One of mom’s trees before she started putting them in front of the mirrored wall in the living room. Unfortunately, I have no pictures of the later Christmas trees.
At Christmas time when I was a child, my mother transformed our old farmhouse into a magical place. Fresh boughs of evergreen, sprayed with canned snow and trimmed with white twinkle lights, nestled on the mid-shelf of the corner hutch in the dining room. The soft glow of pastel-colored icicle lights outlined the large picture window in the living room. A tall, portly Christmas tree festooned with old fashioned ornaments and C7 lights stood in front of a mirrored wall, which made it appear as if we had two trees. Mom always bought a real tree. She would ask the attendant to hold tree after tree, while she walked around each one. The tree had to look good from all sides, and the trunk had to be straight. Once she sent my father to pick out the tree, but only once. Father’s tree spurred a loud conversation and a few tears.
Mom baked loads of homemade cookies, filling round tins with Mexican wedding cakes, sugar cookies, peppermint meringues, gingerbread men, and spritz cookies. In the days before Christmas, I skimmed cookies, sneaking one now and then from a tin then rearranging the remaining ones to fill the empty space.
The weekend before Christmas Mom took us to the American Soda Water Company, a place filled with bottles of the tastiest soda in so many delicious flavors, such as grapefruit, grape, strawberry, cherry, orange, root beer, cream, lime, cherry cola, black cherry, and more. She pushed the cart in which she had placed a wooden case that held twenty-four bottles. My siblings and I buzzed around the aisles plucking our favorite flavors and some of our father’s favorites. After we filled the case, mother placed another empty case on top of the full one. We would leave the store with four cases of soda, enough to see us well into the New Year because we weren’t allowed more than two or three a week. But we pilfered the occasional bottle of soda. Eventually, only empty bottles remained in the wooden cases, and Mom returned them to the soda company and collected her deposit, a nickel a bottle.
Winter at the farmhouse. The only animals we ever owned were dogs and cats. But it had been a working farm at one time. The buildings in the background belonged to neighbors.
On Christmas eve, my siblings and I nestled under our covers and tried to sleep. And when I couldn’t, I peered out the small window at the side of my bed and searched the starry sky, hoping to spot Rudolph’s red nose. However, by the time I was six, thanks to a know-it-all neighbor boy who was three years older than me, I knew there was no Santa Claus. Still, wanting to believe, I looked for Santa’s sleigh in the sky, and when I spotted red lights on a commercial jet heading to Billy Mitchell Airport, I would pretend it was Jolly Old St. Nick with Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, and Donner and Blitzen, all led by Rudolph and his shiny nose.
Eventually all was quiet in the house, my siblings and I softly snoring and dreaming of Christmas morning. At this time, my mother’s shift as Santa’s elf would begin. It took her hours to wrap presents for her four children. She couldn’t do this ahead of time because she needed her Christmas bonus from Marc’s Big Boy where she worked as a waitress, which she received just a few days before Christmas. Bonus money in hand, she drove to the store and paid off the layaway balance on our gifts, which she hid in the trunk of her car until Christmas Eve when her children were all fast asleep. Each package she wrapped with bright cheerful paper and tied up with ribbons or decorated with bows. She artfully arranged them under the tree as if she were staging a scene for the Gimbels storefront window in downtown Milwaukee. Then in the wee hours before dawn she slipped into bed for a few hours’ sleep.
We had strict orders not to wake my parents too early. This meant we weren’t to get out of bed until about eight o’clock. But sometimes before dawn, we might tiptoe down the stairs and into the living room to see the presents under the tree. We kept our distance, not wanting to break the mystical spell of the Christmas tree tending to our gifts tucked under its boughs. And we didn’t want to get into trouble with our parents. We tiptoed back up the stairs and climbed back into our beds. Waiting.
Christmas morning, circa 1969
Christmas morning never disappointed. We opened our presents one at a time because my parents wanted to see us enjoy each of our gifts. Mom was a wonderful Santa. There were always some toys from our lists, but each year she surprised us with wonderful presents we hadn’t even known we would want. Puzzles, games, art supplies, books, pajamas, and clothes spread across the floor as we unwrapped our gifts.
Once the wrapping paper was cleaned up and breakfast had been eaten, our job was to stay out of the kitchen and out of Mom’s way as she began to cook Christmas dinner, a feast of turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, gravy, and green bean casserole, all cooked to perfection. Later we would be asked to set the dining room table, and after dinner we helped wash and dry the dishes. But Christmas morning and afternoon belonged to us, a time to play with our new toys and games.
In mid-afternoon Uncle Freddy and Auntie Pat arrived with our three cousins (Brian, Dee Dee, and Lisa) and Nana Kitty. We ate at an elegant, second-hand burl wood dining table covered with a crocheted cloth my mother bought at an antique store. Before we filled our plates, someone said grace, giving thanks for our feast. Then began the passing of the dishes and the filling of the plates. With twelve people seated around the table, this took some time. It was fair game to interrupt any conversation with “Could you please pass me the . . . ?”
Christmas dinner. From the left and clockwise: Auntie Pat, me, Steve, Nana, Mom, Uncle Fred, Kimberly, Dee Dee, Suzanne, Grandpa Howard (who had recently married Nana) Brian, and Lisa. My father took the photo, circa 1972.
At the end of the day, when the dishes were done, when the company was gone, except for Nana who stayed to babysit us, my parents would meet up with friends at a local theater to see a movie. It was the perfect end to a perfect day. My siblings and I would fold up the crocheted tablecloth, exposing the thick pad that protected the dining table, and set up our new art supplies. We painted or sketched or wove hot pads while Nana visited with us. We snacked on cookies and soda. At bedtime we put on our new Christmas jammies. As we drifted off to sleep, we knew before we could do it all again, we had to wait 365 days. A lifetime to a child. A snap of the fingers to an adult.
Christmas gives me the blues. I miss the magic of childhood Christmases spent with my siblings, and I miss the magic of Christmas mornings I spent with my young children. I miss family and friends who have passed away, and the special Christmas traditions we had. Because nothing stays the same, nostalgia can be heart-wrenching.
So, I’m weaving some new traditions into some old ones.
When I was in my twenties, my mother-in-law took me to my first ballet, along with my two sisters-in-law. It was December, so of course, we went to The Nutcracker. I loved it. For two hours enchanting music, graceful dancing, sparkling costumes, and magical sets swept me away to another world. Attending The Nutcracker with my mother-in-law became a tradition for a handful of years.
This year I took my twelve-year-old granddaughter, Clara, to see The Nutcracker, her first ballet. My mother-in-law would be happy to know I’m reviving her tradition.
Clara and I were dressed in the past and present. I wore a pair of old garnet earrings given to me by a friend, a black-and-red plaid sweater given to me by another friend, and a string of pearls given to me by my mother. I carried a black purse my sister had sent me. Clara wore a black skirt I’d bought her, black leggings, and a cream-colored sweater with a brown geometric design that her grandmother had worn when she was young. We were wrapped in the beauty of the present and the comfort of the past.
