Afoot and Light-Hearted

We have discovered Charlee Bears!  Suddenly, my non-food-motivated beauty is rushing to do whatever I ask of her so that I’ll pop a treat into her mouth.  She crunches it up with lip-smacking zest and an avaricious gleam in her eye, then gazes at me in rapt fascination, waiting for the next command.  As Betsy, Cleo’s favorite student and frequent trick-trainer, says, “I used to never  be sure if she knew what I wanted and just didn’t feel like doing it, or if she really didn’t understand what I was asking her for.  Now I know!”  Since the Charlee Bear find, Cleo has perfected the high five, a trick we’ve been working on for, oh, two years and the back leg hop, something which she’s now taken to doing spontaneously when she’s excited.

We’re probably coming late to the party here, but until last month, I’d never heard of Charlee Bears.  It’s all thanks to our art teacher, just returned from sabbatical, who came over to say hi to us during the first faculty meeting.  As she was patting Cleo and making a fuss over her, she exclaimed, “Oh!  I have a couple of Charlee Bears in my pocket.  Is it okay for Cleo to have them?”  Knowing that Cleo never, ever eats dry treats, I said doubtfully, “You can see if she’ll eat them if you....”  Before I’d finished the sentence, Cleo was making a gigantic deal out of chewing up the offering.  Swallowing, she turned in slow motion to stare at her benefactress as if she were the second coming.  I could almost hear the soundtrack swelling as Cleo discovered the meaning of life.

“What are those things called, again?” I asked.

“All natural healthy dog treats!”  “Savory taste of real liver!”  “All USA ingredients!”  “Only 3 calories per treat!”  And, to top it all off, they’re “Pocket Perfect.”  In fact, they look so much like oyster crackers that I’ve been tempted to try one on more than a few occasions.  That actually smell pretty good.  It’s the beef liver that stops me, though it certainly doesn’t stop Cleo.  I figure if I keep working on Betsy, she’ll eventually break down and give one a taste.  I almost had her last Monday, but she chickened out. 

By now, Cleo knows she’s going to get them when we’re training.  As we walk into class on Monday nights, she gets even more excited than she used to and there’s an added spring in her step.  One of the benefits of being able to carry several in my pocket is that I can surprise her with them, too.  I love the look of disbelief that crosses her face when I casually reach into my pocket and pull one out.  I imagine that it reinforces her impression of my magical abilities and beneficence.  For me, it just gives me pleasure to surprise and delight her.

I’ve mentioned before that as often as we can, and certainly every weekend, we take Cleo for a trail walk along the site of an old, long-ago-dismantled railway line.  It’s a beautiful place to go, open and green, full of intoxicating smells for the canine nose and blissfully leash-free, allowing for lagging behind and running to catch up, zig-zagging, crow chasing and all kinds of other exhilarating experiences.  In the last couple of weeks, we found a path leading off the trail that takes us all the way down to the ocean.

This morning, Cleo got her ritual pooping out of the way as soon as we arrived at the trail.  As John bagged the evidence and ran off to dispose of it, Cleo and I did some refresher work on come, finish and stand.  It’s always helpful to train in a variety of settings because dogs are very location-specific, as our trainer, Pluis, was reminding the class last week.  The Saturday before, she had been working at a lake with a retriever and his owner.  The goal was for the dog to swim out to a float, grab it, bring it directly back to the handler, then wait for the handler to step back and give a command before shaking the water out of his fur.  They worked and worked until the dog had it down, then walked forty yards around the lake to try it in a new location.  Same lake, same handler, same trainer, same float, same commands.  The dog had absolutely no idea what they were asking him to do. 

So I like to practice with Cleo wherever we might be.  And, of course, I happened to have some Charlee Bears in my pocket this morning, much to Cleo’s ecstatic delight.  Although it was a concern for her to see Daddy jogging off without us, when she heard me say “Come!” and saw me reach into my pocket, she happily galloped over and sat at my feet.  Chomp, chomp, chomp!  Hand signal to heel.  Chomp, chomp!  Stand.  Mmm, mmm!  Daddy came back and we set off.  Now and then, I called Cleo back, rewarding her with a treat.  We walked to the ocean and stood in a small gazebo overlooking the rocks and the spectacular, roaring winter waves as they folded over themselves in violent curls, frothing as they skirted along the polished stones at the edge of the continent.  Cleo jumped up onto a bench and rested her front paws on the banister, ears blowing in the fresh breeze.  She gazed out to sea, following the flight of a passing cormorant. 

When the time came, she was happy to head back up the path.  As we turned onto the main trail, she was all alertness and quivering attention.  John and I could see nothing ahead, but she was fixated.  “Okay!” I told her, giving the release command and allowing her to run ahead.  She bounded off, but then slowed, making sure we were nearby.  Once again, she stared ahead, shifting the angle of her body now and then to gain a new perspective.  In true terrier fashion, she was obsessed with whatever was ahead, though all we saw was an empty trail.  As we neared the road that bisects the trail, I called Cleo back to me and told her to heel, which she did perfectly, though with all her attention directed ahead of us.  She stayed with me as we crossed the road, she sat at my feet the instant I stopped.  This was perfection that deserved a reward.  I reached into my pocket for the favored treats and held one in front of her mouth.  Without a glance at my hand, she snatched the treat away from me and spat it on the ground.  John and I laughed and I gave Cleo the Okay.  She leapt ahead, trotting jauntily ahead of us, tail extended at a free and confident angle. 

