Luna

Son had one request for Christmas:  a German Shepherd Puppy.  He has not asked for much the previous sixteen years.  But a puppy?  A living, chewing, pooping thing?  A German Shepherd? 

I tried talking him out of it;  or at least revising it down to something more manageable.  Oregon in the winter is terrible for housebreaking a puppy.  How about waiting until spring?  GSDs shed.  Let's look up low-shedders ....  What about a Corgi?  We aren't the type of family to be out climbing mountains or embarking on daring wilderness rescue missions.  What would a German Shepherd want with us? 

It's a good thing he didn't ask for a pony.  Because Christmas came and we delivered. GSD it is.

We had visited her at six weeks old in her cozy whelping box at a farm in Turner, Oregon.  She snuggled with her seven litter mates and toddled around when mama dog neared the pen.  She was reserved;  more likely to sit back and watch her more intrepid siblings get into trouble.  Fat, round, and bright eyed, she stole our hearts.  About three weeks later we picked up the small black fuzz ball and brought her home.

We named her Luna.  But she looks like a black bear cub.  Luna Bear.

She's Son's dog, but like everything else at Casa Peace Love and Bossy, she belongs to all of us.  It takes three nimble adults to guide a puppy into civilized human house living.  We have changed our sleeping arrangements, schedules, shopping lists, leisure activities, waking and sleeping hours, and research.  Everything revolves around the new baby.  In the month she's been with us, we have all grown and learned.  A lot.

Luna has served as a darling, demanding, determined antidote to my sedentary lifestyle of yore.  Right from the start, I have had to get down on the floor on her level.  To bend, reach, lift, walk, run and clean, clean, clean.  My sit time has been reduced drastically.  When I do sit, it is to read a few more pages of the dog training books.  This feature of puppy ownership may be the most valuable gift, adding years to my life and health to my years.  She's a good girl!

This morning I took Luna out onto the back deck, slick with frost.  As we stepped outside, I heard the flutter of wings overhead.  I followed the trail of sound and saw a small owl alight on the bone-colored tangle of winter branches.  His fat silhouette in the thicket stood out against the pearly  morning sky.  It was the first time I have ever seen him. 

I have heard him for years.  His gentle hoot has serenaded many a summer evening.  He perched in his high aerie and surveyed the winter domain.  Then he took flight and disappeared in the northern sky. 

I caught sight of the owl whose watchful eye and soft chant have woven through so many twilights.  A gift of the dawn.

Twenty

It's been two decades since we promised to love one another for all of life.  We tumbled into love quickly, deeply, purely. 

And he said, "There is a song in Mexico that says,  'Drink hot chocolate, pay what you owe." 

I knew at once that I could be with him forever and feel at peace.  I knew he would take care of me.  Under the stars of the night sky on a beach in a fishing village on the Gulf coast of Vera Cruz, I felt it on day three.  I felt it. 

Today I love him as much as I did on December 30, 1993 when we exchanged vows of love and faithfulness. 

Life does not hand out easy.  And we have never had it so.  As they say, "The dream is free.  Hustle sold separately."  We have worked.  The path has had its share of sorrows.  But he has been my rock, my knight, my co-conspirator, my defender, my love, my ardent fan. 

There is beauty along the way.  Beauty every day.  We drink hot chocolate, and pay what we owe. 

Overly Compelling Diagnoses

A few weeks ago I attended my nephew's special education conference.  The team gathered there helped me see with new eyes that some of his quirky behavior is a manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder.  His need to walk a certain route in the halls, making him late to class daily.  His carrying his backpack to breakfast, and fastidiously returning it upstairs afterwards each day.  His  refusal to stay out of the street on a walk .... maybe the sidewalk was something he could not allow himself to touch.  Hmmmm.... knowing him as I do, the explanation of this thinking pattern made sense and answered a lot of questions that have had us stumped.

OCD.  Aren't we all a little OCD?

Take the kitchen at our house.  Each of the three of us has one stubborn OCD pitfall.  It gets us every time.  

Son will inspect every spoon for water spots before using one to eat.  If it has a spot, it's rejected.  Back into the drawer.  Sometimes he has to go through six or eight to find the one with flawless shine.  Hubby and I roll our eyes.  Son now has to set the table each day, because if he does not pick the spoons, the whole meal is delayed.

I don't care about water spots on my pretty spoons.  But I have my own offbeat tangent.  The IKEA tumblers come in the colors of the rainbow.  And they must be stacked in the order of those rainbow hues.  Indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange, pink.  No one else seems to understand that this is necessary, so I constantly happen upon the stack done wrong.  And I must fix it.  People!  How can you live with yourselves, letting this slide?

