Day 105: A Birthday, A Check-up, and a Milestone

Dear reader,
Today is a big day.  My dog, Zoe, is celebrating her ninth birthday.  In all the years we have lived together, I have never done anything special to honor her birthday.  I am heading out with Zoe to Ottawa for the day, and my husband is afraid I will return with party hats for the dogs (there will be four, counting Zoe) but not for the humans also celebrating their Aries birthdays at our house this evening (two) or for the rest of us cheering the two others on (three more humans, counting myself) but I assure you, I don't have plans to give out hats or streamers, and no one will jump out of a cake.  I know people who buy their dogs special gifts on their birthdays, or who make them special meals, but my big plan for the extravaganza is just to make dinner for a few dear friends, and to enjoy having their dogs running around us as we eat.  And I will probably take way too many pictures.

For Zoe to make it to nine is in itself a very big deal--the biggest gift.

When she was diagnosed in August with osteosarcoma, I learned that if we were to let nature take its course and didn't amputate the left hind leg with the cancerous tumors, she would probably not live to see 2012.  And if we hadn't elected to do chemotherapy as well, if she had become a tripod but not fought this aggressive cancer's spread to her lungs with the drugs, she wouldn't have made it to this birthday that coincides with the start of spring.

"Chemotherapy" and "dog" are not words I ever expected to use in the same sentence, ever.  (Maybe that's why it never occurred to me to buy pet insurance . . . )  I know it's a luxury to be able to follow this course, and the majority of the people in the world would not be able to buy their dogs time in this way.  I spend a lot of my time thinking about inequality at the national and global levels, and I am aware that there are currently 49 million human beings in this country alone who don't have health insurance, and who therefore are not doing what they can to extend their own precious, irreplaceable lives through conventional medicine.  And in my travels in India and in Senegal my heart broke at the sight of street children and homeless dogs everywhere.  So I know how lucky I am to have the power to make a decision (with a husband who is splitting the bills) that never really was a decision for me/us.

Adding on a bit more credit card debt and putting off opening a savings account and a supplemental retirement account are simply worth it to me; maybe I'm just a romantic at heart, but when I think of what Zoe brings to my life, the lessons in mindfulness and joy, I can't imagine another way.   Plus, our kids are grown, and my husband and I are both orphans now, so we're really only paying for our own upkeep.  But really, the issue has been, is this course of action we are taking for Zoe, or for me/us?  What I'm really asking day after day: Is this dog happy?  Does she like her life?  Does she eat with gusto?  Does she love her daily walks?  Does she wake up every morning excited to greet the day?  As long as the answer to these questions is yes more than 95% of the time, then there's no question what our path will be.

One morning when Zoe was a puppy, I took her on a walk near our house on a 3.2 mile paved loop called Partridge Run.  Here dogs really should stay on leads because it's a popular bike path and place for roller bladers, and Zoe almost ran into one of those kids on blades, the elder daughter of B., one of my colleagues, an environmental philosopher/ethicist.  Do you want to know what this smart little girl said when my puppy almost made her fall?  "That's okay.  Zoe means 'bringer of life' in Greek, so that's what she's doing today. Adding more life to our day."

Zoe, bringer of life.  I hadn't known the meaning of her name.  The smart twelve-year-old daughter of the philosopher had to tell me that.  And here's the thing.  As she fights for her life on the cellular level, there is no evidence on the surface that anything is amiss.  Her eyes gleam, her coat shines, and she runs with her pack with the same sass and bravado.

Just now, I looked for a fuller definition of the name on google, and some web site or other gave me this:

I took this picture yesterday.  She's under the deck.

zoe { dzo-ay’}
Strong's Lexicon: Greek Origin
-Life
- the state of one who is possessed of vitality or is animate
- every living soul
-Life
- of the absolute fullness of life, both essential and ethical, which belongs to God, and through Him
- life real and genuine, a life active and vigorous, devoted to God, blessed, in the portion even in this world of those who put their trust in Christ, and to last for ever.

