This Thing We Call Life

I had planned to write this post about special dogs we've loved over the years, but it seems too tough of a topic for today. Here's the photos, but the story's different. I want to tell you a story about a good friend from my teen years named Dawn. She and I have kept in touch with for many years.

She's a widow now too, and has been a valuable source of support. I didn't make it to our 40th high-school reunion in 2009, but we did manage to get together one day for lunch last summer. Isn't it funny how, even if they look quite different, when you see someone again after several years, once they start talking, all the time falls away? When I'm with Dawn, it's 1967 again, or so it seems. Her parents lived right behind mine and we were in the same grade at school, so we couldn't have avoided each other even if we'd tried. It was a good thing we hit it off right away after I was involuntarily transplanted to Boise in the eighth grade.

After being no-bosom buddies (yuck, yuck) all through school, we went our separate ways after college. We each married handsome young men, and I remained in Boise while she moved to a remote Alaskan fishing village with her husband to teach Eskimo children.

Teaching in Alaska's extreme conditions was a popular move for young couples with education degrees in the 1970's. It paid very well. The oil pipeline was under construction then, too, so we had several friends who left Idaho for the Far North to make big money.

Such pilgrimages are still going on, since Idaho hasn't had an economic boom since its last gold rush and that was quite some time ago. No one seems to come back and say they hated their Alaskan experience and Dawn and her husband were no exception. They loved living among the Eskimos and ended up staying about ten years.The minimalist lifestyle of the natives afforded few luxuries. Their traditional sources of food and clothing were whale, seal, fox and fish. This proved to be adequate, Dawn said, but she constantly craved a fresh green salad.

No fresh produce could be flown into their village due to the extremely cold temperatures. So Dawn decided to try to bring two heads of iceberg lettuce home from a trip to Fairbanks. To protect them from freezing, she stuffed them up in her coat, planning to keep them warm there for the entire flight. This vision of my skinny friend with two heads of lettuce crammed up her coat is amusing in itself, but it gets better. As she tried to negotiate her way to her seat, while jockeying the ton of other stuff from town, she was mortified when both heads of lettuce escaped and rolled down the aisle like a pair of pale-green bowling balls.

Dawn turned red with embarrassment (she does that easily), but quickly learned in that part of the country, no one bats an eye at the sight of two heads of lettuce coming at them down an airplane aisle. The produce was simply scooped up and politely returned by another traveler. Here you go; no problem, ma'am. She wondered later if everyone else on the plane was also cradling lettuce in their coats.

My friend had two babies, Emily and Jessica, while living in their Arctic home. This seemed a little nuts to me at the time, but Dawn's always been quite a trooper, especially when it comes to the Great Outdoors. Now that I think about it, she still is. A little nuts, that is.

Another time, she took her little girls on a rare trip to the city. Emily was about four years old and Jessica, two. They had no TV at home, so the girls had never seen a movie (VCRs hadn't been invented yet). So off they went to see a Disney classic on the big screen. Dawn wasn't into watching the movie as much as she was seeing her kids' reactions as they laughed and clapped through the childrens' film.

When it was over and the lights came on, Dawn prepared to leave. When she looked to see if she had both girls, she was surprised to see Emily still sitting in her seat, weeping.  My friend was shocked. It had been a happy movie with a great ending, she thought. "Why are you crying?" she asked little Emily, who was the very picture of despair, tears rolling down her cheeks. "B-b-b-because it's ov, ov, o-ver," Emily blubbered, letting loose wioth a full-blown wail. "You're crying because it's over?" Dawn asked, adding, "Oh Honey, we'll do this again sometime."  All parents tell their kids that when they're trying to get them out of a place if they don't want to leave. It works for a few years, but as they get older, children begin to realize there's a catch to this thing we call life: You can't go back, you can only go forward.  You can revisit special places or look at pictures of past times, but the experiences,  exactly as you had them, can never truly be relived. 

I've been thinking about this since last month when I wrote about our dog, Hoo, and promised a follow-up. Looking through pictures of the 16 years Hoo enriched our lives, I was reminded of so much happiness I had with my late husband.

Sometimes I think I'd rather recall the times when we weren't getting along so well. It's easier. Don't get me wrong. I'm very grateful for my 40 years with my husband. "You should be glad for what you had," says my best friend, who is divorced. "I always wanted a marriage like yours, but I never had it," she reminds me when I get down.

"I know," I reply. "I am glad." Lately, though, I've been thinking about Emily in the theater. I can totally relate to the reason for her tears when the lights came on.

There's only one difference: I do my crying in the dark.

Never Fear; I'm Still Here

Sunny came by yesterday afternoon and kissed River, giving her a radiant glow. It helped make up for River's lack of sparkling current this time of year. Her bony shoulders are exposed, too, and her underbelly is growing fuzz in her low-water season.