The ballet started at two o’clock, so we left the house at one o’clock. Because it’s a short drive to Symphony Hall, we arrived early. Happily, we discovered a foosball table in the lobby. This might be an odd place for a game table, but Symphony Hall is next to a college hockey arena. (An air hockey game would’ve been more appropriate, but they are noisy, like the ear-splitting clack-clack of a pickleball game.) There was no foosball table when I went to the ballet with my mother-in-law. But she would have approved. She liked quiet adventures. In her seventies she painted her nails with canary-yellow and key-lime-pie-green nail polish. She changed the spelling of her first name. She asked me to take her to see Willie Nelson. She went to see The Pirates of the Caribbean with me.
My granddaughter reached the foosball table first. She dropped the ball down the side chute and pushed and pulled on the handles. “Want to play?” I asked. “Sure,” she said. A small smile tickled the corners of her mouth.
Dressed in our semi-elegant, mostly black clothes and coats, we stood opposite one another. We cranked handles and spun our foosball players. Trash talking was minimal. We focused, each of us giving 110% to our plastic, featureless foosball athletes. The game went back and forth with the lead changing many times, but in the end, I prevailed by one goal. I wanted to do a Chariots of Fire victory stride, but well . . . I was wearing pearls.
The lights reflected in the window make it appear as if the sky has lights that illuminate the Aerial Lift Bridge.
It was after 1:30, but the ushers still weren’t taking tickets. I wondered why there were so few people in the lobby. But then a ship came through the canal, and the staff, Clara, and I walked out onto a balcony to watch it glide into the harbor. No matter how many vessels we locals see enter the canal, we never tire of watching them chug under the lift bridge and into the harbor to take on a load of cargo. After the ship passed by, the staff, Clara, and I returned to the warmth of the lobby.
The ushers still weren’t taking tickets, and I got a strange feeling. After I talked to one of the staff, I found out the ballet actually started at three o’clock. Clara and I had been an hour early. We had time to whittle away, so we explored the lower level of the building. We sat in lobby chairs and watched people walk by. We checked out The Nutcracker merchandise. I bought Clara a light-up wand made of optical fibers and myself a pair of socks decorated with nutcrackers.
Finally, the auditorium doors opened, ushers handed us programs, and we found our seats.
Shortly after three o’clock, the lights in the auditorium dimmed, the orchestra began to play, and the curtain rose. My Christmas blues were chased away by pirouettes and leaps, jumps and high kicks all performed by dancers in colorful costumes. Some of the old tradition of the ballet I’d seen with my mother-in-law remained, but it was given a new twist. Instead of being set in the Victorian-style home where Clara’s family and Drosselmeyer gather on Christmas Eve, the set had been transformed into a train station. The ballet was still set in the early 1900s, but the dancers, other than the lead ballet performers, were dressed as street vendors, travelers, lumberjacks, and gingerbread cookies. I have to admit that at first I missed the version I’d seen with my mother-in-law. But the ballet was so good. And clinging to the past too tightly brings a sense of melancholy. Nothing stays the same. So, I let it go and wove the night’s new traditions in with the old.
If life were A Christmas Carol, my mother-in-law would have been Fred, the ever-cheerful nephew of Ebenezer Scrooge. She knew how to keep the spirit of Christmas in her heart all year long and how to rise above characters like Scrooge. (Circa 1935, I chose this photo for the cover of the book I helped my mother-in-law write about her life because it captured her personality so well.)
After rounds of curtain calls and clapping until our palms hurt, Clara and I exited the auditorium. We left the bright lights of the lobby behind and walked out into the dark, cold night. We stuffed our chilled hands into our mittens. Beneath our stylish coats, our hearts were warm.
And for a while my Christmas blues were banished. Maybe next year we will go to the symphony or a Christmas play, then the following year back to The Nutcracker. It’s good to look to the future.
I taught my twelve-year-old granddaughter, Clara, how to play cribbage. The first two rounds we played were full-disclosure games because we laid our cards face up on the table. It’s the easiest way to teach someone to play. I taught her strategies for tossing cards into the crib, how to maximize her chance for a better hand, and how to peg points while preventing her opponent from doing the same. I taught her how to count the pairs, runs, and combinations of fifteens. Cribbage is a complicated game, but that’s what makes it fun.
I learned to play cribbage when I was nineteen years old. I was a bartender in a small unincorporated town, population 350. One of my customers asked me to play cribbage. I told him I didn’t know how. “Well,” he said, “you’re going to have to learn because when customers come in and it’s slow, they’re going to expect you to play.”
I’d grown up eight hours away in a metropolitan area, and I’d never heard of cribbage.
The customer grabbed the cribbage board and a deck of cards off a ledge from behind the bar. “I’ll teach you,” he said. He placed the pegs in their starting holes and shuffled the cards. I carried over a barstool and sat down in front of him but stayed behind the bar. After all, should another customer have shown up, I might’ve had to pour a beer, mix a whiskey-7, or pop a top on a soda. He taught me well, and I played many games of cribbage with him and other bar patrons, especially on quiet winter days and nights.
Shortly after Clara and I started our third game, I asked, “Do you want to play without us seeing each other’s cards?”
“Sure!” She smiled and her eyes sparkled, excited that Nana felt she was ready to be in charge of her own hand. She did well and quickly caught on to counting her hands, but luck plays a part in cribbage, and I had better cards. Yet none of that mattered. We laughed and celebrated our high-scoring hands. We laughed and mocked our low-scoring hands, saying, “two, four, and there ain’t no more,” or “I got nineteen.” (Nineteen equals nothing because it’s not possible to score nineteen points in a cribbage hand.) I almost skunked her in one of the games, but she managed to avoid the stink of getting beat by 31 points or more. And we laughed about that too. Both of us like to play cards and board games, but neither of us is bothered by losing. There is always another game to be played.
Clara and I played on the same cribbage board I used when I taught my grandma Olive to play cribbage. I have two other boards, but I liked knowing that Clara and I were touching the same pegs and moving them along the same holes on the same board Grandma Olive and I used forty-five years ago.
When I was eighteen, I moved in with my grandparents, George and Olive, and lived with them for almost three years. Grandma Olive and I didn’t always agree about how I should live my life. She believed I should sing in the church choir and attend Sunday sermons. She believed I should be present at the dinner table for breakfast, lunch, and supper. She believed I should be home before midnight. She believed I should have a better class of friends. She believed I should iron my shirts instead of wearing them wrinkled.
I believed Sunday mornings were for sleeping in. I believed if a friend said, “Let’s go swimming” or “Let’s play tennis,” skipping lunch or dinner was no big deal. I believed being home by midnight was for Cinderella. I believed my friends were wonderful. And I believed the heat from my body would smooth out most of the wrinkles in my shirts.