 Okay, I don't go in for all the God talk.  As some of you who have been reading my posts know, my religion is this:  God = dog = love.  Mine is a secular spirituality:  I believe in the force of love, animals, and nature, in social justice and peace.  But still, I love the idea that this name I picked just because I liked it and thought it was kind of spunky is a name that connotes vitality, the force of life, and goodness.

I will say this: bringing this animal into my family has made me a better human.  A more loving, compassionate, in-the-moment human, and a less self-centered, distracted, petty, solipsistic, head-up-my-heiny one (although as I wrote this, Zoe woke up from her nap and started licking her butt.)

So today's a big day.  Not only is she alive, but she's going to Alta Vista Animal Hospital again for a lung x-ray and blood work.  We'll see what's really going on inside, and if the new drugs she is on--palladia and cyclophosphamide--are helping.  If they are, if the nodules in her lungs are shrinking or at least staying the same size, then this dog will be able to bring more life into my life for many more months.  If not, I will love every day we have together.

I really hope, dear reader, that you will consider sharing the story of Zoe with anyone you know whose dog has cancer--especially people who just got the heartbreaking diagnosis and are deciding what to do.  I can tell you this much: the seven months we have had together since her diagnosis have been among the happiest days--and I now measure time in days--of my life, because of what I have learned about investing more of myself to every moment.  Zoe has taught me this.  And so has writing this blog.  Having to glean a lesson from every day, something vaguely essay-worthy, has been a tough assignment, but it has helped me find the sacred in the quotidian.

And I hope you will spread the word to your dog and cat friends that getting pet insurance might be a good idea.  We can't get it now, but we're committed to this course, and luckily, my husband and I both have secure jobs.  I haven't looked into how much of her treatment would have been covered if we did have insurance, but I'll find out and let you know.

In the meantime, thank you so much for reading.  I plan to continue this blog after we reach the milestone of 108 days.  (And if you are new to this blog, and are curious, just go to the home page and read more about the significance of doing something you want to turn into a reflexive habit--in this case, meditating and posting for 108 straight days, or look here, as to the method to my madness in "Winter with Zoe."  The post will have a new subtitle, but I'm hooked on it now, so I'll continue. We will let Winter persist in Bloglandia, but not its weather!  I'll have more to say about this plan soon.)

Tomorrow I'll have news about how it went today at Alta Vista, and I'll probably have something embarrassing to report about my behavior at this milestone birthday.

But until then, thank you so much for reading.  And may you all have a lovely first full day of spring.  May this spring bring you new life too--a lot of what the Greeks described as Zoe.

With gratitude,

Natalia

Day 104: Familiarity Does not Breed Contempt--Gertrude Stein and the Dog Agree

We like to think of our escape to the South in March as a human-friendly dog vacation at a human-friendly dog hotel, but I'm pretty sure Zoe only likes it because we've been here before, and therefore, it's a bit like being at home--another home.  What she likes is that it's familiar.  She knows these beachy smells now.  She likes the sound of the ocean.  But if she could tell us directly, I am sure she would say that the Carolina coast has nothing on the North Country, where we live, and where she can preside over another balcony overlooking another body of water, the Grasse River.

We were on the second day driving home and had crossed from Pennsylvania into New York when Zoe really perked up in the car. 

I watched her watching the landscape intently.

In North Carolina, we had seen dolphins and pink sunrises and trees ablaze with white buds.

We had run through salt water and watched seagulls and terns swoop down for fish.

But what excited Zoe was a return to the familiar.

This is what dogs teach us. That our home, wherever it is, is where we create our lives in every way imaginable.  Anyone can love a sunrise beach walk in mild weather.  But to love the place where we live in every season, even the monochrome ones, requires a subtle kind of knowing.  After a while, certain storm-scarred trees and shrubs become as recognizable and distinct as people and other creatures.  We know where the swimming holes are.  We know where to find berries in late summer and trillium in May.  If we can see this beauty a few paces from where we live, if we learn how to see and appreciate that place from moment to moment, we are truly alive.

