My short essay “Christmas Break Snowstorms Were the Best” appears in the March issue of Northern Wilds, where I’m a contributing writer. I love writing for the magazine and reading it.
You can view it in blog form here: https://northernwilds.com/snow-day-memories-part-two/ You will need to scroll down. My essay is the second one,
Or you can view it in the magazine format here: https://northernwilds.com/current-issue/ There is an option to view it in full screen. My essay appears on page 18.
I lost a mitten on February 10. And it made me very sad. I hadn’t lost a mitten since 2017, when I actually lost a pair of them.
This Christmas my mother bought me a pair of very pretty mittens. The colors are cheery and subdued, all at the same time. The red flower on the top of each mitten, along with the red buds along the cuffs have just the right touch of whimsy for me. She also bought the knit beanie hat that matched the mittens. When I opened her gift, I wasn’t sure about the beanie. I’m kind of fussy about hats. But later when I tried it on, I found it fit well and looked nice on my head. My mother has a knack for buying me things I wouldn’t buy for myself, yet I end up loving them. She seems to know if something will suit me. Maybe that’s because she sees me differently than I see myself.
After I unwrapped the mittens, oohed and aahed over them, and slipped them on my hands, my mother said, “I bought those at Ciao Bella’s. They were expensive.”
And my mother has a knack for that too — pointing out that something was expensive or sharing exactly how much she paid for it. I think this has to do with how poor she was as a child. I had no doubt they were expensive. They were fancy, they were lined, and they felt like small warm hugs on my hands. I loved them. I thought, “I’ll have to take extra care not to lose them.” And that made me afraid to wear them.
Until my daughter-in-law took me to dinner and a play to celebrate my book of short stories being accepted by a publisher. It was a special night, and I wanted to wear my pretty hat and mittens. Dinner was wonderful, and the play, What the Constitution Means to Me, was funny and thought-provoking, and I didn’t lose my hat or mittens.
Emboldened, I started to wear my Christmas mittens to other places, including a coffee shop on February 10. I met a friend for lunch, and we visited for two hours. When I got up to leave and put on my mittens, I discovered I had only one mitten in my purse. I was certain that I’d had both of them when I’d gotten out of my car. My heart sank. In the morning when I’d put on the mittens, I remembered thinking, “I love these, and I sure hope I don’t ever lose them.” I felt like I’d cursed my mittens.
My friend and I looked everywhere for the mitten: all over the coffee shop, in the parking lot, in my car. Then we looked in all of those places again and again. (It’s nice to have a friend who will stay and help you look for a lost mitten.) We even went next door to the bookstore just in case someone found the mitten and turned it in there. No one had seen my mitten, and no one had turned it in at either shop. In the bitter cold, I drove home with only one hand snuggled in warmth. Mother Goose’s nursery rhyme about naughty kittens losing their mittens played in my head.
I’d decided to try and replace the mittens. After I arrived home, I called the store where my mother had bought them and left a message. But I was too impatient to wait for someone to call me back. While I was waiting, someone, somewhere, might buy the last pair of mittens like mine.
I found a tag inside my remaining mitten. They were made by a company called Lost Horizons. Now that’s irony. I looked up the company online. They still had my mittens for sale. The name of the pattern was Chloe. I decided not to wait to hear back from the store where I’d left a message. (They have never returned my call.) I ordered a pair of Chloe mittens. My mother was right — they are expensive. And I had to pay shipping. But it was worth it to me because the mittens had been a gift from her. The older my mother gets, the more sentimental I get about her.
In the meantime, I took a photo of my remaining mitten and made a poster, writing on it: “Have you seen this mitten? They were a Christmas gift from my mother. If found please return to the coffee shop or the bookstore.” I asked the managers of each establishment if they could put up my poster. I needed to do everything I could to find my lost mitten. After all, when I lost the pair of mittens in 2017, I searched for them like a treasure hunter on the trail of a buried treasure. I never did find those mittens, and they weren’t replaceable.
