A to Z Challenge -The Letter D - This Dog

I am participating in the “April Blogging From A to Z Challenge” for 2018.  Except for Sundays, but starting with Sunday April 1, I will be writing a post each day in April.  Working through the alphabet, by the end of the challenge I will have posted 26 writings.  

This Dog

I was newly separated from a 27 year marriage and living alone and on my own for the first time in my life.   As you might imagine it was a challenging time filled with extreme emotional ups and downs. 

My children were grown and off on their own life’s explorations.  

As I reflect back on that time, I now understand that among the many emotions I was experiencing, one of the strongest was the emptiness of my once filled nest.  

Yes,  I was feeling a freedom exhilaration.  I felt the lightness of only having to care for myself.  I could choose to eat dinner for breakfast and vice versa.  

But I also felt an overwhelming loneliness.  Something I had never experienced before in my 40 plus years. 

I just wanted to look.  My new friend and I were on the way somewhere else when I spotted the doggies in the window.  

“Would you like to hold one?” she said. 

Of course I did.  That one in the corner of the wriggly puppy filled pen, the one the others didn’t want to play with, the smallest of the bunch, she’s the one I wanted to hold. 

We took her home and I felt like I was home again.  

She was so tiny, she practically fit in the palm of my hand.  

Sadly, she was too small and as I found out later, she had been taken from her mother too soon. I  had her for one short week.   She didn’t make it. I still get tears in my eyes when I think about that little one. A hard lesson learned about how certain pet stores acquire their puppies. 

After that heartbreaking experience, I felt sure that I never wanted to go through that again.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about how much that small helpless creature added to my life in that one short week. 

Three weeks later we were on our way, out to the country.  I had spotted an ad, by a breeder of Maltese puppies. 

As we pulled off the road, onto a long winding driveway, we passed by a kid hanging up side down on the branch of big old oak.  Out in the field two more kids were racing around in the fields on a big old tractor.  A couple of deer were grazing off to the side of the big old farmhouse. 

A tall woman greeted us as we got out of the car.  

She was dressed as I imagine a farmer would be, in denim overalls and plaid flannel shirt. Her curly hair loosely tied at the back of her head.  She had a pretty freckled face and bright welcoming eyes. 

“Let me show you the pups,” she said.  

The pen was in the back yard of the house.  Inside of the pen were two white fur balls.  One was wildly barking and jumping on up on the side of the pen.  “Pick me!” " Pick me!”

The other one was smaller, almost cowering in the corner.  

The woman opened the gate to the pen, and the crazy one came bolting out.  He ran up to us.  I held out my hand, he took a sniff and then took off in the other direction, running in circles. 

The little one stayed in the pen.  The woman gently picked her up.  She snuggled into her arms, almost as if she thought she could hide there. 

The woman put her down on the ground.  I went up to her, knelt down and put my hand out. She timidly came up to me.  All of a sudden Mr. Crazy, came running up and started nipping at the little one, teasing her, trying to get her to play “chase me". 

The woman told us we could have either one.  

We chose this dog

The crazy one!

 

A to Z Challenge - The Letter C - Giving Care

I am participating in the “April Blogging From A to Z Challenge” for 2018.  Except for Sundays, but starting with Sunday April 1, I will be writing a post each day in April.  Working through the alphabet, by the end of the challenge I will have posted 26 writings.  

Giving Care

I remember the exact moment I became a caregiver for the first time.   I must admit, now that I am reflecting on the subject, I realize that up until that point I was probably pretty much self involved.

At the age of 25, I gave birth to my first child, a beautiful baby girl.  I was in love with this girl immediately.  Funny how that happens.   

I was the oldest of six, so, I did have some experience with babies, but they were not my sole responsibility.  

The first two months of motherhood were pretty fantastic.  I remember my mother saying something about me having a real life baby doll to play with.  I would dress her in all of the cuteness.  I held her all of the time.

Then one day everything changed.   

By then she was sleeping through the night, or at least most of the night.   This one night, however, she was very fussy.  I remember it was a Saturday night.  Even though she felt a little warm to me, I didn’t think much of it.  After a couple of hours of walking the floor with her, she finally fell asleep in my arms and I was able to lay her in her cradle. 

She woke very early with a raspy cry.  When I picked her up, I could tell that she was feverish.  I took her temperature.  It was 102.5.   Although it was a Sunday morning, I thought that I should give the doctor a call.   Naturally, I got an answering service.   At least back then you could talk to a human and not have to navigate through those annoying phone tree commands.   The woman who answered said she would talk to the doctor and he would give me a call back. 

Now I fully expected the doctor to reassure me.  I was pretty confident that he was going to tell me to give her some baby Tylenol and that would be that, but he didn’t. 