But I loved Grandma Olive, and I knew she loved me and worried about me. And because neither of us liked conflict, our disagreements were soft-spoken, thirty-second exchanges of point and counterpoint, in which neither of us would change our minds. Then I would leave the room. And she would exhale a heavy sigh.
When I wasn’t working or with my friends, I liked spending time with Grandma in her kitchen. She taught me how to make an angel food cake (lots of sifting and gentle folding) and Amish sugar cookies (pressed with the bottom of a cut-glass crystal sugar bowl). She taught me how to play Shanghai rummy, which used two decks of cards and had increasingly complicated hands of sets and runs, which players had to attain to score points.
Grandma often heard me talk about playing cribbage with customers when I bartended. “I wish I knew how to play,” she would say, so I bought a cribbage board. One evening as we finished up the supper dishes, I offered to teach her how to play. I can still picture her standing in her slightly remodeled 1940s kitchen, wearing her patterned apron trimmed in red rickrack, one of its pockets bulging with an ever-present handkerchief. She teared up, smiled, and said, “Oh, yes!”
Grandma Olive loved me even if drove her crazy, and I loved her even if she didn’t understand my generation.
Grandma Olive with me on her lap and Grandpa George with my sister on his lap, 1960. Seventeen years later I would move in and teacher Grandma how to play cribbage.
I lived with my grandparents for nearly three years. I thought I was easy to have around, and in many ways I was. But looking back, I realize that my grandparents, especially Grandma Olive, worried about me. They’d already raised three children, so having their eighteen-year-old granddaughter come to live with them during their golden years wasn’t ideal. Grandpa, who was never a talker and still worked at his gas station six days a week, would remain an enigma to me. But Grandma and I came to know and appreciate one another, most of time.
So sometimes when the baking and cooking and dishes were done, Grandma Olive and I would sit at the old wooden kitchen table covered in oilcloth and play Shanghai rummy or cribbage. We talked and laughed, and forgot about our disagreements, neither of us caring if we won or lost the game.
A few years after I moved out of my grandparents’ house, Grandpa George died, and Grandma Olive developed dementia. She and I couldn’t play cards anymore.
Comes a time when there isn’t another game to be played.
Cabela with one of her favorite toys. She was always so gentle with her stuffed toys.
Cabela died at 11:30 on the night of August 4. She was fifteen years old, and we loved her very much. She was a brown standard poodle born on June 24, 2008, in a red barn on a farm in Barret, Minnesota. Her first human parents were Emmet and Ruth, a pair of kind farmers who raised Labradors and standard poodles for pin money. Cabela spent her early puppy days playing outside on their farm with her siblings in the summer sunshine. She developed a life-long love of being outdoors.
Cabela on patrol.
When we brought Cabela home, she wanted to be outside all the time. She liked to sit or lay under my husband’s maple tree in the front yard. She believed her job was to patrol the yard, watching cars and pedestrians move up and down the streets at the front and the side of our house. She and the priest who lived across the street became friends. When he left or returned home in his silver Buick, he would slow to a crawl to see if Cabela was outside. If she was, she would line up with his car, he on the road and she in our yard. The priest would slowly accelerate and Cabela would accelerate. They raced until she reached our lot line. The priest always ended the race in a tie, and the two of them enjoyed their game for years. In her prime when Cabela was excited, she ran hot laps, up to six or seven of them in a row, around our yard at warp speed, or she launched herself six feet into the air along the trunk of a tall pine tree. Drivers would stop and watch her performance. Dr. Jenny, her regular vet, once remarked, “Cabela has the heartrate of an athlete.” I said, “She is an athlete.”
Cabela died because her stomach twisted. The medical term for this is Gastric dilatation-volvulus (GDV). It’s more common in deep-chested dogs like standard poodles, and it’s more problematic in older dogs because the muscles and ligaments holding their stomachs in place become weak and more elastic. The emergency hospital vet, Dr. H, asked me if Cabela was spayed and when I said yes, he asked if her stomach had been tacked at the time. I’d never heard of this, but it’s supposed to help prevent GDV. I have no idea if Cabela’s stomach was tacked when she was fixed.
Cabela and Ziva on a winter’s walk. Many of our winter walks in the snow were magical.
On August 4, Cabela’s evening started out normal. She ate her supper, and an hour later she went for a walk with her sister, Ziva, and me. Cabela still loved her walks, but they were now a slow, grass-sniffing shuffle around the block, then she was done. After the walk she rambled around the house. This too was part of her evening routine. She had a touch of dementia, which often became more noticeable in the evening. In humans with dementia, this is called sundowning. Cabala would look like a person who had entered a room but couldn’t remember why, no matter how hard she tried. Usually after thirty to sixty minutes of intermittent ramblings, she settled into a deep peaceful sleep until the wee hours of the morning when she would wake me up so she could go outside and potty.
But on that night, Cabela wouldn’t even lay down for a short rest. She moved from the family room to the living room and back again. My husband and I encouraged her to lay down. We stroked her head and ears when she came near us. We patted the couch cushion, inviting her to hop up and rest. But she backed away and kept moving. We wondered if her hips or legs were in pain. She was arthritic and her hind leg muscles had begun to atrophy. We wondered if she’d torn a ligament. She didn’t cry or whine or wince. Cabela was so very stoic all her life, and at the end of her life she would be no different. Later that night while treating her, Dr. H would remark, “Cabela is one of the most stoic dogs I’ve ever treated.”
At nine o’clock, I gently helped Cabela lay down on her sheepskin bed. She resisted for a moment, then relaxed. She closed her eyes, and I stroked her face and neck. She fell asleep. Later I would realize that for a few minutes either fatigue got the best of her pain or the position in which she lay gave her a brief respite from it. But at that moment, it appeared she would sleep until the wee hours of the morning. I sat with her for five minutes, watching the peaceful rise and fall of her chest, her only movement. Then I let her be and returned to the family room.
But a few minutes later Cabela was up and walking around, lost and confused, looking at me with sad eyes. I tried to lay her down again and soothe her, but she was having none of it. She snapped at me, placing her teeth gently on my arm. She kept pacing. At ten o’clock I took Cabela to the animal hospital.
I had to carry her into the van. Again she whipped her head around and nipped at me. This time her head banged into my glasses, bending my wire-rim frames. She rested her teeth on my shoulder, but did not bite down. Only later would I understand she was saying, “It hurts so bad.”
We arrived at the hospital, and I had to lift Cabela out of the van. She snapped at me one last time, still all warning and no bite. After I described her symptoms to the receptionist, Cabela was seen immediately. Dr. H and the techs were wonderful to Cabela and me. The vet suspected her stomach had twisted. I felt awful. I told the doctor that I thought she had been sundowning. He understood because he’d had a beagle who had episodes of sundowning as an old dog. He remarked that Cabela had a very good heart rate for a dog her age. “She was an athlete,” I said.
