“
:) !!! Today Is Daisy’s 13th.
Birthday!!! J
“
11/17/12
To my very dearest, kind friends, and ever-loyal
readers,
Thirteen years.
Imagine that !
Hardly an eyelash flutter in geologic time, but—nevertheless—thirteen
times that the earth has fully orbited the sun.
Perhaps a have-remembered scattering of calendar
pages, but, an infant born thirteen years ago would now be in eighth grade !
If you were to get in your car, and drive for only
ten miles, day in, day out for thirteen years (actually, about thirteen years
and two hundred, twenty-one miles, give or take), you would have managed—most easily—to
travel around the earth at its equator twice !
Thirteen years ago, my life was so very much
different, as really, I can imagine everyone’s was.
It was—perhaps—sometime right after the beginning of
November, 1999.
My dear father had died the previous year a scant
twelve days before Christmas Eve, and my wonderful mother (who would—in two
months celebrate her eighty-third birthday) and I had again assumed a quiet and
rather unprepossessing existence.
I was forty-five years old, then, and in the peak of
health; I was employed full time night shift at a small, geriatric residential
treatment facility in town.
I had settled into a dull routine of working nights,
doing errands on my way home from work, spending some time with my mother, and
then trying to salvage maybe five usable—out of the next ten hours—sleep that
would propel me into the next day, and then the day after that.
My mother and I were still grieving for my father,
and—frankly—neither one of us were in the mood to fool-around with the upcoming
holidays.
On fair days, my mother would go outside early, well
before I got home, to tend to her flowers and plants; and in those days would—when
it came time—to wash a couple of loads of laundry, and then hang them out on
the clothesline to dry.
She was usually ready to call it a day right after I
arrived home, and we would have breakfast, and then spend time conversing,
before I said my, ‘good-nights’, and lumbered to my room to try to sleep. Sleep did not come easily, and I found I was
pretty much tired all the time, and straight out exhausted some of the time.
Before I got home, my mother would often go out to
the end of our deck, and there through double-hand’s full of cubed up pieces of
bread for the birds and squirrels that would always gather en masse in our back
yard; their silly antics always amusing.
One morning—though, while talking with mom—I idly
happened to look through the sliding-door window just in time to see this vague
shape dart across the back yard, stay long-enough to eat the bread mom had
thrown out to the birds, and then just as quickly run away.
At the time, a number of neighbors who had dogs
would let them run loose everywhere, and so, I figured that it was probably
some neighbor’s dog on the prowl. And gave
it no further thought.
Several days later, I arrived home on, ‘laundry day’,
and could already see a clothes-line full of towels, shirts, and socks, etc.
being half-heartedly dried by brief fits of still-humid breeze. The towels probably wouldn’t be dried-enough
to bring inside until early afternoon.
There are still two sheds in my back yard. One metal
one my father bought and assembled, in which was the washing machine. The other more, ‘open’, one that looked,
somehow, like nothing more than a giant chicken coop was designed, and built out
of wood by my father.
It was on that long-ago morning in November that my
dear mother casually remarked to me that there was a dog sleeping out in the
open, wooden shed.
When I went out to look, I saw the most forlorn, bedraggled,
filthy, starving wretch of a poor dog.
It hardly resembled a dog, looking—then--more like some starved, giant
rat; you could plainly see all its ribs, and could count the number of visible
ridges on its backbone.
It had lost a lot of fur, having almost none on its
tail. Its eyes were glazed and jaundiced. It looked warily at me with horribly haunted,
vacant, hopeless eyes absolutely full of misery.
I found out it was missing all its upper and lower
front teeth; and was covered in burrs, nettles, and alive with fleas, which it
hardly seemed to care about.
Mom and I immediately fed it, and gave it
water. I believe that it inhaled the
food, hardly tasting it, and drank, and drank, and drank until her belly
audibly rumbled.
When I arrived home the next morning, my mother said
the dog was still there, and while still very, very wary of us, it did not seem
to want to leave us.
One morning, soon after—while I was giving it a dish
of food—it barred its yellow teeth, and growled menacingly at me. I did not want to risk its biting my mother,
and so I telephoned our County’s Animal Control Office, who sent an agent to us.
The dog was understandably apprehensive and afraid,
but was docile-enough, when the agent slipped the wide leash about the dog’s
neck, preparing to take it away where, in three days, the dog would have been
euthanized.
But then something utterly amazing happened; the dog
slowly came up to me, its ears completely flat, and its tail wagging ever so
slowly. The dog’s eyes got as big as
saucers, and…she began to lick the back of my hand.
That—my very dearest friends—broke my heart.
The agent laughed and said, “...she’s decided to
trust you instead of me. Looks like you’ve
got yourself a dog, mister.”
At the time, I did not want a dog. I did not need a dog. I hadn’t had a dog since, ”King”, the
shepherd/collie mix puppy I had picked out of a litter when I was ten years
old.
“King”, was very intelligent, and grew to be a
beautiful, friendly dog who followed me everywhere. And who was my best, ‘buddy’.
After a rather short illness, he died in 1970, while
I was in tenth grade. I stayed up almost
the entire night, sitting outside with, ‘King’, in my lap, crying and crying,
while he feebly tried to lick my face.
While I was away in school—the next day—my father
took, “King”, to the vets, and had him put to sleep, and had him buried there.
When I got home from school, “King”, was gone; I
never did have a chance to tell him goodbye, and that I loved him……
And so, the prospect of again having a dog did not
thrill me, but when the County agent finally left, the dog jubilantly began to
bounce from front feet to rear, like a wind-up toy dog, and she ran around, and
around me making little, happy barking noises.