Four or five days later my new mittens arrived. They were exactly the same! They looked just like the mitten I hadn’t lost. I put the right one on first because that was the one I’d lost. Same great hugging-the-hand feeling. Then I slipped on the left mitten. Not good. It felt like an overly-firm handshake. The lining of the mitten had been twisted during assembly and sewn in the wrong place.
On one hand, I still had the original left mitten that fit well, so that would leave me with a good pair of mittens that fit. On the other hand, I’d paid for two mittens that were supposed to fit properly. I wanted what I’d paid for, so I emailed the company, and explained the problem. It was Saturday and their offices were closed until Monday.
But in the tale of my lost mitten — a story with its ups and downs — another upswing came my way. I heard back from Lost Horizons. Their representative emailed me that while their offices were closed on the weekend, they wanted me to know that they’d received my email, they were sorry I’d had a problem with the mittens, and they’d be contacting me on Monday to help me with either a new pair of mittens or a refund.
On Monday I opted for new mittens. I received another email with a return label and an assurance that they’d reserve a pair of the Chloe mittens for me. (I liked how they made sure they didn’t sell the last pair of Chloe mittens while waiting for my returned mittens. A company that thinks like me!)
So, the pair of mittens with a defective left are on their way to the East Coast. And I’m waiting in the Midwest. It was bad luck to lose one of my mittens, especially during a subzero cold snap. It was good luck to find I could buy another pair. It was bad luck to get a defective mitten. It was good luck to have done business with a company that values customer service.
I’m hoping the good luck holds and my mittens arrive soon. I hope they fit well. I’m not superstitious, but maybe I’ll only wear them to the theater and not to coffee shops.
I want this book!
On Monday I received an email from a blogger who posts book reviews and blurbs about new releases.
One look at the book’s magnificent cover art and my heart was pounding out of my chest, like a cartoon character who has taken one look at another cartoon character and fallen hopelessly, immediately, completely in love.
Look at that gorgeous airship, hovering over the frozen landscape.
How had I never heard about an airship and an arctic rescue?
Those of you who read my book reviews know I like to read about shipwrecks. Something you don’t know about me is that I think airships are fascinating. Mind you, I wouldn’t get on an airship, any more than I would get on a ship.
I want the book. But I’m on a book diet right now, which means I stop buying books for two or three weeks while I read some of the books on my TBR stacks. (This doesn’t always stop me from cheating and buying a book anyway.) On Monday, I decided to resist temptation by using my local library. But this book was just released, and my library doesn’t have a copy yet, and copies aren’t available through inter-library loan.
I’m making a deal with myself: (1) read a couple of books from my TBR stacks, (2) wait until at least February, then (3) declare that I need a present for Groundhog’s Day.
Yes, her name is Ziva Baby. Baby is her middle name. It has nothing to do with my love of the movie Dirty Dancing. She earned her middle name because she was and still is quite the baby.
She didn’t read the book, and she’s not unruly. As a matter of fact, she is rather ruly these days, as in she rules the roost. And because while she’s only 14 years old in dog years, she’s 78 in people years. She is the oldest person in the house, and she wants her dinner and her treats and her walks when she wants them. She gets her way. She’s earned it.
She’s a blue poodle, at least that was the consensus of two different poodle breeders. She doesn’t normally look this blue. The afternoon sunlight reflected off the rug and onto her fur. Ziva hangs out here if my husband is in the TV room and I’m in the kitchen or front room. This way neither of us can leave the house without her noticing. She loves car rides, even though she occasionally gets carsick. My van’s floor is covered with a layer of car blankets and towels. Last week she threw up on one of the leather seats, and I didn’t notice until the next day. The throw up was chunky, but frozen solid. It was super easy to clean up. So, there’s a good point to sub-zero temperatures.
