Part II, Day 38: A Check-up, Two Rivers, Zen lessons from John Daniel and Mike Petroni

photo by Tara Freeman

Friday morning, May 18, 2012

Zoe and I rise early and spend some time together looking at the river.  It’s how we start most days around here.  The river is a constant for us—always flowing, never the same, a place where we both find stillness.

Today my husband is taking her to Ottawa for her monthly check-up at the oncologist’s. I have gone every time since September, and it’s hard for me to let go today, to be the one at home waiting for news, but it’s good for me to try. 

The Grasse River that Zoe and I watch from the balcony

For today’s post, I’ve invited Mike Petroni, a talented graduating senior who won our annual Joan Donovan speech contest at St. Lawrence University (which means he is speaking at our commencement celebration this weekend, along with our valedictorian, Erin Siracusa, who has also guest-posted for this blog) to share a short essay he wrote this fall in my class.  It was inspired by a memoir we read, Rogue River Journal, by John Daniel.  John Daniel spent five months in 2000 to 2001 by himself in the Rogue River Wilderness in Oregon, and the result is one of the most moving, insightful, lyrical, meditative memoirs I have ever read and taught.  It’s about many things: Thoreau, the natural world, Daniel’s relationship with his father, and Daniel's coming of age during the Vietnam war.  In the book he often visits the Rogue River, his steady companion in his season of solitude.  Daniel struggles with the Zen notion of detachment.  In the chapter Petroni references below Daniel explores a central paradox of life, as he sees it: that we are here on this earth to learn love, and we are on this earth to learn to let go of what we love.

Mike Petroni is third from the right, back row

Rogue River Meditation

by Mike Petroni

The day I turned 10 years old, March 3, 2000, John Daniel walked down to the Rogue River. Fitting, that on this day he finds time to reflect on rivers as we did just a week ago at the Grasse. In the Rogue’s flowing, he saw life, he saw death, he saw music, he saw love. His essay gripped me. For a while I had been thinking about Thoreau, about social hierarchies, about resistance, the Occupy hysteria, about “being men first and Americans only in the late and convenient hour.” But then I slipped into this day, this magical day 3/3 and into the river.

The Rogue gave Daniel mysterious and searching thoughts. Its murky going, its whispers, and its changing consistency probe the deepest and most private essence of his poetic mind. As he watches the river, all the social histories and conventional worries are stripped away from Daniel’s thoughts and what’s left is a conversation about what it means to exist with expiration. He puts his rod down and just listens to the water, which is “absorbed in its own enactment” and for a while he tunes in to the spiritual metaphor that is the Rogue River.

“Here is a creature of mystery, voicing rumors of distant places known to it and not to me,” he muses, accepting the mystical power of the unknown and entering into a mood and voice of fluid uncertainty. He mentions the river as the symbol of the boundary between the living and the dead. He admits to being afraid of death. He is in love. What honest person is not afraid of losing that? From this platform forged with a weave of heartstrings and a sense of a connection so deep with life, he dares call it love, Daniel describes, “the trouble I have with Buddhism is that I resist the notion of detachment” (243). He asks, “Why would I want to detach myself from these verdant boulders, this flowing river, this mild rain? From my wife and friends, my work? What good could be greater than this” (243)?

In asking these questions, Daniel rejects the religious projections of an afterlife and criticizes them for not placing emphasis on what’s right in front of us. Then he quotes Robert Frost for any who are still skeptical of the importance of this world: “Earth’s the right place for love: I don’t know where it’s likely to go better” (243). It’s a simple quote, but it says a lot. Perhaps there is nothing else, perhaps what’s here is all we will ever have, so why not get attached, why not suffer in the moment for love, or become elated, why not take chances, go on adventures, and not leave all your enthusiasm for what comes next?

Daniel’s rejection of the detachment practice reminded me of one of my freshman year revelations. We studied the Kantian conception of beauty and learned, according to Kant, that beauty hinges on two things. First the observed thing must produce in the viewer, a harmony of the senses, a sort of “awwwhh” feeling which could in turn be equated with sublimity, being hypnotized, and being absorbed uncontrollably. Secondly this feeling must happen without any attachment from the subject, so that no preconceived notions or feelings will get in the way of the viewer’s response. I agree with Kant’s brilliant observations on how the mind and body can react to physical forms to determine their importance and beauty, but I was a bit skeptical on the second premise.

Why must viewers release their past conceptions? Yes I know that these attachments make it difficult to determine what we “all” think is beautiful, but I believe that they are needed, because this harmony of the senses, the tingles, and awe inspired feelings must originate somewhere and it’s hard for me to believe that they come from a pre-wired human conception of what is beautiful.

Yes, I am hardwired to think women are attractive, but a woman’s beauty comes from my own experiences interacting with her. Without a past attachment, the beauty is hallowed. I refuse to go by this rule. I want like Daniel, like Edward Abbey and like all the other writers we have read, to feel attached, to feel kindred, to find home in this world, not some conceived, or heavenly one. Our attachments come from our past, our actions, our feelings, and they create our identity. Without them we are shells, and the dramas and triumphs of life disappear, the story loses its tension and the vibrant energy connecting it all shuts off. 

“The crossing is life itself,” Daniel writes, “The crossing is the whole of living and dying, and that means, it has to mean, that I am already in the river” (244). This is a revelation; it is good to be reminded of this every single day. This is a personal testament, to the self, to life as a whole, the bigger picture and the tiniest of emotions. Here I am, living, and this is all I will ever know. His last lines parallel my own musings from last week and they somehow hit me and held me at the same time.

