Part II: Day 58: The Literary Dog Gets a Gig

Zoe in front of the Athenaeum Hotel, Chautauqua, with her male human

For the first time in known history, Zoe has been granted entry to the Chautauqua Writers Festival.  She has a room that she shares with her two human attendants in the Victorian hotel, the Athenaeum, on the first floor, across the hall from a student in her person's workshop--a young woman who, like her instructor, sees metaphors everywhere, even in the parking lot, and is writing an essay about a wasp that terrified Darwin because it laid its eggs inside a spider's abdomen and the creature was churned inside out.

When things that belong on the inside are outside it gets scary: ulcers, skin ruptures that look intestinal, parasites, alien embryos, intense emotions--like the kind that a memoirist relives, never exorcising them completely, through writing.  

At the picnic before the reading a clump of admirers have gathered on the grass to love up this dog.  They praise her beauty, her sweet ways, her proffered paws, her polite begging technique, her lean-in hugs.  After her person gives the dog bites of pulled pork and chicken, the nonfiction festival director takes care of dessert.  The lovely tattooed poet who is writing about her relationship with Rilke gets teary-eyed talking about her writing mentors, including this festival director--how they not only nurtured her muse, but how they also found her and her small children a place to live and gave her the will to live when she was in the lowest place ever.  Zoe's person's eyes fill too, and Zoe notes that this is a place where people really share things, essential things, life-affirming things, and not just pulled pork and pie.  The tattooed poet has lived with cats but is drawn to Zoe, she says, because she can see something special about her, something soulful and wise in her eyes that transcends speciesdom.

Zoe with Diana Hume George and Traci Morell

Erica Sklar and Zoe are in love

One of the student interns, a talented nonfiction writer, has veterinary science training.  Zoe's person took to her at once, and Zoe adores her so quickly, so instantly, that it's hard for anyone else to get her attention.  The two submit to a photo shoot, but would rather just commune without all the fuss.

Zoe has a lump on her neck that is seeping.  It was the size of a golf ball before the road trip began, but it's shrinking.  Her people keep patting it down with disinfectant, but then it bleeds.  Even though an oozing growth isn't easy on the eyes, the writers pet her anyway, complimenting her on her lustrous black coat, shiny after being groomed, although one poet at the barbeque suggests that it might be a good idea for her person to wash her hands before she goes to the podium because there's blood on it, which is probably also metaphorical, but not in a good way.  Because Zoe looks so good it's hard to believe that something deadly is growing inside her.  These lumps are the internal made external, even if they aren't harmful--her local vet doesn't think so, but really doesn't know--so they are the focus of her human attendants' administrations.  It comforts them to help make something shrink when other things are so beyond reach.

At the podium, before her person reads, she tries to explain to the audience how Zoe came into her life, how this dog's cancer has changed the way she thinks about time, and how she expected to fall in love with her dog but not like this-- so deeply, completely, helplessly.  She says something about how when humans adopt dogs they risk their hearts because they know they are devoting themselves to a creature with a lifespan that is normally much shorter than theirs, and when that lifespan is limited even more by a disease . . .  Around the room, a few people, she will find out later, are thinking about their own pets and trying not to cry.

Zoe is seated in the back row of this crowd with her male person.  The two humans have wondered how Zoe will comport herself at this event.  This dog is fabulous at parties and weddings.  If people are speaking, delivering toasts, reciting vows, promising to love each other in sickness and in health, feeding each other cake, opening champagne, dancing to bad Eighties music, she is the perfect guest.  Retirement dinners are okay too.  She likes listening to embarrassing tidbits about the retiree's thorough e-mails, idiosyncratic office attire, and generous deeds at the copy machine.  But if it starts to feel too much like a classroom to her, she whines. 

Case in point: her person took her to the final day presentations at the Adirondack Semester in December and at first she thought it was a party and did what she does: quietly made the rounds, leaning into the people who clearly needed to snuggle.  But when the talks went on for just a tad too long, or the blue sky beaming into the window lit up the spot where she stood, she decided it was time to play in the snow.  Her sighs went stereo.  They could be heard in every corner.  She was like the kid with ADD who taps her foot and sighs extravagantly when her person delivers a lecture.  "Gee, I'm sorry.  Was I boring you?" said person is always tempted to say.

