“If you go slowly enough, six or seven months is an eternity—if you let it be—if you forget old things, and learn new ones. Even a week can last forever.”
Rick Bass, Winter

"In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer."
Albert Camus

Friday, June 22, 2012

Part II: Day 57: Summer with Zoe

The first official calender day of summer was on June 20, and on that day Zoe watched my friends and me do yoga on a boat launch deck at Lake Findley, New York.  She thought it looked like a lot of work for such a hot day, so she napped in the shade. 

Zoe is back to watching the house, barking at the wandering hound who just roamed past the house as I began this post, swimming in the Grass River, and enduring my endless photo shoots on the lawn.

In the past week Zoe has:

eaten barbeque at a picnic for writers at Chautauqua, where she was cooed over by poets and memoirists and novelists and fed bites of pie by an essayist and literary festival director;

attended a literary reading for which she was the subject;

watched a wedding procession accompanied by Scottish bagpipes at the Anthanaeum Hotel;

strolled through pre-season Chautauqua paths and bridges and grasses;

met six women who spent time with her person in elementary school, junior high, and high school in Cleveland, were well-acquainted with her predecessor, Ginger, the family collie/shepherd mix, and know where all the bones and bodies are buried, what books were read, which teacher had eyebrows like caterpillars, which ones were in the closet, which ones made sexist remarks, which ones made us want to learn, how weekends were spent and what music was playing--think Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young--and who kissed which boys and when, where, but not always why, definitely not always why;

dipped her paws into two Western New York lakes;

witnessed the dare-devilry of flying squirrels;

dined out at in the outdoor seating area of a restaurant, reliving her glory days in France when she was served water before her people got their drinks;

illegally entered a rest stop in the Finger Lakes because her person had to pee and thought they both should get ice cream and was not going to leave her in the car in 93-degree weather;

was discussed, petted and admired by many.

The stories and blog posts continue tomorrow . . .

No comments:

Post a Comment