My Girl Silver

I was out in the yard today watching my 10 year old German Shepherd, she looked hot and  tired.  My heart did that weird thing when I looked at her.  It grows with that pleasing feeling when looking at someone you love.  Yet there was the bit of aching sadness that so much time has gone by for her in my ten years.  It is starting to show in her walk. It is slower and more deliberate.  It just started showing up this spring.  Her legs shake a little when she trys to climb down from the porches, they never did before.  I am worried for my girl Silver, I love her so much. 

She is my girl, my Silver.  She is my protector, she is my friend.   Silver was born April 19th 2000.   She was my 40th birthday present.   We had decided to wait for our tax check before picking out a dog,  and I was still trying to decide if I wanted a teacup yorkie or a regular sized one.   Four weeks later we found the first ad for puppies we had seen in months and the check came in the mail, so we made the appointment to check them out, even though a sheperds birthweight is close to that of a full grown yorkie, I figured it would not hurt to humor my husband and look at the puppies. 

When we arrived the owners took us to the patio in the back to wait while they let the dogs loose from their pen.  Seven itty bitty german shepherds came bounding across the yard and onto the patio.  I was sitting on a chair just amazed at them all.  During this viewing at one point all seven puppies ran over to me and sniffed at my hands, and wiggled between my feet, and all got petted and made over and they all bounded off in that ball of fur way except one little puppy.  This one little girl stayed by my feet looking at me.  She was so soft, so cute, and her colors were gorgous,  a deep black and silver.  She got up suddenly and stepped a few steps squatted and peed.  I watched as the liquid inched toward my feet and laughed.  She looked back at me with a look that is totally Silvers and then ran off with her brothers and sisters. 

My mind kept screaming she will poop a teacup yorkie sized poop!  She will shed a new carpet in a year!  She will eat more than I can imagine!  Then small thoughts crept in like, She will sleep in the living room…. One baby dog changed my thinking, and over the years my life.  From teacup to this large mug, love came pouring out to me.  I was offered a lifetime of companionship, love, and courage all in a ball of fur at my feet, but only if I let myself move away from the pocket sized dog I had dreamed of.   

I realized that no yorkie could ever wipe out the vision of that puppy from my mind and heart.  I was sure she was the one, I put the bow on her collar and marked her as mine and turned to leave with my family for the last few weeks wait.  I marked her as mine with a down payment of 100.00 as well.  She does not realize that bow and money is my way of choosing her and letting others know she is mine,  just as she had marked me as hers to the other puppies  when she peed at my feet.  

  

Holly’s Amazing Underwater Experience

Living this close to the passaic river has been an experience that I would not trade for anything.   Six years ago we left the swamps of Florida for the swamps of New Jersey.  I love this house on the river, the 4 acre yard that came with it is as much a part of the river as it is not.  

We have dedicated about two average sized lots as our yard.  The rest is fairly wild.  There are swampy areas where the water never really dries up, and the stretch along the bank that makes beautiful long walks possible.   There is a lot of animal activity here in my yard, from deer to turkey to fox and racoon.   They are free to be there safe, and we enjoy seeing them.  They like to stay next to the river more often than not following it to that place they go, and our german sheperd Silver makes sure they stay out of the yard part as much as possible.  She is funny that way, and our two mini-dachsands follow her lead. The road is a dirt road, a private drive, it is part of the protected wetlands as well. 

When the river rises and washes over its banks, the animals move closer to the house.  They change their paths and are able to survive by their mobility.  Not all living things are so lucky.  The trees are huge, taller than our house which is 3 stories, and some have fallen during the recent floodings.  Their roots ripped from the ground, tons of dirt displaced.  Enough firewood for an entire season if I had a fireplace, but within weeks of its demise it is full of wildlife making it their new homes.  So we leave it as it is, since it fell in the wild part of the land

  Ninety-nine percent of the plants are deciduous, winter is rather blah looking here.  I decided to plant 4 Holly trees.  Two males and two females for the color and for the benefit of the wildlife.   I put them further down in the yard near my birdfeeders and birdhouses, away from the house so there is a comfort zone for the birds and animals.  They were small but they thrived and grew a few inches that spring and summer.  When winter hit the first snow covered them and they looked like little mounds under all that frozen water.  My holly’s were getting their first experience underwater. 

Our first flood ended up being a 100 year flood, and the waters surrounded our house in the end.  My poor Holly’s were underwater, completely covered.  We saw 3 story trees take a dive to the left and the right of us during this time, my thoughts were that they were a lost cause, my poor little holly trees.  It took a month or more for the water to fully receed and for the yard to stop feeling like a sponge.  It was a full week that the four holly’s were underwater, two had been planted closer to the house and were the first to breath air, while the other two stayed underwater another week.  I was amazed when they started sprouting new leaves a short time later, but I noticed that two of them struggled a little more.  This has happened 3 times in the last 4 years.  This is not the norm and yet I accept this risk by living here. 

The amount of dirt that is stuck to their leaves has fought washing off from this years flood, but has not stopped their progress.  Though the two have had their growth retarded they continue to grow anyway in hopes of not being submerged again.  They have reached the 12 inch mark while the other two have reached two and three feet putting them way above the underwater risk.   Why don’t I move them you wonder, they belong where they are and they have fought very hard to stay there. 

This is unusual, they even called one the 114 year flood.  We evacuated for that one since it was overtaking the road itself.    

My house is made for such emergencies,  I am beginning to think God made Holly’s the same way.

Cool Green Grass

Running in that all or nothing way we did as children.  Running from and running to without a reason to slow down.  I miss the feeling of the speed of light whipping through my hair.  I long to run so fast that I pass myself on the way back.  I learned as I grew up that this only belongs to children, this natural free-ness when we run.  Its not just running, its a statement of life.