“Slip or stand, I want to be aware of the crossing. To reach the other shore with each step, I must realize each step I am taking. And somehow, to truly have known this familiar shore, to truly have loved it, to truly have been here at all, with every step I must let it go” (244).  

Part II, Day 37: Diary of a Dog-Centric Slacker

I wake up today at 5:30 AM feeling like anything but a slacker.  I'm up early.  It's a Monday.  I'm ready to tackle the beginning of the second half of my France novel.

Zoe and I head outside, where she chases a bunny as her pre-meditation warm-up.  We make our way upstairs to my studio.

I aspire to attain this kind of focus and concentration.  Sometimes I'm in the chair above.

6 AM: I meditate while Zoe meditates, and then I finish, edit, and post Monday's piece for "Winter with Zoe," Sunday House Call.

7 AM: Breakfast for both of us.

7:30 AM: Zoe leaves for the gentlemen's walk.  I'm ready to work on the novel.  I have no commitments until 6:30 PM yoga class.  I have nothing else planned.  Nothing.  There is no reason why this can't be not only a day of breakthroughs, but a day when I go way over my page minimum.  All that time is mine!  Anything can happen.

8:00 AM: Nothing has happened.

8:30 AM: Ditto

9:00 AM: I meditate again.  I pray. 

9:30 AM: I do what I said I wouldn't do--tool around with the first half a little, just to get ideas.  I realize that I don't like the way it ends.  Too much is explained.  Shouldn't there be some mystery left?  A carrot to draw people to Part II?  Maybe this is why I can't start the new section.

10:00 AM: I start looking for inspiration through novels that are either set in France, or have young, college-age characters as I do in Part I of my book, but I end up reading a beautiful essay by Brenda Miller, "Blessing of the Animals," which is mostly about her dog, and I realize that I have canine-brain today, and France feels very, very far away.

1 PM:  I wake up.  I can't believe it.  I fell asleep for two hours!  I have not done this, not napped, since I had a puke-guts-out-flu this winter.  And before that, I really can't remember when.   What happened?  I know I'm fighting a cold, but come on.  Was I abducted by aliens?

1:05 PM: I hear Zoe barking.  My husband has taken her in the back yard for the midday romp.

For the next hour, Zoe and my husband and I play games in the yard.  We stroll through the grass, hop onto flat river rocks, and then my husband royally trounces me in a round of Bocce.  Sometimes when the balls go flying her way, Zoe wants to catch them, so I throw a baseball to her instead so that she doesn't get reamed by the heavier balls. 

2-4 PM: Having surrendered completely to this state of not-knowing, the only reasonable thing to do is to chill for the rest of the day with my dog.  I claim the hammock and re-read my favorite scenes from The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides.  Then I browse through a book about plotting novels that makes me so cranky I want to drown it in the river. ("Plots are for dead people," says a character in "How to Be a Writer" by Lorrie Moore).

4:10 PM: How's this for a plot twist?  A vanilla/chocolate twist cone from Morgan's, our favorite ice cream place in the North Country.   Zoe gets a soft-serve vanilla.

The people who work here have a soft spot for dogs and a cup of soft serve for any dog with a sweet tooth.  Morgan was the female partner of the owners' maiden name and it gets a lot of play.  They once had dog named Morgan, and Morgan is their son's middle name and that's what people call him--or Mo.  Their current springer spaniel, Cooper, is one of Zoe's best friends.  Dogs used to get ice cream for free here, but Cooper told his family that he thought only he should have that privilege, and since his wish is their command, they agreed.

I savor every lick, but Zoe is more of a speed-slurper.  Still, a soft-serve vanilla on a warm May day is bliss for her.

photo of Sarah Scafidi-Mcguire, my amazing teacher, by Tara Freeman

4:30 PM: Zoe and I walk for an hour in the woods.  We see no one and I give her my complete attention.  Sometimes the quiet and the roominess we can enjoy in the North Country makes for an expansiveness of mind.

6:30 PM:  I go to yoga class and take my favorite spot by the window that overlooks Main Street.  From this window I can see the downtown of our village, the village green, our movie theater, and the ice cream place where Zoe and I spent a productive 20 minutes.  I feel grateful for this village, for this town, for this life, because even if the novel makes no headway, even if I never again write anything anyone anywhere wants to read, even if I fail at everything I set out to do, I am in a nurturing place where I can sooth myself with one dollar ice cream cones and inspiring walks in the woods and great yoga classes.

And then, when Sarah, my teacher, assists me in a handstand, it happens.  I have an epiphany.  I have to be upside down to have a breakthrough, I guess. It's another way to surrender: a bit like a nap, a bit like an hour in a hammock, only this form of letting go takes upper body strength.  I see a way to end Part I on a cliff-hanger (which is a bit like being turned upside-down, from the characters' point of view) and now I feel like I'm on the threshold of knowing how to start the book's second half.

Tuesday: The block (which I picture as a glacier) is thawing.  I play with the new ending for Part I.  I do a rough, free-write for what will be the first chapter in Part II.  Zoe sits beside me and pants now and then, adding to the feeling that it's getting hot around here, the ice is melting melting melting.

Wednesday: Part II, scene one launched.

