Birds of a Feather

 

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.