Greedy birds of prey dive-bomb her shallow pools, feasting on stranded fish. River is glad, however, that no rock-crushers have shown up to grind away at her shores this fall. There is a limit to the indignities she can endure while she is laid off from work.

I grew melancholy looking at photos of Hoo, so that project has been shelved for now. I am getting in firewood and doing all necessary preparations folks must make for winter in this part of the country.

Living a stone's throw away from the Canadian border makes one wary of the approaching change of weather.

I'm glad I don't also have to contend with hoards of Canadians illegally crossing into North Idaho in search of work. God save the Queen.

Sunny was in a hurry to leave, as her hours have been cut, too. Before she left, though, she kissed Bric on the forehead. He was unaware of his beauty, but I saw it, and share it with you here.

Don't forget about me, give up on me, or quit praying for me, and I'll do the same for you. Let's carry on, then, shall we?

The Legendary Hoobert Heever



I'm not a dog snob. For the first 30 years of our marriage, we never had the money to buy an AKC dog, so a series of lovable mutts shared our lives. Probably the most memorable and clearly my favorite was a black-and-white, natural-born comedian named Hoo.

That's her above, laughing. Behind her is a our Golden Retriever, a pound puppy we named "Wuzzy." As a wee doggie, she looked like a little bear, so her name came from the nursery rhyme, "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.." She went by "Wuz" most of the time.

We got Hoo for free from a neighbor who owned her mother, a purebred German Shepherd. Her father was unknown. A half-shepherd sounded good, so we brought home the sweetest of 10 little pups.

How a dog gets its name at our house is usually left up to fate. In Hoo's case, it happened when another neighbor came over to see our new puppy.  "And this is who?" he asked politely, picking her up. In a light-bulb moment, I answered, "Yes, this is Hoo." Having one dog named Wuz and another named Hoo had potential for being very funny, I remember thinking.

Hoo didn't know who she was yet when she first came to live with us. As she grew, our hopes of owning a dog that looked like a German Shepherd began to fade. It wasn't long before her personality began to emerge as well. Hoobie was a nut. You could tell just by looking at her. She received her full name, Hoobert Heever Henderson, from something I read one day in a Reader's Digest. It was a short story about the first-ever live radio broadcast of a presidential address to the nation. It marked the end of the golden era for newspapers, which had long enjoyed a media monopoly as the sole source of news coverage.

President Herbert Hoover was standing by as the broadcast was about to begin. The announcer, incredibly nervous and daunted by his historic task, ceremoniously cleared his throat. In a high-pitched, quivering voice, he then effectively ended his broadcasting career by leaning to the mike and saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, HOOBERT HEEVER."

I've always imagined this epic blunder having been followed by an audible gasp of horror from all the people in the radio station control room. I've also pondered the possibility that if hundred of thousands were listening to their radios at that moment, the announcer's huge faux pas may have caused a tsunami of collective gasps that rolled across America, eventually sending out a global "OMG!" Perhaps the massive intake of breath created an atmospheric change, a moment of shock so intense it was like a  "shot heard 'round the world."

But that's just speculation. The Reader's Digest article didn't say whatever happened to the poor guy. I hope he didn't go out and jump off a building. The country was in the Great Depression, after all.

Humiliation of this scale must have been hard to handle. Hopefully he found another job in a field where stage fright couldn't sabotage him. Perhaps he turned to Demon Rum and became a bum, like many men down on their luck in those days. 

Hoo knows? Yes, she does but she'd never tell. Hoo's tail must be continued, for she lived to be 16 years old and her legendary antics were many. Stay tuned, then. More Hoo is coming for you.

I Do Believe It's True

 

Someone told me
It's all happening at the zoo.
I do believe it,
I do believe it's true.

It's a light and tumble journey
From the East Side to the park;
Just a fine and fancy ramble
To the zoo.

You can take the crosstown bus
If it's raining or it's cold,
And the animals will love it
If you do.
[From: http://www.metrolyrics.com/at-the-zoo-p-simon-1967-lyrics-simon-and-garfunkel.html ]

It had been many years since I'd been to a zoo. My intense empathy and compassion for animals has always tainted my zoo visits in the past, so I quit going.

For my seven-year-old granddaughter's sake, however, I decided to go with her to the Portland Zoo recently.

I really disliked the bat cave, flat-out refused to go near the snake building, complained about paying $5 for a bottle of water, and got totally pooped out after a few hours.

I took these photos for you before heading back to the car to wait for the kids.

All in all, for me, it was a fairly fun trip to the zoo; I saw nothing that made me unbearably sad.

Like men incarcerated at San Quentin, the zoo animals appeared to suffer mostly from boredom and of course, lack of room to roam. Fat and lazy describes most of the creatures I saw. But, are they happy? Or are such feelings exclusive to humans?

The confined animals would be far worse off if they were free, I suppose. Life in the wild is dangerous and dinner times are far apart.

But, do you think they would chose to run or fly free -- even if it meant being sometimes hungry or afraid -- if they could?

I do. I do believe it's true.