I used to just push through things with the force of sheer will, using my intellect, but not my intuition.  Then I'd have to go in and redo it all anyway, down the line.  But sometimes self-discipline is not enough.  Sometimes determination is not enough.  Sometimes we have to just accept that the solution is going to take us to very new terrain, a place we haven't been before, and we have to feel our way there in the dark by being gentle with ourselves.  Not giving up, exactly, but just letting the thing simmer on a back burner while we do other things.  If I had to figure out what helped most--the reading, the nap, the bocce, the company of the dog, the ice cream, the walk, the sunlight, the many hours outdoors, the yoga, or the simple act of just surrendering on a Monday when I'd vowed to push ahead--I'm not sure which I'd choose because I think it was all of the above.

Zoe would say it was the ice cream.

Namaste!

Part II: Day 36: Mr. Husband, We're Ready for Our Close-Up

At this time of year, those first two weeks of May, the colors change visibly every single day.  One day the lilacs are budding, the next day the trees are ablaze.  In the woods are the last of the trillium.  Maybe if we walk through them every other day we can make them last?

This time I handed the camera over to the husband so that I could be in some of the pictures.

She knows where we're going, but there's still much to see

Entrance to the Woods

How rare it is for us to be pointed in the same direction, with trillium around us

Which is why we took dozens of these, but you won't have to see them all, gentle reader, I promise.  This one is posted here because Zoe has a nice smile, and my eyes are open for a change.

One of us said, "Where's mommy?" which is why she is looking my way and not towards our photographer

Talk to the hand

How was that treat, really?

Peace

Mirth

A private joke--Zoe looks likes she's laughing here

One last picture (or twelve), and then you can swim, Zoe!

I'd like a Slurpee about now.

Testing the temperature

Hope you don't object to black slime paw prints

Thank you, she says.

After a walk like this through the splendor of May wildflower season, I want to go back in time and do it all again.  In these posts, I do.

Namaste, gentle reader.  I hope all kinds of flowers are blooming, wherever you are.

Part II, Day 35: My Friend has a Hole in her Heart Now

Dear reader,
Although the subject of mortality is part of this blog's job description, I haven't been talking about it much lately.  Of course that's partly because my object is to seize every day and not waste precious time worrying about the inevitable, but recently I was reminded that part of preparing for that day is to accept that it will come.

I used to think that if I did everything right, gave Zoe a great diet and lots of exercise and a great life and didn't let her play in traffic, she would live to at least 14.  It would be painful to witness her slow decline.  I would get a ramp to help her get in and out of the car, she'd get finicky about her food, and I'd probably have to spend a lot of time wiping her bottom.  Whenever I thought ahead to losing her, I would try to figure out how old I would be that year, what I would be doing at work, and whether or not I had a leave of some kind coming up so that I could spend three to six months in bed grieving without completely disrupting my professional life.  The big question then would be whether or not to take medication.  As someone with mental illness in the family, I think it's a miracle sometimes that I survived my tumultuous youth without anything stronger than B-vitamins and aerobic exercise and yoga and herbal tea, so it would be a tough decision as to whether or not to get a prescription for Zoloft.  My hope was that my friends and husband would do an intervention if my grief got out of hand, if things got too bad.

It was entirely in keeping with my lifestyle then that I thought I had to plan ahead to schedule a nervous breakdown.

I've grown up a lot in the past few months.  I've had to work on myself to become the person my dog deserves.

Lesson Number One: The day Zoe was diagnosed with bone cancer she missed the memo that she and her people were supposed to be sad.  As some of you know, I'd brought her into the Canton Animal Hospital in desperation after she had been limping for two months and two different vets had diagnosed mild arthritis.  (One suggested Zoe would feel much better if we gave her a daily aspirin.)  By the time Zoe was properly seen to by Dr. Amy Thompson, who is now her vet, cancer had eaten up a big part of her ankle.  She had borne the advance of this aggressive disease with grace and patience.  Bone cancer is the most painful cancer there is, I've been told, and Zoe still savored her twice daily walks and meals and still took pleasure in watching the river from the balcony and in chasing squirrels up trees.

After Dr. Thompson delivered the news, she looked at Zoe, who was still sleeping under anesthesia, and back to the ugly dark matter in her x-rayed bone and said with something like awe, "She's so strong.  She's so strong."

And here's the thing: when Zoe woke up, and Dr. Thompson took her back out to the lobby, Zoe bounded over to us, her tail thumping overtime, as though this was the best moment of her life.  She was thrilled to be reunited with us, thrilled to go home.  We had just gotten her death sentence, the worst news possible, but now we had to dry our eyes and smile because the dog would not have understood.  Why the long faces? she would have said.  She was happy to be with us, so we had to be happy too.

Zoe's contentment with the quotidian is the balm that keeps me strong.  I can't plan ahead to guard against future loss and sorrow.  I simply enjoy our days together.  That's all I can do.  As I have written before, Zoe, as all dogs are, is a zen master with a tail.  Zoe has helped me become the person I need to be to be the person she deserves.

This spring my amazing, loving, funny college roommate, C., lost her beloved dog, Harpo.  He had been suffering from leptospirosis, a disease that affects the liver.  Dogs can get it from drinking puddles of water in the woods that are contaminated with rodent urine.  If ever a dog loved the outdoors, it was Harpo.  My friend and her husband brought water and a bowl for him on their walks, but to stop him from lapping up the rain water he found himself would have deprived him of one of his great joys in life.  

He was ill for 20 months when they finally had to put him down.  He was taking 10 pills a day, near the end, but he never complained.

