Leah, my terrier mix, and my one-year-old granddaughter are similarly wordless in their expression of affection. My granddaughter, who has just learned to walk, toddles around toys and two large dogs on the living room floor to throw herself into her father’s arms when he comes home from work. And Leah is ecstatic when I open the front door.
I do have the words to express my affection. They are my thing, you know.
I love you. See?
But sometimes words are not enough. When it thunders and lightning cracks the sky, I search for the dog, pulling her out from under the bed or extracting her from where she cowers in the basement, simply to hold her in my arms until her trembling stops, but I’m not always that attentive to those I love.
I met a man last night down by the cove where I’d been walking Leah. He had been a dog handler in Vietnam, but when the war ended, he said most of those faithful servants, German Shepherds who found tunnels and land mines, were classified as “surplus equipment.” The military euthanized them or left them behind. He was explaining the origin of his affection for dogs as he asked about Leah’s parentage. Turned out this kind soul lives on a sailboat in the creek and rows ashore twice a day to walk a dog for a friend with cancer.
I think about him once I’m back at my desk and worry that writers are more susceptible than most to trading words for action. I can describe my love for Leah, and for my family and friends, but did I call my sister today?
Similarly, every dog in my neighborhood gets two walks a day. I marvel at the good stewardship of their owners because I feel love for my rescue nut, my squirrel maniac, my staunch defender of the piano, which she won’t let me dust, and champion of horseflies, which she won’t let me kill. Still, when I’m tired, I cut that second walk short, and when she wants desperately to play in the middle of Shrinking or Man on Fire, I call out, “Go get a toy,” but don’t get up.
Lazy love. I feel it, but don’t do it. Intensity of feeling is not depth of commitment.
We’re still talking about dogs, right?
Worse yet, I’ve been known to do it but not feel it. My granddaughter reminds me of the years when my own kids were little, and I never had a minute alone. At the end of the day, I’d sometimes retreat to the tub in the master bath for refuge, my privacy under siege from the other side of a locked door.
“Mommy! Why don’t you come out?”
“Mommy, what are you doing in there?”
I’d surrender, and we’d switch places. It would be the children who were in the tub, soaking away the lead pencil marks and peanut butter smears, readying themselves like clean canvases on which I was to paint the soft, brilliant colors of my attention before bed. But frustrated that there had been no time for me once again, I’d become a gale of efficiency, present like the December sun: light without warmth.
As the sun set, I’d tuck them under their covers, feigning an interest I did not feel at that moment, only to discover forgeries were immediately discernible to the expert eye.
They would materialize in tears by my side before I’d even gotten downstairs, even opened a book, ignoring my admonishments to seek me out again and again, crying for some inexplicable reason, just crying, they could not say why. And because they could not articulate the intractable sadness drawing them down the steps, they’d cast about in an ever-widening arc for a loss to attach to it.
“Mrs. Clark yelled at me today.”
“I’m not the fastest runner in third grade anymore.”
“Where will I go when I die?”
I am never without the knowledge that we won’t always be together—you, me, and the people we love. And in those moments, the children reminded me of that. They are grown now, but they still do. And sometimes I am sad, and I, too, don’t know why, but I suspect the reason is distance. A distance they would not tolerate, calling me back from my detachment, again and again, not accepting less than love both felt and acted upon.
If the words are right but the feeling wrong, we always know.
We’re still talking about kids, right?
Leah is too quiet. I have so much work to do here at my desk, but I get up to go find her. The Blue Angels are practicing for the U.S. Naval Academy’s Commissioning Week air show, and F-18’s are blasting over the house faster than the speed of sound. Faster than the seconds words hang in the air.
I find her hiding under the living room sofa. A small black-and-white nose peeks out, then two paws. I hoist 15 pounds into my arms and hold her then. She is stiff at first, then surrenders to the beat of my heart and sags against me.
“You’re okay,” I whisper to both of us.
Out the window, a starburst of contrails dissolves into the blue.