No Dog Lobe Here

That part of the brain that makes people want dogs?  I don't have that.

I know many of you must see this as a tragic birth defect, and, I guess it is.  But, I cope.  You know, some people can't get higher math, or can't read social cues.  Some are not cut out to be parents.  Sociopaths do not feel guilt or experience normal human emotions.  I do not get dogs.

Part of it, I'm sure, is that we didn't ever have a dog when I was growing up.  I don't miss it, and I don't see the need.

Part of it is the stories I hear from the people who LOVE their dogs.

A former coworker used to tell us practically every day about a shelter dog she had adopted.  She loved that animal!  She loved it so much she let it sleep with her.  Even though it threw up in her bed.  Every night.  And snored so much she couldn't sleep!  She loved it even though it made wet and muddy messes.  On her white carpet.  Every day.  She would complain about all that it put her through and express her love for it in the same sentence.  I would stare at her, probably with my mouth hanging open, and Just. Not. Get. It.

I would think to myself, "If I had a roommate like that, that would be its last day in my house."

Whatever that dog gave back to her that made it worth it to her was totally invisible to me.  I tell you, I am missing that lobe.

My brothers have accepted dogs into their houses.  That's cool, I guess.  Even though one of them has to get a team of people with ropes to pull that huge animal back whenever someone crosses the unforgivable line of ringing their doorbell.  I listen to the struggle on the other side of the door, and I just don't understand why anyone would want to go through that.

Really.  I don't get it.

And then there are more stories.  Stories about dogs coming out into the living room with used tampons in their mouths when there is company.  Stories about dogs needing surgery that costs thousands of dollars.  Stories about dogs chewing up valued belongings.  Stories about dogs getting out and getting lost, people having to drive around looking for dogs.  Stories about dogs eating one's dinner.  Stories about dogs getting into the garbage.  Stories about being in trouble with the law because one's dog bit/scared/decimated someone.

Honest.  I have never.  Never never ever heard a story about someone's dog that made me want one.

Not even a little.

Dogs just don't do it for me.

I guess I just don't get it.  And I'm fine with that.

Even if I could overcome my fear of dogs, which seems, you know, hopeless, I still wouldn't want one.  When I invite people to my home, I want them to feel welcome, not terrified.  I try not to let my children jump up on top of them, let alone an animal.  I know something must be wrong with me, but getting pounced on by someone's animal just does not do it for me.  I would rather leave than sit down.

And I already know without trying that I would absolutely fail at a job as a dog catcher.  I could possibly see myself driving up to the area where the loose dog was.  You know, within the safety of the vehicle.  Maybe, I could even step out of the truck.  But I know that the moment I laid eyes on the dog, I would be all, "That's fine, you just say there.  Good doggie.  No, don't come over here.  I'm leaving now."  I would back up to the truck, get in like the boogie man was after me, and drive away.  And then, I suppose, turn in my badge.

I know that people can be (inexplicably) very, very fond of their dogs.  Just because I don't understand it doesn't mean it isn't real.  So, I try to be polite and seem interested, the same way people do for me when there is a new picture of my granddaughter.

The other day, I had a conversation with a dog lover that it seemed might be a turning point for me.  She was so trusting of my sympathy, so candid with me about how she saw things, that I really hoped that I could begin to gain some ground, some insight, into what makes people love dogs.  I listened hopefully.  Maybe I could begin to see things from the other point of view.

It was partly my fault that she turned unsuspectingly to me, I guess.  A month or two ago, she had a dog who was dying, so, of course, I listened sympathetically then.  To be fair to myself, I really was sympathetic to her mourning. She had no idea that I'm a dog sociopath.  I should have warned her, before this conversation, I guess, that my capacity for sympathy was limited, but I honestly did think maybe, listening to such a detailed description of what it was like to be a dog owner and lover would help me.