Yes, Ziva is a charmer. For months, I’ve been telling people that she’s going to be 14 years old on January 23, 2025. And people keep telling her she looks amazing for her age. Ziva never gets tired of hearing this. She’s a mouthy charmer. I think that’s about the most wonderful thing a person can say about a dog. Ziva likes to talk, and I like that she likes to communicate. She can’t speak English, and I can’t speak bark, but I pretty much know what she wants by the tone of her bark or the timbre of her grumble.
Ziva loves her walks. Most dogs do. It’s one of the nicest things we can do for our dogs — take them for a walk. Ziva loves to walk with me. She loves to walk with Nellie, my grand-dog. When we go to Michigan, she loves to walk with Bogey, my mom’s dog. Ziva can’t always walk as far as she used to. Some days she walks farther and faster than other days. She used to strut, with her poodle sashay, looking like a runway model. Now she often has a hitch in her stride. My vet says I’m very in tune to Ziva. And she’s right. I notice the smallest changes. Ziva and I have walked many miles over the years.
Ziva is my writing buddy. My watchdog. My traveling companion. My walking partner. My cuddle bunny.
She had a low-key birthday this year. After all, I couldn’t buy her another fancy bed. But she did have some extra treats. She also had a car ride, and didn’t throw up. And, tonight she has a couch all to herself and both of her humans are in the same room with her watching Animal Control.
Lesson Seven: Freedom from the Threat of Violence
London was the last stop on our European trip. We traveled around the city using the London Underground, nicknamed the Tube, and the adorable red double-decker buses, so quintessentially British. Inside the Tube and on the buses, signs were posted warning riders not to touch unattended packages, but to report them to a conductor or bus driver immediately. The conflict between the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and the British Army had spilled over into England in 1973, and from January through March 1976, six bombs exploded in London. The IRA warned authorities before a bomb went off, so injuries were few and fatalities fewer. Because the IRA and British were negotiating, there were no bombings for the rest of 1976, and our stay in London was free from explosions. However, I didn’t know that when we toured London. Even if I had known, it might not have been much comfort because throughout history truces have been broken.
The warnings didn’t stop people from riding the Tubes or the buses. But it was strange to think I could board a bus, perhaps off to Hyde Park, Harrods, or Trafalgar Square, and be blown up by someone who wanted to make a point, someone who thought of me only as collateral damage. And yet somehow, I felt I would be safe because I was a visitor from a different country who had nothing to do with the conflict between the IRA and the British. At the time, I wondered what it must be like for people to live under the threat of terrorism.
Now, I think about random gun violence in the United States, which has taken many lives. Schools, places of worship, stores, malls, businesses, theaters, nightclubs, restaurants, concerts, parades, neighborhoods, homes, places people expect to be safe have been scenes of bloodshed. When I see a sign that says, “Guns Banned on These Premises,” I think about the don’t-touch-the-unattended-package signs in London. Signs won’t keep us safe from violence or terrorism or war. We need to see each other as fellow travelers in our neighborhoods, our country, and the world.
Learn about people from down the block and from other cultures.
Going Home
After a month in Europe, we landed at Billy Mitchell Field in Milwaukee. I had a couple of dollars in foreign coins and one U.S. dime in my purse. I had spent the rest of my money and might have spent the dime too, but I needed it to call my parents for a ride home from the airport. After I deposited the dime in the payphone, I was broke, but I was rich with wonderful memories and great experiences.
My love of language and interest in meeting people from other countries continued. When I went to college, I kept studying Spanish, and I made friends with people from Europe, South America, and Asia. We cooked for each other and helped each other with our studies. We went dancing and roller skating. We talked for hours about our lives and dreams. We taught each other swear words and laughed as we cursed in each other’s languages.
The European trip my parents gave me was the best gift: an opportunity for me to grow as a person. I have a scrapbook of mementos and photographs, and occasionally I look at them. I have a Spanish Damascene dinner bell I bought in Madrid and a soft plaid cashmere scarf I bought in London. Occasionally, I ring the dinner bell or wear the scarf. But the best keepsakes are the lessons of kindness, acceptance, and adventure that I have carried with me all these years.
