those times when the laws of physics are still something to be learned about years later in university. Times when your mom is busy in the kitchen, your dad is at work, and you are left to your own devices.

With my big brother, we cut a swath through our parents' patience. There was the time we took the TV apart, literally, when we were 12 years old. Mom was still amazed we didn't electrocute ourselves as she surveyed the CRT, flyback transformer, demodulator, and filters scattered across her clean floor. It was worth the grounding (literally and figuratively). Then, the less physically risky, though not without its own penance. Mom and Dad had an electric blanket with dual controls, something NEW. We reconfigured it so Mom's control operated Dad's side, and vice versa. Mom woke up, "I'm freezing!" and cranked up the heat. Then Dad would say, "I'm hot!" and would crank his side down. It took them two nights to figure it out. Grounded again.

The world was ours to take, living as we did at that age, in advance of adulthood, when life knows no pauses and has no fear of what the future brings. I'm not sure when it changed. Mom's cancer was turning terminal, the splash of cold water against the bow of our lives, her death in her late 50s, that shadow line that marked the official end of that unfettered road.

I can't say I didn't do anything rash again; every fork in the road has its own seduction, but everything was tinged with the mark of mortality, the portent of possible loss. If you don't love hard, you won't be hurt, you think, reconciling yourself to the life of a gregarious loner.

40-some years later, with as many lessons of loss etched on my heart as there were marks in my logbook, I embarked on what was the rashest decision of all. A tattoo? You say. No. A change of job, residence, or last name? Certainly not. No, it was a decision made one night, Lorelei, our last rescue, having been diagnosed with an aggressive soft tissue sarcoma. We took her to the best Veterinary oncologist in all of Chicagoland, whatever the expense. They went in to see what could be done, but it was inoperable; she wouldn't have survived any attempt to remove the embedded mass. While she waited to come out of recovery, a dash was made to a local thrift store to obtain an extra-soft baby blanket, which would provide her with some extra warmth and comfort on the long drive home.

We took her home to make her remaining days as joyful and pain-free as possible, when the notice came in from the Rescue group that we had adopted her from. They had a young yellow Lab with an orthopedic defect that might need the "doggie elevator" my husband had made for Lorelei. Honey Bee was her American Kennel Club name. She was 10 months old, from an Amish Breeder who had released her when it became apparent she couldn't be sold due to markedly bowed front legs. Poor nutrition? Genetics? Growing up in a small pen for 10 months in a barn?" We don't know, and didn't ask; all we knew was they had the good hearts to take her some distance to a well-known rescue that would find her the right home.

So, with a thumbs up from EJ (who, honestly, would probably say yes if I asked to buy a tank), we brought her home. A PUPPY. What was I thinking? I'm 66 years old, still working, and I've now got an overgrown puppy with NO training, NO socialization, and the urgent energy of a 40-pound Velociraptor on Crack (with puppy teeth to match). Add in a husband who can be on the road 2-3 weeks a month, and there was a moment I almost called and said, "wait, I change my mind", but like that moment when that first labor pain starts, there's no calling it off.

Her first night was great; she had some cuddle time with Lorelei and her new mom and dad, and then slept next to EJ as he lay on the futon beside her. As he waved to leave for work the next morning, I thought, "I can do this!"

It was the calm before the storm. I likened it to those long, late flights overseas, when storms were forecast but not yet visible, the engines humming in a drowsy sky, senses alert but not fully engaged in the fatigue. On such nights, the few stars above cast their touch upon our aircraft, shafts of light penetrating a sky that was turning from clear to the blackened soot of nearby fire. The massed clouds all around would have had a singular significance of effect, had we been able to see them ahead. But the aircraft's radar was not yet painting any threat. You sensed it was there, but with no hint of the direction from which it would come, the nearing of a menace, feeling like it was coming from all and every direction. Then that first spray would hit the window as your radar screen lit up with what looked like the big red dot on a 7-Up beverage can.

I remember the first sharp expression of small puppy teeth in my flank; she had discovered that people have bottoms, and they are biteable. Ouch! It really didn't hurt that bad through my jeans, but the surprise came out in my voice, and she thought it was a game. The next thing I knew, she was running and jumping off the recliner, launching herself at the couch like one of the Flying Wallendas, knocking over a plant in the process, while Lorelei looked on, taking notes.

The typhoon had arrived, and I named her "Sunny."  Phonetically, it was close enough she responded immediately, yet avoiding the whole standing out on the porch at 6 am shouting at her in the yard while EJ loaded up his car for work, "Honey, NO, not the rabbit poop" or "Honey, NO! NO, don't lick that!" The neighbors would be calling the authorities (or the local sanitarium).

Lorelei was overjoyed to have a friend, and Sunny played with her surprisingly gently, then lay protectively nearby when Lorelei slept frequently in those last weeks with us. Bittersweet scenes to view, as it was impossible to see without that sense of unavoidable finality. The quietness as they slept came over me like a forecast of abrogation, that pause before the heart ceases to beat like a rundown timepiece.

The coming months were marked by continued mayhem, including stolen tools and shoes, shredded rolls of paper towels taken from the counter, as well as one late-night trip to the Vet when a dew claw was torn in the Zoomie to end all Zoomies. There were laughs, tears, and many days I would have gladly dispensed myself of the regrettable opportunity of "guess what gross thing I have in my mouth, Mom?"

We had a local dog walker who came by as needed, especially when we were working, playing with her, and teaching her the skills we were slowly building with her daily. But I'd still come home, approaching her crate like it was the den of some wild beast, with bravery but some bluster. I'd open the door while singing the notes of "Ride of the Valkyries", and our evening would commence, measured not in hours but by the kinetic energy of flying fur.

But, as with any storm, the skies clear, the winds calm, at least in the land of Puppy-Ville. It was during those last weeks before retirement that we faced one of our largest challenges, both intellectually and emotionally, on the job in several years. The loss of life was immense, the senselessness of it all, a bitter taste on my tongue as I worked late into the night. I'd learned long ago, my first official assignment after the earth shook in Pennsylvania on 9-11, that there was no point in asking "Death, where is thy sting?" as you stand before a vast, smoking hole in the ground. The images that day, 24 years ago, pursued me home, making sleep impossible without a strong shot of Single Malt.

But having put that bottle away years ago, I learned to take comfort as the shadows gathered again, with the little things of joy I had around me. In those last weeks, badge still in my pocket, regret in my fingers, I learned to appreciate the simple pleasure of a young dog. For she was once as I was, living in advance of an end she will not fear coming, because she doesn't conceive of its existence, that beautiful continuity of joy that knows no limits and no introspection.

I wouldn't have traded this decision for anything. - Brigid