Category Archives: Family

May 4th 2016 or Decades of Doglessness (7)

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my dog Sanji, photo taken at my mom's house by Phil when I was away

My dog Sanji died 31 years ago today. She was born in 1976, part Great Dane and part German Shepherd, the runt of eleven. A woman I worked with then at the secret shopper spy job told me sanji means female bear in Tibetan. I don’t know if that’s true, but I liked the sound of it. I used to say she was part deer and part fish. She had a tender spirit, and she loved any kind of water, would leap with pure dog joy into the swimming pool. She loved going to the beach in Alameda when we lived in Oakland. After she died I wished I’d taken her there more often. She chased the seagulls along the wide sandbar, ears laid back in the wind, big grin on her beautiful face. It seems impossible she’s been dead so long. I can’t believe I’ve been dogless for three decades now. If a psychic had predicted this, that 27-year-old me wouldn’t have believed another word she said, convinced she was a fraud. And to think I’ve spent such a big chunk of my life without a dog seems unbelievably sad. But life unfolds as it will, and this was all about the timing.

Sanji and my cat Trair and I made this little family. When Sanji died Trair and I were left alone together. I knew she didn’t want another dog. When Trair died 12 years later, my landlord wouldn’t let me get a dog, so I got Sofia instead. Doglessness continued from there until now when both Sofia and Sable have so newly left me catless, too. I still cry now and then when I think of Sanji, but after all this time they are grateful tears more than anything, the memories dreamy and good. I remember our back-house cottage in Highland Park where she died of cancer and how she and Trair and I used to hang out together in our little backyard there. I would sit between the bougainvillea and the lemon tree on the small patch of grass I cut on rare occasions with an old rusty hand mower. Trair would land in my lap as soon as I settled in the chair, my joint resting unlit with a box of wooden matches in the clean blue enamel ashtray, my Marlboro Lights and my ice cold Corona beside them. When Sanji got tired of fetching, or more often when I got tired of throwing the slimy green tennis ball, she’d sprawl beside us on the grass. I marveled over our sweet little family of three. If you paid attention, you could hear traffic a block away on the old highway 11. But in our tiny yard tucked away from the world the three of us would rest together in a different kind of quiet, bask together in a deep and lucky peace.

I Make People Feel Bad, Part 2 (55)

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I make people feel bad. I’ve lost friends over it, again and again through the decades. Over the last year or so I’ve begun to be able to admit this, to see it with more clarity, to begin to face it. Even as I move my pen across the page I am braced for the self-loathing, but it doesn’t come, not the way it used to. Sometimes it comes still in one big wave, trying to swamp me, making me clench in rage, wanting to die, like that last time Sable wouldn’t come inside, and I yelled at him from the doorway. He sat hunched over in the courtyard staring at me with his big green eyes. I felt it all then, how much I hated myself for what I was doing to him. It was the last time I yelled at him, something I’ve clung to in my grief. Thank god I stopped yelling at him in those last months before he died. Other things still trigger that wave, but the feelings are momentary now, and it doesn’t sink me anymore, doesn’t tumble me around underwater, sand in my mouth, unable to breathe. It doesn’t get all of me anymore. I think enough of me stays separate, watches from somewhere further up the shoreline, refuses to relinquish herself, my feet in dry sand now. I think little by little I’ve healed enough to not be taken over by my self-hatred, and that healing has let me begin to face the fact that I am mean to the people I love. I can turn toward that now, maybe even say it out loud, look at it in daylight. I can do this now without being pulled down by that dark, terrifying wall of water. May I keep learning to be tender to myself, so I can be more tender to all the beings in my life. May I let go of my remorse, all that damage, all that time lost, too. May I forgive myself. May I learn now how to make the ones I love feel good.

I Make People Feel Bad (54)

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I make people feel bad. I’m mean to people I love. Sometimes I do it because I want them to take better care of themselves. Or because I want them to be present. Or because I want them to do the right thing. (Usually, if they aren’t acting out of integrity, they already feel guilty about it, and then I make them feel worse.) I don’t do it on purpose. I don’t want to hurt them. I get caught up in it, my pushing, my icky tone. I go on automatic pilot. I’ve done it since I was an adolescent, maybe even longer. I think over time, especially in this last year or two, I have begun to do it less often. But I don’t even know if that matters. One small moment is terrible for both of us. I remember being in the car with my best friend when I was sixteen. My hands were on the wheel, and I was screaming at her. Then I started crying. Even then I understood making her feel bad made me feel worse about myself, added heft and weight to my mountains of self-loathing. But I couldn’t stop. Just before my cats died I stopped yelling at them, found a way to be neutral, even tender. Now I have small moments when I manage to modulate the ugly tone in my voice, to not react badly to my mother on the phone. Not always, but sometimes I can stop myself. I want to believe one day I won’t hurt the people I love. And maybe saying all this is part of that, saying this and not hating myself while I do.