Charlee Bears may be manna from heaven, but they ain’t nothin’ compared to the joy of the open trail.

Somebody's Crying

“There isn’t an adult who hasn’t experienced heartbreak.”  I was talking with one of my young students as he sat in my office, eyes red-rimmed, mashing Cleo to his chest like a talisman against further pain.  She was being uncharacteristically calm about his too-tight grip.  She lay supine, cradled in his arms, her back legs extended, toes pointing to the window, her neck craning, chin hooked over his upper arm, ears dangling.  From time to time, she bounced up and down as the boy tried to wipe his eyes or nose on his unoccupied shoulder without letting go of the (miraculously) sleeping dog.

“Thanks,” he replied glumly, more as an acknowledgement of my attempt to be kind than with any sense of belief in what I’d said.  Who can tell a fourteen-year-old boy experiencing his first break-up that his exquisite heartache is anything but unique, the worst of all time, one for the ages?  After all, she was the one.  He had planned to travel the world with her, living a blissful existence in her presence every minute of every day.  Now, all he wanted to do was find a way to get her back.  If only he could find the right words, make the right gesture, she would see that they were meant for each other.

And all I wanted to do was find the balm to heal this tender heart, knowing full well that this would be a betrayal of everything I believe about working with adolescents.  Not only can we not take away the pain, it’s disrespectful even to try. 

When I was much younger, going through my divorce, my oldest sister confessed to me that she was pretty sure my marriage wouldn’t last. 

“Why didn’t you stop me?” I wailed across the phone lines. 

“Because that was something you had to find out for yourself,” she replied.  “All I could do was be there to help you pick up the pieces.”   And she was.  Had she tried to stop me from marrying my first husband, a perfectly nice man who was entirely unsuited to my temperament, I would have felt angry and resentful, then gone ahead and done exactly what I wanted.  Later, when divorce became inevitable, I doubt I would have been able to lean on her as I did.

Every heart break, every wrong choice, every right choice that ends badly, teaches us so much about love.  If I hadn’t pursued that dark-eyed and mysterious (read cold and distant) actor in college, would I appreciate the active communication John and I have every day?  If that boy in seventh grade hadn’t rolled his eyes when I confessed to liking him, would I care as much about people’s feelings now?  Okay, probably; he was just a jerk.  Cute, but a jerk.  Then again, he’s probably learned a thing or two in the ensuing forty plus years, too.

Some of the hardest conversations I have are the ones when I try to encourage parents to let their children deal with an upheaval on their own.  Stand in support, yes.  Advise, absolutely.  But don’t try to fix it.  When you let your child work through the challenge, you’re teaching resilience.  Problem solving.  Tenacity.  Self-determination.  And you’re showing that you trust your child to find a way through.

I was reminded of a student the other day.  This guy was one of the nicest kids in the world, hugely popular with his classmates, a bit of a class clown, but not a mean bone in his body.  A sharply honed academic he was not.  He fought for his Cs and occasional C-minuses.  The faculty knew this fellow was going to be one of those people who would never set the world on fire intellectually, but who would be immensely successful because he had so much social intelligence.  He would be the guy who raised millions for the nonprofit he worked for because he could convey his belief in the organization with such charm and conviction that folks would rush to open their checkbooks.  Or he would be the connector who introduced two people who subsequently changed the world with their partnership.  Unfortunately, this student’s father was not as convinced of his son’s potential as we were.  Dad had been number one in his class at an Ivy League school, and that was the only definition of success that he understood.  If his son earned a C on a test, Dad was in the Head’s office, complaining that the teacher obviously didn’t like him.  If the boy’s low grades kept him out of the play, Dad met with the director—oh, the rule was fine for other students, just not for his son. 

Towards the end of his freshman year, I heard that the student was about to complete his Eagle Scout project.  “Wow!” I exclaimed to the teacher who was telling me about it.  “He’s only a freshman and he’s already becoming an Eagle Scout?  That’s really impressive!”

“Not really,” said the teacher, shrugging.  “His dad did it all for him.”

As much as I wanted, and still want, to take away my heartbroken student’s pain, to tell him that his dream girl will see the light and take him back, I know she won’t.  He may always love her, but more likely, he’ll always remember the things about her that made him feel good, and when he meets someone who lightens his heart in the same way, he’ll treasure her. 

In the meantime, the best thing he can do is to hang onto a sleeping puppy and let her soft grey fur soak up some tears.

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Don't forget!  The Educated Dog (the book) is available on Amazon.com.  If you liked it, feel free to write a review or "like" it on Amazon.

Love and Loyalty

Every year at this time, I teach Romeo and Juliet to my eighth grade English class.  I love teaching this play to this age group.  Most of them enter into reading and discussing it thinking that it’s a touching romantic love story.  They’re very surprised to discover that the whole debacle unfolds over a five day period and leaves six people dead.  Far from a touching romance, it’s a bloodbath born of five varieties of unrestrained love.  My class this year is a really special group of people.  While there is the usual contingent of squirrely adolescents, they’re also wise beyond their years, highly verbal and deeply thoughtful.  As we discussed the five types of love in the play, one of my students said, “When we’re talking about familial love, love of your family’s honor, aren’t we really talking about loyalty?”