He told me to bring her right into the office.  On a Sunday morning!  I clearly remember the fear and the clutch in my stomach.
And that’s when I became a caregiver for the first time in my life.  It was at that exact moment  I realized that there was something more precious to me than my own life.  I was responsible for another’s well being.  I was a caregiver.
Now I must tell you that everything turned out fine.  She had a bit of an ear infection.  I think the doctor had me bring my baby into the office because I was a new mother.  Perhaps that was why.
Since that day, my caregiver role has expanded to include two more children.  I also gave care to two parents at the end of their lives.  Currently I am, of all things, caring for our 17 year old Maltese puppy.  (That might be another post in itself).
I’ve had many parental stomach clutching moments in my life since that first time.
None can compare, though, to the moment when another doctor told us that Joe had stage IV colon cancer.
That’s the one thing I could not and still cannot reconcile in my caregiver brain.  How could I not give my son the care he needed to keep him alive?

A to Z Challenge -The Letter B - Billy From Down The Street

I am participating in the “April Blogging From A to Z Challenge” for 2018.  Except for Sundays, but starting with Sunday April 1, I will be writing a post each day in April.  Working through the alphabet, by the end of the challenge I will have posted 26 writings.  

Billy From Down The Street

We all had a crush on Billy.    To me he was “Billy, from down the street”.   My friend Susan called him “next door neighbor Billy”.  Joy’s mom had several names for Billy.  Mainly she referred to him as “That Billy from across the street”.   

“Cookie,” she’d say, “that Billy from across street is bad news.” 

Everyone called Joy, “Cookie".  Everyone that is except Billy.  He called her “My Sweet Joy.” 

Even after all of these years,  I can still picture the color of his eyes.  They weren’t just blue, they were Billy blue.  

He had this way of looking straight into your eyes.   He would squint with a furrowed brow when he listened to you as if he really wanted to understand what you were saying. 

While most of the boys were sporting crew cuts, Billy wore his dark hair long and loose.  When he rode his bike, jumping the curbs, his hair flew wildly in all directions. 

Billy didn’t hang out much with the other neighborhood kids.  He was slightly built and not as tall as other boys his age.  He wasn’t into playing ball or trading comic books.   He mostly just wanted to be with his Sweet Joy.

Of course Cookie’s mom forbid her to see Billy.   “You stay away from him, Cookie!” she’d say. 

At the time I didn’t understand why Cookie’s mom was so wary of Billy.   I wondered if she just didn’t like his rebellious look, with the long hair and all. 

Most afternoons, after school, Cookie would come over to my house, then we would meet up with Susan. 

“Mom, I’m going over to the girl’s for a while,” Cookie would say.  She knew her mom would be watching out the window to make sure that Cookie was actually going where she said she was.  

Cookie also knew that Billy would be watching from his window.  He lived next door to Susan.  That was their signal.  We were their cover. 

We would all meet up at the park. 

It was, as far as I knew, quite innocent.  After all, we were barely teenagers.  We would swing on the swings and climb on the bars.  We would joke and laugh.  I fondly remember it as a fun time.  Most important of all, we would make sure we were all home before dinner.

This went on all through the spring and summer.   

In September, at the start of a new school year, Cookie’s mom found a note from Billy in Cookie’s room. 

So, Cookie was grounded and pretty much confined to her house. 

“If you want to see your friends, they can come over here,” her mom would say.

Whenever we would be with her, she only wanted to talk about Billy.  

“We are madly in love,” she would say. 

“I am so crazy about Billy, the other day I put the cereal box in the fridge and the milk in the pantry,” she said with a giggle. 

So, Susan and I began to spend less and less time with Cookie.  

Billy didn’t attend the same school that we did.  I’m not sure how he and Cookie managed to still communicate and see each other.  But apparently they did.

I’ll never forget this night. At 2:30 in the morning, I was awoken by the door bell ringing and loud knocking on our front door.  

My parents, my sister and I jumped out of bed.  Even though we were all still half asleep, we were shaken as we raced to the front door. 

The two policeman stood in the foyer. 

“When was the last time you spoke to Joy?” the taller one asked.

I was confused and not thinking clearly.   “Um, uh…,” I stammered.   

Gathering my thoughts together, I remembered that Cookie wasn’t in school on Wednesday.  

And that’s what I told the officers.

I thought a moment more and said, “I think I talked to Cookie, uh I mean Joy, on Tuesday.”

“Our lockers are next to each other."

“What did you talk about?”  The shorter man asked.

“Nothing special,”  I said.

“What is this about?”  my father wanted to know. 

Finally, they told us that Cookie had not come home from school and neither had Billy.

By daylight the pair had been found “hiding” at the park.  

Years later, Susan admitted to me that she was the one who suggested that was where they might have gone. 

Needless to say, the more Cookie’s parents tried to keep her and Billy apart, the more skillful they became at finding ways to see each other.  

A year later, Billy and his family moved to another state.  

Cookie and I drifted further apart.  Susan and I still keep in touch.  

I think I heard that Cookie wound up marrying someone she met in college.

Tragically, Billy did not live a long life.  I guess there is something to be said for a mother’s intuition.

Have you ever had a Billy or a Cookie in your life?