Our dog gains almost four pounds a week, can you imagine? She’s a beautiful girl, full of mischief and smart enough so that I have to keep her brain busy. Busy-brained dogs don’t chew up good shoes and that’s important.
In order to keep our valuables intact, I take Chloe the ever-enlarging dog to the dog park on the Edmonds shore. It was windy today. It was cold and windy, very windy. A storm was passing. The low pressure blew through central Puget Sound with abandon. I zipped up my all weather coat and stuffed my hands into deep pockets; settled onto a log to watch the fast-moving clouds.
Chloe has made friends on the beach: Luna, the white German Shepherd, June the Blue Heeler, an Icelandic Shepherd (I’ve forgotten her name), and a half-dozen drooling boxers, a baby pugle, a no-legged long-haired Corgie, and too many black labs to count. The labs and retrievers will swim in icy water to retrieve anything, but the shepherds wisely bark at the ball from the shore. Heelers snap and growl. Pugs have no fear and a whole lot of love.
I can’t get enough of the dogs! I learn something new about their society every time I sit on the beach watching them interact.
Today was a sad day in our family (my human family, not the society of dogs – I switched tracks on you, dear diary). My daughter, my brother, my mother, and my sister-in-law feel the heavy weight of losing someone slowly, cruelly. The doctor’s diagnosis wasn’t good. I don’t want and don’t have time to write about it now because I have to leave in ten minutes to pick Jim up from work.
I stood on the shore watching the sun sink into the fleeing clouds. We’re closing in on spring and the long golden shadows of evening time are my proof. Long shadows, deep blue water capped in foamy white, wind and rain and dramatic entrances of the sun put perspective into the loss. The dogs ran and barked, rolled into each other during mock battles while throwing joy into the cold windy air.
This is all I have time for tonight. Dogs, drool, windy salted air and evening time. Loss, as if time rolls up into itself like the inner curl of a particularly strong Pacific storm. I don’t even know what I’m writing about but here it is. Bah.