The North Country has its share of poverty and extreme weather.  There is no ocean, and the river valley where we live is fairly flat.  When others might focus on the trailers we just passed, Zoe watches the sky and sees the branches bend in the wind. 

When others see farms that could be anywhere else in the U.S., Zoe smells the ones she knows.

And she is always thrilled to see critters out enjoying the sun. 
How I wish I had a photo--it was on the driver's side--of the happy, shirtless, Buddha-bellied farmer sitting in the grass with about thirty of his goats.  And then there are the Amish farms, the horses and buggies that she sometimes yells at for driving too fast.


While others might see these fields as monochrome, she sees the tall grass and knows what it feels like to run through it.

When others might see merciless rocks that the first farmers here had to remove with oxen, that miners later made into talcum powder, Zoe sees landmarks that tell her she's close. 

And then it's our street. She stands now at the car window, her face rapt.

And here is our yard.  Where did winter go?  It is warmer here than it was in North Carolina.  She runs up to the house to make sure all is as it should be.  She hugs her favorite carpet.  And later, she runs back outside to see the river again, her old friend.

And then on Monday, when it's near-summer weather, she takes her normal warm weather position under the deck.  She likes the cool leaves in her little fort down there, and she's so content to be back doing her job, watching the house, that she curls up her paws as she does when she's getting her belly rubbed.

Having a dog, going through a decade of one's life--more if we are lucky--with a dog helps us see what is around us anew every day, after every trip.

Gertrude Stein wrote in Paris, France: 

“Familiarity does not breed contempt. On the contrary the more familiar it is the more rare and beautiful it is. Take the quarter in which one lives, it is lovely, it is a place rare and beautiful and to leave it is awful.”

 My dog would agree, and as her person I have come to understand that it is wisdom to know this.

Day 103: A Tale of Two Mondays

Part I      The Monday before Spring Break:  Putting Mindfulness to the Test

So I've been trying to be totally here now, and that means focusing my attention not just on the obvious things that require complete concentration, like driving and writing, but mundane tasks where it is easy to drift off: washing the dishes, chopping carrots, doing laundry, getting mail at the post office, that sort of thing.

Early on I wrote a post, which you can find here, a taking-out-the-trash meditation, courtesy of Thich Nhat Hanh from You are Here.  I try to employ this helpful mantra on garbage day:

"Flowers and garbage are both organic in nature.  So looking deeply into the nature of a flower, you can see the presence of the compost and the garbage.  The flower is also going to turn into garbage, but don't be afraid!  You are a gardener, and you have in your hands the power to transform garbage into flowers, into fruit, into vegetables.  You don't throw anything away, because you are not afraid of garbage.  Your hands are capable of transforming it into flowers, or lettuce, or cucumbers.

"The same is true of your happiness and your sorrow.  Sorrow, fear, and depression are all a kind of garbage.  These bits of garbage are part of real life, and we must look deeply into their nature.  You can practice in order to turn these bits of garbage into flowers.  It is not only your love that is organic; your hate is, too.  So you should not throw anything out.  All you have to do is learn how to transform your garbage into flowers."

But what would Thich Nhat Hanh say about our problem with our neighbors, who give us their garbage?  Zen task of the morning: How to bring mindfulness to the dirty ugly truth that someone is putting trash in our bin and expecting us to take care of it?

We live on a busy road in a small village and over the years we've had to contend with the spectacle of all kinds of nasty stuff tossed onto our lawn: McDonald's cups, coke bottles, empty cigarette cartons.  And then there was the notorious drive-by diapering.  Don't ask.

But now we have a new problem, as of 2012.  We have "neighbors"--I use this term loosely because I know our neighbors across the street and next door, and they are all courteous, rules-playing, generous people who are quite clearly not the culprits here--who leave trash in our bins and expect us to not only pay for it, but bag it for them.