What an interesting thought.  Loyalty is generally good, isn’t it?  But then, so is love.  Can’t loyalty be taken too far?  If you love your family, or the idea of your family, too much, as Tybalt does, isn’t that just as bad as loving someone so much that your own identity is subsumed in his?  Juliet gives up her name for Romeo when she has known him all of fifteen minutes.  She can imagine no world without him by her side, as he can imagine no world without her.  Is that really healthy?  Tybalt is rude to his uncle and risks bringing social embarrassment on his household because he is so zealous about protecting his family’s “honor” that he is willing to kill Romeo while Romeo is a guest at a Capulet party.  When love for, or loyalty to, a group overwhelms respect for the individuals in that group, doesn’t that presage disaster?  Shakespeare certainly seems to think so.

I grew up at a time when loyalty to country, AKA patriotism, meant that you should never question your government’s actions.  America, love it or leave it.  These days, loyalty to a political party seems to trump loyalty to country.  If the other guy wins the election, that’s tyranny and we gotta secede.  If we win, that proves our ideas are best and the other side is morally bankrupt.  Or is that just what the media feeds us?  Do most of us really live in a grey area of nuance?  The place where loyalty and constructive criticism meet? 

It’s been brought to my attention over the years that my sense of loyalty doesn’t always serve me well.  For years, I’ve gone to the same woman to cut my hair not because she’s particularly good at it (as my husband and certain friends have pointed out on multiple occasions), but because I like her.  We developed a friendship over the years, and I care about her.  She knows about my trials and tribulations raising my step-children and I know about her divorce, her subsequent dating fiascos, her child rearing quandaries.  She’s funny and sassy and opinionated, all of which I love.  But I’d rather see her for a glass of wine than a haircut.  So after years of dithering and hesitation, I’m now going to someone new.  I feel guilty and I don’t like her as much, but my hair looks great. 

Perhaps in a slightly more meaningful context, I felt a decidedly misplaced loyalty to the ophthalmologist who performed my Lasik surgery.  Oh, him I disliked intensely, but I always figured, because he did the surgery, he knew what he was doing.  I finally realized what an arrogant jerk he was when John and I encountered him at a local restaurant.  He was solo, a good three sheets to the wind when he staggered up to us and shook my hand.  Then, turning to John, he said, “Don’t worry, I’m her doctor, not her lover.”  Okay, eww!  I mean, really?  What do you even say to that?  John looked like he wanted to deck the guy.  And, by the way, came up with a pretty good comeback which he chose not to say until the jerk was out of earshot, showing yet again the class that is one of the many reasons I love him.  So after putting off my yearly eye appointment because I didn’t want this slimeball anywhere near me, I finally found a new optometrist who quickly informed me that, although I have been told for years that my eyes are corrected to 20-25, they are nowhere close to that.  Not only that, but it is no big deal to actually correct them to 20-25.  So after over a decade of accepting that when someone said to me, “See that dog over there?” I would have to answer, “No,” it turns out that in a few days, I will.

So that’s why I’ve been questioning the value of loyalty lately.  Then, the other day, a friend sent me an article about a German Shepherd, Tommy, who continues to attend mass every day at his owner’s church even though she died over a year ago.  If you knew my friend, you’d recognize why this story was such a profound example of canine loyalty; she can be polite during a church service when she’s required to go, but she would never attend one voluntarily.  Were she Tommy the German Shepherd, it’s far more likely that you’d find her hoisting one to her owner’s memory at the local sidewalk café. 

Pluis, our trainer, often admonishes the class, “Our dogs must find us terrifically boring.”  All we do is stare at a computer screen, sit around reading, leave them alone, worry about the state of the world.  Any sensible being should know that if you are not sleeping or eating, you should be playing, running, chasing, digging, sniffing, tasting, repeat.  Yet here is Cleo on this most boring weekend when I have been laid out by either the flu or the worst cold I’ve had in years (and after reading the flu.gov site, I’m going for the former), and what is she doing?  Well, right now she’s lying on the chaise in her characteristic Kilroy position, chin hanging over the back edge, so that she can watch me type.  Moments ago when I got up in search of my water glass, she followed me into the bedroom (Are we napping again?), back to the kitchen (What are you gonna do in here?), to the living room (Are we going somewhere?), back to the bedroom (I guess we’re napping), back to the kitchen (What are you doing?) and finally into my office where, with a resigned sigh, she left me at the computer and returned to the chaise.  As I napped earlier, she stood guard (snoozed guard?) over me, springing up at odd sounds, ready to protect and defend if the need arose.  Or at least, that’s how I interpret her sudden leaps to rigid-legged attention and heart-stopping outbursts of alarm-bark.  Dogs are not in relationships with us for what they can get.  They love us in a way that is far too easy to take for granted. 

And that is the true meaning, and the real value, of loyalty.

Cleo the Bedlington Returns!

