Every morning, when I get ready for my day, I sit at my dressing table, known as a vanity by the judgy, and check out my face in a mirror that lights up and magnifies by a power of 15.

“Why do you do that?” my mother asked when she was alive. And “Stop doing that!” my former dermatologist groaned. “No one expects perfection!”

I smiled at him sadly. He was, of course, a man.

“You’ll never see anything better than you saw the day before!” Mom predicted, but it’s not that I think I’ll discover I’ve gotten younger-looking overnight; it’s that I am searching for the newest sign of deterioration. Stemming the tide requires grand-scale scrutiny. And if you have fair skin and blue eyes, it also requires pretty vigilant screenings by a dermatologist as you pay in spades for those days before sunscreen when you grooved to tunes on your beach towel in the Outer Banks.

But a magnifying mirror would not have saved me this Monday when I visited my new dermatologist after a weekend hiking through the woods of the Blue Ridge. I was chatting with the doctor as she updated my records when I felt something itchy about two inches above my hairline on the back of my neck. Without thinking, I slipped an exploratory hand up to touch the place and discovered a small bump.

Dr. Aguh was still studying the computer screen while I sat there, semi-horrified to realize that the itchy bump was a tick I must have picked up over the weekend. Now, I would have to dislodge the critter and offer it up like a creepy present. “I’m meticulously clean! I wash every day! And, oh yeah, here’s a bug I just found in my hair.”

So when Dr. Aguh beamed her bright smile on me at last, I was perched on the edge of my hardback chair in my gray jeans and white sweater, pinching my new friend with his tiny flailing legs between my thumb and index finger.

“I can’t believe this,” I confessed, “but I just found this tick …

“(I know! Gross!)

“And he was attached… (I know! Grosser!)

“Right here.” I pointed at the back of my neck with my other hand.

She didn’t look.

“A tick?” Dr. Aguh stepped backward involuntarily.

“Put it in here,” she suggested, handing me a specimen cup at arm’s length.

“I was outside all weekend,” I called after her as she abruptly exited the room. I peered in the cup at my new friend, left to ponder our effects on each other’s lives.

I walked over to the window, put my captive on the sill, and immediately googled “ticks that cause Lyme disease” on my cellphone. A nasty lineup of the usual suspects appeared. I began comparing mugshots. “Number One. Dog tick, step forward.” By the time the doctor returned, I was fairly certain this was not a Lyme disease perp but a harmless imposter. Still, we weren’t sure, so I was told that if I wanted an antibiotic after further research at home, I could call.

In my office, I taped the defendant to a piece of white paper, took his photograph, and then enlarged it. Which brings me back to things we size up and how this is not a good thing most of the time. Very little benefit comes from looking at something way larger than it appears to the naked eye. Or that is normally hidden. You think your dog is cute? Ever pulled back those lips and had a look at those teeth? Who’s cute now? How about your horse? So beautiful, so noble, but pull up those lips and call in the clowns.

Likewise, the person speaking on Zoom! You can change your zoom settings to automatically enlarge the speaker, you know. Please don’t do this in my workshops. I like to think you are seeing me as I’m seeing you—very small, with little detail, from a galaxy far, far away.

What else suffers from magnification?

Anxiety enlarges my impatience, makes me snap at the dog, say bad words to inanimate objects. I sound mean, but I’m really worried; about injured children in warzones I long to hold to my heart, about rising tides and temperatures. About my vanishing savings. And fear magnifies my inclination to criticize. I sound judgmental, but I’m scared. For my children, their children. For humanity. You.

But we can also magnify the moon, the Milky Way, and the light from distant stars. And magnification makes things appear closer, like age, but they are not really closer. In fact, they are not even right-side up!

All cameras, telescopes, and even the corneas of your eyes bend incoming light to produce an image that is upside down. It is your brain that receives those signals, decodes and interprets them, then constructs an image of the world right side up.

Sometimes it feels as if I’m seeing the world upside down from very far away, and my brain has not yet righted it, but it could.

The primal brain is ego-centric. There is only self. So, giving love feels like receiving love; extending compassion, feels as if we have been enfolded in loving arms. Praying for another feels like blessings raining down. A conversion accomplished by the brain but experienced in the heart.

When mom wanted me to feel the consequences of a questionable decision, say accelerating through a yellow traffic light, she’d ask, “What if everybody did that?”  Well, what if?

What if everybody did that?

Gave away, relentlessly, what we want to receive. Justice. Empathy. Mercy.

When that is the light by which we see, it will right the world.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

A quick review before we get to why I am telling you this story.

I worked for five years as a volunteer dog walker at the SPCA before I met Leah.

She was a grossly neglected, 17-pound, black-and-white terrier mix. Her original owner, overwhelmed by the needs of three kids under the age of seven, had recognized his limitations and surrendered the puppy on her first birthday. I’ll always be grateful.