Well, the first time it was in a bag--one of the black bags that had just been outlawed by New York State.  We had just bought clear bags for our garbage, and our garbage-donors hadn't.  So I transferred the contents of their very large, heavy black bag into one of our new clear ones, and then, of course, because it was as tall as I am, and maybe also because I wasn't being mindful enough, it broke, and their garbage and I bonded in a very intimate way.  On my hands, down my legs, were spilled sodas, cigarette butts, and something viscous and sweet-smelling like pudding or melted ice cream.

Lately the trash just comes in loose shopping bags from the Price Chopper.

"Maybe if you pay close attention, you'll find a bill or something, that has their address," my husband told me.  He had seen the garbage earlier and planned to deal with it after the dog walk without telling me, but then his car died and I had to go fetch Zoe and hand him his wallet while he called AAA.

So here is my test.  Or course I'm pissed off, but I also don't want to let it wreck my morning.  I have work to do.  So I behold the bags.  Why does this garbage donation feel particularly hostile?  Inside the top bag is a big wad of human hair.  Long and black.  And some bloodied Q-tips.  Where have those Q-tips been?

I think, well, this is organic material.  It belonged to a living human being with real life human problems, including economic ones.  I certainly can relate to that one.  And I believe garbage removal should be paid for by our taxes.  I don't think it should be a luxury.  So since I'm more well off in my current life than my neighbor, I can be his or her benefactor this one time.

I think about Thich Nhat Hanh, and how the flowers become garbage, and the lettuce and cucumbers were in the compost.  But the rest of the bag contains a giant soda bottle that needs to go to recyclables (my donor expects me to sort his trash too, you see), and junk food detritus: the styrofoam Chinese to-go box, the Lucky Charms box (which should also be sorted into the paper bag, but I'm cheating now), the pizza box (that too?  I've never been sure about pizza boxes if they have pizza on them), and juice boxes.

The detritus of my neighbors' weekend is in my hands.  I'm not wearing gloves, so this feels all the more intimate.

I inhale and I exhale.  I observe all kinds of snarky class judgments rising to the surface without judging them.  Thoughts like, You could save money by cooking real food, and maybe you could afford garbage bags.  I would be happy to help you out here if I didn't have to bag your trash for you, Mr. or Ms. Long Black Hair Lucky Charms.  Maybe you would feel better, and have the energy to be doing this job yourself, if you didn't eat gross stuff all the time.

There it is out on the road, a temptation to those in need.  Wheel it in, Nat!

I was raised by a Welfare mom, but there was a garbage service in our building and we didn't have to pay for it. Would my mother have slipped out under cover of night and put our trash into other people's bins if we didn't have this service?  You bet.  We do what we do to survive.

I inhale and exhale.  Then I decide to mix my donor's trash with ours into a single bag so as to save not only on our bill but on the plastic that goes into the landfill.  That is the ultimate fusing.  Lucky Charms falls next to the empty bag of Zoe's food.  She needs all the luck she can get, so I'll take it where I can.

But now I'm onto the next stage of mindfulness.  To remember to wheel in our garbage bin, after the collectors have come for it, so that we don't have to go through this exercise every single week.

My view every morning as I wrote last week

Namaste, my friends.

Sweet Interlude on the Beach:

Part II    Putting Mindfulness to the Test, Two Mondays Later

We drove home from North Carolina to progressively warmer weather.  It was 65 when we took our last beach walk, and we returned to 77 degrees.

While we were gone, someone came and stole winter from us.  There is no snow anywhere to be found.

The dog runs through the yard looking for it.

The house is clean, and since we made no garbage this week, we have nothing to wheel out, and nothing to tempt the local garbage donors.

I wake Monday at 6 to walk to the studio for meditation and writing, with nothing to try not to grumble over, nothing to rise above, nothing to transcend.  Just a morning like any other: pink sky, still wind, and the river, my old friend, flowing past the house in no hurry to go anywhere or be anything other than what it is.

Day 102: We saw a Dolphin, and Other Memories Not Photographed

1.  We saw a dolphin on our last day.  We weren't trying to.  We didn't have our heart set on anything except rest and a few good walks.  But here we were, on the balcony.  The sun had just come out after a very brief rain.  My husband said, very calmly, "There it is.  The dolphin."  We saw its gray fin, and then it was gone, and then it was there again.  Then I went back to eating my yogurt.