Happy New Year and welcome back to the world of Cleo!  The lamb-girl and I are very glad to be here.  You may recall that the week before Halloween, I wrote to say that I would be taking a month off to get my book in order.  Okay, who knew?!  It’s a lot harder than I thought it would be to ready a book for publication.  So here we are, two and a half months later, but the book is published and available on Amazon. Here’s the link, in case you want to get it: The Educated Dog.  It is being sold only as an ebook, but if you don’t have a Kindle, here is an article on how to read ebooks without one.  If you like the book, I would so appreciate your posting a review on the Amazon site.  Anyway, I’m really excited to have actually accomplished this goal, as well as to be back writing the blog and sharing our stories!

So much has happened since October, both in the wide world and in the tiny sliver of Cleo’s world.  Anyone who was alive and aware in December 2012 will never again hear the words Sandy Hook or Newtown without experiencing a wave of grief.  For our school, exams had ended two days before that dreadful Friday, and our students had scattered to their homes and vacations.  I spent a lot of time that weekend alternately reading news stories and lying on the chaise snuggling Cleo, her head tucked under my chin, her little body warming my chest.  Even she eventually got fed up with being plucked from whatever activity she was engaged in to be wrapped in her mom’s arms and tightly held.  She squirmed to loosen herself, her pointy paws pressing into my neck and sternum, her elbow digging into my ribs, then hopped down to pounce on her moose which she carried back to me to present for a game of chase.  She was right, as always.  Playing with her was a much better palliative than lying around trying to fathom the unfathomable.  Action trumped inaction and eventually led us to join the 26 Acts of Kindness movement.  Building bridges between people by affirming our mutual humanity is the only answer I can think of to an act that so rends the fabric of society.

Once it got underway, we had a wonderful vacation.  John and I made sure that Cleo got to walk on her favorite trail every day, and several times took her to the park for an evening tear around the field or, if the stupid deer had taken over, the tennis court.  Ever since Cleo and I were out walking one day and a young doe ran down the path after us, she has recognized their silhouettes.  When she sees them on the field at night, she stands at attention, pressing forward, nose awiggle, tail ramrod straight and quivering.  She looks like she’s thinking how much she’d like to bite their ankles.  Or maybe I’m just projecting.  She probably wants to play with them.  It’s me that wants to bite their ankles.  Anyway, she enjoys the tennis court almost as much as the grass and was happy to show off for our son Jackson and his girlfriend when he was home on leave from his Navy training.  She raced around the court, easily outrunning and outmaneuvering all four of us, laughing as she taunted us by skimming past, just out of reach.

And now we’re back at school.  I’ve been making a point to take Cleo with me to meetings this year.  Usually, I take her blanket and favorite chew-object, an antler (no, my hostility is not subconscious), so that she has somewhere to be and something to keep her occupied.  Faculty meetings are held in the library, just downstairs from Cleo’s and my office.  The other morning I dropped Cleo off, leaving her to do her daily perimeter check (territory outside office windows free of turkeys, quail or other intruders; couch cushions inspected for left-over crumbs, toys or other objects and scents of interest; toys present and accounted for), grabbed her blanket and headed to the meeting, letting her know she could join me when she was ready.  In a minute or two, I heard little exclamations of greeting rippling through the group of assembled campus adults, then a happy face was grinning up at me.  I arranged Cleo’s blanket and showed her the antler.  She plopped down and started enthusiastically gnawing—crunch, crunch, grind.  Then she stopped, craned her neck and looked at me.  Up she got, a truly uncharacteristic lack of obedience.  The meeting started and I quietly put her back in a down-stay.  It lasted for less than a minute.  What was going on?  I knew she didn’t need to go out; she’d already done all that less than a half hour before.  Back onto the blanket.  A new teacher is welcomed and a returning one greeted, both with applause.  Cleo is up, feet on my lap, looking anxiously into my face.

Call me slow.  It wouldn’t be the first time.  You see, two days before, the boiler in the library had broken.  The repairman had the flu and couldn’t come fix it.  It wasn’t unbearable when we were in our office with a space heater cranked, but in the open library it was cold.  In fact, the California Central Coast is now going through the coldest winter I can remember since I moved here.  Temperatures are dropping into the 30s almost nightly and rarely breaking into the high 50s during the day.  Every human in the room, literally, was bundled up in winter coats, scarves, mittens, hats.  Some were even huddled in extra blankets.  Cleo, her hair clipped unusually short by a new groomer, was literally shivering.  She wasn’t being disobedient; she was succumbing to hypothermia!

I patted my lap and she jumped up, turned around and gratefully lay down, curled into a tight ball.  I lay my gloved hand on her side to help warm her up.  During the break, when she normally would have gotten up to say hello to her favorite people, she managed to open an eye and look around.  She did appreciatively crunch up a few Charlie Bears that one of the art teachers happened to have in her pocket, and happily sniffed the coat sleeves of her Aunt Kim and Aunt Charlotte when they scratched her ears (gloves on).  But she was not about to leave my lap.  As she warmed up, she uncurled a bit from the tight ball, taking more and more of my lap until I had to extend it with my left forearm and hand.  She sighed contentedly and stretched her chin so that it rested fully in my palm.  By the end of the meeting, my knees were stiff, my feet were tingling and my arm muscles ached.  But Cleo and I were both toasty warm.  Several folks stopped on their way out to tell Cleo how good she had been, then we made our way up to the office and dialed the space heater to high.

