The Dog and I

I'm not what you would call a dog person. Of course, it's true that, next to the television's remote control, dog is man's best friend. Perhaps my justified ambivalence toward Poochicus Biteyourbuttabit is due to too many an untoward encounter with the snarling, hydrophobic malevolence of a Fido, a Rover, a Rin Tin Tin, intent on my evisceration. This since toddlerhood. I have scars yet upon my person that prove my canine-fanged point. Would I lie to you, dear and curious reader?

Fast forward past a quarter-century of caring for dozens of family pets - both canine and feline (don't get me started on Miss Kitty and her dozen siblings!).

My current assignment is house sitting, and that with a most unusual doggie in attendance. She is what is commonly termed "a love" and is a lumbering ottoman, though she actually hails from Oz. She and I have the same monikers in real life, which may cause you, the discerning reader, to scratch your proverbial noggin. But names truly are not at issue here. What is at issue is whether or not I shall become a worthy care-provider for Cara Mia. She has caught me totally off my guard. With ravenous abandon, our well-padded lady broke into an unattended, opened can of dog food. She was licking her capacious chops when I caught her.

She was not the least embarrassed.

She dropped the can at my feet and let out a lusty belch, all the while wagging her tail ...

I Am ... Free

Stronger, younger men would despair to find themselves in my place.

My circumstance - immobility of my lower limbs - would become an irreparable psychological blow to what many fellows believe the defining characteristics of manhood. Taking risks that are possible only in youth, these sturdy heroes march forward with confidence. They stretch toward a future of assured promise and prosperity. My frame, however, has been weakened by degrees through a lengthy illness. This sad body lies inert at the threshold of atrophy. The divan shall evermore be my home.

Though the physical is irrevocably on the wane, the spirit is, conversely, waxing most prodigiously. Though my feet no longer provide me the simple pleasure of a solitary promenade, nor the capacity to gambol about the sylvan expanse of my family's estate, I am, more than any robust youth who runs and leaps, free.

 

I possess a joyous liberty and fullness of heart that soars higher than a lark. Useless limbs are no longer a source of ruing my entry into the world. Spiritual emancipation arrived when I recognized the sublime importance of the dearest yet simplest of gifts. A student of so many years ago brought me the means to record my every thought: pen and ink and paper.

 

I have found freedom in the bottom of an inkwell.

 

Daisy

Golden Gloriosa Daisy,

 

Never do you cease to 'maze me.

 

Pretty face toward sky upturned,

 

For your company bards have yearned.

 

Gentlest of winds cause you to sway,

 

Inspire us e'er to dance all day!

The Book Stall

 

An otherwise beautiful day was scarred by an incident of wanton brutality.

 

Bending over the tattered shreds of poverty and despair, Marcus gently slipped his sturdy right arm under the slender shoulders of the frail young man. He carefully raised Sergei's trunk to a slightly more elevated position, yet all the while being careful not to inflict any further pain upon the victim. Marie and Ava Sturges, elderly spinster ladies, had been taking their usual early morning walk when they happened upon the poor boy, crumpled in a heap in the narrow lane behind The Book Stall. Ava, the spryer of the two sisters, hastened to Marcus's cottage while a distraught Marie kept watch that no further harm should befall the destitute immigrant. Her protective spirit and the righteous indignation she felt on Sergei's behalf were weapons far greater in strength than any her tiny body could literally wield.

 

Scarcely able to utter more than a few unintelligible words, Sergei's blue eyes, now opened, told more the story of his life than his garbled speech ever could.

 

Marcus, the third-generation owner of The Book Stall, recognized the lad immediately. Sergei had arrived from "the old country" some weeks before and had been frequenting the tiny but surprisingly well-supplied book store. The owner, a patient and good-hearted man, listened attentively to Sergei's poor English and deduced that the immigrant wanted a French-English dictionary. Naturally, Marcus knew down what row and on what shelf the somewhat worn yet still serviceable Dictionnaire Larousse sat. It was still too early to understand why a man named Sergei was of the French tongue. Names had yet to be exchanged. Nationality to be learned.

 

Purchase made and in hand, Sergei motioned with the other hand, which was clutching a notebook and pen, over to the little set of table and chairs by the sunny, cheerily curtained window.

 

"There ... there?" he continued pointing.

 

"Yes, of course!" Markus beamed, taking Sergei by his elbow and escorting him to what would become his new classroom.

Let Your Passion Move You

 

Aunt Rose had been writing down her thoughts from the moment she learned to put pencil to paper. Feeding Rose's fervid imagination were the tales spinning about in the old and dusty books left behind by the last tenants of the decrepit farmhouse. She fairly devoured each and every tattered, dog-eared page. Is there any other eatable in this universe that can be so devoured yet, beyond all human reason, remain intact sufficient for countless more tasty repasts? Clearly a precocious child, the young Rose applied herself in school - she was a model student - and excelled in all subjects. The study of English grammar and literature, however, was her passion.

Upon graduation Rose was determined to continue her education; she became a self-taught woman at a time when "education" and "women" were words infrequently paired together. Despite long hours spent tending the garden, the livestock and diverse other chores peculiar to life on a ranch, Rose used her evenings to feed the mind. It was the young scholar's custom to read in bed until she finally dropped off, her will no longer able to fight off much-deserved sleep. An open book in one hand, a pencil now motionless upon a word-cluttered notebook in the other: this, an evening's literary drama played out. 