2.  On a midday beach walk, I saw a tern with its wondrous spiky headdress and black-tipped tail pecking at a fish. The fish had the same coloring as the bird, mostly white with gray and black, and at first I thought the bird was eating a bird: tern cannibals!  I was quite relieved that it was just my eyesight and sicko imagination conspiring.

3. Every day walking on the beach I saw birds feeding on the water. 

4.  If a sound could be photographed or posted, I would want to hold this sound I hear now with me forever.  The waves, the waves, the waves.

Day 101: Dogs at Play and at Rest

On Topsail Island, dogs can run free.

The only dogs on leads are the ones that would run away otherwise, or the ones that have muzzles too, because they don't play well with others, or the ones that are new around here and can't believe their good luck.

This is my utopia.  The only place that comes close is France, where you can bring dogs inside restaurants.

Zoe with Sadie, the puppy in the room next door

These dogs of Dixie tired the old girl out

But on our last day of the vacation, we did bring Zoe to the wine bar outside the bookstore we love, and she took time to smell the flowers.  The new guy there, Jonathan, brought her out a couple milkbones.  Beth told her she was welcome any time.

If you come to this wonderful island with your dog, tell the dogs you meet that Zoe and Natalia say hello.

It was jacket weather at first, but by the end of the week, it was warm

This dog is named for a famous photographer.  His person is an anthropologist.

The anthropologist is dating a woman much younger, and her dog is much younger too.

Young dogs can always get Zoe to swim.

This wolfy dog would prefer to be pulling a sled in snow, and his person is a skier who had a hard time deciding between a beach week and the last week to ski of the season

This is Zoe most of the day on Topsail, but sometimes she is sitting.

I was afraid these dogs would run off with the fish the people had caught, or the tackle boxes.

At the bookstore/wine bar

Flowers!  in March!

Sitting outside in March after buying too many books: perfect end to a perfect week

Day 100: Lessons Learned on a Beach Walk in March, Upon Returning to a Place the Dog Used to Run Wildly through With Four Legs

1.  If there isn't a dog at the end of the beach, and we don't have treats, our tripod dog does not want to walk as long as she used to.  This is neither good, nor bad, but it means we have to get our exercise in other ways.

She was about to go on a sit-down strike only about fifteen minutes into the walk, when she spotted a golden retriever at the edge of the beach.  If you look closely at this picture, you see the golden's tail seeming to come out of Zoe's body.

2.  We can trust her now not to roll in every single smelly thing.  Case in point: the 13 jellyfish we counted on the walk back.  This is a good development.

3.  If the male person leaves to go to throw away the poop bag, and the team of three is split up, Zoe will be in a quandary.  For a long time she will stand in between her two people, pointing one way, then the other.  As a herding dog, this is a difficult moment for her.  Her sheep are not together.

4.  When possible, she will dog the man's footsteps, and we now understand why this noun is sometimes the only verb that will do.

Here's the sequence of how it went down, below:

The dog's male person leaves to toss the poop bag.  Dog can't take her eyes off him.

Dog gets in line directly behind him as soon as he's back and they walk away from the other person, who is once again taking too many pictures.

Plowing through sand can be harder than cutting a path through snow

5.  Three flights of stairs, with landings, and all that space in between, are a bit too much for a tripod dog at this stage of the game.  (Husband with arthritic hip concurs.) She often looks longingly on the second floor.  Are we there yet?  And today on the afternoon walk, her footing gave out, the back leg collapsed, just before we started up the stairs.  I thought I was going to have to carry her, and wasn't sure I could.  She weighs 65 pounds now.  But then she just rallied.  She said, Yes we can, like an Obama dog campaign ad, and before I knew it we were up.


6.  A dog doing a back roll in jellyfish-free sand is just as adorable as one rolling in snow.  The difference is that the snow melts on the carpet, and the sand, well, it never goes away unless you vacuum.  But if you don't care, it's sure cute.