Autumn Leaves are Falling

For many people, the onset of fall is nothing but a reminder of the headlong rush towards winter, but I love this time of year.  Of course, that’s easy for me to say; I live in a part of the world where the temperature rarely goes below 40 degrees and snow is something we see from a distance.  As we drive clear, sun drenched streets, we can look towards the east where there are a couple of isolated mountains of enough elevation that their peaks are occasionally dusted with snow during the winter months.  It’s a cause for great excitement and considerable comment, as well as spontaneous “drives to the snow” to bring back snowballs, carefully preserved in coolers, for a seconds-long snowball fight or the general pranking of one’s friends.  Not for us the rapidly plummeting temperatures, the leafless, rattling tree branches, the desertion by hummingbirds and butterflies, or the retrieval from storage of ice scrapers and snow shovels.. 

In high school, my favorite English teacher once broke my heart when she groaned in an agonized tone, “I hate autumn.  It speaks of nothing but death.”  I had no idea what to say to her.  Even now, words of comfort or understanding would probably desert me.  At seventeen, I could only gaze at her with aching pity.  I wanted to graft my love of the season, whole cloth, into her brain.  Even that word—autumn—is beautiful.  It’s the taste of crisp apples, the smell of quiet earth and the soul-soothing touch of the lengthening angles of sunlight.

Here in Monterey, the season also brings with it our warmest weather of the year.  Many people call this Indian Summer, but that always seems a misnomer to me.  For someone who grew up in Pennsylvania and Vermont, Indian Summer was the warm period that followed a cool period that followed a hot summer.  Here in Central California, it doesn’t seem fair to call the one really hot time of the year anything but October.  When your summer is cold and foggy and your early fall is mild with the promise of sunshine, a week of 70s and 80s doesn’t really deserve to be called Indian Summer.

We are funny here, though.  We pine for warm, sunny weather for months, then two days into our warm spell, we’re all staggering around, sweaty and exhausted, poleaxed by the heat and humidity.  I really feel for Cleo.  I can pare down to shorts and a tank top; she is stuck in a fur coat.  The major part of every day this past week, she has spread herself out on the gel mat I stand on as I work at the computer.  It’s the only cool surface in the room.  Everything else is textile: the carpet, the couch, the cushions on the chairs.  She barely lifts her head as I straddle her, one foot on either side of her prone body, tapping away at the keyboard.  Occasionally, she’ll muster the energy to get up and greet a visitor, giving the hand a peremptory lick before once more flopping onto her side in heat-induced lethargy.  Of course, that means that in the evening, when the sun sets and the thermometer drops to a pleasant sixty-two or –three, she is ready for action, bounding into the backyard, barking a challenge and making the world safe for democracy.

A couple of times this past week, she rallied herself for daytime action.  At 10:18 AM on 10/18, many schools participate in the Great California Shakeout, an earthquake drill.  Cleo and I were in charge of the library, a beautiful, if impractical, open structure with soaring ceilings and outer walls of plate glass.  When the building was constructed, there was no thought for installing safety glass or, indeed, tempered glass of any kind.  Over the years, we’ve had occasion, thanks to chairs being too forcefully pushed out of the way, to replace two or three sheets of glass with the safer variety.  The cost of replacing them all would put us in debt for the foreseeable century.  So one of the things Cleo and I did last Thursday was to go around to the students sitting by the outer walls and quietly ask them, “What would you do if there were an earthquake?” 

“Oh,” responded one young man, looking with doubt at the towering window behind him.  “Huh.”

Huh, indeed.  That’s why we have drills.

We followed our earthquake drill with a fire drill.  Let’s just say, not Cleo’s favorite sound in the world.  With the county fire marshal in attendance, I wanted Cleo to be on her best behavior, so when she started barking at the alarm, I picked her up.  She quieted instantly.  And for an instant.  Then she redoubled her barking and upped the ante with some struggling, kicking and whining.  I put her down and headed for the mustering area, one of our athletic fields.  She strained against the leash the whole way, but once on the field, she got into line and sat politely, if anxiously, by my side.  Having Mom nearby helped her restrain herself, but once we were dismissed, she needed to get rid of that pent up energy.  In spite of the heat, she and I sprinted all over that field, chasing each other, chasing the crows, chasing a soccer drill thingie that flew like a Frisbee.  When she eventually lay down, panting, with her tummy pressed against the cool grass, I figured it was time to go in and get a drink of water.

Her other daytime outing was when Auntie Kim took her across the street to the Wilderness Lab.  I swear, though it’s only across the street, the Lab is always a good ten degrees warmer than the rest of campus.  Hot, dry, and full of prickly stuff, but also redolent of wild animal scat.  Cleo loves going over there.  This outing with Auntie was her first time without me.  When they returned, Kim was full of amazed compliments.  “Cleo was so well behaved!” she reported.  “A couple times she tried to sneak under the razor wire onto the BLM land, but the second I said, ‘No!’ she came right back.  She heeled all the way back to school.  Without a leash! Everyone was so impressed!” 

Well of course she did!  I’d love to say that it was because she is so very well trained, and to some extent, that’s true.  But the real reason she was so obedient was because without Mama there, she was afraid she’d be abandoned to the mountain lions and coyotes.  There was no way she was going to let her Auntie out of her sight. 

