Of Dogs, Kids, and Extra-Ordinary Moments

60: (January 2019)

I saw a video on Facebook that keeps playing in my mind’s eye. It’s a collage of extraordinarily cute interactions between dogs and babies; how could it not go viral? It made me think of our precious grandbabies, so far away in other parts of the country. And it reminded me of the pure joy of being around our two family dogs. So, why is it that we didn’t race out to a dog shelter after ours died three years ago? I can’t do much about the grandbabies living across the country, but we could get a dog. Why don’t we?

In part, our dogless state is interwoven with the fact that our melded family currently lives all over the country and the world. I am profoundly grateful that modern technology enables us to keep in touch quite easily at the touch of a screen with those we love who live far away. But it’s not the same as kissing a baby’s cheeks, or sharing a leisurely meal and conversation at the dinner table. So we try to see them all in person as much as possible. That’s what holds us back from getting a dog now.

I know people put dogs in kennels all the time when they travel, but I never liked the idea of that. My next door neighbor always took care of the dogs when we were away in the past, but even then, I felt bad that they were alone in the house for long periods of time. But is it foolish to forego the joy of having a dog in exchange for a few weeks of travel each year?

Maybe, just maybe, it’s worth pondering a little more in this new year. Am I just being lazy in not finding a solution to the travel/dog conundrum? Or am I making excuses for not getting a dog so that I won’t have to suffer through the pain when the dog dies in 10 or 15 years? Ouch! That feels closer to the heart of it. But that may not be a bad tradeoff; perhaps I just need more time.

Sometimes we have to be gentle with ourselves, which can be a healthy choice as long as it doesn’t ultimately hold us back from risking opportunities for love and joy. So I’ll ponder. And maybe, just maybe, take a trip to a dog shelter.

40: (January 1999)

We sat shoulder to shoulder in the coffeehouse, enjoying the music of a three-piece folk band. I was with my eight-year-old daughter. This was a special evening for us, for we’re seldom alone together unless it’s to accomplish a hurried errand.

The musicians played foot-stomping tunes, and we clapped along and sipped tea with lots of honey in it. Giggling, we tore off pieces of cotton candy from the bag I had stuffed into my purse before we left home. My daughter gleefully discovered that if she dropped a blob of the cotton candy into the tea, it disappeared instantaneously, like a magic trick. It almost appeared to vanish before it even touched the surface of the tea. We laughed in delight as we watched the pink blobs disappear over and over again.

I sat there thinking, “It doesn’t get better than this.”  I wished I could freeze the moment, but it became the next moment and the next, and the best I could do was to try to hold them in my heart. I pondered how one day these moments would be a distant memory and mused over how life is just a series of individual moments that all disappear as quickly as the last.

Nobody knows how long we have on this earth, and in a way, it does not matter. We have the moment. That is something we can be sure of. Some moments are great, some are downright bad, most are ordinary. But it is the ordinary moments that are often ripe with the simple sweetness of life: the look on a child’s face, the magic of disappearing candy, the unabashed affection of an eight-year-old’s arm encircling your shoulders in a restaurant.

The moments are to be savored. They’re to be noticed, because like the cotton candy, they will disappear in the blink of an eye. To miss the moments is to miss it all. The sweetness is there. Don’t forget to taste it!

60-40:

Cherishing the ordinary, day-to-day joyous moments isn’t difficult, if only we’d remember to do it! But we get complacent, don’t we? We forget to see with our hearts. Sometimes we need to be reminded of the beauty in the ordinary stuff of our lives.  

That’s one of the things I loved about the dogs. They lived in the here and now and seemed so endlessly happy with the everyday routines of life that it was easy to be swept along into their joy.

There are good moments, and then there are those same moments with a dog on your lap, and those are even better! Throw in some babies, and the ordinary becomes simply extraordinary.