Tag: love

On the Tempo of Time

I’ve often been envious of my dog because he isn’t as acutely aware of the passage of time as I am. For the most part, he lives in the moment. He alternately chomps or licks his squeaky toys when he’s inside, fetches his frisbee in the yard, explores the universe of shrubs, sticks, and other dogs on the trail, eats at his established mealtimes, and sleeps when he’s tired. What a fantastic life that must be!

Border Collie with a very long stick (still attached to the ground at one end)
The bigger the stick, the better: Tock in his happy place.

A dog doesn’t have to think about how rapidly the months pass, how the holidays roll around when it seems we just finished with them, how the aches of our aging bodies and the battle scars in our minds keep multiplying so that waking up in the morning is often just as painful as going to sleep.

But when I give this more thought, I realize that of course my dog must acknowledge time even though he can’t put it into words. For one thing, he can no longer leap into the car without a thought, but is forced to slow down and use a humiliating step. For another, he lives through the ebb and flow of seasons along with me—the lush green growing of spring (sticks in the pond!), the lazy heat of summer (the beach! the lake!), the crisp change of fall (extra food in the bowl!), the frigid cold (snowballs!) of winter.

Border Collie trotting ahead down trail through a lush green forest

On a deeper level, I wonder whether my dog is aware of the nuances in time that happen every day for me. Boring or painful things take forever, like cleaning the bathroom, driving in traffic to get groceries, trying to get back to sleep at 3 am, trying to stay awake and write when I’m not feeling inspired, or enduring unpleasant muscle spasms in my back. So immersed am I in my misery that I can hardly imagine an end to them, a time when once again my life will be more pleasant.

I hope Tock doesn’t experience such anguish, but I fear he might. Every morning, he stands at my side while I eat breakfast, imploring me with his eyes to hurry up so we can go for our walk. Does the wait feel interminable to him? Likewise, the wait for his dinner when he lies at my feet while I’m writing and the “dinner bird” (that sings on the clock at 4pm) has long since sung. Does he wonder whether he’s ever going to be fed? Worst of all are his trips to the vet. Before we even enter the building, all he wants to do is leave. He spends the entire time staring at or pulling toward the door, his toenails scrabbling ineffectively on the hard, cold tiles. Poor guy. He must feel like his punishment is lasting forever.

A clock with a bird for each hour
Tock becomes very attentive once the dinner bird (House Wren) has sung.

What about the good things, though? Walks in the woods on a perfect spring day, when the temperature and humidity are just right and the bugs haven’t yet emerged in droves. Working on my trail system at the family summer place. Listening to marmots whistle amidst sun-warmed talus slopes. Playing cards with my son and occasional reluctant husband. Writing when I’m in the zone and the thoughts flow fast. For me, these things sail by. I feel as though I’ve scarcely begun when they’re coming to an end.

I hope this cruel trick that time plays isn’t the same for Tock. I hope time stretches out for him when he’s happy even longer than it does when he’s not.

Border Collie lying in grass with a frisbee between his front paws

Of course, nothing would seem so wonderful if it lasted forever, right? In the best of all possible worlds, we’d move from one delightful thing to another, and another, and another. Last summer after Tock and I spent six timeless, satisfying hours on trail work, I admit that nothing felt so good as finishing for the day, putting my feet up, and eating a good meal. Tock would not have appreciated the shower, but he had a big dinner and a well-earned rest.

Though time ticks relentlessly onward and we can never re-visit the past (how I would love to hug my former dogs again!), it has proven very helpful in its effect on my memory. The good memories stretch out in a long golden glow that I can enjoy for as long as I want. Meanwhile, the bad memories have shrunk to nearly nothing. The super unpleasant sensation of childbirth, for instance, has totally vanished, as if my son were born in an instant. But I’ll forever remember the experience of holding him for the first time. The memory of devouring some homemade brownies after all that hard labor is pretty special, too. As for Tock, I’m hopeful that he’s reliving his best memories when his legs twitch during a dream.

Sleeping Border Collie surrounded by toys

What causes time to alter its tempo for you? Does it compress or expand depending on the nature of the moment you’re experiencing? Even if your legs don’t twitch when you’re dreaming, does time slow down when you remember the good things? It’s my hope that time can reward us all in that one small way.

Happy Tales!

Inseparable

I had to take our car in for service this week. A mundane task, right? Well, I was dreading it. Not because of the hour-long drive in frozen weather, nor because the appointment was scheduled to take all day for some inexplicable reason. I was even willing to put up with the insipid pop music blasting without cease into the waiting room.

My view of the inside of a Tesla service station waiting room
The endless wait

No, the main reason I was so reluctant to go was because I couldn’t bring my dog.