[In 1976 when I was seventeen, I traveled to Europe with a group of fellow high school students. I wrote the essay European Tour 101 in 2023. This essay was published in Tales of Travel by the University of Minnesota-Duluth. I’m publishing it to my blog in five parts.]
Lesson Six: Be Alone with Yourself in a Place You’ve Never Been Before
In 1976, I had a lot of freedom in Europe. I can’t imagine high school students today having the freedom we had. We only had a few rules: Be respectful to everyone, be on time for the bus tours, and never go out at night alone. However, during the day when we had time off from tours, we could wander out alone. I did this a bit in all the cities we visited, but in Paris I spent most of my free time on my own, walking miles and miles along city sidewalks and riding the metro to explore different neighborhoods. I didn’t have a word for it when I was seventeen, but now I would say that my introverted self had reached a threshold by the time we had reached Paris.
I listened to musicians busk in the Paris metro, their melodies amplified by the underground walls covered with white subway tile. I bought a bottle of Chanel N°5, my favorite perfume, from a department store that catered to tourists. I walked past bakeries because I didn’t like French pastries.
From a local boutique which didn’t cater to tourists, I bought a blue T-shirt even though the clerk was rude when he discovered I couldn’t speak French beyond my greeting of bonjour. I thought if I bought something in the shop, the clerk would see me as a customer and be nice, but he continued to snub me as he took my money, bagged the shirt, and handed it to me. I was angry because I believed I was being respectful by greeting him in French. But now I think about it from his viewpoint: I was just another American showing off my one word of French, someone who couldn’t be bothered to learn the rest of his language.
Almost every day I ate by myself at an Italian restaurant owned by two handsome brothers from Sicily. The brothers were charming, the food outstanding, and the sorbet, served in large Italian lemons, took the sizzle out of the hot Parisian summer. One afternoon I sat in front of the Eiffel Tower next to the Trocadero Fountain, mesmerized by it synchronized spouts of playful water. I saw much of Paris at my own pace – without the need to negotiate with anyone about what to see, or how long to linger, or where to eat.
Enjoy solitude among many.
[Coming soon: European Tour 101 – Part 5, London]
[In 1976 when I was seventeen, I traveled to Europe with a group of fellow high school students. I wrote the essay European Tour 101 in 2023. This essay was published in Tales of Travel by the University of Minnesota-Duluth. I’m publishing it to my blog in five parts.]
Lesson Five: Serenade Your Tour Guide
Our train left Salzburg in the evening, shortly after nightfall. The station’s platform was written in romantic darkness, punctuated with street lamps. Our Austrian tour guide had come to the station to make sure our travel arrangements were in order and to say goodbye. We were headed to Paris.
I no longer remember the guide’s name. She was a university student, kind and soft spoken, with a gentle smile and a lilting laugh. Warm blue eyes sparkled behind her gold wire-rimmed glasses. She had accompanied us to a salt mine, to museums and art galleries, and to the Alps where the mountain scene for the Sound of Music was filmed. We stayed in Adnet, a farming village, thirty minutes from Salzburg. The small village had a well-lighted, welcoming restaurant, and we ate our evening meals there as one large group. After dinner we sang songs, and one night someone taught us the words to “Edelweiss” from the Sound of Music.
After we boarded the train, our tour guide stood on the platform waving at us. Someone in our group began to sing “Edelweiss.” Spontaneously, voice after voice, the rest of us joined in, and on a warm summer’s night as the train eased its way along the track, we leaned our heads and hands out the windows, and as one rhythmic beating heart, over and over, we sang the words about a small white flower, about meetings and greetings, about remembering and forever.
Our guide cried, wiping tears from her cheeks before they could splatter on the concrete beneath her. We sang and waved until we could no longer see her. And as the distance between us grew, one by one our voices drifted off, and we pulled our heads and hands inside the windows, and settled in our seats, bound for Paris, the City of Light.