This weekend, the weather broke and we’ve had cool days, cooler nights and buckets of rain.  Sodden pine needles clog the gutters and storm drains.  As I write, I can hear cars swishing by on the wet pavement.  Clouds pile up above the Bay in frothy imitations of snow-capped peaks.  I’m snuggled up on the chaise, a blanket covering me, the world’s most perfect puppy warming my feet, her chin flung across my shins.  As I said, I love this time of year.

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Dear Faithful Readers,

Thank you for your comments, your readership, your good wishes for Cleo and me!  I wanted you to know that I will be taking the next month off to focus on revising and compiling the first year's worth of blog posts for collection in a book that will be ready in time for the holidays.  Perfect for gift giving!  We'll be back in December.  In the meantime, feel free to be in touch.  We always love hearing from you all.

All the best,
Joyce and Cleo

Muddy Outcomes

Sometimes it feels like every action we take comes with unintended consequences, whether positive or negative.  In foreign policy circles, this is called blowback, though I guess that term usually has negative connotations.  You probably wouldn’t hear a news anchor say something like, “Middle East peace was achieved today as a result of blowback from the Secretary of State’s most recent round of shuttle diplomacy.” 

But unintended consequences can be good.  Just a moment ago, in fact, as an unintended consequence of finally getting around to downloading IOS 6 for my iPhone, I discovered one of the coolest apps I’ve ever seen.  I’m keeping it a secret so it won’t get over-used.  Although, given that it’s one of the featured Passbook apps, that’s probably a lost cause.

John and I have been dealing with the unintended consequences of installing a dog door for Cleo.   Before we bought it, we carefully considered the dangers of unwelcome intruders (whether self-propelled or puppy-propelled).  A friend’s graphic story about a student of hers who woke up one hot night to discover a rabid skunk standing on his chest definitely gave us pause.  So far (knock on wood) we’ve been spared the entrance of anything untoward.  Last night, we might have been the closest ever to entertaining an unwelcome guest.  Cleo caught her first rat.  I wasn’t sure whether to be congratulatory or grossed out.  One thing’s for sure: She won’t be licking my face when she comes in from the backyard anymore.  Frankly, it was just a baby, about four inches long, but hey, when it’s in your backyard, a rat is a rat.  When I discovered her, she was a little confused about the whole thing.  I think she was as surprised as I was (let alone the rat) that she had actually succeeded in getting it, and she was trying to figure out what to do with it now.  I can just imagine her deciding that a good, safe place for it would be between the cushions on the chaise in the living room.  I could almost hear the characteristic, sneaky tick-tick-tick of her nails as she tried to tiptoe past me with her contraband.  I brought her in and locked the flap prestissimo.

What hadn’t dawned on us was that things besides the puppy might go out.  Or maybe I should say “in addition to” rather than “besides,” given that they are going out with Cleo.  I first became suspicious when I discovered an unusually dirty pair of John’s socks lying next to the refrigerator.  When I picked them up, I discovered they were damp and curiously earthy smelling.  Now, John would rather be barefoot than shod any day of the week, and even if he were wearing socks, he wouldn’t go tromping around in the mud with them.  Not long after this, his leather gloves (a perennial favorite of Cleo’s) disappeared from the coffee table.  We looked in her usual hiding places, but found nothing.  A quick scan of the backyard likewise turned up zilch, but later that afternoon, I heard Cleo rustling around in the narrow passage between our shed and fence.  Not long after that, she came through the dog door with a single glove in her mouth and a guilty expression on her face.  So I know where her hiding place is, but let me tell you, I am not planning to explore it!  Here there be spiders!  Besides, she usually returns whatever she’s stolen.  Maybe it’s guilt or maybe she’s bragging, I don’t know.  The second glove showed up a couple days later, wet and muddy. 

Sometimes we don’t even realize that something is missing until she brings it back.  It’s always been her penchant to steal socks in pairs; when there isn’t a lone survivor to call attention to its solitude, it’s pretty easy to overlook missing socks.  Luckily, she almost always returns them in pairs, too.  I was a little resentful when she spat my favorite underpants at my feet last week.  At least this time we were home alone rather than having dinner with friends.  Nothing says “Welcome!” like your dog bearing your unmentionables to the dining table.

At the moment, we’re waiting for the return of our bathroom doorstop.  As we brush our teeth at night, the door swings quietly closed, always stopping at just the right angle so that I bang an elbow into it as I reach for the floss.  “Where’s the damn doorstop?” I ask Cleo, who snoozes happily on, stretched out on our bed. 

And really, what’s a little blowback compared to a contented puppy dog?

Wishing You a Happy Voyage Home

“I didn’t really know much about military personnel.  I didn’t know much about their lives… I don’t think I appreciated them to the level that they deserved.  And that has changed…. I border on embarrassed at how little thought I gave military service until I got to know service members.”

Wow.  Stephen Colbert and I think alike.  Not the character Stephen Colbert, the real Stephen Colbert.  He said those words to Terry Gross during a recent interview on Fresh Air.  Of course, we came to the same realization from two different angles.  Colbert was talking about what he had learned from doing his show for the last several years.  In 2009, he spent a week in Iraq performing for the troops.  Since then, he and his staff have supported several charities which raise funds to help military personnel and their families.  My awakening was on a much smaller, though possibly more personal, scale.