Cabela was taken back into the hospital where she was sedated to relieve her pain, then she had her abdomen x-rayed. I knew if her stomach was twisted, she would need to be put to sleep. Dogs do have surgery to correct twisted stomachs and often survive if the condition is caught early. But Cabela was fifteen years old with some dementia, nearly deaf, arthritic with weak muscles, and during her initial exam, Dr. H had discovered she was nearly blind in her right eye.
Cabela’s x-ray confirmed that her stomach had twisted. The vet said because I’d brought her in so quickly, she would’ve been a good candidate for surgery if she had been younger and in good health. “But to do this surgery on her at this stage of her life,” he said, “would be cruel.” And I agreed. The vet left to get the medicine needed to put Cabela to sleep.
Baby Cabela playing with her big sister Bailey and Lizzy, their favorite toy.
The tech brought Cabela back to me and I sat on the floor and held her. She was heavily sedated, breathing quietly, soft and warm in my lap. I asked the tech if he had a pair of scissors so I could have a snippet of Cabela’s hair as a keepsake. He kindly made this happen. Then the vet returned. After Cabela died, I was given time alone with her. I held her. I thanked her for being such a good dog. I told her she would see her old pal Bailey, our first standard poodle, and they could play and nothing would hurt. They loved to chase one another and play tuggy with an elastic-filled, furry toy we called Lizzy. Bailey died when Cabela was two and a half, and she looked for Bailey for weeks. When my husband and I brought Cabela home and introduced the two of them, they began to play immediately. Every minute or so, Bailey would run back to my husband or me, wagging her tail and smiling as if to say, “Thank you! Thank you so much for bringing me a puppy!” Then she would dash back to play with Cabela.
We met Cabela on a pleasant September day in 2008 in Owatonna, Minnesota, near the Cabela’s sporting goods store, for which she would be named. My husband and I and my youngest son and his future wife were eating lunch in a restaurant and watching out the window as people walked up and down a row of dog breeders who had set up along a wide grassy boulevard. The breeders came from Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota to sell leftover puppies they hadn’t been able to sell back home. We decided after lunch to look at them. I thought about free puppy cuddles. We already had our two-year-old standard poodle, Bailey, so I had no interest in getting another dog.
The four of us visited the standard poodle puppies first, and my son scooped up a chocolate one and snuggled her to his chest. Content, the puppy nuzzled in and closed her eyes. I talked to the woman about her poodles and my poodle. And while I talked, my son whispered, “Take her home, please, just take her home.” He repeated the words over and over. I looked at my eighteen-year-old son, holding this puppy, and my heart melted. I asked the lady how much she wanted for the puppy. Her answer was reasonable. I asked my husband if it was okay with him, and without hesitation he said it was. I wrote the woman a check, and my son carried her to the car. We never visited the other breeds of puppies.
We named our new puppy in record time. Because she was a chocolate-colored dog, my husband suggested Hershey, which I immediately nixed. “That name will encourage jokes about the Hershey squirts.” My husband laughed, but this was an indignity I felt no dog should have to endure. My son suggested Cabela, and we all agreed it was a great name. Cabela was eleven weeks old when we bought her, and I am eternally grateful that no one else had chosen her. She earned her middle name when during a case of the zoomies, she misjudged the width of the hallway and ran head first into a wall. As she shook her head, I said, “Your middle name is now Grace.” Over the years we gave her lots of nicknames: The Brown Bomber, Range Rover, Ichabod, Snickerdoodle, Kadiddlehopper, and Bel. I once read somewhere that a well-loved pet will have many nicknames.
It was after midnight when I came home without Cabela. I came in through the garage and up the basement stairs. Ziva stood at the top of the steps, waiting. She kept looking to either side of me, watching for Cabela to come up the stairs. Even though it was late, I knew I wouldn’t sleep, so I sat on the loveseat and Ziva climbed up on her favorite couch. I turned on the TV, but I have know idea what I watched. Every now and then, Ziva heard a noise and her head popped up. She looked toward the hallway, waiting to see Cabela come into the family room.
In 2011, after Bailey had died, Cabela was lonely. She had liked having a dog buddy, so we called Emmet and Ruth. Luckily one of their poodles had recently had puppies, so we reserved one for Cabela. But, when we brought Ziva home, she didn’t want to play with Cabela. Every time Cabela came near her, Ziva squealed like she was in mortal danger. And each time Cabela moved away and gave her space. “Won’t that be something if Ziva never wants to play?” my husband and I would say. Thankfully, two weeks later, Ziva approached Cabela and said, “Let’s play.” And they, too, became buddies.
Ziva and Cabela liked to be near one another.
Cabela died on a Friday night, and that weekend I couldn’t stay in the house. I wanted to be outside where Cabela had loved to be. I felt her spirit would be in the yard. I spent the whole weekend outside, making things look pretty for Cabela. I weeded gardens and picked up sticks. My husband helped me wash windows, clean gutters, and dig up some scraggly, out-of-control bushes so we could plant new ones next spring. If I mentioned Cabela’s name and Ziva heard me, she looked at me quickly and intently and cocked her head. “Where?” she would ask. She seemed so sad, too.
I miss Cabela. I loved how her ears flapped in the wind when she sat in our front yard on breezy days. I miss how she poodle-pranced down the street on our walks. I miss how she could raise one eyebrow and then the next, alternating back and forth when she asked for a treat. I miss seeing her on the living room couch, her front paws resting on its back and her head resting on her paws as she looked out the window, working the yard from inside the house. I miss how she would turn to look at us each night before she headed down the hall to her sheepskin bed. “Calling it a night?” my husband would ask, then say, “Have a good sleep.”
[My dog Cabela died two months ago. I’ve tried to blog about her dying (because I blogged about her when she was living) but I would end up crying. Then I would decide my words were fluff, unable to capture her essence and the hole left in my heart by her death. A couple of days ago I read“When a Cold Nose is at the Pearly Gates: Writing a Pet’s Obituary” by Laurel E. Hunt on Brevity Blog. After I finished reading Hunt’s blog, I tried writing about Cabela’s death in the form of an obituary, but that didn’t work for me either. And I cried again. Even thought Hunt’s writing idea didn’t work for me, I’m thankful I read her blog on October 6 because she inspired me to try and write about Cabela again. To learn more about GDV click here.]
[I’ve read many good books in the past few months. I’m reviewing some of them in a series of blog posts. So, if you’re looking for a summer read, maybe you’ll find a book to enjoy in one of my book review posts. Note: Autumn Equinox begins September 23!]
Why did I read this book?
I follow Lynn Haraldson’s blog. I love her writing — how she expresses herself, how she captures the essence of an experience, and how she weaves the past into the present. After all, our pasts are part of us, always influencing our current lives. She blogs about many things, including some of the events in her memoir An Obesity of Grief. When her book came out, I bought it, certain it would be very good. I was right. I read her book in two nights — on both of them staying up much later than I normally do, telling myself over and over, “I’ll just read one more chapter.”
