Between grading essays and keeping up with horrible readings I must assign for early British lit, I'm reading Caroline Knapp's Pack of Two: The Intricate Bond Between People and Dogs (thanks Amy!). So far I'm only three chapters in but it's impressive in anecdotal evidence of the bond (girl buys dog and falls in love) and the pyschological/social research that reflects why we love them so. Knapp suggests the answers are as simple as we'd think--companionship, fulfillment, restitution for some loss--but that it can also be more complicated. I haven't gotten to the complicated part yet.
All I can think about is that for years now, when Brock feels the imp of the perverse coming on, he's said to me, "Now, King won't be alive forever. He's getting older (look at those white whiskers!) and you should prepare yourself for it." At which point he'll put on a wistful face, and look at King as if he's already passed, doing so only to ensure I get close to tears. And just when I'm on the brink, Brock stops with the charade and assures me all is fine, as our King will live forever.
What troubles me now is he hasn't said this for awhile. Either he's forgotten our playacting or he's getting as worried as I am. We've googled the lump on King's back and our bugginess calls it a nodule, but our pragmatism says we need to get it checked out. Now. The problem is this costs a lot of money and, guys, we aren't allowed to use credit cards, that's how broke we are.
So my best baby in the world might be dying and all I can say is, sorry King buddy, I'm broke? You can imagine that every time I buy sushi from Publix or order an Amazon book or purchase something equally unnecessary I remember the boy and fall into self-loathing. Instead of writing now I should be selling some crap on Craig's List and getting my son to the vet.
I am completely aware I am not a mother and don't want to be for awhile still. King is not my substitute son, though I often refer to him as one (read: the blog you're reading). Yet the connection between King and I is so powerful and real I can't imagine my life without him, and like Caroline Knapp, I'd argue this isn't perverse. He and I are almost always on the same psychic page: all he ever wants is to be touched and, for most of my life, all I desire is to touch. Each time we sense what the other wants we do what we can to provide it. It's beyond buggy.
At the same time, lots of time goes by when I'm not thinking of his best interests. In other words, I often ignore him. As a teacher-writer-reader-wife-house cleaner-daughter-granddaughter, I'm up to my eyeballs in duties. Lots of times when I'm done performing them a moment comes when I should feel good about them but don't yet and can't figure out why. And then I see King and get into the petting routine, me on the blue chair and him on the floor. The guttural purr of a dog in love.
We got the house that's best for him, that's true. Every time we let him out the doors there are fields to explore and birds to chase then ignore. But I can't remember the last time I had him on a leash. If it's good for a dog to be disciplined (and you don't need to be Cesar to know it is), King's been experiencing a whole lotta bad. Continuous petting does not a happy dog make.
Admittedly we've gotten lazy since the move. In Baton Rouge I ran him round the lakes for miles almost every day. After three years of doing this he was never broken of the routine of pulling my arm of its socket during the first mile of the run, and panting behind me during the rest of it. And I loved the routine, even though he made me look like an asshole in front of all the other lake joggers with their well-behaved dogs, even though I tried to be a good mother but obviously was not.
I'm writing this hoping to affirm that King's okay, that my love for him is okay, that if I forget about him tomorrow for a few hours I'm still his mother who genuinely loves him. And maybe seeing these words in print will remind me to check out that lump again, to find a way to find a vet so that, from now on, I can focus on times like his first jump on top of me, when I came down with him to the ground. I'd known Brock a month and already wanted to marry him, but never knew before a bugginess like King's.
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On my desk I've got a picture of King at less than a year old, standing in an open field of Ohio snow. At this time in his life I'm not even alive to him yet, but I'm going to pretend from now on that this isn't true. Whatever woman snapped that picture is dead. After this picture was taken, now that I'm remembering it, King turned his face to the long shadow he cast on the snow and pounced on it, and the shadow moved continuously and King chased and chased after it. He didn't yet have his bearings; his paws were huge but his legs still stubby. It was so cute how he kept tripping over his front legs, and how his shadow would stumble along with him. You really should've been there.
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