Learning to be Puppy Parents
An excerpt from a personal essay on growing up.
He’s a Havanese and he’s a hardly a nudge over six pounds. Havanese don’t shed because they don’t have fur; they have hair instead, we’ve learned. His hair is a splotchy light-brown on white and it’s always perfectly riled. We’ve also learned about food portioning, water bowl temperature, pee-pads, cleaning poop from parquet wood, flea combing, crate training, leash training, leaving him alone training, eye gunk cleaning with warm water on cotton, and puppy nail clipping. We’ve had some hands-on experience, and we’ve done our reading—The Art of Raising a Puppy has been our bible. I avoid clichés like the plague but sometimes they fit, and worship, in any form, is well entrenched in the human experience.
Our first night, my girlfriend and I had stepped out of the cab at the nearest corner to our apartment, on 10th Avenue. A late summer’s evening when the sun disappears too early. And we carried our new four-month-old puppy to our stoop, up the steps, and up the four flights of our walk-up to our small one-bedroom apartment. We call our apartment home now, with the Edison bulbs hanging down on exposed brick, the small butchers block, the south-facing fire escape—it’s our getaway from bright lights and city sound, our refuge. We call our new puppy Charlie. He cried that first night, and our research had told us sternly to fight the urge to smother him with hugs and kisses and all the love we already had for him. So, we did. He cried as if he were alone on a damp New York side street. It was painful for us, but we knew Charlie would be okay.
My girlfriend and I have had our four-month-old for about three weeks now, in our three-year-old home. Often, life decisions such as adopting a new pet elicit all the old thoughts we’ve had on a subject. We contextualize the best we can. Somehow, I didn’t make the connection between Charlie and the first dog I had growing up. Only now am I finding myself reminiscent—we adopted Holly back home in Indiana when I was twelve. This was when Mom was still alive and when my family attended a church that was headquartered about three hours east, across the St. Mary's river and the Ohio border. We used to drive there once a month, in our white minivan, sometimes once every two. This Sunday was in late October when the cold dew would still hold the ground verdant for more days and when the wheat fields on the side of Highway 30 poured out that dense richness of the filtered, overcast light—that dying soil wrought by hard labor for over two centuries. An ephemeral beauty to such a scene, appropriate for this special Sunday. Exceptionally special, because on the way, we were going to a town near our church to visit a dog adoption home.
I’d woken to the smell of Dad's coffee. He'd always pour it into an old green coated Steel Thermos. Leanne drank coffee-boosh which had been my name for a drink made of squeezed oranges which was only had from a mug. While we were young, Leanne and I both struggled with our alveo-palatals: an immediate challenge for her as a younger sister—in those years, instead of Johnny my name was Yaya. Not to be confused with Yahweh, a term which she wouldn't hear at our protestant church. Our church, by the way, didn't call itself a church but a Fellowship instead, as we would fellowship with one another and share the Word. We built community together, found harmonious sanctity. Naturally, I know these terms well as their sounds are ingrained against my heart; they feel like loved ones I haven't spoken to in too long.
Reflections
Brief personal essay
My world was more vibrant then, perhaps, when I’d walk with my mother down the stone steps, my small hand on the rail which hadn’t rusted. Past the walkway, on this daily journey, we’d cut around a small pond surrounded by weeping willows and onto a footbridge with a brook flowing beneath it. I’d toss a stick over the edge to watch it plummet down, splash so delicately, emerge on the surface only to disappear to the other side where we’d both be waiting. After our game, we’d cross the footbridge and come to an oak tree. At the base of this tree was always a Canadian goose nesting her eggs—I always thought of the Trumpet of the Swan. And mom would say be careful, she won’t trust you if you move too quickly.Mom had earned the mother goose’s trust over the several week period of that spring season, but I always moved too quickly.
Fifteen years later, and five years after my mother’s death, I returned to this place. I found the oak tree cleanly removed from the bottom of its trunk, leaving a flat headstone, death date in rings.
A moment of emptiness, an ephemeral retrospection of childhood too deep for tears. I yearned for those spring weeks in the late 90’s, the chance to bring the patience I’ve learned, back to those moments. But that’s not the way it works. I reached down and picked up a small stick which I supposed to be a remnant of that old oak tree. I walked onto the footbridge, and released the stick into the water which still flowed the same way and same direction as it always had, and the water carried the stick down between the banks and I watched carefully until losing sight of it.
In this world which I once so eagerly took for granted, as children naturally do, I find myself now desperately searching for meaning in all the unlikely places, in the weeds, in their mundaneness, in those places where we lack patience. I find myself searching for meaning also when these elegiac fragments force themselves to the surface. When moments from my past somehow emerge by the sheer cyclicality of life.
Recently, I wrote a piece of short fiction, in first person, which contains the following lines.
My eyelids are cold, so I don’t leave them shut for long. I remember a time, while my cigarette is burning out and my glass rests empty on the rail. A cigarette doesn’t fix the cold. It makes you not care. I have a eulogized moment of silence and my inner monologue pauses for a breath. Let me pour over this rail like a blot of ink in a black well. Let me dry out with dead dreams, to dust on cold ground. Then I'm back in this world–I extend my numb fingers and fold them back.
The Gray Area
An excerpt from a personal essay on writing.
I’ve decided there are two lines, not one, between the two forms. A line rests against criticism, and a line rests against the personal essay. Between the two, Venn diagram-style, is the gray area. I avoid clichés like the plague but sometimes they fit, and this half-white, half-black borderland is crucial. It is what I do. It’s the style of writing I love. It’s the way I talk to my reader. It’s the way I reveal that introverted kid who grew up but hardly changed. This form utilizes the personal essay as an apparatus to achieve its true goal, criticism. But my intention is to tell a story for the sake of the story—and allow descriptive criticism to sprout from it.
