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.