What is this book about?
Lynn Haraldson is nineteen years old, and deeply in love with her husband Bruce. Their life together — filled with dreams — stretches ahead of them. They plan to be married for seventy-five years. They have recently taken over the farm owned by Bruce’s parents, who have retired. They are the joyful parents of an eleven-day-old baby girl. Then Bruce dies in an accident.
The day Bruce dies begins as an ordinary day. Lynn takes care of their infant daughter while Bruce leaves the house to tend to the farm. But Lynn never sees Bruce again. He dies in a tractor-train collision. Filled with grief, she wants to see her husband’s body, to touch his hand, to say goodbye. But people tell her she shouldn’t because it will traumatize her, better to remember Bruce as she knew him. Because Lynn is nineteen, older adults treat her more like a child than a grown woman who has just lost her husband.
After Bruce’s death, Lynn tries to hide her grief, telling people that she is just fine. But her grief won’t stay put. It manifests itself in two failed marriages, in gaining and losing over one-hundred pounds twice, and in recurring nightmares featuring Bruce. She struggles with a nagging question: How could Bruce not see or hear the oncoming train?
For years, even though Lynn’s life moves forward in some ways, she remains stuck in a cycle of grief-driven behaviors until she begins therapy, confronting Bruce’s death and her grief.
What makes this book memorable?
Haraldson tells her story with unflinching honesty. If readers have experienced a tragic loss, reading An Obesity of Grief will help them understand they are not alone in their thoughts about grief and their struggles with it. If readers haven’t experienced the type of profound loss Haralson confronts, the book will help them understand the impact of grief because chances are they know someone who has faced the untimely death of a spouse or loved one.
Haraldson’s prose is both lean and powerful. She tells her story, moving back and forth in time, building suspense for her readers, taking them along with her on her journey. And as she grapples with the painful memories and emotions surrounding her grief, she gives readers a memoir that is deeply moving, insightful, and offers hope.
[I’d like to give a shout-out to the cover art on Haraldson’s book. It’s stunning and haunting, and it captures the essence of her memoir.]
“Hey, boys,” comes a lively greeting from a tall, white-haired man, whose cheery voice emanates from an equally upbeat face that gives the impression it has spent a lifetime brimming with friendliness. The man, who is at least as old as I am, is dressed in a pair of jean shorts and a casual blue shirt that matches the color of his fun-loving, twinkling eyes.
My six- and four-year-old grandsons have just entered the assistant lighthouse keeper’s home in Two Harbors, Minnesota. The jovial man, however, isn’t the assistant keeper. He is a tourist, like us, visiting the lighthouse grounds, which are now a museum.
He points toward the corner of what would’ve been a small sitting room. “What’s that, boys?” he asks my grandsons. I haven’t crossed the threshold yet, so I can’t see what he points at.
Without skipping a beat, my six-year-old grandson answers, “That’s a typewriter.”
“Wow,” the man says, now looking at me. “Most kids don’t know that!” He reminds me of my father who would’ve put this kind of question to anyone, young or old, in a museum, hoping the person wouldn’t know the answer, giving him the opportunity to burst into a history lesson. In the absence of strangers, my father would quiz me, “Do you know what this is?”
I smile at the man, and as an explanation, I say, “Their nana is a writer.” But this isn’t why my grandson knows a typewriter when he sees one. None of my grandchildren have seen me use one. I do my writing on a laptop. Although I wrote plenty of college papers on a typewriter, I can’t say I miss it. I made too many mistakes and smeared thick globs of whiteout on typos, which resembled miniature frescos when they dried, but without any artistic flair.
I’m not sure why I blurt out, “Their nana is a writer,” but something in the tall man’s happy manner makes me happy, so I say it because writing makes me happy. I’m already thinking about our encounter as something to write about.
So, why does my six-year-old grandson know that the machine with rows of letters is a typewriter? Because I like to take my grandkids to small museums. A month ago we visited the Old Firehouse and Police Museum. On the second floor in an old office displayed with artifacts, he pointed to a typewriter sitting on a wooden desk and asked, “What’s that?” I explained what it was and how it worked, and that the fire chief used it to type reports about the fires they fought.
The white-haired man moves on to another room in the assistant keeper’s house turned museum. My grandsons and I look at the typewriter. “Can I touch it?” one of them asks. My first impulse is to say no. Instead, I look at the typewriter. I don’t see a do-not-touch sign. If I had, I would’ve said no. In my family there are two kinds of people: those who can’t ignore signs and those who feel they are merely suggestions. But I’m flirting with a technicality because I know museum curators don’t want visitors touching artifacts.
I think back to the mid-1990s when I took my father and my two sons to the same fire and police museum that I recently visited with my grandkids. Inside the museum was an old fire truck, with a hand crank used to start its engine. I came upon my father turning the crank, which was located right below a sign that said: DO NOT TURN THE HAND CRANK.
“Dad,” I said, “you can’t do that. Look at the sign.” I wondered if he thought the engine might roar to life.
“Well, they left the crank here,” my father said, as if the presence of the crank negated the command: DO NOT TURN THE HAND CRANK. The old hand-crank fire truck was still there when I took my grandkids, but the sign was gone and so was the hand crank. I don’t think my father was the only person who turned that crank. He was a mechanic nearly all of his life, and the urge to tinker with mechanical objects never left him.
My grandsons and I are still staring at the typewriter. I think about my father and his belief that signs weren’t meant for him. He routinely ignored handicapped parking and speed limit signs. When he taught me to drive, he said that I could take curves at twenty miles over the posted limit. I stare at the typewriter, thinking about the fingers from the past that pushed its keys, sending thin metal bars with raised letters clacking to an inked ribbon, leaving black words on white paper. My grandsons stare at the typewriter as if it’s a mystical object, but I have no idea what they are thinking.
“You may touch it,” I say, “but very gently, like this.” And, I brush my fingers like feathers across a few keys. There is no one to tell me, “You can’t do that.” There is no one I can answer back to by saying, “Well, there isn’t a sign.”
I add, “Do not push down on the letters.”
Each grandson takes a turn, stroking a few keys softly, like they are a newborn’s forehead. Sensing they’ve been granted a special privilege, they are silent. Neither of them pushes down on a key. But I imagine they think about what it would feel like and how the typewriter would react if they did.
Suddenly, I understand something about my father and the old fire truck and its hand crank. He wanted to feel that crank turn. Perhaps, because he’d never had the opportunity. By the time he was born in 1937, hand-crank cars were a thing of the past. But his father, who opened a gas station and repair shop in 1920, would’ve worked on cars with hand cranks. Perhaps, my father wanted to touch something that linked him back in time to his father.