I sang “Edelweiss” to both of my children when they were babies, and it became my youngest child’s favorite lullaby. After all these years, I remember the gifts we traded with our guide at the station: our song for her — and her tears of delight for us. I wonder if she ever plays the memory in her mind like a scene from an old movie as I still do.
Be spontaneous; express gratitude.
[Coming soon: European Tour 101 – Part 4, Paris]
[In 1976 when I was seventeen, I traveled to Europe with a group of fellow high school students. I wrote the essay European Tour 101 in 2023. This essay was published in Tales of Travel by the University of Minnesota-Duluth. I’m publishing it to my blog in five parts.]
Lesson Four: Patriotism is Fine, But Ditch It for the Ballet
On July 4, 1976, our tour group was in Rome. Even before I left for Europe, I felt bad about missing America’s Bicentennial birthday bash. When we arrived in Rome, we were given a choice about how we wanted to spend the Fourth of July. We could attend a professional ballet performance or an evening picnic followed by fireworks sponsored by the American Embassy. I chose the picnic and fireworks because if I couldn’t be in the States for the Bicentennial, I could at least be with a group of patriotic Americans eating scrumptious picnic food and watching extravagant fireworks.
It was the worst Fourth of July celebration I ever attended. The food was second-rate, the fireworks were average, and the park was peppered with litter. I grew up inspired by Lady Bird Johnson and the Keep America Beautiful campaign. Every spring and fall my sisters and I pulled our red wagon up and down our road and picked garbage out of the ditches. I yelled at friends who threw litter out of car windows. The inconsiderate Americans who couldn’t put their trash in the garbage can embarrassed me. Before the fireworks even started, I regretted skipping the ballet.
At the time I saw the embassy picnic as a lackluster celebration that didn’t match the significance of two centuries of democracy. In hindsight it strikes me that American democracy has a long history of casting aside many of its citizens, like the discarded rubbish I saw on July 4, 1976, dropped by patriotic Americans who somehow felt entitled to litter someone else’s park. Patriotism isn’t about eating a hotdog or watching fireworks. Patriotism should be about loving a country that embraces equality, justice, and opportunity for all.
Years later my mother-in-law took me to my first ballet, The Nutcracker. I loved everything about it—Tchaikovsky’s music, the graceful dancers, the whimsical costumes, and the enchanted scenery. And again, I regretted missing the ballet in Rome, which I think was Swan Lake.
Always choose the ballet.
[Coming soon: European Tour 101 – Part 3, Austria]
[In 1976 when I was seventeen, I traveled to Europe with a group of fellow high school students. I wrote the essay European Tour 101 in 2023. This essay was published in Tales of Travel by the University of Minnesota-Duluth. I’m publishing it to my blog in five parts.]
In the spring of 1976 when I was seventeen, I brought home a brochure from my German class that showcased a thirty-day trip to six European cities in five countries. I had studied high school German for two years and middle and high school Spanish for five years, and Austria and Spain were two of the countries we would visit. I had no illusions about my ability to chat in German or Spanish with the locals, but I longed to visit Europe. I gave the brochure to my mother, who after reading it told me I could go. There was never a discussion of “maybe” or “we’ll see.” The trip cost around $1,400 in 1976, a lot of money for my parents who were on the lower end of the middle-class ladder.
Mother never said it in so many words, but she believed in learning about other cultures. She had encouraged me to study a foreign language. While I was in high school, she signed up to host foreign exchange students for Milwaukee Week. During this time, exchange students from all over Wisconsin spent a week in Milwaukee. I enjoyed meeting the exchange students, learning about their countries, and showing them around my city.
I’m over sixty now, but I remember my only trip to Europe with fondness because it was a good time, it influenced my life in a positive way, and it was educational on many levels. The life lessons I learned in Europe stand out to me because my European experiences are stored in my brain on a thirty-day shelf between two bookends—the touchdown in Madrid on one side and the departure from London four weeks later on the other side. The memories lean on one another, easy to access and tapping one wakes up its neighbor.