Harpo was the dog who introduced me to the delightful world of oodles.  One of my friend's sons was allergic to pet dander and after conducting some research he found out that dogs that are part poodle are fine if they inherit the poodle's hair qualities. I loved learning the names of the most popular hybrids.  The golden doodle, which was Harper's breed; the labradoodle, which sounded charmingly Mary Poppins the first time I heard the word; and my favorite of all, the schnoodle.  I wanted to get a schnoodle just so I could say this word daily.  A schnoodle seemed like the kind of dog you'd want by your side as you feasted on blintzs or strudel, and then you would take a nap together and canoodle.

But I digress.


I fell in love with Harpo at first sight, this big golden retriever with a perm who liked to sit on people's feet and reach up whenever possible to chew on their chins.  Every August his family took him on vacation in the Adirondacks.  He swam and hiked up mountains, and at night, as they relaxed after a long day outdoors, he would slow dance with each family member.  Once, he danced with me.  He put his big, furry paws on my shoulders and we moved about to our own music, and I said, "I want a dog."


A year later, I took Zoe home.


When I found out that they had to put Harpo down, and he was only ten, I cried and cried. 

I told C. that I was glad I didn't know about leptospirosis and how a dog can get it or I would have been utterly paranoid every time we went into the woods, which is every day of our lives.  She replied that what they learned was that their dog was a happy boy, and his happiness made them happy, and there was no way they could deprive him of his favorite thing to do in the woods.


Lesson Number Two: You can't control every thing your dog does, no matter how much you try.  Sometimes when he follows his bliss, he might be hastening his decline.  It's a delicate balancing act between acting as Captain Safety and Fun Human Sidekick, and their dog was probably glad when they chose to do the latter.  Also, sometimes what makes dogs sick is the natural world itself.  How much can we do about that?


For a week after I heard about Harpo I brought Zoe water on our walks.  She refused it every time. Zoe prefers to drink river water--river water that is no doubt polluted, that other critters have peed in, that has all kinds of nasty sludge.  All the dogs around here do.  And although I try to stop her, she has been known to eat gross dead critters she finds in the woods.  I've seen her with deer legs, squirrels, fish.  And then she's sick for a day or two afterwards.  But do I want to keep her on the lead all the time?  Deprive her of the joy she takes in being a hunter or stop her from foraging for her own water?  No way.


A few weeks later I took Zoe to her oncologist in Canada for her check-up, and while I was there, a couple named Gabriela and Jerry arrived with Tucker, their sweet German shepherd, the gentle giant.  I spent the afternoon with them.  The vet techs had put us in touch with each other a couple weeks earlier because ours were the only two dogs of all their patients who had this same kind of awful cancer, osteosarcoma.


Gabriela and I were facebook messaging and e-mailing and on the phone a lot during the week leading up to us meeting in person.  Two weeks before, some very small lesions had shown up on Tucker's lungs.  Dr. Bravo sent them home with Palladia, which is given orally: the same protocol of metronomic drugs Zoe was on.  Zoe's lung lesions had appeared six months ago, but she was--and is--still doing just fine. The tumors have to become quite huge before the dog feels any discomfort.


But Tucker wasn't eating.  He had started limping more and one of his paws was so swollen and painful he couldn't put weight on it.  All he wanted to do was lie on his bed and rest.


Now, to get to the animal hospital in Ottawa we have to drive 90 minutes each way, cross an international border, and present paperwork and passports.  Sometimes, this can take longer than I'd like, especially in the winter.  I thought Zoe and I had it bad, but Gabriela and Jerry had to drive two and a half hours to get to our animal hospital, and they are Canadian.  That just shows you how few clinics there are in North America to choose from if your dog gets cancer and you want to extend his or her life.


The day I met Gabriela and Jerry, Tucker didn't have an appointment.  That morning they had brought him into their local vet, but she couldn't figure out what was wrong.


As we waited together, we tried not to speculate, but of course we did.  Maybe he had a hairline fracture in his paw from that time when the noise from the construction project next door was so loud he ran into the bathtub and claimed it as his bunker.  And wouldn't the pain of a fracture take away his appetite?  We didn't know all the things that could go wrong.  We'd been told to watch out for a cough.  We'd been told to watch out for loss of appetite.  The lesions in the dog's lungs two weeks ago had been very small.  There was no reason we knew of for him to be suffering.  But what we didn't know is that the cancer could spread like a wildfire in no time at all, and that's what happened to this sweet, noble dog.

When they left Dr. Bravo's office, Gabriela and Jerry were sobbing.  I stood with them and we all held each other up as we wept.  They had the verdict now: their sweet dog was afflicted with hypertrophic osteopathy.  The disease had run through all the tissue of his body, especially his legs, and he was in great pain.  The only thing they could do for Tucker was to give him a shot of heavy-duty, time-released painkillers, and send him home.  

Gabriela and Jerry had done everything for their dog that they could.  When Tucker lost his appetite, Gabriela served him a raw chicken from a recipe she'd read on the web.  She gave him slippery elm bark to sooth his stomach.  She tried smoothies with nutrients.  She massaged him for hours.  She called everyone she could think of who might have a cure.  I tried to imagine that two and a half hour drive: Jerry, who suffers from serious back pain from injuries he sustained in the military, drove, while Gabriela got on the phone to make arrangements for their vet to come to their home the next day to put him down.  It must have been the saddest 150 minutes of their lives.

Tucker's ashes are now in an urn in their living room.  

