to fade,
to disappear,
I’ll stay with you:
hold your paw,
feel your fur
from snout to tail
rub your belly, rough now
with age.
. . .
The phrase
“She’s been my best friend
since I was twelve”
doesn’t quite do
your worth justice
Sweetest girl.
Nevertheless,
it’s the truest thing I know:
mom surprised me
a little after my twelfth birthday,
drove up to the breeder’s house,
a location I vaguely recognized
from when we had first visited;
then looked over to me,
smiling, knowing how big a gift
I was about to get.
It was summer in Dallas,
and the air was pregnant
with spores and trace
amounts of rich white women’s
Elizabeth Arden,
as is natural for
that part of the country.
That was one of the few times—
other than tantrums in infancy—
I can remember crying uncontrollably.
To get to see you, and pick you,
and take you
home,
was
more than I’d dreamt
as possibility.
(unlike the other girls,
I never dreamt of wedding days,
or lifelong love, or even,
puppies coming true.
Only bought you a brush
and a bed in anticipation,
on which I wrote “Cloe,”
since I couldn’t quite spell “Chloe”
yet)
When he brought you out
with your brothers and sisters
I didn’t see you at first;
I actually wanted the short-haired
dappled male, who was sitting cutely
and quietly by my crossed legs;
and it was mother who saw you first.
“Look at this one!”
she exclaimed,
pointing to the red, longhaired
with flopping, oversized ears,
running around the coffee table
and under it,
jumping hurdles
over the other puppies,
bumping her head repeatedly on
the table’s low underside.
“Why is she so hyper?”
I laughingly asked,
observing her attitude of
showmanship,
to this day, what we call her
“Pick Me!” moves.
“Erika, this is the one. You’ve
got to take this one.”
And so it was.
. . .
I brought you home
and your bottom fit
in the palm of one hand
and you sat like that,
erect and upright,
so tiny but already so long
like the dachshund you are,
hound face nuzzling my chest,
the entire drive.
You were soft,
and small,
and tender,
and warm.
And I instantly loved you.
I didn’t understand
taking care of another living thing;
I’d had pets my entire life,
but the burden of their care
usually fell on my mother
or my sister;
rarely were my abilities to care
taken seriously.
As you grew,
I did more and more for you,
and I always included you:
watching movies on my bed,
going to the pool with friends,
walking in the park.
The run-run-park, Chloe:
huge expanses of Texan land
half-groomed, half-wild,
where I’d let you pull out your Flexi leash
full-length, until I couldn’t see you anymore,
searching through the woods and creek
for rabbits and foxes;
or where ducks and geese swam in a pond,
which you playfully watched from the deck above,
tongue hanging low,
low as you,
touching, sometimes,
the ground your pitter-patter
toes conquered
tiny bit by tiny bit.
In your earlier years,
when it snowed, which it rarely did,
we’d take you there, too, to see the water
and the field, now thinly blanketed white:
a few inches of cover was enough
to swallow your tiny legs whole,
the sweater great-great-grandma knit for you
hugging your already corpulent frame.
You would slowly triumph in your movements,
and look up every few steps
for approval,
wagging,
panting
(laughing).
And we’d take you in the car,
the red Chevy Cavalier convertible,
and pick the freeze out
from between the pads
of your toes.
Or sometimes we’d just
let it melt with your body heat
and eventually towel you dry.
You would be happy for days;
it never really took much.
And yet, I think
I could have done more for you,
had I chosen a school
closer to home that spring
before I turned 18—
you were already six then.
I would have been able
to see you on weekends
to take you on drives
or to explore any and every field;
but ambition and possibility
got the best of me,
maybe in the same way
it got my father;
and, temporarily,
I left you behind.
I’m sorry. I love you more than that;I thought I had to.
You were always my baby
when I came home in spring,
and in winter,
and in summer.
When mom,
who had accepted you as hers
once I took leave,
would let me,
I would feed you
and walk you
and clean the
gunk out of your ears
and medicate you for fleas.
And you always sat and watched
patiently
to see if I’d take you somewhere
or feed you something
or invite you up on the couch with me;
which you loved:
tiny girl who loved feeling ever-tall,
ever-bold:
Mr. Lion.
After my graduation, brief unemployment,
other misfortune, and mom getting sick,
I came back home—
“home,” having moved more times
than I could keep track of,
was now Manhattan—
then New Jersey,
just outside of Newark,
where mom’s doctors were.
I was closed off then,
I saw and spoke to no one
unless they could write me a paycheck,
or prescribe me (all the wrong) meds;
unless I was fending off predators,
racists, verbal jousters who
couldn’t even pronounce
“Portuguese” when they used it
in an attack against us.