Last week, John and I left Cleo in the care of friends and flew to Great Lakes, Illinois, to see our son (by blood, his son, by childrearing, ours) Jackson graduate from Recruit Training Command, the Navy’s basic training.

This past year has been a taxing one for our family.  Sometimes adolescents experience a gentle, constantly ascending arc of growth from childhood to adulthood.  At other times, the path can be a little rockier with lots of ups and downs.  And then there are the times when the path is not so much rocky as boulder-strewn, less up and down than veering straight over the cliff into a freefall tumble to the valley floor below.  It can be difficult or impossible to pinpoint any reason why one person’s adolescence is more fraught than another’s.  I’ve known young men far less capable, less socially intelligent and less kind than Jackson who sailed through their teens and twenties with nary a blip on the radar screen of distress.  John and I aren’t perfect parents, but I’ve seen kids fare better with far worse ones.  Suffice it to say that a year ago, we reached crisis point, and after much consultation and deliberation, John and I did the hardest thing we have ever had to do.  We gave Jackson a month to find somewhere else to live.

It’s a tribute to a resourcefulness he didn’t know he possessed, and to his emotional intelligence, that he pretty quickly lined up a couple places with friends.  He also parlayed a part-time job at a failing bike shop into a full-time position as a bike repairman for a thriving string of rental shops for tourists.  And for the first time, he started thinking about his future.   John and I were floored when Jackson called to say he had enlisted in the Navy.  “Why the Navy?!” I whined to John.  “If he had to enlist, why not the Coast Guard?”  When my oldest sister’s college boyfriend drew a number so low that he knew he would be drafted into the war in Vietnam, he enlisted in the Coast Guard as a safer choice.  That made a big impression on my fifteen-year-old mind, though these days, what with the war on drugs and the Coast Guard’s deployment to Iraq in the early days of that war, I don’t know that the “Coast-Guard-is-safe” canard holds water anymore.

Growing up during the Vietnam War, I never thought of the military as a career choice.  Don’t misunderstand: I was never one of those people who shouted epithets at soldiers in uniform or who went to the airport to yell “Baby killer” at returning veterans.  For one thing, I was too young to drive and my parents never would have given me permission to go.  For another, even as a callous teenager, I saw that these protesters were yelling at the wrong people.  So many of the boys returning home were barely older than we, and they would bear scars for the rest of their lives.  Yet even though I have nieces, nephews, students, friends and colleagues who enlisted in one branch of the service or another, I still thought of military service as something one would have to be required to do, rather than something one would chose to do.

We had six months to get used to the idea.  Recruitment was so high when Jackson enlisted that the Navy had no room for him until August.  And so it was that last week, John and I turned our faces towards Lake Michigan.  The graduation hall opened at 6:30 AM for a ceremony that started at 9:00.  We couldn’t imagine why we would need to be there so early, so we slept in till 5:30, had breakfast, hopped in the car and made the hour drive to the base.  Traffic was fairly heavy the whole way, but when we turned the corner onto the street leading to the main gate, with a mile and a half to go, it seemed to get even worse.  Avoiding the badly backed up right lane, we pulled over into the left where the going was a bit clearer.  “Man, that is just bumper-to-bumper over there,” I commented.  “They are not even moving.”

Silence.  We looked at each other.  Uh-oh.  “Naw!” I waved my hand to dismiss the idea.  We scanned the line of cars.  “Every one of those cars,” John stated ominously, “has what looks like a family in it.”  I tried to peer into the car next to us.  Dad, Mom, Grandpa, Sister?  By now we were a quarter mile farther along the road.  Clearly we were not the only ones taken by surprise.  Cars ahead of us were slowing and merging with the right hand lane.  John put on his signal and eased into the long line of graduation-goers, waving a thank you to the car behind us.  We sat, not moving.  Five minutes passed.  We sat.  Cars flashed past us on the left.  We sat.  In ten minutes, we had not moved a single car length.  Up ahead, every time some space opened up, a car from the left lane merged into it.  It was almost 8:00; the Navy had been very clear that the doors to the graduation hall would close at 8:45.  “We’re never going to get through this line in time,” I fretted.

“There is no way we’re going to miss this,” John vowed in his best Dirty Harry style.  He peeled out of the line and into the left lane. 

“What are we going to do?” I asked, a little quavery.

“Think outside the box.”  He gave me a grin.  “How are those shoes for walking?”

About a half mile from the gate, we dove into a residential side street, found a perfect parking place, stretched out the kinks in our legs and started a very pleasant trek.  We were the only pedestrians, and the two sailors detailed to check IDs at the walk-in gate looked thrilled to have something to do.  By 8:25, we were crammed onto the bleachers with the majority of what would ultimately become a crowd of over five thousand.  It turns out that Jackson was one of 1001 graduating Sailor Recruits, the second largest class of the year.