Photos Figurines and Prayer
(for a family of three)
An excerpt from a memoir essay.
On his queen-size bed rests a royal, Portland peach with flowing beige patterned duvet. His wife picked it out a few months before she died. Across the bedroom is a dresser, containing earrings, watches, necklaces, and neatly folded shirts and blouses. On top is a keepsake box, with letters and pictures and the slide show from the memorial service. Next to the keepsake box is a small collection of perfumes and body sprays—some nearly empty, some still hardly used. Sometimes his daughter sneaks into the bedroom and sprays a tiny bit to pretty herself up, to smell like Mommy, to be grown-up.
I don’t fully understand marriage or the marriage my parents shared. It’s difficult to understand my father’s perspective and thoughts and pain. But I try, and I learn. I notice the available details, like broken puzzle pieces. In the living room stands a graceful cherry curio cabinet with eighteen figurines. Faithfully, on every anniversary, Dad would give Mom a Precious Moments figurine. It was always a scene, made of bisque porcelain with faded, matte color, with a young boy and girl together. One figurine has the boy dressed in a suit, handing the girl his balloon. Another shows them rolling a watermelon up a hill. On the small platforms, the two are always close. Mom also had a few teddy bears from Dad, and he had made sure each one had a smile. “Those are hard to find,” he’d say.
On the rare occasion of a disagreement, Mom and Dad would resolve it before going to sleep. They sought meaning in the thrilling times and in the quiet ones. Moving across state borders with a one year old, or washing dishes together. Building the family business, or driving to an emptied Pokagon State Park on a Saturday in February. On Mom’s last Mother’s Day, all she wanted was the family to work in the flower garden, so that’s what we did.
Soldier's and Sailors Monument
Excerpt from a review of a New York City monument.
A key example of the Beaux-Arts movement with its curvilinear colonnade construction, the balustrade, formal paved, terraced stairs lead up to the central structure of the monument, which towers at an elevated 30 meters. Surrounding are stone benches, two cannons, and gentle walkways. An American flag flies to the left on the southwestern side. The monument's south facing bronze doorway—originally left open to the public though now kept locked for public safety—compliments the tones of the exterior’s veined white marble. Mirroring the doorway, on the northern, rear side, a bronze plaque reads the following inscription: "Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Monument of the City of New York," which is followed by names of the commissioners, architects, and lead builders. Besides this titling, the monument could be otherwise difficult to decipher as it carries no inherent, ideographic meaning. Further identifiers are the far subtler inscriptions that read the names of New York volunteer regiments, and other generals and admirals that fought for the Union in the Civil War.
Interestingly, this beautiful monument lives on an under-appreciated ornament to the Riverside landscape. It represents a misunderstood time in American history. A time worshiped through fictional literature and grade school text books. Many monuments decorate a location, but this monument is a location itself in a grand sense. Providing a peaceful, ominous structure built by American workers over a century ago, when there was a deeper, connected understanding of what the monument commemorated. On the Memorial Day that the monument was first publicly opened, Civil War veterans, most near 60 years old, marched in the parade along Riverside Dr.
The monument doesn't represent a particular battle, a particular leader. It represents a high ground, that was provided by the soldiers and sailors fighting on the side of the Union. The description reads "Soldiers' and Sailors'" with apostrophes because this is their monument, their place of found peace. And it is open to all. Standing tall, facing south, not guarded with fences, it is approachable from every direction. Walking north up the steps to the elevated center, the sun is to your back. This space transcends the shots fired and bloodshed. This space exudes a palpability—any observer is absorbed into this monument so long as he gives away the moment.
Summer Essay
An excerpt from a memoir essay I wrote after a summer of learning about hard work, in Indiana.
Dirt sets on my skin and seeps down into my pores; my sweat muddies the ground and seeps down into the earth. I smell of both—the dirt, the sweat. The aching in my body grows more consistent. My back, neck, shoulders, arms, legs. But the sun is now close again to the horizon. Its light grazes the hill we have been working. Ian and I decide to walk away and see it from a guest’s perspective.
Turning around we see how the textured brown mulch blankets the steep slope, surrounding the decorative boulders, the box woods, the Knock Out roses, the grass plants, freshly planted perennials and now eleven small trees near the top. Pink and white pedals splash across the dark wood chips, the gray rocks, the dense greens. White arches and pillars stand catching the setting sun’s last light. The box woods around the Club House’s white patio are perfectly placed, perfectly aligned, just as we'd measured. Over the crest of our hill, the tops of silhouetted trees can be seen standing afar. Through these trees is a yellow sheen gleaming through, brushing the clouds. Far above those trees, the sky grows dark. The day is ending.
“It’s beautiful,” Ian says, and he starts walking back toward the tools lying together on the hill. I don’t move my feet. I lower my head and open my hands and I see the dirt and dust and even the blood smeared on the edge of my palm. I swallow slow breaths of this fresh air to taste it and slow the time. I see the work I did, the hill I formed, the view I built. The sun’s light gives worth to the work. Eventually I move my tired feet, and I catch up to my friend.
We ride back to the shop. Ian drives, and I light a cigarette for him. The cart path turns onto a car road. We both lean to the left as Ian spins the wheel to the right. I sip on my water and slowly spill some on the road moving beside our cart. We joke about work and girls and school. Ian slows our cart to let a BMW pass, and then we pass an older man walking his dog. We round the corner onto the drive leading toward the garage. I point out that John’s F-150 is already gone. After parking the cart, we unload our tools and head toward the time-card machine. Doug is in his office chatting on the phone. “Thanks Doug, thanks very much, we’re headed out.” I wave to him and keep moving. We wash our hands, clocking out at 5:41 p.m. We make our way out toward the parking lot. Chris Omler is waiting for us at the next job.