One Foot in Reality
When we feed the dogs, Roscoe, the white one with spots and a big heart, stands up to sniff the bowl, walks a few steps like this, then runs to the corner where his bowl will be put down, turning three or four complete circles on the way. He's done this for every meal for the last three of four years. He's done this routine for every meal in this house for nearly a year. Tonight he started the first of his revolutions and slammed his nose right into the wall before he'd completed 45 degrees. Caught off guard, stinging, our sweet dog stepped sideways, looked at the wall, looked at me, and then started hopping around again, re-focusing his attention on the task at hand: the food bowl.
This morning I felt like Roscoe did just after the wall stopped his spin. Unlike Roscoe, I did not jump right back into the task at hand. I moped, I shed some tears, I let my feeling get hurt by further slights, real and imagined. I was having a bad day. (And I always indulge myself by hearing an echo of those words from Beth Henley's play/ movie "Crimes of the Heart" when the sisters talk of how their mother had been having a bad day, "a REAL bad day.")
Then this evening our friend Deborah stopped by to see Alexander. I told her I was discouraged. She's an Emergency Room RN at Baptist Hospital. She played with Alexander, making him belly-laugh over and over. She talked about her mother barely getting by on social security. She complained with me about the people I wanted to complain about. Her shins were killing her from the half-marathon she did in Kentucky a couple of weeks ago but she never whined. She sat there on our couch icing her shins and making us all laugh and feel better.
We fed ourselves and Alexander, then wandered down the street to where our friends' house is turned upside down with repairs and moving preparations. Denise helped Emma price for a garage sale while Robert kept me company as Sender joyfully explored their deck, backyard, and various rooms. We will miss these two tremendously.
After time with Deborah, Emma, Robert, and always Alexander, I started to realize I need to keep one foot in reality to remember the joy of this crazy life. The paramedic life used to keep me there. It may be time to find a way to get back to that. Life is too beautiful and rich to dwell on hitting the occasional mid-spin wall in the face.