She suffered a bloodborne disease she’d contracted from a tick bite, was on antibiotics, had just been spayed, and had never been groomed, so her hair hung in her eyes and draped from her black, triangular ears like a bat. It was difficult to see her face in the oversized cone placed on her little head to keep her from licking her incision, but a kind heart, one that seemed unconditionally forgiving of her own neglect, radiated from two shiny, bright eyes. As I’ve said before, with a lot of reasons to expect the worst from this life, Leah was love with her high beams on.

I entered the run, and she immediately put her front paws on my knee, stretching as high as she could in her unwieldy headgear to lick my face. She was so sweet and so grateful, but I didn’t fall in love.

I know! I can’t believe it either!

I couldn’t take her on the creek trail because of her stitches, so we just jogged around the admin building and back into the dark and noisy run assigned to her. A week later, I chose her off the walk board again, and we made our second circuit of the admin building. Once again, she climbed my knee, balancing on her hind legs, in an effort to land a grateful lick on my face.

Sometimes, I am soooo slow to hear the universe calling.

The third time I chose Leah off the walk board, a light went off in my head. Small, young, female, dog needs loving home. I’d been dogless for five years. What was I waiting for?

I asked about her availability and was told I had exactly two hours to commit to adopting her. Two hours. At lunchtime that day, I took home a breed I knew nothing about and a companion I was pledged to serve until death do us part. Mine or hers—whoever leaves first.

Here’s what I discovered about her.

She can run 38 miles an hour. She was bred to hunt.

She barks at everything from the Netflix logo to the doorbell.

She hides things, then waits for me to find them. Usually in my bed.

I also discovered that dogs form a unique attachment to one person, even within a loving household. It is not me, and I am not complaining. Love is not a feeling. Love fronts up. I am not the one who feeds her and walks her in the sleet, in 27-degree weather, and I don’t begrudge loyalty to the one who does, though I do my share.

I was walking her in the linger light; the official term is civil twilight—when the sun is no more than 6 degrees below the horizon but going fast. When we were just a few yards from the front steps, I unleashed her so she could run the rest of the way home. She took off on a tear for the brick steps as she always does, but for the first time ever she just kept going.

In an instant, she was beyond my ability to catch up and had disappeared behind a private residence. I chased her, calling, “Leah! Come!” which, let’s face it, sounds a lot like “Leah! Run!” Suddenly, she reappeared—on the fly—airborne, racing out of the first yard and into the next one, clearly on the hunt—taking off down driveways to disappear in neighbors’ mysterious backyard spaces ringed with security cameras and warnings to trespassers.

She was working her way methodically, yard by yard, toward the busiest traffic artery in town. If she got there without me, she’d be a dead dog—no doubt about it—she had tried to bite the rolling wheels of the Fed Ex truck on numerous occasions.

I kept running but was uncertain of my direction because it was longer and longer between sightings. She was now a comet—a shooting star—sightings of this black and white rocket whizzing by a neighbor’s woodpile or garage were becoming less predictable, less frequent. Panicked, I turned back and ran for my car. My car can go 38 mph indefinitely. I cannot.

My neighbor Steve stopped raking leaves, and positioned himself in the road to direct the posse. He pointed silently and emphatically up the next street—She went thataway!

I turned and glimpsed her flying down the hill into yet another stranger’s yard, so I threw the car in park and ran for her. By now, a little boy, maybe 11, sensing the excitement, had joined the pursuit on his scooter. He was following her into neighbors’ yards, one by one, trying to flush her out to where I was now positioned like a goalie between her last known location and the deadly intersection. We became a team, this child and I.

Suddenly, a rabbit raced out of a neighbor’s yard and took off down the sidewalk, Leah in hot pursuit. The boy cut them off as cleanly as if he’d been on a quarter horse. She veered, heading straight toward rush hour traffic and me at a dead run.

As she flew through a patch of ivy, I managed to snag her safety harness. Overwhelmed with relief, I snatched her up in my arms. The boy on the scooter glided up, grinning.

“You watch football?” he asked, navy ballcap over his eyes, one sneakered foot on the scooter, one on the sidewalk.

“Some,” I said.

“Well, that’s what you call ‘escaping the pocket.’”

I glanced down at Leah, now incarcerated in my arms, then back to the boy. “My hero, thank you,” I smiled, thinking my goodness, I love you; I had a boy like you once.

I carried my jailbreaker to the car. And here, at last, is why I am telling you this and why now. At civil twilight, though the sun is gone, you don’t need artificial light yet to see clearly and this is what I saw.

Love is not a feeling. Love is not what you say, no matter how well you try to say it. (This kills me; you know it does.)

Love is that wild, primal instinct to help anyone and everyone. To find the lost. Shelter the injured. Protect the vulnerable. We help the panicked mother who has lost sight of her child at the mall. We offer an arm to the elderly man feeling faint waiting in line. We leave a note on the windshield warning a driver that his tire is flat before he drives off.

We give in the context in which we live, so in the grand scheme, our offerings are small. That’s how fortunate we are. But this is the same instinct ignited by the nightly news. If you could, you would save every injured child in Gaza, shelter every starving refugee, protect every Ukrainian hospital from bombing, and save every hostage the world over. This is the part of you that would hold the world in your arms if you could. The part of you that prays.