Pathetic? Maybe.

Weird? Yep.

True? Definitely.

Dog returning to me on the beach with stick in his mouth
He’s like a boomerang, always coming back to me.

In my defense, I’d better back up. I’m sure I’m not the only one for whom 2024 was a super tough year. For me, it was the toughest year on record (in my admittedly privileged life)—and that’s not even counting the usual pitch and query rejections that continue to chisel away at my sense of writerly worth. I won’t dwell on the chaos my family experienced because I’ve written about it plenty already. Let’s just say that while this past year was sometimes exciting and possibly character-building, it’s also been exhausting and downright scary.

The one constant through all the turmoil, the one warm fuzzy creature by my side has been—you guessed it—my dog. He gets up when I do from his bed next to mine, he crunches his kibbles while I work on my cereal, he gets dressed (with help) in his fleece jacket right before I pull on my down one, and he strikes out on the trail while simultaneously leaping in my face to remind me how wonderful an excursion together will be. And so we walk, for two hours every morning and another half hour in the afternoon, despite horizontal rain, branch-snapping winds, and cold that freezes the sheep farm’s trickling faucets into lumpy white shrouds.

Could anyone avoid binding to this fellow? I think not. (True with or without the platypus.)

But my dog’s proximity doesn’t end with feeding and walks. He lies on the rug outside the bathroom while I shower, he sleeps in my office while I write, he sprawls at my feet while I cook, and he hops in the car to attend any errand with me, whether it’s a quick trip to the store or a multi-hour excursion to a distant town. Wherever we go, he usually gets an outing, even if only a brief stroll around a parking area or a game of frisbee in a small patch of grass by the hospital. (In the interest of dog safety, I feel it’s important to note that our car has a Dog Mode, in which the battery keeps the car at an optimal temperature no matter how inhospitable the weather is outside. Bringing a non-service dog along for errands would otherwise be impossible).

Border collie lying on kitchen floor
Tock is excellent at performing the dual functions of kitchen rug and auxiliary garbage disposal.

I’ve always kept my dogs close, but this year and this dog more than any other. He has become part of me, as inseparable as a limb from my body. On the rare occasions when he’s not with me, I feel his absence like a gaping wound that will never heal. Dramatic? You bet. True? Well, my arm has never actually been ripped off, so probably not, but you get the picture. My dog is part of my essence—that indefinable aggregation of things that makes up a person’s personality and convictions. My sense of self. My soul. I can’t picture myself without him.

This gets me to wondering: are there other things from which I am inseparable? That is, if they were taken away, I would feel as though I’m no longer me.

Short answer, yes. Some of these inseparabilities (is that even a word?) are vain and trivial. I can probably quickly get over them. My hair, for instance. I’m scheduled for surgery this week for skin cancer on my scalp. Though the doctor is hopeful they’ll be able to suture the area closed, it’s possible the removed section will end up large enough that they’ll have to do a skin graft and then I’ll end up with a bald patch on the top of my head. I’ve been trying to envision myself either wearing a hat or wig to cover it for the rest of my life or going the other route and shaving my head entirely. I know people routinely lose their hair for all sorts of reasons, so it’s totally selfish that I find this upsetting. I don’t know why my view of myself in the mirror is so strongly tied to my sense of who I am. I have to remind myself that at least my dog won’t care.

Author with small bandage on top of head
Breaking News: Surgery #1 (of 2) is done, with sutures!

Then there are the bigger things, like my human family. Son, husband, parents … all of them hold a part of me within them just as I do of them. Work is another big one. Though I’ve never had a steady, traditional, well-paying career, I seem to have spent most of my life working in one way or another. For whatever misguided reason, I’ve chosen to grind away at things that take a long time to learn and perfect, and I’ve invested years of passion in each. Music first: giving that up due to injury was traumatic and required a lot of internal rewiring of my sense of self. Next ecology, then dog agility training, then writing. I’ve now spent so much time studying the craft of writing middle-grade fiction, specifically, that it’s become a huge part of my identity. Even if no one but my husband and my critique partners ever read my finished works, writing these novels occupies an important part of every one of my days. I love being part of the writing community, and experiencing the pleasure of crafting a phrase, a scene, a story.

Hands typing on computer keyboard
Photo credit: Glenn Carstens Peters

At this point in my life, if anyone asked me who I am, I’d say: children’s book writer and dog / nature lover (those last two things go hand in hand for me, because how can you have a dog if you don’t like to get outside?). Of course, this is but one moment in my existence. Maybe by next year, I’ll have added another inseparability to my list.

How about you? What are those things so intrexicably tied to your being that you can’t imagine existing without them?

Writer standing facing her dog in an alpine meadow

Happy Tales!