After all, I enjoyed touching the typewriter keys and wondering about the lighthouse keepers and the documents they typed. Perhaps, in their off-hours, they wrote novels or stories or poems about the solitary life of lighthouse keepers and the stormy moods of Lake Superior.
We move on from the typewriter, looking at a way of life from the early 1900s. An old stove waits for someone to start a fire in it and cook a meal in cast iron pots. Old dishes sit on a scarred table, waiting for a meal to be served upon them. An ancient washing machine waits for someone to load it with soiled clothes. Oil lamps wait to be lit after the sun sets, and an old stuffed chair waits to be filled by a weary person at the end of the day.
Over and over my grandsons ask, “What’s this?” And I explain. Over and over their hands reach to touch an object, and I say, “Don’t touch.” I point to the signs saying, Please, Do Not Touch, which had been absent by the typewriter, but are now everywhere. And each time they withdraw their hands. I can’t ignore an actual sign asking, Please Do Not Touch.
But I’m glad there wasn’t a sign by the typewriter, and I wonder if my dad would’ve pushed the keys.
The jacket makes its return to the Goodwill, January 2023
I bought the deep-green Minnesota Wild windbreaker at Goodwill for $3.99. Its 2T size was perfect for my grandson Michael, who was two years old at the time. I kept it at my house as a spare jacket because where I live the weather changes faster than a runway model. Michael wore the jacket on misty days and sunny-but-cool breezy days and gray chilly days when the sun refused to show its face. When needed, he pulled up the hood and slipped his hands into the pockets, hiding his ears and hands from the cold.
When Michael outgrew the jacket, I saved it for Evan who wore it until he outgrew it. Then, I saved it for Charlie who wore it until a year ago when he told me, “I’m too big for this.” I had run out of grandchildren, but I kept the jacket. Throughout the year, I thought about donating it back to Goodwill, but it held memories. My grandsons wore it to the library, to parks, and on walks. When they ran and played, the windbreaker’s waterproof material serenaded them with a crinkly tune.
I’m somewhere between my mother and father on the what-to-purge-and-what-to-keep scale. My mother saves very little. A few years ago, I asked her where the instructions were for her bike lock because I needed to reset the combination. Her answer: “I threw that out.” When I complained, she snapped, “I can’t save everything.” She claims she doesn’t want to make her children clean and sort through piles and piles of possessions. But really? Even small amounts of clutter unsettle her.
Very little exists from my mother’s childhood, but I think that’s because her family had very little. What happened to the other bits and pieces from her youth? I don’t ask. Perhaps her mother threw them away, or perhaps my mother did. Sometimes memories connected to objects are painful, a place one wants to walk away from, not revisit.
In contrast, my father saved a lot of stuff: old newspapers, if an article interested him; letters, including the ones I sent him; his childhood artifacts; his pilot logbooks; trinkets of all sorts; and bits and pieces of mechanical objects because he never knew when he might need that specific part or screw or nut and bolt. He wasn’t a hoarder, and we could walk through his house without fear of being consumed by his possessions, but his garages, closets, and spare rooms were filled with his history, both the small and momentous moments. He would’ve saved the instructions for the bike lock.
My father also kept old issues of Trade-A-Plane, a publication printed on yellow paper, where pilots could buy and sell airplanes and their parts. When the Trade-A-Plane came in the mail, he would dodge his responsibilities and read every classified ad, even if he wasn’t looking to buy or sell because, as he would say, “You never know.” He had lengthy telephone conversations (at a time when long-distance was expensive) with other pilots about planes, even if no buying or selling took place.
Frustrated, my mother once asked him why he needed to save every Trade-A-Plane, and he said, “Well, you never know.” He might want to look up something in one of them. Sounds ridiculous that with decades of old issues, he would be able to find something specific from years ago. Maybe he could have, maybe he couldn’t have, but he was comforted by their presence. They held memories of the planes he bought and sold and dreams of the planes beyond his reach. When he needed to buy a pair of wings for his Cessna 196, he called the airplane junkyards that advertised in the paper. He found a set of wings in New Jersey and had them shipped to Milwaukee.
My father saved the letters his father wrote to his mother in 1937 when she was pregnant with him and in the hospital on bed rest. Her pregnancy had become difficult, and if an emergency developed, the doctor didn’t want her to be an arduous forty-mile drive from the hospital. My father was born on November 24, 1937, and his parents saved a copy of Life magazine from that week, along with the cards family and friends sent on the occasion of his birth. My father treasured all of it. He had a vein of sentimentality that ran deep through his curmudgeonly bedrock. After he died, I inherited these keepsakes, and I cherish them.
The letters my grandfather wrote to my grandmother while she was in the hospital hold the ordinariness of daily life, recounting the weather, what he ate, how much gas he sold at the station, how deer hunting season was progressing, and when he would be coming to visit her. But with each mundane line, I imagined my grandfather writing around his fears about his young wife and child, praying for them to be well and hoping for them to come home soon. Always he signed his letters, “Lots of love, George.” In one letter he wrote about his day and mentioned he’d gone “to sleep without his bed companion.” It was the only personal line in all of his letters – subtle, but filled with longing to have his wife and child home and to be a family. This would’ve been important to my grandfather who was orphaned when he was eleven years old.
I can leaf through that Life magazine from 1937 and know I’m reading the same pages my father and his parents once read, learning what was newsworthy the week their first baby was born. When I read it, I found an article about Dy-Dee doll, “the most popular doll in the world” because she wet her diapers. My mother-in-law received a Dy-Dee doll for Christmas in 1937. The doll was all the rage, and she never forgot Santa left one for her under the Christmas tree. That 1937 issue of Life is a keeper because it connects me to my father and my mother-in-law, making it something I save. My children will have to throw it away.
I understand why my father kept the letters and artifacts of his childhood. I still have the teddy bear Santa brought me for my first Christmas in 1959. In my forties, I put Teddy in a plastic garbage bag. He had holes in his neck and crotch, and most of his fur had worn off. I tried to throw him away, but I couldn’t. After I pulled Teddy out of the garbage, I told my son, “I just can’t let him go.” And my son, who embraces minimalism to the point of nothingness, said, “Somethings you just need to keep.” So, Teddy sits in my closet on a stack of quilting material. I have my yearbooks and old report cards. I have photographs and a scrapbook. I have toys and clothes and artwork that belonged to my children. I have a pair of onyx owls from Nana and a colorful laughing porcelain Buddha from Grandma Olive. I have an antique hutch filled with glassware. I save all the instructions for every appliance and bike lock I buy. But I sympathized with my mother about Dad’s Trade-A-Plane obsession.