Sometimes I think we are nothing more than love looking for an opportunity to express itself.

Maybe love has no gradations. There is no big love and little love. There’s just us, giving what we can.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.

My smart older sisters have blazed a trail through life for me by example. If I hadn’t received my driver’s license on my first try, for instance, I’d have failed tradition. So, having recently discovered that they both love Pilates, I tried it, too. Things went well until they went horribly wrong.

The trial class proved to be a uniquely pleasant way to exercise– working out flat on my back a great deal of the time– sliding against resistance springs on the moving frame of the bed-shaped apparatus called the “reformer.”  German-born Joseph Pilates, who invented this exercise protocol and patented the reformer, became interested in physical fitness as a teenager and even more so during internment by the British in WW I. At that time, he worked as a nurse, experimenting with attaching springs to hospital beds so patients could start toning muscles while bedbound. In 1923, after years of study and experimentation, he came to New York and began teaching his method, which was an enormous success.

The trial class went by quickly because listening to instructions and correcting my form was a good distraction from watching the clock. Also, the instructor talked to us as if we were very, very young. “No Elvis in the pelvis,” she admonished. “Watch your shoulders; we don’t want grumpy shoulders.” The kindergarten vibe was pleasant—no thinking required. Mama’s got you.

So, I signed up for three months—agreeing to have the fee extracted from my bank account every month and registering for one class a week at the one day and time I could attend.

For the first few weeks, it was fun. I made a new friend. We both showed up weekly in ponytails, read the same science books, and laughed a lot. Then, one day, we entered class, and neither of our names appeared on the electronic check-in tablet. Perplexed because we had signed up and paid at the same time, we told the front desk clerk something was wrong with the system, put on our grip socks, and went on into the workout room. If you are more than 5 minutes late, you forfeit your place, and we are both rule abiders.

Assuming the front desk would resolve the glitch, we laid down on our reformers and started warming up, bending our knees to bring the carriage down, stretching to fully extend it and back again. But about 5 minutes into my stretches, I looked up to find the front desk lady staring down at me. She is very short with a curly gray bob. She is usually a very smiley person. “You’re not registered for this class,” she said, “And” pointing to a lady she had in tow also staring down at me, “she is.”

It’s very hard to have a dignified conversation from flat on your back, but I tried. “Of course, I’m registered! You registered me and took the fee out again just today.”

“You’re not registered,” she repeated as if this was the only sentence she had learned in a foreign language.

I could feel myself getting frustrated, confused, and embarrassed. The whole room was gliding back and forth, listening, and the implication that I had somehow broken a rule and was not part of the group was disorienting. They say the greatest trigger for anger is injustice. I was going there fast.

“But I am registered,” I insisted. “That’s my teacher!” I waved at Miss Mandy, who didn’t acknowledge me. “I’ve been here every week for a month,” I protested as I slid by. I didn’t want to lose my momentum. My replacement stared down at me without expression.

“You are not registered,” the front desk lady repeated.

We were devolving into “am too,”/ “are not.”  I had no recourse but to pack my things and leave the class.

In the vestibule, as Miss Mandy continued to exhort my former classmates to enjoy the “delicious” stretches only a few feet away, my entire afternoon wasted, the front desk clerk explained that although no one had told me when I joined, at this particular club, when you pay for three months, you have not reserved a place in a class for three months. You must re-select your class every 4 weeks. And it’s competitive. You might not get into the class you requested.

So, she was not wrong. I thought I had reserved the 12 class spots I paid for, when in fact I had paid for 12 but only reserved four.

I went home and used my words. I wrote about the embarrassment of having not been informed. About the inelegance of the system. It was a polite letter, not a grumpy letter and I got a very reasonable response. We were all well-intentioned and I really liked the staff. So, I picked up where I had left off and everything was going great again.

But this happened.

The day after being kicked out of class, I received an email requesting that I post an online review of the class I had been required to leave. I demurred. A very vulnerable family member had just been hospitalized, and between worrying and working, and still feeling a bit stung, I just didn’t have the motivation to write the requested glowing corporate promotion. I was lucky I could even get myself to class.

I got another email. Then another. Many, many emails, and then a text. The text said something like, “Hi Laura! This is your Pilates instructor, Mandy! Just hit this link to share a review. (And if it’s not complimentary, don’t post it; just tell us privately how we can help.)”

I was so frustrated by then I thought, all-right all-ready! If Mandy is now asking me personally, I’ll write a review! Anything to make these things stop!

So, I replied to the text. “Hi, Mandy, I have had a family member scary-sick in the hospital, and I work full time, but I am happy to take a moment to share that class has been a pleasant respite from a day at my desk, and you are an excellent instructor.” I hit send and got back a version of this: “This is not really Mandy! You can’t reply to this text; your message was not delivered to anyone.”

Pilates enthusiasts say that in 10 days, you’ll feel better, in 20 days, you’ll look better, and in 30 days, you’ll be a new person.

A new person.

That one gets me every time.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.