When I was  4 or 5,  we were living in Warington Virginia.  The house is thought of and spoken of in our family as the house Dad built.  I do not know how much of the house my father actually built, but he was a carpenter.  The house sits back on its large deep lot away from the traffic on Rt. 17.    Though our family has not lived in this house since I was young, it still looks like the house my Dad built.  I was barely a kid still mostly baby.  Running was already in my heart.

There was a pole light down in the yard we would gather around as night fell.  The bugs attracted the bats, and the bats attracted us.  We would toss little rocks up in the air and watch the bats dive for them.  They would realize fast enough that they were too crunchy and go after the bugs again.  More often than not me being so small, the rocks did little more than a few feet airborne before landing on my head.  There was always teasing about the bats getting into our hair and making a nest, the sneaking up behind and tousling our hair.   We would scream with laughter and run swatting at our heads.   It was fun and we ran around and danced in the evenings dying light.

When the sun is going down, a new world awakens to run with.

The cornfield next to our yard brought out an abundance of life at night, and that included us.   One evening in particular,  the sun hanging low in the sky, I was running through the cornfield with my brothers  chasing mice.  My brothers kept yelling at me to be quiet that I would chase away the mice before they could catch any, but it was warm and getting dark and I was running, how could I contain this joy I felt.  There were a lot of itty bitty mice running through that cornfield.   I just wanted to be part of the chase, and  part of the chase I was.   Shortly after being yelled at to hush and stand still, I went running between two rows of corn heading toward home.   Splat! My tiny bare foot found a tiny mouse and the whole 35lbs of me flatten that poor mouse to death.  I screamed and my brothers and sister came running. I had lifted up my foot and the yuck ran off it, and the mouse’s body twitched to the ground.   “Oh gross look what you did!” they all were saying as they came running up and then were bending over and poking at the dead body of the baby mouse.  You’re in trouble now, they taunted.  They were all mad at me for stepping on this little critter and killing it.  I think it was more because, they did not.  I ran away crying leaving bits of gore along the way, even the cool green grass could not change the fact that it was a run without joy.  I was the only one to catch a mouse – I just had to be a part of the chase.   Lucky me.

I have to wonder why I was barefooted, but that was the way it was.  Shoes often got taken off and thrown aside if ever put on to begin with.  The feel of the grass and earth between the toes is too attractive.

Life got weird for me a few years after the mouse, I started to lose that child’s way of looking at life.  Running was never the same.  There became a purpose and goal behind it as I aged, and fear … fear that  once I started my heart would never allow me  stop until I found that cool green grass again.

I can no longer run like the wind,  and I have no desire to catch mice anymore for fun.  Although…

If I close my eyes and sit real still, I can feel the soft cool grass on my feet as they barely touch the ground…

Mine is 50 and it’s all new

This past April, I had the privilege of having my 50th birthday.  It makes me giddy sometimes thinking about it.  It scares me at other times.  The prospect of actual old age is a lot closer feeling now.  You start getting those AARP ads in the mail.  The part of me that is not skin and bones – and least we forget the FAT, does not feel like fifty years has happened to me.  It is not a matter of where did the time go.  I am not even sure it is explainable, because just what does it feel like to be any age.

At 45 years of age, I went to bed one night, knowing everything about my body and how I felt and woke up to a whole new set of rules.  I hit menopause overnight.  I think it happened during the night.  It was that horrid cold sweat that wakes you up, leaving you breathless for no fun reason what so ever,  that was the tip-off.  While I did not recognize my skin, the majority of my beauty products did and they refused to work together.

My best friend stayed with me all the time after that. Terry Cloth Towel is her name.  While I took long hot Epsom salted steamy baths to scrub off the sweat and dry skin that had forced their kinship with me.   She would be taking her own soak in the washer downstairs.  Happy in the fact that she was wet from clean hot water and not my slick sweat.  I still find after almost 5 years the need to have her around.  They still pop up for no pleasing reason and she helps a great deal. My best friend Terry.

This is also the time in my life that I am suppose to get a life.  My husband and I married at 19.  Six months later I am pregnant with our first.  The plan was that I pretty much stay home with the kids and the house until they were older.  Life gets a little more complicated than we anticipate most times and older keeps going.   Even though I held night time part time jobs over the years,  these were not the dreams of a career or any part of a dream at all.  They were the means to Christmas presents, and birthday parties, new clothes and shoes for 3 kids.   Night work for me saved on babysitting, but left me little time for far-fetched dreams.  During all these years I’ve sewed costumes and clothes.  I painted pictures.  I made things left and right.  Sold some  gave a lot away.  I found pleasure in working with my hands in one form of creation or another.  I still do.

Even though the face I see in the mirror is slowly looking familiar again in an unfamiliar way, the step into a new time in life is not familiar at all.  The decision of what to be when I grow up has come around again for me.  It is scary and exciting all in one.   My children are 23,28,and 29 years old and all know how to dress themselves and flush the toilet.  I feel free to do as I please with my life once again.  I tried to think back to when this had first concerned me,  in high school before my life’s path began.  What did I plan for myself and how do I begin to get it back.  Things are different now, my thoughts have changed, I want to be something else, not that other thing.  I will indulge myself with writing and art and my garden.  This being where my passions reside.  I feel ageless within them,  each equal in their potential for success if only for the satisfaction each activity brings.

I might look 50 or more… but I sure do not feel it in my heart… my soul.  What this boils down to is… 50 is a great age that I am happy with, it feels good and I hope I wear it well… but I do get a little scared none the less, because 50 only lasted a nanosecond.