And so, after hanging in a closet for a year, the size 2T Minnesota Wild windbreaker became like my father’s old issues of Trade-A-Plane, no longer useful. Because I wanted others to make happy memories with the jacket, and because having too much clutter in my house unsettles me, it was time to let go. I placed the jacket in the wooden clothes bin at Goodwill. Having heard the door open, a young woman with a broad smile approached me and asked if I needed a receipt. I told her no, and she went back to sorting donations. I turned to leave but I couldn’t, so I grabbed the jacket and laid it on a bin of donated books and took a picture. That helped. It’s what my father would’ve done. He was the champion of taking pictures of everyone and everything. In his later years, he always tucked a small camera in his shirt pocket.
I lifted the jacket off the books, but I wasn’t done yet. I felt compelled to tell its story, so I stepped into the large sorting room, and the young woman asked, “Can I help you?”
I held up the officially licensed NHL windbreaker with the Iron Range Red, Forest Green, Minnesota Wheat, and Harvest Gold “wild animal” logo that appears to be a bear or a wildcat or a wolf. (When asked, the Wild organization will only refer to it as a “wild animal.”) And I told the young woman the story of the jacket’s full-circle journey from Goodwill, through three grandsons, and back to Goodwill.
I felt like an old person telling a story that a young person isn’t particularly interested in hearing, but she smiled, said it was a good story, and thanked me for sharing. I’m fairly certain she meant it. On my way out of the sorting room, I dropped the jacket back into the clothing bin and hoped that soon some child’s parent or grandparent would buy it.
A few weeks later Evan and Charlie came for a sleepover, and we took my dogs for a walk. None of us thought about the windbreaker because it was a clear, cold winter’s night, and we wore snow pants and heavy jackets, knit hats and insulated mittens. We passed the west side of the park, and Evan pointed to a tree and asked, “Do you remember when we circled around this tree last summer?” I didn’t remember, but I said yes because it was important to him. On that particular day, he might have been with his mother at the park, but that’s the slipshod nature of memory. Perhaps that’s why we keep physical remnants from our past. And on that clear, cold winter’s night with stars sparkling above us and a moon peering down at us, I remembered the Minnesota Wild windbreaker I’d given away.
Evan climbed the snowbank by the road, hugged the tree, and said, “This tree holds all my old memories.” He might grow up to be the kind of person who will save every issue of the Trade-A-Plane, all his Nana’s cards and letters, and the instructions for a bike lock. Or perhaps not. But at the agèd year of six, Evan already treasures his memories. And he understands the ability of an object to hold his heart.
This was only part of our yard. We had land on the other side of the white house, the other side of the curved driveway, and behind the barn and white garage. The hill on which the Snapper became my bucking bronco was just to the left of the barn.
My husband and I live on a small hill. Because of this, we’ve always figured our yard had to be cut with a push mower, but recently we needed to hire a lawn service. Three guys showed up. One maneuvered the weed whacker. One swung a leaf blower. And one drove the riding lawn mower — a zero-turn, wide-cut machine that hugged the hills like a sure-footed mountain goat. I watched with glee, nearly jumping up and down, almost clapping my hands together, wanting to ask if I could take the mower for a spin. I thought, “If we buy one of those zero-turn, wide-cut, mountain-goat mowers, I can cut the grass too.” I used to ride my father’s mower like it was a newly-tamed mustang, and I was a free-wheeling cowgirl.
I was eight years old when I started mowing the 2.2 acres that was our yard, a ponderosa compared to the narrow city lot we moved from when I was five. My dad pIopped me on his 1960s Snapper Comet and taught me how to start, shift, and stop it.
I wasn’t to cut the large rocks that grew behind the barn and garage because they ground lawn mower blades like cowpokes chomping chewing tobacco. I got careless once, and Dad needed to replace the blade. I got careless a second time, and I bent something more serious on the lawn mower. But dad was an excellent mechanic, so he ordered parts and fixed the Snapper.
My father, who could be impatient in many things, was surprisingly calm about my attempt to mow rocks. But after he had to fix the lawn mower a second time, I scoured the back field for rocks, like a ranch hand on the lookout for a stray calf. We lived in southeastern Wisconsin, and thousands of years ago some geological force seeded the earth with large rocks, and every spring several of them would manage to bloom. When the rocks grew too tall, my father would dig them out, place them in a small trailer, and haul them to an overgrown field with a miniature tractor not much bigger than the Snapper.
When I cut the hill by the barn I pretended I was riding a bucking bronco in a rodeo. Because I was so light, I would stand and lean toward the hill to keep the mower’s four wheels on the ground, defying its urge to throw me. I conquered that hill — the only thrill in our otherwise flat yard.
Today, placing an eight-year-old child on a riding lawn mower to cut the grass by herself might be considered child endangerment, but I loved riding the red-and-white Comet, turning in tighter and tighter squares until the whole yard was clipped. No one seemed to think it was unusual — not my mother, not the neighbors, and not me. Besides our Snapper Comet, manufactured in the late sixties, was a pony compared to the muscular draft-horse riding lawn mowers of today.
When my father and mother moved to Tucson in 1977, they didn’t take the Snapper Comet with them. No need to cut the desert sands. My parents divorced in 1983, but my father remained in Tucson. After I married and had children, my father returned to Wisconsin for a couple of weeks every summer. He visited me, other relatives, and friends.
Years later on one of my father’s visits to Wisconsin, he found the same model as our 1960s Snapper Comet at a garage sale and bought it. I didn’t ask him why he bought a riding lawn mower to take home to Tucson, where he lived at an airpark without a blade of grass. But he did have a big garage, so he had plenty of space to store it.
But I looked at the Comet and remembered my bronco riding on the hill by the barn — a hill that seems so small now. I wondered if my father looked at that Comet and thought about teaching his daughters to mow the lawn. I wondered if he thought about the 2.2 acres and the farmhouse where his children mostly grew up, a time when we were all together, before several moves and a divorce separated all the things he held dear.
So now, my husband and I have a riding lawn mower savings account. Next spring we’re buying a zero-turn, wide-cut machine that hugs the hills like a mountain goat. I’m going to learn how to operate it. I’m going to cut the hills — at least once. There will be some who say I should stay off the draft horse. But my father, if he were still alive, wouldn’t be one of them. He’d tell me to hop on up. He’d teach me how to start, shift, and stop it. He’d help me shout, “Yippie-i-oh, Yippie-i-ay! Rawhide!”
The dog’s water dish has gone missing. My husband has looked everywhere for it, and he announces he can’t find it anywhere.
I’m reading, trying to finish a book before we need to pick up his father and take him out to eat.
Not being able to find the stainless-steel water dish with a nonskid rubber bottom has flummoxed my spouse. He says, “This is bizarre.”
Not to me: In my world things have always occasionally gone missing, but most of the time the objects have returned. I’ve learned to take a deep breath, stop looking for the missing item, and trust it will reappear when it’s ready.