Flag corps

The Navy puts on one of these graduation ceremonies just about every Friday of the year, and it is quite the show.  There are videos (“We know in just a little while, your recruit will have plenty of stories to tell you from the last eight weeks.  Before that happens, we want to show you our side of the story!”), speeches, special awards and honors, a totally hip drum corps, several tunes from the marching band, a chorus, and lots of impressive marching (the Navy has such a relaxed style of marching—very chill and self-possessed).  At the outset of the ceremony, before the divisions of recruits arrive, a flag corps displays each of the fifty state flags arranged in order of entry into the union.  As the state’s name is announced, the corps member dips the flag and the attendees from that state cheer and applaud.  “Delaware!”  One lone voice from the far left of the audience lets out a whoop.  A similarly small contingent from Rhode Island.  Giant cheers from Illinois, Texas, California.  Some states may have had more recruits than others, but in this graduating class, every state in the union was represented.

Honestly, I don’t know if I would necessarily call myself patriotic.  I’m not sure I know exactly what that word is intended to mean anymore, not as it’s commonly used, anyway.  I do know that I love my country.  Despite its flaws, I believe it affords more opportunities than any other country currently on Earth.  I love Americans.  We are an ornery bunch, but we are also resilient, brave, inventive, imaginative and caring.  I also love our national anthem.  Yes, some people object to it because they claim it’s war-mongering.  It’s not; it’s about surviving.  One night, when Jackson was five or six, John and I were getting ready to read him to sleep.  Jackson sat between us, his warm little head leaning against my arm.  For some reason, I started telling him the story of our national anthem.  An exhausted soldier, embattled and besieged by enemy attacks that have gone on all night, looks up to the ramparts.  In the light of exploding shells, he sees his country’s flag, tattered and smoke-stained, but still flying, still in place.  From that sight, he gathers the strength to press on to the end, to survive.  I’ve never been able to hear that part of the song without tearing up a little.

“And the rockets’ red glare,

The bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof, through the night

That our flag was still there.”

As we sang the national anthem at Jackson’s graduation, I pretended it was the stratospherically high range of the melody that kept me from singing those lines, but the truth is, I was too choked up to get the words out. 

By the time the ceremony was over and the newly hatched sailors were granted liberty, we had about five hours with Jackson before he had to be back to stand watch.  Plus, he was leaving for his “A” school in South Carolina at 1:00 the next morning.  We decided to drive down to Chicago so that he could see the city he’d been an hour away from for the last two months.  As we walked across the base and back to the car, as we drove, as we walked the streets of Chicago, as we ate lunch, as we explored the Skydeck at Sears Tower, this formerly monosyllabic young man talked.  He told us stories, he described his division-mates, he explained terms and drills and the lessons he had learned.  These things mattered to him.  He had an adult perspective on why he was expected to set his cap just so, why it was regulation to take ladders one rung at a time, why it was important that he had learned to fold his clothes precisely: Attention to detail could save his life, and the lives of everyone around him, one day.   He understood why recruits are not permitted to say thank you, why this reflex instilled in kids every day by their parents is actively discouraged.  Thoughtless words, wasted words, can, quite literally, get you sunk.  You better mean everything you say.

It was a fascinating thing to see, everywhere we went, people openly gazing at him.  Granted he is a good-lookin’ boy (I can say that; my genes aren’t involved).  And he is impressive-looking at six-two clad in his sailor’s whites, carrying himself with an ease and a confidence we’d never seen from him before.   There was a lovely, sweet humility about him as he returned their looks with a quiet smile.

On our way into Chicago, we stopped off at a Starbucks to caffeine up.  We each ordered a cup of one kind or another.  At the last moment, I grabbed a little tube of trail mix.  “That’ll be a buck seventy-nine,” said the bepaunched man behind the counter.

John looked confused.  “For the nuts.  What about the rest of it?”

“Whaddabat the rest of it?” returned the cashier, somewhat defensively.  “Lemme tell you a story,” he went on.  “When I was a kid, a recruit, I went into a bar.  The bartender hands me and my buddies a drink and says, ‘The guy at the end of the bar bought you this.’  So I look at the guy and I say, ‘How come you bought us a drink?’  And the guy says to me, ‘When I was a recruit, some guy bought me a drink.  I’m returning the favor.  I’m only goin’ to ask you this: When you’re in your fifties, buy some recruit a drink.’  So here I am.  I’m in my fifties and I’m buyin’ you a drink.  I’m just gonna ask you one thing.  When you’re in your fifties, buy some recruit a drink.”

Jackson and the cashier looked at each other, sharing a moment of reflection that John and I were not, never could be, a part of.  Then Jackson reached out a hand and with grave sincerity said, “Thank you, sir.”

But that wasn’t my favorite moment.  My favorite moment was in the parking lot when we had taken Jackson back to the base and it was time to say goodbye.  I reached out to him and he folded me into a hug, wrapping his arms tightly around me, and held on.  And he did not let go first.

In his interview with Terry Gross, Stephen Colbert said, “I work hard to keep [a consideration of military personnel] in mind without fetishizing military service.  I think there are great ways to serve the country that are not military service.  It’s not the only thing you can do.”  The path that Jackson has chosen is not right for everyone, but for him, it’s something that he is committed to and believes in.  The transformation in him didn’t all happen in an eight week period.  It was taking place over the last year, a year when all three of us had time to reflect, learn about ourselves and grow.  I know there will still be ups and downs as the years go by.  There are in every life and in every relationship.  But when the ties are strong, we can weather a few rough seas.

Jackson on the Skydeck