Lesson One: Travel without a Hangover
The first lesson I learned was don’t be hungover as a tourist. A pounding headache and an unsure stomach turned out to be poor companions while touring Madrid’s architectural marvels on my second day in Spain. The day before at lunch, I split a small bottle of white wine with a friend, and at supper we split a small bottle of red wine. I never drank in the States because I was seventeen, but in Europe I wasn’t breaking the law, so I decided to embrace the whole experience, which is why I tried white wine at lunch and red at supper. In the evening a group of us went dancing. While disco music and colorful lights pulsated around the nightclub, and we danced with Spanish teenagers, I drank two screwdrivers because that is what my friends were drinking.
The next morning, a chaperone banged on our door, rousting us for breakfast. Startled, I sat upright in a finger’s snap. My head lagged behind, pounding as it tried to keep up with my body. Most of the day I had a throbbing headache. I didn’t throw up but the possibility was a nagging pest. Thousands of miles from home and only seventeen, I decided to experience Europe without hangovers, so if I drank at all, I limited myself to no more than one or two drinks in a day. I carried the lesson back home with me and even after I turned eighteen and could legally drink, I never forgot about my second day in Madrid.
Don’t be hungover in life.
Lesson Two: Even Muscle-Bound Bulls Have Feelings
In Madrid we went to a bullfight. Attendance was optional because even though bullfights were part of the Spanish culture, the pretense of masculinity and bravado they symbolized had begun to dissipate as more people spoke against the cruelty suffered by the bulls. I decided to go because it was a Spanish tradition. I don’t remember if the bull died, but the matador didn’t. The stadium, crouching under the Mediterranean sun, became a cauldron of heat. I didn’t like hot weather, and I was sorry I had come. Why would anyone sit in the scorching sun to watch a choreographed drama between a sidestepping matador dressed like a golden baroque candlestick swirling a red cape and an incensed bull snorting like a diesel engine?
We had been told it was a nuanced battle, steeped in meaning. Clearly, I didn’t get it because that afternoon I decided if the object was to kill the bull, it was a show of pointless machismo. I sympathized with the bull, who unlike the matador or me, had been given no choice about where it wanted to be on that blistering afternoon. I concluded that any competition, legal or not, that humiliated or sacrificed animals in the name of amusement was wrong. But I couldn’t throw stones because I knew Americans had their dog fights and rooster fights and probably other types of fights.
As an adult, while watching cartoons with my children, I discovered Ferdinand the Bull, a Disney animated short that won an Oscar in 1938. Ferdinand wouldn’t fight. He wanted only to smell flowers. He so enraged the bullfighters they simply took him back to his green fields filled with flowers. Ferdinand was a consummate pacifist.
Don’t go to bullfights or dog fights or rooster fights.
Lesson Three: If You Don’t Know the Language, Don’t Insult Those Who Do
Mr. Z., who had been my freshman history teacher came on the trip as a chaperone. He was passionate about history, which I had liked about him. But he had a condescending manner that he dressed up as humor, often unsuccessfully, and that I didn’t like. His manner of off-handed superiority almost got him thrown out of a restaurant in Madrid. Tom and Gene, teachers from a neighboring high school, who were seasoned chaperones, often took us to restaurants that catered to locals instead of tourists. The food was usually excellent and the prices reasonable. But this meant staff at the restaurants rarely spoke proficient English. However, between Tom and Gene, we always had someone who could speak Spanish, Italian, German, or French, someone who could help with the pesetas, liras, shillings, or francs.
At this particular lunch, after listening to Tom speak Spanish with the waiter, Mr. Z., who probably suffered from a bit of insecurity after being shown up by a multi-lingual, seasoned traveler, declared, “It’s easy to speak Spanish. You just add an o or an a to the English word. So, soup is soupa.” Not quite, but no one corrected him. During the lunch, Mr. Z. needed butter for his rolls, but instead of asking Tom to talk to the waiter, he decided to ask the waiter directly. Applying his theory about the simplicity of the Spanish language to the word butter, he waived the waiter over, looked at him, and uttered a word that came out sounding like the Spanish word burro, meaning donkey. The waiter’s face went red, and his words, rapid and angry, crashed like falling rocks, frightening Mr. Z., who at least had the good sense to stop talking and look nervous.