For a while, Gabriela and I wrote each other every day.  Their kids are grieving with them, but their friends and relatives don't understand how much they are suffering, and why.  Many well-intentioned friends told them they thought it was a big mistake to try to extend Tucker's life with chemotherapy.  "It's just a dog," people think, but are usually too polite to say.  "Why are you falling apart like this?" 

The suddenness of Tucker's decline shocked me.  I didn't know this could happen.

Lesson Number Three: Sometimes it happens fast.  And the last act of love you can do for your dog is to ease his suffering, as soon as possible.  

Then, just last week, a dear friend in Minnesota wrote me to say that her ten-year-old dog, Halley, had died suddenly.  The dog had gone on a walk with my friend's husband, come home, and a little bit later, just collapsed.  

It turned out this sturdy dog had a tumor growing right over her heart.  She showed no symptoms at all that she had anything wrong with her.  She went on walks, ate her food, wagged her tail, and loved up her people day after day.  She enjoyed every minute of her life.  And then one day she fell and couldn't get up.  Her aorta burst, and there was nothing they could do to save her.

My friend said, "My dog had a hole in her heart, and now I do too."

I must have read that sentence three times.  I sat down, closed my eyes, and cried, trying to take this in. 

Lesson Number Four: Sometimes it happens so fast that the word "fast" no longer signifies.  Sometimes you get no warning at all, and your perfectly healthy-seeming pet collapses before your eyes.

Can we live every day of our lives prepared for the catastrophic loss that happens in a nanosecond?

I think I need to start meditating for longer than 20 minutes every morning to begin to even understand the question.

Two days after my friend lost her Halley I texted my vet and asked her if we could talk about "end days."  "We need something resembling a plan," I said.  And on Sunday, when she came over to watch Zoe's acupuncture session, we agreed that when we think it's time, she'll come to the house.

Amy said, "Now that I'm learning about acupuncture, I've heard a lot of different theories about how dogs fail in the end.  If you are giving your dog acupuncture and doing everything to keep her in balance, she might just be fully functioning to the very end.  We think of human beings and how there's often--but not always--a gradual decline.  That's true for dogs sometimes too.  They gradually lose their appetites.  They start to move less.  But sometimes we hear of dogs who have lots of energy and seem completely healthy, and then they die in their sleep."

I said, "I suppose some of us would think that's the ideal death.  For a dog, or a human."

My husband was sitting beside us as we had this conversation.  He later said that he thinks a situation like the one Amy described would distress him more.  If Zoe didn't wake up one day, he would be more upset, he thinks, then if he had the chance to say good-bye.


I don't know what I think: either scenario is awful.  Mostly I try not to think about the end.  To be honest, I still live mostly in denial.  Zoe looks good, runs well, eats hearty, and has more energy lately than ever.  But I know the day will come when we will have to say good-bye.  I don't know if I'll have much warning.  And I know I'll feel like my friend above with the hole in her heart.  


One of the reasons I number the posts in this blog is to honor the fact that Zoe's days are numbered and that I don't want to miss a single one of them.  I use the model of the 108 beads of a Buddhist mala to remind me that every day, every moment, every bead is precious.


Thinking of time in this way always makes me think of my friend who lost her husband without warning in the fall of 2010.  She kissed him good-bye to go to a meeting, and when she came home three hours later, she found him in his favorite soft chair.  He'd been eating an apple when he died.  When he went to the kitchen to get it, he must have thought he would eat every bite of that apple.  He didn't know he was spending his last morning on this earth. 

I have no words to make sense of what happened to my friend.  No words to imagine the shock to her heart, the suddenness of this inconsolable loss.  But since it happened, I have learned so much from her.  She is tender and open about her own suffering, and she reminds all of us who know and love her to appreciate everything we have, to inhabit our own lives as fully as we can.  


In yoga class she spends extra time working on the spinal stretches that open the heart.  There's a lot of scar tissue growing over that gaping hole, but she isn't afraid of the work she needs to do to feel whole again.


My friend thought she and her husband would grow old together.  When I think of my friend I remember how fortunate I am to have a husband who is my partner in this life, and how lucky we are to be taking care of Zoe together.  And sometimes I think I'm lucky, in a way, that I know our dog won't live until at least 14, at which point I'll have to be medicated or hospitalized. Which is to say that I can't behave as though time was just opening out before us like an endless long, silk scarf.  I can't squander our time.  I have to stay awake.  Whether the ending comes quickly, or gradually, I never forget that every single day the three of us have together is a miraculous gift.


The deaths of the three dogs I just told you about, gentle reader, broke their people's hearts.  C. and her family had 20 months to get used to the idea that their dog had a serious illness.  But when the time came to say good-bye, I'm sure they weren't ready.  Tucker's people thought they had several weeks or months more to share with their gentle giant.  The mean survival rate for a dog with osteosarcoma is one year after the diagnosis, and their sweet boy only got three or four months.  My friend in Minnesota had maybe a half hour to prepare herself to say good-bye to a beloved family member.  She woke up that morning in one life and went to sleep in another--in a home without a dog.


I'm not trying to compare their grief, or the grief that I am rehearsing as I write, with what my friend who has lost her husband has lived. But I'm ending up in the same place.
   
I don't like thinking about death and grief.  I never will.  When I look into my dog's wolfy eyes, when I take in that fierce, intense gaze, all that life pulsing through her, I believe that she'll outlive all of us.


