We'd taken so long to fulfill this promise, had stalled, stuttered, and deflected for so long that I could see they were beginning to doubt that we'd ever intended to honor it. And that finally broke me. Because I don't make promises lightly, certainly not to my children, and I knew that if they loved him, really loved him, then I had to give them the chance to take him home.
Ivan is mostly white with one brown ear. He is a poodle/Stafford terrier mix and his eyes are the color of deep water and sea glass. He has a long tail that curls into a circle and he is as soft as a bunny. I always thought, if I were ever to have a dog, he'd be black and strong, representative of my projected strength and power. I thought he'd be sleek and sexy, shiny-coated and muscular, deep dark-eyed with wisdom and calm. My imaginary dog was my image self, the fuck you to a world that didn't want me to express my strength at all. But this dog is not only mine. He's OURS and we all wanted him and we want him to be part of US.
When I was around ten years old, the same age as my oldest daughter now, I saw a puppy in a pet shop window that seemed to love me as instantly as I loved him. I'd gone in with my father and my sister and possibly my brother, I can't quite recall, and asked if I could hold him. When he was put in my arms, he snuggled and squirmed and licked me and loved me just as I'd suspected. I asked for him. Begged and pleaded. I made promises not only about how well I'd look after him but about how I'd do better as a young human being, be a better person, more giving, more loving, would keep my room clean (though it was usually extremely tidy), fight less with my siblings, be amenable to any and all suggestions for my betterment. I'd psychically prostrated myself on the ground before my father and offered my life in exchange for this love. I knew my dad couldn't just give it to me for no reason, this was 1980 and only Richie Rich from the cartoon got what he asked for just like that, so I waited for Christmas.
In the dream sequence, my father recognized my desperate need for love and contact. He saw that I needed to be important to something or someone, that I needed a place to express my love and devotion. Both he and my mother had grown up with pets and I appealed to their memories, mercilessly begged for this thing. He was a tiny Chihuahua and he trembled with fear at the world much the way I did inside though you'd never know that from my outside. I wanted to make him strong, to give him courage, to let him see that with me he'd be safe, and I'd have a friend when none was available. I wanted to be as strong as I'd hoped to make him.
He was on the top of my Christmas list. My parents hadn't said no, but they'd also not said yes. They'd said nothing, so my ten year old self, still believing in dreams coming true, in great surprises, and in their noticing that something was missing in my life, truly expected to see him sitting next to the Christmas tree surrounded by all the colorfully wrapped boxes and candy filled stockings.
I was lonely. I had plenty of friends but no one particularly close and I was sensitive, often living an alternate life completely in my imagination. Our family is funny in that we spend and spent time close together but not together. We don't and didn't share intimacies, hopes, desires, dreams. It was easy to feel alone surrounded by company, so my longing, my burning love for this puppy exposed me in a way that was terrifying. But I was so blinded by love, by my own hunger for affection, I couldn't help it.
He wasn't there on Christmas morning. I never saw him again. I'd even gone back to the store to see if someone else had had the chance to give him the life I'd wanted so desperately to share with him. I have loved like that all my life. Desperately, afraid of losing it, nearly obsessively. I don't claim that it's healthy. It isn't at all but it's what I have known. I struggle with my sense of love and giving my girls another way to see and feel and be loved.
Two years ago, the girls started asking for a dog and as I'd never had a pet before being their mother when goldfish, hamsters, and newts came into my life, I was actually afraid to say yes. Every cell in my body felt that yearning for my pet store Chihuahua and then whispered, "You can't do this. You've never had a pet. You are not supposed to. You'll probably do it wrong." As I've believed all the other bullshit spoon-fed me about who and what I am, I believed that I was not a dog owner, that I couldn't, that it would just never be. And has happened each time I am about to tell my daughters the same no's that I was told, I change the narrative. To be sure, I promised.
We first started looking for a purebred, a Havanese, because they don't shed and I am a neat freak and clean like a maniac even without a dog in the house. But almost immediately that plan was fraught with obstacles--timing, the right season, location, expense. They were surely cute but I didn't quite see myself well-represented in a Havanese. The girls loved the idea of them but not the time it would take us to procure one. A rescue, we all agreed, would suit us fine and a mix even more so.
That Saturday morning at the shelter, Ivan was the most popular little thing going. Everyone wanted to hold him, meet him, touch him, kiss his soft head. In a room with his sister Savannah, Ivan, then Ethan, held court. The two of them rolled all over each other and jumped on our legs, licked the girls in their eager faces, and I watched my ten year old girl's little dimple press hard into her cheek. I saw that look on her face. She had fallen in love for the first time with someone not in our family, something outside of us. I saw her want him and want him so desperately that she giggled and whispered to him silently. As I suggested other dogs for us to meet and greet she said with assurance, "But I want him." And we met three others and she said that they were nice and sweet and good and would be happy with any one that we were able to take home, but that she wanted him. And I was already afraid for her. Didn't want her to love him too much just in case. Just in case I would fail her by not writing the right thing on the form, by not charming the pants off the staff, by not convincing them that we were worthy, by revealing the flaws that I was bringing to the table.
When they called that Tuesday afternoon, they called the house first. I saw the number come up on the Caller ID and did not answer it. Lily was home sick with me that day and I could not bear having to tell her while she lay in bed that we did not get the puppy we wanted. I let it go to voicemail. I waited for the message icon to appear on the phone. My breath was a little shallower than seconds before. And then my cellphone rang. It was my husband. They'd called him next. We could pick him up that week and had the night to discuss it before deciding if and when. It had been decided all those years ago when I saw my hoped for Christmas gift sitting behind the glass at the pet store.
Ivan is our dog. He is white with one brown year. His mother was the color brown of his ear and his father was a white poodle. My youngest daughter says that he is white and brown just like us. He is going to grow up with them and he has made me a dog owner and the mother of a fur baby for the first time. To say that he is loved and cared for beyond measure would be to understate it. How do you not love someone you have been waiting for nearly all your life?
(c) Copyright 2017. Repatriated Mama: Back to the Suburban Grind.
No comments:
Post a Comment