Hubby smiles at spoon inspections, and may not even see the rainbow.  But he has his stumbling block too.  The utensil drawer has only one compartment for forks, and we have two kinds of forks:  salad and dinner.  Hubby maintains them in neat and separate stacks in that compartment,  straight as soldiers.  If Son or I empty the dishwasher, the forks are in wild disarray,  jumbled together catawampus.  Hubby patiently cleans them up.  It's as necessary as making the bed in the morning.

Yep.  I can understand that special walking route, and the backpack routine.  How could I not?

Well, it's time to go tighten the lightbulb and check the door latch.  52 times.  One for every year.

Paper

An elegy

Touch its gentle heft.  Breathe

Its smell of words.  Hear

Its powdery lament.

Stardust, house dust

Glitter, must

Do even diamonds

Turn to rust?

I like the weight

The pull of gravity

The charm

Of real books

In hand, in lap

In crook of arm.

The neon scream

Of ebook readers

Tablets, pads

Flags the spirit

Tires the heart

A wearing, tedious fad.

Some day on the eternal shore

The book of life

Will open

And no more

The flash of manmade light

And speeding streams of bits

To bear.

O hurry time

To find a resting there.

Autumn

A glorious summer with its long run of sun has given way to fall.  The temperatures have dropped.  I love the change. 

A new season comes along just in time.  Right when we had begun to yawn and glance at the clock. 

Frosty breath in the morning.  The familiar feel of my coat.  Darker days.  Longer nights. 

And the leaves scurrying out in every direction under the headlights' beam on slick streets.  They scatter like a flock of songbirds, startled into flight. 

Or a coven of tiny witches, racing into the shadows, cackling as they go.

Tipping the Universe into Balance

We made it to the finish line.  The school year that threatened to take us all down didn't.  Record class size numbers, downsized staff, teachers laid off, others transferred willy-nilly according to licensure and seniority and everything that is not about students and their best interests. 

We paid for it all year, every day, every minute.  Teachers were stressed and overcome with the volume and intensity of the work.  Students reacted as they do.  Some flew below the radar and learned less, made less progress, got less attention.  Others sensed the adult disarray and acted out, causing greater distress.  And some learned and produced and contributed in spite of it all.

We the adults worked as a team.  Tired,  glazed-eyed and scared, teachers never said die.  Parents swooped in to support in ways they have never before offered.  Relationships settled.  Learning got underway.  And there was a harvest at the end of it all.

In early June, the local paper reported that the superintendent had accepted an $8,000 raise based on his stellar evaluation from the school board.

Outcry erupted from every quarter.  Letters to the editor, blog posts, Facebook pages popped up in a hue and cry.  Parents buzzed to teachers who hemmed and hawed and tried to stay professional.

We have had the toughest year in memory.  Money has disappeared, from school district budgets and from the paychecks of school employees.  Furlough days have effected a de facto anti-raise for all.  People have worked harder than ever before, for uglier results than ever before, and all of it was because of a long stagnant economy's fallout on the state budget coffers.

Now this.  The guy at the helm takes a high profile raise that amounts to about a third of a year's salary for some of our instructional assistants.  $8,000 is not much in his world.  But this $8,000 may be the most expensive $8,000 he's ever received.  And if he had refused it, it would have bought the cheapest PR he could have purchased.

On Fathers' Day we went out to eat.  Our favorite authentic Mexican bistro in the high style NW district of the city.  I don't know why they only had one waitress on duty on Fathers' Day, but there she was.  Alone, zipping between tables, combining tasks to keep everyone happy, responding to the odd request with a smile, and assisted valiantly by the lone busboy who pinch-hit as waiter at a table or two.

I watched them.  Both of them were smart and hard-working.  They kept it all together.  But they were doomed by the poor management that placed them in such a no-win situation.  Parties of guests walked in, waited for a second too long, and walked out.  Others flagged for their check or an extra margarita or more water from across the room with exasperation in the very gesture.  The place was remarkably full, and tables eating, but this poor young woman and man had no hope, no chance of keeping up.

I thought about the money the hip nouveau Latin restaurant would make that day - personnel costs low and receipts up.  But the wait staff would go home with fewer tips than usual.  After all, service was far from par.

Our check came to $36.  Yeah.  Great deal.  I left her $60 and told her to keep the change.  She deserves it.

That Kind of Day

Today  by Billy Collins

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,
so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw 
open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage
indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths
and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight
that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight
on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants
from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,
holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,
well, today is just that kind of day.

Yep, today was just that kind of day in western Oregon.  Spectacular.