Over twenty years ago, I lost my purse. I searched the house and the car but couldn’t find it. I decided I must have forgotten it at work. I drove back to work and searched for my purse. I asked if anyone had turned it in. No luck. I returned home and cancelled my credit cards, which was the easy part. Going to the DMV to replace my driver’s license would have been a joyless, time-consuming task. I needed to cook supper, so I went into my bedroom to change out of my dress clothes. I shut the door behind me and there, hanging on the hook on the back of the door, was my purse. At that moment I remembered having hung it on the hook, a place I’d never before put my purse.
For years I played where-in-the-Sam-Hill-are-my-car-keys with myself. I’d come into the house with groceries or kids or both. The keys in my hand would get stuffed in a pocket or laid on a random surface somewhere in the house. A few hours later or the next day, the hunt for the keys would begin. After one particularly stressful search, I made a hard-and-fast rule for myself: I must either hang the keys on the hook in the hallway or put them in my purse. It’s been years since I’ve done a frantic search for my car keys.
My husband continues his search. I try to ignore the lost-water-dish ruckus. The book I’m reading is very good. Besides, I believe the dish will turn up, but only if he stops looking for it.
He wonders if someone stole it. I doubt someone would come onto our deck and take a dog’s water dish. Then for a moment, I think maybe a fox took it, which is even more preposterous, but more amusing to contemplate. I keep reading (the book is very good). He keeps searching and grumbling.
I try to ignore him because I know the dish will show up somewhere. Years of experience has taught me this. And when I find a lost object, I remember having put it there — but only after I’ve found it. However, this time I’m certain I’m not to blame for the missing item. And to my husband’s credit, he doesn’t ask me if I’ve done something with it. (Which would be a valid question, and I know it.)
The book is so good, and I’m reaching the end, a very interesting and poignant climax. But I realize I’m not going to enjoy the ending without interruption, so I get up and join the search party.
I look in the same places he has looked: the counter, the floor, the dishwasher. Then I go out on the deck and look at the dog’s tray. No water dish. I don’t know what makes me do it, but I walk about ten feet to the edge of the deck. Next to two plants waiting to be put into the ground is the dog’s water dish. Only then do I remember.
I pick up the dish and go back into the house. “I found it,” I say. “It was by the plants at the edge of the deck.”
“How did it get there?”
Not wanting to waste water, I used the old water in the dish to give the plants a drink. I don’t know why I set it next to the plants (which I’ve never done before) instead of refilling it and returning it to the tray. I must have been distracted, probably by one of the dogs in the yard.
“I have no idea,” I say. I’ve seen my fair share of spy thrillers and decide the explanation is on a need-to-know basis. Does he really need to know my forgetfulness caused him a few minutes of puzzlement? Not at all.
He doesn’t say anything more, and I imagine he believes Cabela somehow pushed it over there because lately she’s been banging her dishes about a bit with her clumsy feet.
Later, I wonder if my husband really suspects me of having moved the bowl, but to his credit, he doesn’t mention it. (It would be a valid suspicion, and I know it.)
[In case you’re wondering, I was reading This Is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay. The book is nonfiction. Kay tells stories from his years as a doctor, before he quit to pursue a career as a comedian and a writer for TV and movies. Doctors from all over the world have written to tell him that his experiences as a doctor mirror their experiences as doctors. If you’re a doctor, you’ll probably like the book because you’ll appreciate that someone gets you and understands what the job is like. If you’re not a doctor, you should read the book because you’ll gain insight into a profession that we might all assume we understand because we go to doctors, but we really don’t.]
Each day that Cabela is still with us and healthy enough to enjoy her food, a walk, and a gallop around the yard is a celebration. However, today she is having a spa day, but she knows “spa day” is just a fancy term for a bath and a haircut. She has always liked her beauty appointments, but last month the groomer told me Cabela balked a bit about being brushed out and clipped, especially around her legs and feet. This didn’t surprise me because Cabela moves slowly these days, with an off-kilter hitch in her giddy-up.
I’m sure Cabela has arthritis. When she is willing to take it, I give her a mild pain medication to help with her aches and pains. Most days she eats the pill like she is The Mrs. Astor nibbling a tasty hors d’oeuvre. Other days she turns her nose up like she is Tom Sawyer forced to swallow cod liver oil. Because she doesn’t need the medicine to survive, I let her decide if she wants to take it or not.
I’m proud of Cabela and her 15th birthday, so over the past several months, I’ve repeatedly said to family and friends, “You know, Cabela is going to be 15 years old on June 24.” This morning I sent texts along with a birthday photo of Cabela to family and friends announcing her milestone birthday. Throughout the day, text messages have come through for her. When my husband and I picked Cabela and her sister, Ziva, up from the groomer this afternoon, I read the texts to her.
According to a chart put out by the American Kennel Club, Cabela is 93 years old. A couple of days ago, my 6-year-old grandson kept asking questions about measuring a dog’s life in human years. I tried to answer each question, but the more I tried to explain it, the more questions he asked, including, “How old are people in dog years?” (He asks a lot of interesting questions.)
I told him there wasn’t a chart for that. But this morning I was still thinking about his question. Using the AKC chart, I came up with a way to answer it. Cabela is a large-breed dog, so I chose that category. I moved down the column of a dog’s age in human years until I reached 61 years. The number below that is 66 years. I’m 64 years old. Next, I moved horizontally to the left on the chart, and I found that in dog years I’m between 9 and 10 years old. That makes sense to me because a large-breed, 9-year-old dog is entering its senior citizen years just like I am.
It still amazes me that Cabela came into our home as an 11-week-old puppy, and she is now older than me. It amazes my grandson too. He wanted to know how Cabela could be considered older than his 64-year-old nana. “Most animals,” I said, “age faster than humans.” Of course, he asked what that meant. I reworded my answer: “They grow old faster than humans.” He was quiet, but I don’t think it was because I had managed to explain the mysterious dynamic of aging in dogs and humans. Most likely he was trying to incorporate the new information with his current understanding of aging.
I printed the “How Old Is My Dog in Human Years?” chart for my grandson, so when he comes back on Monday, he can see a visual of the dog-to-human-years concept. I’m sure he’ll have more questions, and he likes to ask them when we’re in the car.
I have to admit this year Cabela’s birthday makes me sad. At 15 (or 93 in human years) she is doing okay. But if she makes it to her 16th birthday, she will be 99 years old. She will age 6 human years in one dog year. Standard poodles have a life expectancy of 11 to 13 years.
When I took Cabela for a walk around the block this morning, I let her go as slow as she wanted. I let her smell each interesting spot as long as she wanted. Ziva and I waited as if we had nowhere else to go, nowhere else we would rather be, and no one else we would rather be with.
Cabela’s day-spa afternoon was a success. The groomer said Cabela did well today, no signs of discomfort. And she looks marvelous, all soft and fluffy. She also smells frou-frou, like she sampled the wares at a perfume counter.
Cabela is taking a well-deserved nap now. As a dear friend of mine once said, “It’s not easy being eye-candy.”
Happy birthday to Cabela, who is still beautiful inside and out!
Writing Near the Lake 