Peter Piper Picked a Pickled PUPPY

“The hands are the instrument’s of man’s intelligence.” –From “The Touch-Screen Generation” in the April Atlantic Monthly.

More than intelligence: the hands create connection, a bridge between emotional and physical.

This morning, Pickle and I lay in bed. She likes to spoon, and she’s great at it to. If I’m lying on my side, she’ll just do a quick turn and plop herself down, half on me until she slides down snug to my chest. I stretch my arm out and she sits her head on my bicep and, within seconds, starts snoring.

And every morning, after my many alarms go off, I try to drag Pickle out of bed to take her outside. She looks at me with her eyes half-open, then relaxes her neck so that her head flops down. If I get out of bed, she stretches, and I can see the wheels turning, “I can just stay here and keep sleeping! I can get up and go pee!” I have the same contemplation quite often, and I have to admit, if I had to get up and go outside, often in the rain, to pee, I would probably choose sleep too.

So this morning, I tried to be more sympathetic. We lay there together, snuggling. I pet her soft fur as her rumbling vocals shook my chest. Her hot breath warmed a small spot on my neck. It’s a strange feeling of completeness. I can’t remember what it was like before she was in my life. She has added so much joy (and stress and crazy and energy and on and on and on). As of Sunday, we’ve been family for a month.

I tried to avoid the “Mommy” thing and just say “Best friend” (dog is man’s best friend, right?), but everywhere I went, people would say I was her mommy or that I’m a proud mama. I give in. I love it, and I love that it’s her, and that we are a happy little family.

I’m getting way off track here. We were lying in bed this morning.

I petted her fur, and I thought of Derek.

He loveloveloved his dog Casey, but he couldn’t pet her or anything. Sometimes he would try to drive his wheelchair up to her so he could touch her with his feet. Sometimes, he would let his arm fall off the rest so he could maybe grasp her fur (I have a small mini-polaroid on my computer of him doing this for her). Otherwise, they would each sit there, and she would stare at him, and he would stare at her and talk sweet.

Now that I have a dog of my own, I can finally understand that bond. Yet I grieve because Derek missed out on the touch of the relationship: the soft fur, the heavy breaths, the shakes and the roll-overs, and the throw-the-ball-already-I’m-goings.

We went to the puppy story a lot. We’d play with them and sit them on his lap and rub their soft puppy fur against his cheeks. We played with one particularly spunky puppy that tried to bite his trach. That scared both of us  pretty quickly, but we didn’t love the puppy any less and kept playing with him, just a little closer to the ground.

It’s strange how an article on technology and children could spark a whole reel of flashbacks and memories intertwined with my present reality.

Puppy love: encompassing every emotion in a span of woof, snore, and head turn. Flopping ears, ticking tail, bright green eyes: Pickle is my Casey, and I love Derek for showing me the joys of loving a dog. 

The Seattle of the East

I'm slightly certain that I have been so busy and drinking so much that my body hasn't even had time for a hangover, resulting in feeling generally bad at present.

Being home has been an odd dreamland. Dad and I went to load wood yesterday, and somehow, it was different. The trees didn't smell like they used to. The wind blew wood chips into my eyes. As I stood on the tailgate, looking up across Grandpap's land, through the fields, between the trees, up the hill, I saw our house. I imagined it in city blocks: how many tall buildings and crosswalks would it take to get home? Is my bus stop that far?

Everywhere I have gone here seems unreal. We visited Waynesburg, and as I sat in the library, looking over Buhl hall, I wondered if the silent boy beside me was really there, if the people walking on the sidewalks were real, if my surroundings were solid or if they would just disappear in the pinch of crinkled eyelids.

I wonder how Seattle and Pittsburgh could possibly exist simultaneously. Somehow, this reminds me of how Pastor Adam says that our lives our totally our choice but totally god's will at the same time. Certain and uncertain, decided and undecided. Existing but not. Being in Pennsylvania, Seattle has seemed to disappear from my scope of reality.

We drove Katlin and Jake to the airport this morning. As we rounded the bend on 386, the city of Pittsburgh stood tangled between rivers. That's it? That was the big bad city that we scarcely ventured to during my twenty years in the area? A few tall buildings scattered across the landscape like a losing game of chess?

I got curious and looked up the stats. People-wise, Pittsburgh is half the size of Seattle. I'm still shocked. I go through downtown Seattle every day.

Funny how these realizations happen: my life has changed and grown more than I thought.

Namesake

Thinking about Derek, I look at Pickle. Funny how even new things in my life can bring me back to him.

I know I’ve quoted him a million times for this, but I just can’t help it. We were sitting in his room when he suddenly said, “Pickle.”

“What?”

“Remember that word: pickle”

“Why?”

“’Cause you gotta remember something in life.”

I have to admit that when I saw the post online for this dog, the name certainly caught my eye. It was the first thing I thought: remember that word. As I browsed her information, I knew that if we ended up together, the name would stick.

I don’t know how she got the name, but it really suits her perfectly, somehow. A woman in the park asked me if it was because she has such green eyes. Part of me wishes I could say I came up with it. Then again, it seems to have played a part in our union. I’m not one for the naming of things.