But what I have to say, gentle reader, is what you already know: Nothing lasts.  No one lasts.  We forget this every day; it's one of the ways we survive.  When I posted an essay called "Bark and Soul," the day after Zoe and I met Tucker, Donna, one of our oncology vet techs, wrote me to say that she had read my post and she was concerned because I sounded so sad.  She reminded me, essentially, to read my own blog, to remember once again the message Zoe keeps teaching me: that dogs live in the moment.  That they are so happy to be with us and they like it when we're really there.  They just want us to love them, and to let them help us cherish every moment we draw breath.

In that spirit, gentle reader, I want to thank you for reading this rather long post today, and I'm asking you now to kindly go on your way.  Go love up your sweetie, kids, and critters.  Walk that dog.  Give the cat a massage.  Reveal your heart's truth to whomever needs to hear it.  Ride your horse.  Get on your bike.  Look at the sky.  Watch the wind stir up the cattails and the lilacs and feel that air on your skin.  Whatever you long to do that you've been putting off, do it now.  

And pardon me while I go do the same.

Namaste.

Part II, Day 34: Sunday House Call

It's Sunday, 8:30 AM, and the Doctors T are coming for home acupuncture.

When Zoe saw Dr. Don T. last, she ended up having minor surgery for a scabrous cyst and I am relieved that our intrepid dog doesn't hold this against him.  When she enters the house, damp from the rain, from the morning gentlemen's walk, she runs directly to him and does her version of a hug, otherwise known as the lean-in.  When she rolls on her back for a belly rub, we know she's ready for a session.

This is the second time the Doctors T have met at our house to talk shop.  The first time, (which you can read about here), they spoke about Amy's acupuncture course in Florida, for which Don has made some training videos.  When Amy arrives, Don jumps into his instinctive role as mentor/teacher.  She tells him about a horse she treated this week.  Its leg was sore and stiff, but massage didn't help.  If I have understood their conversation correctly, one of the key questions for deciding which points to use is to decide if the problem comes from blood stagnation or xi stagnation.  Blood stagnation creates the kind of stiffness that doesn't feel better after you start moving, and often feels worse.  With xi stagnation, the animal just needs to get the energy moving again, and all is well.  The trouble is, if the horse doesn't like your approach, you might get kicked in the head.  And certain places on the legs that would be good to put needles from a therapeutic standpoint are very tricky to get at with an agitated horse.  I stand back and drink my tea and try to imagine myself in her place, walking into a barn for the first time and trying to approach a horse who is ailing, a horse who has never had needles put in its legs, a horse who doesn't know her.  Dr. Amy T is patient and good-humored, and I can see why the farmers around here want her to be the vet in the practice that makes house calls.

Today Zoe is getting six needles.  Stomach 36 and Large Intestine 10, for immune system stimulation and xi tonic.  Spleen 6 for yin tonic.  Bladder 23 for kidney tonic.  Stomach 40, an influential point for phlegm, which is important, I guess, when there are tumors.  Lung 9, the grandfather point to the original tumor.

Zoe backs up into a corner and tries to hide under the desk.  Sometimes she welcomes Chinese medicine and presents herself to her healers, but today she makes them come to her.  If you look at this picture, the humans are bent over what looks just like a black hole under the desk, but that's our girl.

After the needles are in, she withdraws into herself and nods off.  Don T tells us that he has discovered that less is more--only six needles is fine for Zoe.  Recently he gave quite a few needles to a geriatric dog and this old guy didn't want to move for 13 hours afterward.   Acupuncture can really relax an animal, but as you can imagine, this was not an ideal scenario. 

I do notice that Zoe is exceedingly mellow after today's treatment.  She asks to go outside after the sun dries away the rain, and she sleeps away much of the morning.  I peer out at her once and see her kick her paw once in her half-sleep.  Perhaps after eavesdropping on our conversation, she is dreaming that she's a stiff and cranky horse getting an acupuncture treatment for the first time.

Back in the kitchen, my husband, Dr. Amy T and I all admire Don's medical bag.  I remember when old style medical bags were sold as purses at Anthropologie and I coveted one.  My husband makes a joke about the animal doctor carrying his medicines inside the hide of an animal, but Don laughs and says at least it's not naugahyde.  We try to explain naugahyde to Amy, but we need to give her more background.  "Picture polyester pants suits, shag carpets, and fake leather black couches.  It's funny how bad taste can be like an epidemic."  And I realize this is the second time in a week that I've found myself explaining something about the seventies to someone younger than I am.  The other day it was to Zoe.  She had objected to the song "Y.M.C.A.," which we heard blasting on our walk, and even though this serenade happened to take place the day President Obama finally came out in support of gay marriage, Zoe did not want to dance.  This dog prefers mellow, alternative music like the kind Sonya and Alex played for her yesterday when they dropped by to return a book.  Alex turned on his phone and put on the music of the Canadian songwriter Feist, her song "1234," and Zoe wagged her tail.  

A few hours after Zoe's treatment, our friend Eve comes over.   Zoe wakes up from her nap to chase  Blue, Eve's border collie, around the yard.  Inside the house, she runs and pulls her favorite plush squeaky toys out from her box: the skunk, the fox, the beaver.  She darts in and out of tables and legs and rolls on her back and grunts and then asks for a long walk, which we are happy to provide. Our conversation is often interrupted by her demands for attention. 

Eve says, "Wow, I haven't seen Zoe with this much energy in years.  She wasn't like this even before her surgery, before she had cancer.  She preferred to be calm and mellow, and to just sit there looking regal."