Day 99: Three Dog Morning, with Scones

What a joy it is to visit a former student and kindred spirit on a spring day in a garden that smells like summer.

We drive into the college town guided by the GPS, which sends us to the lovely home of Yogini Writer Teacher Mom and Architect Painter Musician and their two small sons and two old dogs and one ancient cat. 

When we first met in the early 90s, I was a few years younger than Yogini Writer Teacher Mom is now, and she was a sophomore in my writing class.  Through work we did on social justice issues on our campus, and our shared addiction to literature, we began a lifelong conversation that we resume every few years, as we can. The last time I saw her was at her wedding six years ago.  The time before that was at mine.

She has prepared a tray of scones and coffee cakes and fresh strawberries, which we enjoy in the garden.  Fresh tulips and lilies in vases, the magnolia tree out front, and the rich green grass all conspire to make me forget that it's March.

While the boys are in pre-school, we talk about teaching; writing; family; birth order and how it affects, well, everything; dogs; the eternal quest to fit writing into an extremely busy life; and my recent travels to India (where her great-grandparents fled the Nazis to practice medicine in Bangalore for ten years) and the time passes so quickly that at the end of it we wish we could just set the visit on rewind and relive those 90 minutes again.

Zoe is thrilled to be hosted by two elder statesdogs.  The team captain, a basset hound, is a proud old Southerner who expects Zoe and her people to follow strict protocols.  I learn this firsthand when I hug him and kiss his head, as I do so often with Zoe it's as automatic as breathing.  The team captain would prefer air kisses on a first encounter, or better yet, a handshake.  I apologize for my presumptuousness and he agrees to let me stay as long as I behave.

Mr. Gratitude is a black-and-white Heinz 57 that this family rescued from evil forces, which is why he and his entourage are traveling by their spy names today.

For months Mr. Gratitude and his mother, Helen Keller, were made to live on their own in a garage. Their person, who by all accounts truly loved them, had died, and her dandy son inherited the two senior pooches.  Said son is a man about town who was busy running for Dogcatcher.  With so much to do for the campaign, new suits to buy, shoes to keep shiny, babies to kiss, he couldn't find the time either to take his late mother's dogs in or find homes for them.  I guess he thought, hey, they're old.  Every few weeks or so he'd remember the dogs and bring a big trough of food for them, but he kept expecting them to be dead.  How disappointing it must have been for him to discover that, despite his best non-efforts, these two were survivors--in part because of the kindness of their neighbors.

Yogini Writer Teacher Mom kept her eye on these dogs, and visited them with her children, and now Mr. Gratitude is part of their family.   Two months ago, before he came home with them, he had no fur on him.  Now he has a lovely thick coat.  He is so sweet that it took great restraint on my part not to sneak away with him.

The vet and another neighbor are paying for Helen Keller's care. When they took her to the animal hospital she had 20 kidney stones.  She is also blind and deaf, but she may have life in her yet.

Yogini Writer Teacher Mom and Architect Painter Musician work full time.  YWTM teaches four courses a semester, all of them writing-intensive, and she spends her days grading endless stacks of papers when she's not looking after the two small boys, whom we picked up from their pre-school at lunchtime.  Yet this busy family found the means to save these dogs.

Zoe has had a lifelong fear of peppy little boys, but after a few minutes in the company of the three-year-old, who knew just how to approach her, she felt brave enough to meet the other children at the pre-school.  Under this young dog whisperer's calming influence she allowed herself to be petted by three small children at once, and as her closing act she ventured over, on her own initiative, to meet a baby.  This was a major milestone in Zoe's career as an ambassador for her kind.

But when it came to the cat, Zoe made no progress.  For her entire life she has hoped in vain to befriend a cat, or better yet, to find a cat who is willing to wrestle with her without using its claws, get her high on its catnip, then carry around her food and open doors for her.  Zoe wagged her tail and stared, and the cat stared back, but Zoe's shadow loomed too large against the wall for the cat to dare to venture inside.