But, I'm afraid, as she told me the sad story about how her neighbor, that she's known for years and years, screamed when her dog ran up to her, barking, my sympathies lay mainly with the neighbor.  She told me that she had asked this woman while she was in the very act of being bitten, "Why are you screaming?"  And that the screaming was why her dog bit the woman.  Everyone knows that it's this dog's "way" to come up to people barking, and that after she sniffs them out, she's fine.

I'm thinking, 'Yay.  Nothing like being sniffed by a dog to make me feel more tolerant of it."

If the woman only wouldn't have made that high-pitched, of all things, scream, then her dog wouldn't have bit her.  All her neighbors know that she and her husband never have their dogs out when they are not outside with them.

I'm thinking about the one, two, three, four times in my life that a dog's owner has told me--WHILE their dog was running up to bite me--"Oh, s/he won't hurt you."  They were wrong.  And I wasn't even screaming.  Not even in a low-pitched way.

I honestly did try to listen with an open mind.  I am sure there is plenty for me to learn about, well, the rest of the world.  I could tell her sadness was real now that her new, huge, vicious (it sounds like) "puppy" is in quarantine.  (Personally, I think I would feel relieved.  "Yes, please, keep him for a few days--as long as you like!")

She just can't understand why her neighbors have turned on her like this.  "We never let our dogs bark more than twice," she told me.  That was interesting.  I wanted to know how.  "We bring them back in or else sit out there with them, you know, correcting them as they bark."

I am the first to admit that I know nothing about how to train a dog, so I can't judge.  But I do appreciate a trained dog.  There have been one or two I've met in my lifetime that I have not been afraid of at all, they were so well trained.

I suppose if all dogs were taught not to bark, not to charge, and could be not just trusted, but trust-WORTHY, not to bite, I wouldn't have a problem with them at all.

Not that I, even still, would want one in my house.  Or, come to think of it, my yard.

Lost Grandmothers

The first funeral I attended was that of my grandmother.  I was twelve.  Because of my tender age and relative inexperience with such things, I was shocked that she had died, but I felt I should be sadder.  I knew that something had changed in my life, but my grandmother and I did not share a close relationship, so, I realize now, there was nothing vital for me to miss.

I knew her, sure, on the surface.  Throughout my childhood, we went to visit her and my grandfather at their tiny house on the west side every Sunday evening.  My siblings and I crowded each other on the couches and chairs around their living room while my parents struggled to make small talk with them over the sounds of voices and the green flickering lights of their colored TV.

When we were lucky, we were allowed to go into the small kitchen adjoining the small living room and play with the two or three toys she had saved for amusing her grandchildren.  She would get the toy down, put it on the table, and leave the room.

I cannot recall my grandmother ever saying one single word directly to me.

I remember feeling strange at the viewing prior to her funeral.  Hers was the first lifeless body I had viewed.  I felt unsure of what to do and how to behave and watched others for clues as we stood and sat around.  I felt strange because it was new to me, and because I knew that it was a solemn occasion, that something had been forever altered in my universe, as, indeed, it had.  We continued to faithfully visit my grandfather every week, sitting around in his dim, green living room, as my mother and dad struggled more than ever to keep up small talk with a most taciturn man.  I also felt strange because I knew I should be sadder than I was.

I have two recollections from her funeral.  The first was the sound of my aunts weeping during the talks.  They felt sad.  Of course, this was their mother, I reasoned.  I would be devastated, lost, beyond crushed if my mother ever died.  It was something I had gravely pondered throughout my young life and still could not begin to comprehend the depths of sorrow I would feel at the loss of her.

The other thing I recall is something that was said about my grandmother.  Someone remarked that she was a woman who, without fail, got up and got dressed each day.  Indeed, I had never seen her not wearing a dress and nylon stockings, even at the annual fourth of July parties in her back yard.  Still, it seemed a curious thing for someone to say--a strange sort of legacy to be known for--and my mind has returned to that comment many times. 

My grandmother had lived to the age of seventy-two.  As shocked as I was at her sudden death, I realized that she had lived as long as many people in that day could expect to live.  At six times my own age, she seemed old enough, at the time, to die.  Her children had all long since married, had all completed their own families.  Her life had settled, it seemed to me, into the simple rhythms of a daily life unchallenged with important work.