If We Are Lucky (40)

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You don’t have to be good. You don’t have to walk on your knees for 100 miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. You only have to gentle enough to understand: even you are only human. You make mistakes. You hurt the ones you love. You let people down. You carry these things with you in a life. You were unkind to your father that late afternoon on his big stone porch in Echo Park the last time you saw him. You yelled at Sofia bare months before she died when she began peeing on the floor instead of using the cat box. You thought Sable had ear mites, that he missed Sofia, that he was losing weight because of his irritable bowel disease. You didn’t think kidney failure until that Saturday morning when he was dangerously dehydrated and you rushed him to the vet. Now he’s dead, and you think you should have known. You should have saved him, could have had him here beside you for another handful of years like you always imagined. But now he’s dead. We carry these things with us in a life. We live with them, wrestle with them, these deep regrets. If we are lucky we make peace with them, let them lay down on the moist earth inside us, our rich decay. If we are lucky, good things grow.

[Editor’s note: The first three sentences here are from a Mary Oliver poem titled “Wild Geese.“ This came from a writing exercise in a workshop I attended called “The Way of Story” by Catherine Ann Jones.)

Goodbye (Again) (39)

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Coming home tonight in the new dark takes me by surprise. I start crying as soon as I unlock the door. No one is here. It hits hard. It strikes like physical pain, has me bending partway over in the doorway. I am so foggy I left this afternoon without my wallet, only the dollar for bus fare I had in my pocket this morning when I decided to walk home from the vet, the carrier light in my hand. Sable alive and purring, tangible moments in the little room. After, I carried his small limp form to the back, laid him down on the table, tucked his ratty catnip mouse near his chin. Way too many layers to touch on much of it now, eyes drooping from our near sleepless night together. Harder, though, than any of the others, I think. There was so much life in him still, my vigorous little boy cat, my big love. Later I will try to do you justice. Tonight, when I settle in without you, I will see what comes. I have been pulled away by work, by people, much of the day. I am looking forward to returning to you tonight while you are still fresh in me. I know how quickly you can fade. When I lie here in the dark I will hold to me sweet memory, the small weight of your tiny form pressed against me in the night, the way you purred almost until the end. My brave little one, I am so proud of you. My dear Boo, sweet dreams.

Holding Hope (38)

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My black cat lying on the bed

Yesterday I made a wish on Venus, the morning star caught in the early half light through the louvered windows above my bed. Coming home last night I saw the southern cross hanging in the dark sky, and I stopped in the middle of the road near our home. I stood there for a long time talking to the heavens, beseeching the cat gods. Both times I was stunned by how big hope is, how core to humankind. And so, again and again I banish my fear and turn away from the draw of agonized remorse. I open to hope. I want to grab hold wth both fists, hang on for dear life, but I know it doesn’t work that way. We have to open to hope even when it hurts. We hold our arms out wide while feathers brush across our open palms. My little one is poised between the worlds, so I open to hope, to true dreams of having him home again, playing with his ratty catnip toy I have waiting on the pillow, racing across the courtyard in mad cat abandon, happy and well. When I visit I send him mental pictures of just that, and of sleeping curled together on our bed. I open to hope, and beside the deep sweetness and the ache of it sits the knowing I may lose him, the knowing I may need to let him go. So, I hold them both and pray. And as I write, it feels important to send this out into the world, my prayer made manifest, like a kite breaking free of its tether, or a bright red balloon drifting across the sky, whispering to the gods. I whisper, too. “I love you, Boo.” And, “Please stay.”

Grateful (37)

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For the way our palo verde flung herself at a diagonal when she blew over in the last fierce wind so she didn’t hurt my neighbor’s carport or our wooden fence, and she didn’t block my front door. The mango and palm trees in pots beneath her felled form came through unscathed. The vet didn’t find an ear infection. Two people have responded to the writer’s guild post about doing spontaneous writing. I’m spending Thanksgiving tomorrow with Mami and Auntie Gardi and her family for the first time ever. I get to choose a new tree to plant, maybe that one I’ve had my eye on with the big pink flowers in the fall. For the bare branches it will have in the winter so I can see the mountains. For the mountains themselves. For my new yoga teacher and the new meditation center I can ride my bike to, sidewalk all the way. For the good headlight on my bike so I feel comfortable riding in the dark. For my zafu. That I finished grading all the summaries and essays late last night, so the next four days sit clear. That cleaning up the shambles of our courtyard after they cut our tree in pieces and took her away had me paring everything back to pure clean beginnings. For time this weekend to put the Christmas solar lights up, lay down a few small pavers, put the sweet finishing touches back in new places, life breathed into it all. For this afternoon when I hauled Boo back to bed with me, and he stayed on my belly and let me pet him for a long time, tears rolling down my face. For the promise of belonging to the sangha, the promise of Sable becoming well again, the promise of a wet winter. For the house finch and the goldfinch at their feeders today in our naked courtyard, flitting, chattering bits of sweetness in the warm, clear day. For the big full moon rising out my shower window in the cold night, water hot against my skin. For you, for me, for words and meaning, for long lives lived well.