Regular care and feeding, plus a number of trips to
the vet’s for examinations, shots, medications soon transformed a rather
scraggily, timid dog into a beauty, with bright eyes, and a medium, black and
white colored coat.
My mother came up with the name, “Daisy”. And—somehow—it seemed to fit her perfectly.
Daisy remained an, ‘outside’, dog until the weather
turned unexpectedly cold for Florida in January. We started to let Daisy stay in the house at
night, and then go outside on a long leash during the day.
But somewhere—in the next three months—it was Daisy
who decided that she would rather stay in the house full time, going out only
to, ‘take care of business’.
Daisy almost immediately bonded with my mother; in
her eyes, my mom could do no wrong. On
those cold evenings, Daisy would crawl under the lamp table next to my mom’s
recliner while mom watched teevee.
Occasionally, my mother would reach through the arm
of the chair to pet Daisy, and call her little cute, made-up names; and Daisy
LOVED it!
Daisy would sometimes play—briefly—with me, but she
followed my mother everywhere, and—at night, when mom went to bed—Daisy would
curl-up on the carpet next to the side of the bed mom favored. And would not move a hair until my mother got
up in the morning.
Weeks pass.
Months turn into years. Time
dispassionately disregards the fleeting hopes and dreams of Man. In ever-growing, we age; and time blithely runs
ever-ahead, even as we seem to fall further and further behind.
The longings of Youth become the fevered dreams of
the Ancient. And—as much as we might
like to , ‘stop the clock’,--we are as almost helpless spectators reviewing the
parade of minutes as they pass from the Present to the Past, and into
faultily-recalled memory.
In February of 2008, my dearest mother passed from
this world, hopefully, to join my father.
At home, our, ‘little pack’, dwindled to just Daisy
and me.
For months after my mother died, Daisy would run
around and around the house, stopping here or there to look in all the rooms,
looking for my mom. I could not explain,
‘death’, to Daisy (frankly, my dear, sweet friends, I can hardly explain it to
myself!), still, I believe that Daisy, ‘knew’, somehow.
And so, ever since, it has been just Daisy and
me. Both of us have aged, and become
ill. Both of us have pain. In her own way—now—Daisy is as fully disabled
as am I.
No matter where I go in the house, Daisy follows
close behind. If I am (as I am now) at
the computer in my study, I can see Daisy curled-up on the rug not five feet
away from me.
Should I venture out to the kitchen for more coffee,
or to find something to eat, or to take medications, Daisy follows slowly
behind. When I finally weary of the day,
and have medicated-myself sufficiently-enough to go to bed, and—hopefully—to sleep,
Daisy now curls-up on the rug beside, ‘my’, side of the bed to see what fitful
sleep either of us may be able to find.
When I put her food down, she often waits until I am
sitting out at the counter of the kitchen having my dinner.
And should I have to visit the bathroom, soon after,
Daisy will slowly pad-up the hall, looking in the doors of the rooms until she
sees me. Once she is somehow satisfied
where I am—only then—will she go back out into the living room, to lie down
upon the rug in front of my loveseat.
Daisy has become much more than just, ‘company’. She truly is my, ‘pal, and my buddy’;
although she probably thinks I am weird, I do carry on conversations to her;
sometimes I make-up, and sing silly, little songs to her. Or I call her a number of silly, ‘pet’,
names. These, she tolerates, no doubt
looking to the Heavens for patience!
And as Daisy may have been 1,5 to 2.5 years old when
she, ‘adopted’, us, after thirteen years, she may well be almost 15-16 years
old. In that regard, we practically BOTH are becoming geriatric.
Although—at first—I may have not wanted or needed a
dog, after thirteen years of loving, loyal companionship, I now can hardly
recall a time when I did not have her.
And—in truth—I cannot know how much longer I will be able to have her;
that…will come…in time.
Meanwhile my very dearest friends, today is Daisy’s
thirteenth (arbitrary) birthday ! I have
tried to make of it as special a day as I could; earlier, I cooked a full pound
of really choice ground beef, which I have divided into two servings. One, this morning, and the other, tonight.
I also arranged (and paid extra) for the mobile
groomer to come out, today, and to give Daisy the, ‘royal’, treatment. Now, Daisy is nicely and neatly trimmed; she
got a flea bath AND an oatmeal bath to soothe her skin. AND she now has a cute bow above her ear
(which knowing Daisy) she’ll have shaken it off by tomorrow!
Today is, “Daisy’s Day!”. Really, friends, they ALL are.
Since it is her birthday, Daisy especially wanted me
to tell you (should you too have a dog or two) that—to help celebrate her birthday—she
asks that you spend a little more time than usual, this evening, with your
dog. Give them lots of extra attention,
affection, and love. Many ear-scratches,
and nuzzles. And—of course!—a few,
special treats! If you are still able,
to maybe get down on the floor (at your dog’s level), and play with them; hold
them, hug them, and always tell them how much you love them!
And…huh?..uh…wait a minute. Daisy is pawing at my leg, trying to tell me
something. What?...oh…oh…o-kay.
Daisy just told me that—since it is her birthday—cats
are included, too!!!!!
My very dearest friends, and kind readers, I would
like to wish each of you lessened or no pain, freedom from want or care;
surrounded by family, friends, and pets who love you.
I hope that you are fully able to enjoy a safe,
happy, and plentiful Thanksgiving, and holiday season! I think of you so very often.
And, please, please always know that I love you
dearly!
‘Zahc’/Charles