Zoe's person tells the assembled that it could go either way depending on what Zoe thinks is going on here: party or school.  This is, of course, a great challenge for a writer at a reading.  Well, it's both, one wants to say, if the purpose of literature really is, as Horace once told us, to delight and instruct: plaire et instruire.  Can you say the same thing about a blog?  Can a blog be held to the same standards?  We don't know.  This is the first time Zoe's person has read something that hasn't been published, let alone shared the posts from this corner in the oral tradition.  It's a little scary.  Like wearing something that belongs inside, outside.  Underwear, say.  Or maybe a nightshirt, like the one with down dog paw prints that her friend Rebecca gave her one year for her birthday.

When she hears her name, Zoe whines audibly.  All human heads turn to look at her again. What has she decided?  Does she want to stick around?

She does.

It doesn't hurt that all the people smell a little like pulled pork.

Although Zoe's person rehearsed and timed her reading, and was able to get through five posts in her allotted 20 minutes when she practiced in her room, when all is said and done, and done and said, and heads have turned to admire the dog in question again, and again, the writer in this corner only has time for three posts: Under Wild Apple Trees, Bark and Soul, and Which Way Do we Go? She wanted to end with Pink Twilight Sky, but hey, the clock has ticked.  There is never enough time. 

Zoe listens respectfully to the whole thing, never making another sound, and for a mad instant her person wonders if the two of them might be able to take this show on the road.  Maybe they could stop at other dog-loving literary venues.  Maybe other dogs could come too.

Then it's over, and the amazing, dog-loving Puerto Rican-American poet, Martin Espada, is coming to the podium.  He will rock and sway, sing and chant, performing poems about immigration, and childhood, and his childhood muses, and the staff at Windows on the World, many of them undocumented workers, who lost their lives in September 11th, and no one will be the same afterwards.  It's going to be one of the best poetry readings this dog's person has ever attended.  Just before he goes on he'll tell Zoe's person that he lost his dog to cancer last year, and he and his wife still haven't gotten over it. 

And Zoe will miss every minute of it. Someone will leave the room and Zoe will tug at the lead to follow.  She's had her fifteen minutes of fame and now it's time to stalk the other Chautauqau dogs out for evening strolls along the lakefront, rest beside the fountain, and lap up a drink at the Victorian hotel.

She's been inside among warm bodies for too long, and the outside beckons.

Kerry Grant, Natalia Singer, Zoe, Kristine Newman, and Ruby at Chautauqua, photo by Diana Hume George

P.S.  The dog's person would like to thank the kind and generous Sherra Babcock and Kristine Newman and Diana Hume George at the Chautauqua Writers Festival for opening all these doors to Zoe and making her feel so much at home.  Kristine even brought her dog over for a play date and swim to tire Zoe out before the reading, and gave her a toy.  These dog-lovers are beautiful humans and Zoe and her person are grateful to have them in the pack.

Chautauqua is supposed to be about the life of the mind, but for this dog, it's the life of the body.  And in particular, the head scratch . . .

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 . . .

Day 59: The Heart of the Matter: a Two-Part Day

Part I: Destiny
I had put February 2 on my calendar months ago.  Jaimy Gordon, who won the National Book Award in 2010 for her novel, Lord of Misrule, was reading from her work at St. Lawrence University.  I am new to her work but I'm in love.  Her voice is at once sparkling and earthy and odd and distinct: it's just pure music and genius.  It has sphagnum moss in it, and the blues, red dirt and black clay, the ululations of mourning, and a child's freshness and wonder.  It is unflinching in its honesty and acceptance of life at every cadence, in every pitch.

And there are dogs here and there as well.

I really can't do justice to her work in this short, two-part post.  But just to start, take a look at how a character named Two-Tie in Lord of Misrule, which takes us inside the world of small-time horse racing in West Virginia, reflects on his dog's life in the context of other dog's lives at the track:

 On the racetrack may be found any number of doggy types, Two-Tie observed to himself as he surveyed his rooms over the Ritzy Lunch in the graying dark to see what his all-night card game had dragged in. . . . Deucey Gifford was an old broad-browed retriever dog, faithful to the death, who had some dignity with her size.  The doggish part was how she never let go.  Once she thought something belonged to her, or didn't, her jaw clamped down and her gaze flattened out and she could get stupid, very stupid.  . . . It was a known fact that dogs sleep two-thirds of the time.  These four, like sixty-seven percent of the other dogs on the planet, were asleep.