It's been about eight weeks since Eve has seen Zoe, and I trust her perceptions.  It's easy when you're with a dog day after day to forget what her baseline normal looks like.

I feel so lucky to have all these people on Zoe's team.   Who knew that in a village of 6,000 people I would find veterinarians who do acupuncture and make house calls?

While I loaded these photos onto my computer, Zoe was outside my window relaxing in the grass, watching the house, waiting for me to feed her dinner.  A day that included two long walks in the woods, a photo shoot in the trillium, an acupuncture treatment, and a mad chase around the yard with a border collie is coming to a close soon.  This is just life as Zoe knows it.  Not bad or good, not special, just normal. 

But every day that feels normal to Zoe is a gift to me.

Hello, I am mellow; I just had acupuncture.  If you want to talk, you'll have to come to me and speak gently.

Part II, Day 33: Clouds. Sun. Rain.

photo by Alex Epstein

Chapter One: Clouds.

Rain showers arrive, and at the end of a warm day the steam brings out black fly nymphs.  Sonya and Alex and Zoe and I are walking through the woods covered head to toe with latex, bug dope, and in one instance, black fur.  Spirits are high today.  The two seniors just finished their last courses.  One just got a second job offer through Americorps, and the other has interviews in the works.  The destination: Boston.  The older human just finished Part I of her novel.  A celebration is in order.

photo by Alex Epstein

 

Alex and Sonya and Zoe

We have much to discuss: grassroots environmental movements in the North Country; the new tradition of bringing celebratory drinks to some courses populated mostly by seniors; the wildflowers around us, especially the trillium; Jeffrey Eugenides's The Marriage Plot, the duo's upcoming travels to France and Italy, and Zoe's place in their heart as the not-a-dog person's dog to love.  They both have excellent dog instincts and know--Alex especially--how to operate three moves ahead, as in a game of chess, to anticipate danger, as when we leave the woods and get close to a road, or when other dogs show up that might not play well with others.  I see a dog in this couple's future, especially when they ask me, in detail, how much time housebreaking a puppy takes.

But not this summer.  This summer is going to be about travel, city life, and work.  

Zoe and I will miss them.

 
Chapter two: Sun

photo by Kelly Prime

The first really hot day in over a week and Zoe just wants to swim and stroll in a mellow way in the shade.  She hasn't seen K. for over two years but she recognizes her instantly when we pick her up at the bookstore.  She extends her snout as far as it will go to cover K's cheek with kisses--something she never does with me, or with the not-a-dog persons she has won over in time.  Today, though, there's something about the sun and the mood in the air that makes her exult in inter-species love and affection.  I think it's the company of K.  Like me, K. would live in a pen with eight dogs walking all over her if she could.

The question of the day: can a neuroscience major become a writer?  The answer, to quote Elizabeth Gilbert: Is the bean green?  Does James Brown get down?  This is a gal who keeps a lyrical, imagery-rich blog about her travels and food passions; a gal who dances, plays music, writes, makes art; all on top of being a gifted science major who has worked as a lab tutor all year.  We talk about how everything we do in life can be fodder for writing, even working at the Stewart's Shop in her town, which is part of the summer plan (great chances for conversation with customers, and people-watching, we agree) and the nature conservancy where she is a guide for kids.

I try to imagine what it would be like to be good at more than one or two things at once.  My sister is like that.  My friend, Sandra, in Paris is like that. 

We both agree that if we could do anything outside of our repertoire, we'd be singer-songwriters.  I'd be the new Joni Mitchell and . . . I am not sure what she would write or who she would be.  We'll have to walk again soon, so I can find out. 

Chapter Three: Rain

photo by Olivia Arroyo

Today an athlete from L.A., O., is enjoying her last full day in the North Country.  She has one last paper to turn in and then she's off for a summer of long, intense days of training (her tennis coach has already told her that the workouts begin on Monday).  She's also taking driving lessons, and she'll hunt for whatever part-time job she can find, preferably in a bookstore or library.

O. and Zoe are good friends

O. was only seventeen when she showed up in my nonfiction writing class this fall.  Many of the students were graduating seniors.  She wowed them with memoirs about her eccentric L.A. neighbors, her youthful forays into writing fantasy and young adult fiction, and her father's adventures in his native Costa Rica on the road with a flatulent pig.

For much of the fall, she would come to visit me in my office on the one day of the week when Zoe came with me, and we would talk about writing, then walk with Zoe and talk about everything else under the sun.

I only brought Zoe to campus for about 90 minutes a week, but on those days, there would be a line of students waiting to come to the office.  For a shy dog, Zoe enjoyed holding court, but her editorial advice was unreliable.  The manuscripts students handed in only interested her if the students had just come from the dining hall, and it's not easy to make an essay radiant with lyricism and original thought while also redolent of meat.

Lunch dates are fun, but I've never been a big one for going out for coffee.  Maybe because when I drink coffee or tea, I'm usually sitting behind this computer.  For me, conversation flows best when there's something to marvel at that is happening right in front of us.  Clouds shaped like brains floating overhead.  Trillium blooming. A three-legged dog swimming--something her surgeon last summer said she would probably not do again.  A three-legged dog reminding us that even when we make plans, all we ever have is now.

Part II, Day 32: Which Way Do We Go?

I've been trying to get back to see the trillium since our two-hour walk on Sunday, but on two consecutive walks this week, Zoe said no.