“Go back to Portageez!"
But you
I would cuddle with,
let out onto the patio,
photograph,
hum to, whistle for,
write odes to, off the top of my head
when cooking or cleaning.
In this way, despite
all the therapists,
the lawyers, the dealers in the street
I watched get arrested regularly,
the disappearing of
everybody—
I was social,
I was actively loving.
You kept me alive,
and you kept glimmers of me
wholly me.
This is maybe how mothers do it
when freer youth watch them
and wonder how they can
have so few nights out,
take so few phone calls.
. . .
Now I have settled
for the time being,
all the stillness and the silence
and the prescriptions behind me:
I bought us a house,
with wood floors like you like,
and carpet in the rooms like you like,
and two yards with grass,
so your old joints don’t have to go far
to feel its summer-defiant coolness
underfoot and underbelly.
The house was for me,
but it can be your retirement home
if you’ll have it
(you turned seventeen in June),
and your teeny paw print may as well
be on the deed:
I entrust you with
this Trust.
Your size defies
your regality,
your emotional worth,
and the depths
of your deserving.
And freely I bequeath it to you,
whatever parts you like:
Sweetest, wagging girl.
Most stubborn,
silliest,
most playful,
humblest,
most loyal,
rudest,
sleepiest,
most entitled,
most curious,
shaggiest,
best,
best friend.
. . .
Since last week's seizure,
which may as well have
stopped my heart entirely,
when you walk,
the sedatives make you wobble weakly,
incapable of lifting up
your hind quarters
without help from me or “grandma,"
limping your front left paw to compensate;
some torn ligament,
some slipped disc,
maybe,
said the ER vet.
An MRI and a neurologist
will be required.
Watching you walk like this,
or un-walk, really,
staying home as much as I can
to be available when you whine and grumble
for someone to move you—
outside to urinate,
or inside, to prove to yourself
you’re still that same young pup,
by dragging your temporarily
incapacitated bottom half—
watching this
is my “humane," gradual preparation
for the day when you won’t get up
again.
Right now,
each time I carry you,
I love you more,
and am ever-protective—
but my heart sinks
with my mind’s capacity
for anticipation.
It doesn’t matter how old you are,
one-hundred-and-nineteen in dog years
(dachshunds can live to 25 or 30, I’ve read):
I’d still never
see it coming.
I’d never imagine
having to live
without your daily greeting
of walking over me in bed,
your short legs barely able to reach
(but you try nevertheless)—
to kiss me,
to literally park
your ass on my face,
to say, “Mine. My momma,”
or, “Wake up, you lazy bum—
it’s feeding time."
. . .
What on green earth will it be like
to come home at midday
to make us lunch,
when you’re not hidden in some closet
under piles of blankets,
snoring like an old man?
Not there for me to wake
from some (I’m sure) stellar
dream about running
in your favorite half-groomed,
half-not park?
And how empty will everything seem
when I make travel arrangements
and only have to find a sitter for the cat,
and we don’t have to pay $200 for your coach ticket
under the seat in front of me
heading somewhere across the country?
What if,
Chloe,
when mom leaves,
she takes you with her,
citing how I left you to her
when I chose college in a new world
ten years ago,
and how all my attempts at being
responsible & maternal,
were futile?
Tell me, please,
because I just don’t know:
who could ever replace
the world’s
sweetest girl?
. . .
In honor of you,
and your possibly-fading,
possibly-not, will
to breathe
to stick around
to love me
and be loyal
and be free;
to feel and give joy,
here are the names
we’ve called you
over the course of
the seventeen years
you’ve wagged at our feet
and granted me the privilege
of petting your floppy ears:
Chloe, Lampalaminas, Colada, Piña Colada, Ca-loud-o, Sweet Girl, Boo-Boo, Puppawitz, Tiny Tot, Girlsie, Baby Boo, Pateeto, Wubbles, McPubbles, Pubbles Magoo, Magoo-Magoo, Pateeto Pie, Potato Cakes, Badger Dog, Hounddog, Beautiful Girl, Mr. Lion, Mean Girl, Snarky, Love of My Life.
You’re golden, Chloe Haines;
You’re platinum—
You're conflict-free diamonds!
And
when you’re ready to go
to fade,
to disappear,
I’ll stay with you:
hold your paw,
feel your fur
from snout to tail
rub your belly,
rougher now
with age.
And when it stops hurting
to see your chest fail to rise and fall,
I’ll kiss your sweet black nose
and bury you by the grapefruit tree
that, only two feet tall,
towered over you
when you once looked up at me there
for approval,
eyes full of love,
tail steadily wagging.
. . . . .
© erika simone 2014