 Of course the whole notion was an insult to dogs, which included some of the noblest individuals that Two-Tie had ever known in his life, like his Elizabeth.  But as with humans it was a question of how the dog had been raised and what had been asked of it whilst it was still young.  Early on, you had to show a intelligent dog what to do.  A dog like that thought good of herself and pretty soon she ran the whole show, better than what you could.  On the other hand, if nutting was asked of it, a dog would expect its dog food every night and morning every day of its life and spend the rest of its time looking for that bonus hamburger that fell on the floor, never noticing how good it was taken care of already, for the nutting it contributed to society.  The dog got led around like a ponyride by that nose for a free hamburger, and the rest of its brain went dead.

His Elizabeth, however, was a herd dog, hustled by some ancient sense of responsibility not to let her sheep--whoever she decided her sheep were--out of her sight.  As for Two-Tie she wouldn't let him take a dump in privacy but curled up with a groan on the little wrinkled rug between the tub and the sink for the duration.  

I got invited to the dinner in her honor, but it took place during the second of only three meditation classes I just signed up for, so I reluctantly declined.  I was definitely going to go the reading, to hear what that rich voice sounds like out loud, but then I had this extra unexpected visit to Alta Vista with Zoe on Friday, and readings get me over-stimulated, so I knew I would have to miss it if wanted to be focused and strong for Zoe on Friday, especially with those long winter drives.

And then a miracle happened.  I was driving Zoe to Alta Vista yesterday morning, when suddenly I realized (I still hadn't had enough sleep) that I would never make it without an extra coffee.  I found a place on the right, just before the bridge to Canada, a coffee/gas/fast food place I'd never noticed before on all my many drives, and I pulled into the parking lot.

When I got out of the car, I saw my college, Pedro, who was once Jaimy's student in graduate school at Western Michigan, and he waved.  He said, "Jaimy's right in the car with me, if you want to meet her."  They were driving to the Ottawa airport so she could go home.  Her check-in time must have been around the time Zoe's was at the hospital, and he must have seen me when he stopped to get gas.   It's a ninety-minute drive from our village in Upstate New York, across the border in Ogdensburg, and then up Route 416 to the airport.  Alta Vista is a few streets past the airport.  I have never run into someone I knew while en route to Ottawa.  It was an incredible coincidence.

She wanted to meet Zoe.  I led her over to my car, across some treacherous ice, and Zoe hopped out to say hello.  Meanwhile, Jaimy told me a little about her dogs.  She was very nice to Zoe.

Then she went right to the heart of the matter.

She asked me, "Is there any chance at all she can have a complete recovery?"  I thought about this.  "Probably not, but I think maybe 10% recover."  That was a number Kerry and I had found somewhere about dogs living--I don't remember, exactly--maybe two or three years after the diagnosis.  I don't think that's the answer to the question she asked.

Pedro came over, and Zoe ran to him and did her usual lean-in hug.  "Don't you hate how they always like the boys better?" Jaimy said.  "It's just not fair."

I laughed.  We were both running late for our appointments--Zoe's drop-off, and her flight--so we said a hasty good-bye.

"I was so sorry I didn't get to meet you, and here you were.  It's a miracle," I said.

"It is," she said.  I had sent her a fan letter, via Pedro, so she knew how much I like her work.

"It was destiny," I said, and she agreed.  Then we drove away in our separate cars.

I was so happy then.  When something seems like it was meant to be, I get that wonderful electric feeling that I am where I should be, doing what I am meant to be doing.  Like all the universe is one pulsing, beating synchronous heart.

Part Two: The Examined Life

It must be a little disconcerting and definitely odd to discover that someone has a blog dedicated to her dog, and that particular dog is one of your patients.  I had shared the link with Willow and Donna at Alta Vista and when we came in on Wednesday they complimented me on the writing.  When I brought her today, the dark-haired guy behind the counter said he had enjoyed my blog.  Dr. Bravo, when I saw her later in the day, even complimented me on the photos.  And when I was leaving, Willow asked me about Zoe's "human brother" and I told her a little about the stepsons.

I can't tell if they are any nicer to me now that they know they are going to show up as characters in this ongoing story, but I think not.  They are their usual combination of courteous and professional and matter-of-fact.  That's all Zoe and I need, anyway.  But I'm glad they can't ever forget her name.

So I dropped Zoe off at 11, and they were going to try to fit an appointment in with the fully-booked cardiologist so he could take a picture of her heart to see if she could handle a fifth treatment of doxorubicin.  I was in good spirits when I left Alta Vista and headed out to my favorite restaurant on that part of town, Trattoria Vittoria, to have a long lunch and write quite a few letters of recommendation for my students who are applying to various abroad programs.  That was my office and snack palace for the day.