Mama would come dutifully into the tiny bedroom every night to check on Rose. Removing the wireframe eyeglasses from her little girl's bowed head, Mama gazed upon the big family's youngest child one last time for the day. Bemused, she had to wonder what would become of so singular a young lady. The kerosene lamp shone no more that night ...

The outlook of her family and of older members of the community could be described as nothing other than provincial. "There goes Rose the bookworm!" the old hens would cluck as they huddled together on the general store's wooden walk. Rose would throw them a cursory smile and breeze on by as she headed to the stationers three doors down, then to the book seller's stall. The old women were not necessarily malicious in their tittering; they were simply amused at the thought of a farm girl's getting higher than herself. Rose was not embittered (it simply was not her nature) but annoyed at the narrow view so tenaciously held by the older generation. Not to mention the lack of vision of her contemporaries.

Few among Rose's acquaintances (and none of her family) presumed that this young author's first book would sell. Quite to the contrary, Hard Work Will Not Kill You became a national best-seller. In the course of its 383 pages Rose described how she, her ten siblings and old-world parents turned a rundown ranch in the San Joaquin Valley into a profitable enterprise. This meandering but spellbinding account included a detailed family history as well as the plucky raconteur's philosophy on a number of matters near to the heart, most notably that of the modern woman's place in the worldwide community.

She who laughs last laughs best ... all the way to the bank.

The Past and Present Unite

 

Finding a small window of settled weather this morning, I ventured forth on a brisk uphill walk through my usual haunts. Actually, my ambulation did not become brisk until the roadway leveled off, permitting my huffs and puffs to regulate. The sky was piled high with mountains of vanilla-cream clouds, spilling luxuriantly one over the other so that there was no discernible beginning nor end of their cumulative mass. Light and shadow, in particularly sharp definition (given the sun's ins and outs), highlighted the contours of the towering meringue peaks.

 

I found a neighborhood home empty and for sale. A foreclosure. Wandering cautiously onto the property, I was lured to a spacious deck giving onto the most stunning view of a golf course studded with both evergreen and colorful deciduous trees. Tenderly embracing the expansive green were rolling hills whose dusty timber had been washed clean by the previous evening's downpour. What arrested my gaze, however, was the brilliant light from an otherwise watery sun that flooded Miner's Point in pearly opalescence.

 

A genuine showstopper.

 

 

This late afternoon would be a perfect time to remain indoors and curl up in front of the fireplace with a good read. Possessing many a good book but no obvious fireplace, I have to bolt. Cabin fever has gotten the better of me, so I'm going to put on a brave face and raincoat and dash headlong into the blustery and darkening remains of one hour's daylight.

 

Drawn along the same path, I surge forward, my frame a near-horizontal incline against the punishing gale. Upon entering the same property as the day before, I find shelter under the eaves of the house. They afford little more than minor relief from the rain but virtually none from the wildly circulating winds. I don't mind. I knew what lay ahead the moment I stepped out my own front door.

 

Once again my attention is fixed on a Miner's Point now enveloped in a wild and woolly atmospheric condition so different from that of the day before. Undulating foothills and their swaying sentinels roil in a sea of cascading and sprinting vapors. A barely discernible mountain pass is in evidence only because a string of diamond-like automobile headlights and blurred red taillights are flowing downward and upward respectively on a distant roadway cradled within sloping walls of earth, stone and tree.

 

I've never before been this soaked to the bone and loved it so ...

 

 

Like a moth to the flame, a poet to the babbling brook, a drunkard to the grog, I expect to be pulled in once again. Whether by simple desire or actual gravity, who can say? Perhaps the draw to this property has proven merely a flicker of subconscious recognition of similarities to my childhood home.

 

My third visit to the bank-owned home with the killer view shall be tomorrow ...

 

Calm is as good as any a word to describe the new day and its weather as I saunter along from my current digs to that greatly missed, fabled "childhood" home on the hill. Though the look of the sky is an autumnal cool and gray overcast, yet Sol gently, unobtrusively illumines the dirty cotton batting, thereby spreading an expansive cheer and warmth throughout the vale.

 

Perched once again on the deck and looking outward with the eyes of a thirteen-year old boy, I am transported back a half century. Having come from the fertile valleys of central California and landing on the highest peak in a little, unincorporated hamlet, I feel that all the air has been squeezed from my lungs. It could've been literally, but, of course, you must realize that I'm speaking figuratively.

 

My family and I were standing on the deck of a home for sale. The old darling was beautifully hewn of stone and rough timber. She was a mere shell - an interior yet to be fitted out - but with such potential. My mother, enamored of the entire package, commented to the owner that only one thing was missing: a view of the ocean. The lady of the house smiled and directed my mother's gaze over to the left. Pointing to a break in the trees on the distant range, Mrs. Emerson said, "Look, Dear." There, faintly but absolutely, was a sliver of blue crowned by whitecaps.

 

My "new home," too, affords a Pacific glimmer, one that beckons this grown-up "thirteen-year old" to cast off and dream on toward the morrow ...

 

 

 

 

 

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