She likes the woods and the trillium just fine; what she took strenuous objection to was the route we had to take to get there.  When Zoe puts her foot down, when she does her "hell no, we won't go," she becomes very heavy and immobile.  I could, if I chose, put her back on the lead and try to tug her toward my destination, but what would be the joy in that?  These walks are for her.  I am her person, and I am there to serve.  If I had to force the matter and exert my will, it wouldn't be any fun.

What's fun is to figure out what she wants, what she doesn't want, and why.

Take Tuesday, for example.  On Tuesday she objected to puberty.  En masse.  We had crossed the path and were on the island, and were about to cross the second bridge.  But then, just up ahead, a group of about 30 kids, mostly boys in middle school, gathered in a clump to admire this cute three-legged dog making her way into their world.

I heard them before I saw them, but I saw her before I heard them.  She sat down and said, hell no.

Mind you, this is a shy dog.  She doesn't go to parties.  She prefers the one-on-one, or a group of three, maybe four.  It's difficult to go into depth on philosophical matters when there are ten, twenty, or maybe thirty boys, age 12-13, who all want to pat her on the head and say, "hi dog, hi hi hi!"

What I loved about this crossroads was the child leader who came forth.  A boy with a buzz cut who had clearly done time in the canine community said, "Guys, you're scaring this dog.  Let me go forward first.  Alone."  He told his minions to shush, and then he presented himself to our girl.  He was indisputably the alpha boy and no one doubted his authority, least of all, me.

The problem was that he did not have eyes in back of his head.  He didn't know, because he was too busy looking sweetly at Zoe and asking her in all the right ways if she wanted to sit and be patted, that the gang had not in the least bit thinned out, and so it looked to Zoe like the boy was luring her there with my help so that she could then be high-fived by about sixty growing hands--all at the same time.

Zoe was on the bridge a foot away from Alpha Boy, seriously considering his proposal, but then she decided against it, and that was that.  She turned around and walked away.

"What's her name?  If I call her, will she come?" the boy asked me.  What he really wanted to know was if this dog had been trained at all.

"I think she's just decided that this is too large a group to meet," I said, as Zoe's reverse walk turned into a run.  Before I finished the sentence she had whizzed over the bridge and was halfway down the first leg of our path.

But then I saw what all my weeks and months of training had accomplished.  She turned and looked behind several times to make sure I was watching.  She made sure we made eye contact every time she turned her head.  And then she made sure I could see that she was waiting for me in a quiet, discreet spot closer to the river, away from the throngs.

The smallest boy in this group, the least alpha one of the pack, stopped to yell to me, "Your dog is sweet.  She's the nicest dog I've ever seen."  

I wanted to thank him, but I was hurrying away, trying to catch up to my dog.

On Wednesday her objective to the path was purely aesthetic.

We were at the same point where things broke down on Tuesday, on the second bridge, and we heard loud music.  I hope she isn't starting to think that whenever we cross this bridge now, she'll be bombarded with sensations.  Middle school boys, loud music: after a while it's the same kind of too- muchness.

There was a band playing on campus.  The music sailing across the river to us was "Y.M.C.A."

Zoe looked at me and said, "Seriously?"  She sat down.

I wanted to explain the seventies to her.  I wanted to tell her about dance parties, gay rights, and how this fun, upbeat song by the Village People is the gay anthem.  But that it's also a song played at major sports events. I just read, for example, that it made the Guinness Book of Records in 2009 when 44,000 people sang the song at the Sun Bowl in Texas.  I wanted her to know that in a certain frame of mind, if you want to dance, and you know some fun arm moves, it's a great song for fostering unity, better even than the Hokey Pokey.  Better than a conga line or the macarena.  I wanted her to realize she was dismissing number 7 on VH1's list of the 100 Greatest Dance Songs of the 20th Century.
 
But I knew not to argue with her.  She had that certain determined head tilt.  Crossing the bridge was out of the question.  We killed some time at the island, where we wandered along the river's edge, chased sticks, and then followed the undergrowth to the edge and watched a German shepherd on the other side of the bridge charge toward the live music without hesitation.

"One can't argue with taste," Zoe finally said.

When I brought home this puppy nine years ago, the prevailing opinion, from all the sources I read and the classes Zoe and I attended, was that I had to be the firm pack leader.  That Zoe would be more content and feel more secure if she knew that I was alpha, that it was my way or the highway.

That isn't the relationship we established.  I'm alpha when it comes to big things, like, she can't play in traffic.  She acquiesces so sweetly to so many things we never bargained for: going to veterinarians once a month or more, submitting to blood tests, x-rays, intravenous treatments of drugs I never knew the names of before this September, acupuncture needles, herbs and vitamins and endless pills, all kinds of poking and prodding, and then the spectacle of me, her person, coming to her every night when she's settling into bed and telling her how great she is, how she is brave and good and resilient and strong, when she really just wants to sleep and dream about chasing rabbits and eating a maggoty old squirrel.

But one of the things I love about Zoe is her confidence in her own opinions.  While I dither about what to do in so many ways, especially on the page--should character X go here?  will character Y sleep with character Z?  am i over-doing it on the back story?  should i move this scene over there?--she knows where she wants to play, and why.  And when I worry about how to ask for things I need, and how to give my dog the things she needs most, she always knows where to go.  This way, her nose shows me.  She points, in her regal way, and the direction is clear.  That way.  No, not there.  Are you kidding me?  What, are you kidding me?

I think we're going to have to drive to the entrance to these woods if I want to walk through them again before the last of the trillium die