Finally, towards 3, I returned to Alta Vista.  The cardiologist had done his thing, but it was so busy there, and there were so many dogs getting chemotherapy, that he hadn't been able to consult with Dr. Bravo about the results.  I couldn't concentrate on anything else, so I camped out there in the waiting room and read about Angelina Jolie's latest weight loss. 

I can see why they suggest that the pets' people don't lurk, if they have a choice.  Watching people come in with their sick dogs made me increasingly sadder.  A woman with a French accent had brought a blanket.  Her dog was in the ICU and she wanted to spend the rest of the day and evening with him.  He had just had "le radio" (radiation) and so she would have to settle for a quick hello now, and then come back later in the evening for the extended love-in.

A family came in with a dog I loved instantly.  He reminded me of Zoe.  He was much bigger than she is, but had some of her same breeds in his mix--border collie and retriever.  A big black and white guy with white socks and a steady gaze and chocolate brown eyes and a long snout and that same kind of watchfulness--he turned his head to acknowledge every movement, every new person, every voice.  And he had her same doggy grin.  "Fred's eleven," the man with him said.  "We think he has cancer."  He explained how the dog had always had a great appetite, but he had not wanted to eat anything for the past week.  "We were here for tests, but now they want more tests.  Her bone marrow."  The woman said, "I can't say the word cancer without starting to cry."  Her eyes filled.  Mine started to as well.  But then I told them what a good life Zoe and I have had since her diagnosis.

By the time Dr. Bravo invited me to talk, I was on the verge of tears.  She said that Zoe's heart can withstand one more treatment, but not two.  There's some dilation, and she explained a few other things that went right over my head.  I was not really tracking well.  But she was quite confident that Zoe would be fine with another treatment, and since it is keeping the cancer at bay, I agreed.

I sat down and opened my journal.  I was trying to figure out all the reasons I had to be so sad, beyond the obvious ones.  A year ago, if someone had told me I would be going to Canada every three weeks to help my dog get intravenous chemotherapy for a very harsh form of cancer, I would have thought, this was going to be an awful, nightmarish time of my life.  Dread, sorrow: those words to describe pain and loss don't ever quite really describe what it's like.  But it hasn't been nightmarish.  Of course it's tremendously sad, and hard, but Zoe and I have had such a good fall and winter together.  She hasn't suffered. Our time together each day is so rich and lovely.  And I have felt incredibly lucky--as though it were destiny--that my sabbatical, which only comes every seven years, could come now, so that I have the time and flexibility to devote myself to her completely.

Later, the cardiologist showed me Zoe's heart.  I saw the pulsing of it, the beat of Zoe now, in February of 2012, very much alive.  But where there should be red in the picture there is some pink, which means dilation.  And there are waves that should all intersect that separate instead: the hallmark of an asynchronous contraction of the heart.

But it's supposedly a subtle problem.  Not yet another thing to worry about.

As if.  As though I wouldn't worry.  I've had the irrational need for every other part of Zoe's being to be in perfect working order, to compensate for what isn't and can't be. Especially her heart.  That glorious, brave heart.

He told me that if there is any problem down the line, she can take beta blockers, but the heart will recover and the problem now is subtle.  She can walk as much as ever and do every single thing she does.

When I asked about his accent, he said he was from the Southeast of France.  When I told him Zoe had been there, he didn't seem impressed.  I suppose Alta Vista sees its share of well-traveled pets.

And then I realized something else, as I left in rush hour for the long drive home in the dark.  That having a daily post means that I am living the examined life as well.  Well, duh.  It's just that before, I had longer to process how I think and feel about everything.  When I wrote my memoir, I was analyzing and recounting events that had taken place decades before.  So now, with Zoe, and with this blog, I have to get to the heart of the matter right then and there.  That's a very zen way of living. 

And that's when I got to the ultimate reason for my sadness.  We're at the end of an era.  As long as I knew there were more of these awful-sounding, but not-truly awful chemo appointments ahead of us, it felt to me like time was still stretching out ahead of us, that we had an abundance of time, but even more so, that we had many tricks up our sleeve for keeping Zoe well.  We're on to a new phase now. New oral drugs that may or may not agree with her.  Drugs that haven't really been tested yet, because they've only been on the market for a short time and the clinical trials are going on now.

And from there it's just a matter of faith, and trust, and luck, and, I suppose, destiny.

Zoe is eager to go home after a full day at Alta-Vista

Zoe meets her male look-alike

Zoe and Willow