Our dogs were from the same litter. I can’t even remember how old I was, maybe seven? Fuzzy was mine, but she ran away in a snowstorm a few years later. Casey was Derek’s. We both had them from puppies. We saw them the day they were born, and we watched them grow.

Casey and Derek had the true man’s-best-friend relationship. She followed him everywhere. She’d constantly lay by his side. When we went for walks, she followed along, even when her bones became so old and tired. And even when Derek couldn’t pet her anymore, her ears perked at his voice.

I was always afraid that a day would come when I would have to tell Derek that she died. But I never did; it was the other way around, and we didn’t have to say anything—Casey knew.

As I look at Pickle, I pray for that bond. I pray that she would be my Casey.

Sometimes I worry about trying to move on by replacing Derek with other things. It’s crossed my mind with getting a dog. I like to take care of others. I was so lost without Derek because it meant I didn’t have someone who needed me to take care of them.

I’m realizing now that what one of my professor’s said was quite true. He was describing his children and how he didn’t realize the love you can have for each of them. He said having another child is like opening another room that you didn’t know existed—you don’t love the other any less, but you fill this whole room just as much.

This is Pickle. She is a new room. I love Derek just as much. I miss him just as much. But it’s not like there is a puppy running around in my love for him, trying to cover it all in dog hair and make it smell like piss.

I wonder if the door to the Derek room is closing or ever will. I think of Rilke’s quote, “Love the questions like locked rooms.” Are they locked because they are a surprise, or are they locked because you know what is in them and want to cherish it? 

You'll just know.

The service was over, and we stood turning wires into small lassoes.

“Where are you in your relationship with Jesus, Natalie?” Wow. Way to be straight-forward, I suppose.

I think (and hope) that I give the same answer every time. It’s a question I hadn’t thought of much, but the past few months, I’ve been asked some variation of it more times than I have my whole life.

My answer begins with “I don’t know,” then I go on to say, “There’s just some things that are little walls that I can’t seem to get over.” And it goes from there.

The inquirer always seems to nod and agree and say interludes like, “Yeah, I was like that before I was a Christian,” or “I used to think that too,” but they never seem to be able to explain what changed their minds.

“You can’t force the belief. God will reveal himself to you, and you’ll just know.”

I second-guess everything. I think every option is the right option, and I run my life based on a wheel-of-fortune spin of sparkly emotions. I try not to—I know that you can’t build a house on sand, but that’s never stopped me from trying.

Since I moved to Seattle, I started frequenting the Animal Shelter on 15^th. It was within walking distance of my old apartment and still so with my new place. The past few weeks or so, my searching got more serious. Every weekend, Laura and I would walk in and look at each dog.

“What about this one?” Every visit, I would get attached to one dog. I would think that was it, but when I left, I didn’t think about it too much anymore. Like how it’s so easy to believe in god in church, but on Monday morning, it’s like the service never happened.

Finally, I expanded my search to online. I created a list of potentials and sent it to my sister. Then I applied for one of the dogs, just on a whim. She wasn’t at all what I had in mind, but I felt drawn to her for some reason.

A few days later, the denial email came—she was in a trial adoption with another family.

That night, I searched again. I added one dog to my list and crossed off nearly all of the others. I applied for that one dog. Her description sounded too good—she seemed like everything I was looking for.

The rescue emailed me—come visit tomorrow. I took a half-day off work and drove to Auburn on the first day of a long streak of sun. Laura’s dog, Chipper, sat on my lap and slept as we made our way through the traffic—out of the city and into the winding rural woodlands.

You know that excited feeling where you can’t contain yourself because you’re so hopeful and your chest feels light and giddy? Yeah, I didn’t feel that at all. I was so excited that my whole insides just stopped. I was trying not to get my hopes up, and the result was this surreal sort of half-consciousness.

I looked at Pickle and wondered. I was wary at first because she was a stranger to me, and she seemed very attached to her shelter mother, and she wanted to play rough with Chipper. As I stood and talked to the adoption woman and watched the two dogs interact, I knew that Pickle would be going home with me.

The whole car ride, Chipper slept on my lap and Pickle slept in the passenger seat. I couldn’t stop smiling and had a feeling of completeness. I thought about how all of the other dogs at the shelter had only appealed to me because I wanted them to—Pickle came through because she is it—she is the right dog for me.

I would say more about her, but that’s not what this is about.

In college, Laura, Katlin, and I would have “girl nights” where we would watch TV shows like “Say ‘Yes’ to the Dress.” I was always quite insensitive about it (still am), saying “Oh my gosh; it’s just a dress. Why cry over a dress?” (Yeah, yeah symbolism and all that; remind me if I ever get married.)

The whole point, though, was that I just couldn’t understand what it meant to find “the one”: the man, the dress, the day. None of it made sense, and it still doesn’t, but I’m starting to at least get a clearer picture.

When the “right” thing happens, you just know.

So maybe god isn’t to be found in a puppy or a wedding dress, but I’m trying to keep trusting that when he “reveals himself to me,” I will know.