Tom, fluent in Spanish, straightened out the mess. Understanding the arrogant American hadn’t meant to call him a donkey, soothed the waiter a bit, but Mr. Z.’s insult to the Spanish language still rankled him. To Mr. Z.’s credit for the rest of the trip, he didn’t try to speak Spanish or any other foreign language, but he should have known better. He had been to the same pre-trip meetings the rest of us had been to. We had been told that many Europeans looked down on Americans who expected everyone to speak English, yet couldn’t be bothered to learn another language themselves. Perhaps Mr. Z. wanted to soothe his bruised ego, or maybe he wanted to be funny, but either way he failed.
Don’t show off at the expense of other people.
[Coming soon: European Tour 101 – Part 2, Italy]
Yesterday morning I asked my dog, Ziva, if she wanted to go for a car ride. Of course, she said yes. She’ll go anywhere in the car, around the block or on a ten-hour trip to Petoskey, Michigan. She is just happy to be included.
We had three errands to run: go to the post office, go to the bank, and pick up my grand-dog Nellie. Before we could do any of those things, Ziva and I had a mishap. In a residential neighborhood, a speeding truck pulled out in front of us. Not only was the driver speeding, but he couldn’t see us as he approached the street that I was driving on because several thick evergreen trees grew on the corner of the lot. When he did see us, he drove even faster to avoid us, which was the better choice because he could not have stopped in time.
I was already going slow, but I had to use a heavy foot on the brakes, causing Ziva to slide from the front seat onto the floor. After I stopped, I honked my horn loud and long. The man stomped on his gas pedal, zooming away like an Indy race car driver after the green flag waves. If he thought he was fleeing from an angry woman, he was right. Had I been alone in the car, I would not have honked at him, as my honking would have come too late to serve as a warning. But my dog was tangled up on the floor, struggling to regain her footing. I used my horn to scream at him.
Ziva gingerly worked to untangle her feet. She slowly climbed back up on the front seat. Nothing appeared to be broken. For a moment I wondered if she would ever want to get in a car with me again.
When I was almost one, my mother had a car accident. Our two-year-old German Shepherd, Fritz, and I were in the car. After the accident the car was not drivable, but other than my mother having some cracked ribs, everyone was fine, including Fritz, who had been sleeping when the accident occurred. He never forgot that accident or that he had been sleeping instead of on guard. Afterward, if my mother was driving, no matter how long or short the journey, Fritz would sit on the seat and watch the road. His head might bob and his eyelids might droop, but he would jerk himself back to consciousness if he momentarily drifted off. If my father drove, Fritz would curl up and go to sleep. Fritz lived to be fifteen years old, and he never again slept in the car when my mother drove.
Ziva and I finished our errands then picked up Nellie. I was glad my grand-dog hadn’t been in the car when I had to slam on my brakes. She has an excellent memory, and in the future she might have become reluctant to get in my car.
As for Ziva, she was more than happy to get back in the car when we took Nellie home. And later on when I went to the grocery store, she was excited to ride along. She blamed neither me nor our car for her mishap, and she had been oblivious about the stupid, lead-footed pickup driver.
But after Ziva got up this morning, her head was crooked and she couldn’t seem to hold it straight, and when she walked, her gait was awkward. So, I decided to stay home with her. She ate a good breakfast, and after she moved around a bit, her stiffness disappeared and her head righted itself. People are always stiff and sore the day after an accident, so it would make sense animals would be the same.
Ziva is taking her morning nap as I write this. She’s happy to have me at home, and I’m happy to be with her. She is almost fourteen years old, and this morning, for a brief moment, I worried something might be wrong with her that couldn’t be fixed. After all, falling hurts more when we get older. We don’t bounce as well.
Writing Near the Lake 