My other grandmother had only lived to forty-seven.  She had died decades before my birth, leaving my mother a bereaved small child, the youngest of eight unmarried children.  In contrast, her death seemed to me to be the greatest tragedy I had ever heard of.  As she lay wasting away in bed during the last months of her life, I am sure it was painfully clear to her and her family that she was, against her will, leaving her great work unfinished.  I do not doubt that her heart yearned to take care of her children as much as her children's hearts yearned toward her.  But it was not to be.

I have heard stories about this grandmother I never knew--how she had the best garden in her neighborhood, how her children were known for their kindness to each other, how she forged a loving and strong bond with her husband and they were never known to quarrel.  I learned that she was one of the first women in her ward to drive and would give others rides to women's meetings.  I know she was tall and capable and quiet.  I know she sewed her own clothing, put up her own food, made do and did without what was beyond her means to create.  From the characteristics I got to know in my aunts, uncles, and mother, I glimpsed her fine qualities.  In the goodness of my siblings and cousins--all the grandchildren she never met--I see her legacy.

The grandmother I knew had a pastime of crocheting.  She made doilies and various other objects as she sat in her tidy house with my taciturn grandfather.  After her death, I was the recipient of a couple of these.  She once made me a pillowcase with my name on it.  With fabric paint pens, she had drawn a lamb on the white broadcloth and written my name in cursive on the pillow case's edge.

To my recollection, that is the only present I received from her in her lifetime, and the only time she had ever spelled my name right.  My birthday cards had invariably come addressed to "Jeannine."

"Why don't we tell Grandma how to spell my name?" I asked my mother once.  My ever diplomatic mother's soft response had left my grandmother exonerated of both ignorance of my name and willful bad intentions, yet failed to explain to me the mystery of the distance between us.

My education, my reading, my associations, all the stories I seek out to increase my learning and understanding inform me of the great acts of people.  I am inspired by the great things done by myriads who left something important behind them as they left this life.  I wonder sometimes if they meant to do something great, if it was hard for them, if they knew that was their calling in life, what sacrifices they made to accomplish what they did, whether greatness ever came from just pursuing the things they loved to do.

I remember many times as a child feeling like, "Here we all are, but what now are we supposed to do?"

The thought of leaving my life without doing anything important haunts me, yet I find my days are often filled to the brim with the mundane--washing the same table, sorting the same clothes into the same piles of laundry, tucking the same few children into beds with the same tired lullaby that was sung to me.  And, with that, another day is gone.

The needs of life press on us, daily.  We have to spend our days preparing food again, going to work again, getting dressed, getting undressed, even many times having the same conversations over and over again.  We have to do these things in order to survive and maintain a certain quality of life.

The opportunities to make something greater out of our lives than just surviving all our 26,300 days sometimes seem fleeting.  Frankly, we lose some of them by hesitating to step up, by failing to lift our eyes above our own kneading and mending.

But, could it be that there could be meaning, even great meaning, in doing our repetitive daily tasks?  Surely there is something to be said in what is forged by attending church every week, reading the same scriptures yet again, folding the same clothes into our children's drawers.  We know that thinking the same thoughts makes our neural pathways to that information stronger, and that the road in the brain to a detail not searched for in many years can disappear.

She got up and got dressed every day.

As little as I know about my grandmother even though I met her on at least seven hundred occasions, I know that she lived her quiet life honorably, doing what that life called upon her to do. And, I have heard since, she had some constraints on her not of her choosing that limited her choices.

Is it possible that doing the same mundane things our lives call upon us to do could be sanding grooves into some great work of art?  Could they be weaving threads into a piece of a tapestry larger than our world and with a greater design than we can comprehend?  Are all these little tasks really meaningless?  Surely, at least, good habits form a good character, and that is worth something.

And yet, how much richer would my life be if my grandmother had, just once, spoken my name, looked into my face, asked me what I thought about. . .anything?  And taught me something about herself?

That is what I finally grieve about her death.