Dog talk and winds moan

My dog Scooby walked into the bathroom while I was in the shower one morning about three weeks ago. Rosemary mint conditioner on my hair and patchouli soap lathered on my skin. Did I hear another set of footprints?

“Well, hello, Jill”

I heard a voice I wasn’t sure I recognized . I peeked my head outside the shower curtain. No one was there. Scooby looked at me with ears perked, eyes bright. I didn’t see anyone else.

“Hello?” I asked and my voice echoed across the tiles, glass window and mirrors on the wall. No answer. No sound at all. Scooby just looked at me waiting for a reply.

There was no one in the house and no reason to be scared despite being in the shower and hearing a human voice. Except it wasn’t human. It was Scooby vocalizing his intentional good morning greeting.

He’s not the first dog I’ve had speak to me in plain human English. I had a dog Bob who spoke to me during the last few years of his life. Deedee talked out loud, too. She was a German Shepherd whose owner had been abusive and she came to us, Sam and I, as a rescue dog from the Triple D Ranch in Odessa; a roadhouse. Geesh, I’ve never known such a grateful and obedient dog.

One March morning she stood up and shook herself fully awake and then nudged my foot hanging off the bed.  I felt it, but didn’t stir. Not yet.

“You gotta get up, Jill,” Deedee said. I heard it plain as day. So did Sam. His right arm flung off the blankets. He turned his head on the pillow and looked at me with smiling eyes.

“You gotta get up, Jill, you heard her.”

My feet hit the floor. Bare skin on hardwood. Warm and smooth. I grabbed the teapot and filled it quickly under the tap with water and set it on the stove while I put on some clothes, socks, and found some shoes. Then Deedee and the other dogs were out the door to face the onset of another day on the farm.

We never talked about the incident again. Sam spoke many animal languages and I spoke only mine. When we transcended those translation problems it didn’t spook me. Instead I learned from him to open my heart more than my ears.

What I heard from Scooby while in the shower the other day was a good sign. At least he’s talking to me. And I can hear it.

He doesn’t mention the nail clipping, or the extra long walk through the forest, or the fresh beef bones, either. And Lucy, our other darling Dalmatian, speaks only in the the nose rubbing category for demonstration of affection. Lots of it.

I mistook Scoob’s dog talk for ghost talk. I’ve been getting plenty of that as the March winds blow. Here in the woods the trees enunciate all the lamentations of my world. The moans, and cries, whimpers of limbs, whispers of wishes, the ghosts of all that walk my way seem captured in the soundscape of life in the pines.

Howling, wailing, exhaling, wheezing, breathing,

This afternoon the winds picked up and rain came from the south. The basement walk-out door blew open, sending dry oak and maple leaves across the cement floor. I sensed Sam coming in from the storm and searched the laundry room and guest bedroom and bath thinking his ghost might be right around the corner. Nothing. Silence and darkness. Outside the winds still moan through the spruce, elm and pines down the trail. I shut the door and close it tight.

Dance me to the end of time

Leonard Cohen’s song is an earworm.

“Dance me to the end of time,” he croons.

Flashbacks to dances from my past. Maybe from my future. Til the end of time. A slow song.

The YMCA overlooking the Fox River. Charlie Daniels concert in Stevens Point. The disco ball in Cleo’s on College Avenue. Singing Van Morrison inside the warehouse in the flats. Polka dancing at the 1st Annual Otto Grunsky Bike Race. The Lascivious Ball  in Hyde Park. The Athens sound with R.E.M. and Dixie Chicks. Rockabilly in the Ramada Lounge. Kumas formerly known as the Woodside. Grass Roots.The Rongo.

Madison is still on the bucket list for rooftop rocking. Future August adventure sweating to the oldies?

Sam and I rarely danced. I desperately wanted him to dance me to the end of time. Please, lead. In tempo to the dance of our lives, I expected him to lead.

I could not follow his final steps.

Guilt. I could not follow him by ending my life when he ended his. I never imagined I could go on without him. It’s more than three years and I still can’t fathom one more day without Sam. It happens anyway.

Shame. Why did he do this and leave the stigma on me? Everyone thinks I must be the reason why. No one knows our intimacies or the sexual longings I can hardly control. He’d left me after one of the most passionate and peaceful nights we’d ever spent together. I wanted to be with him.

But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t actualize my suicidal ideations.  I had no reason to continue living without Sam. I lost everything. He defined me.  I desperately wanted to merge my soul with his. Joining him on the other side proved particularly seductive. But I couldn’t self-inflict pain. I sought pain relief.  Sam’s death ripped us physically apart and the open wounds left me very much alive and suffering. How I envied him the restful peace of eternal sleep.

Dancing to the end of time. I dance with Sam in my dreams. I close my eyes and whirl around, snap my fingers, shake my hips. He won’t dance, but he’ll watch. Then grab me around the waist and pull me close as we laugh and he whispers loudly in my ear that he loves me. The wondrous sensation of his passion fills my dream life. When I awake crying, only his dogs lie beside me. Their groans sorrowful.

I dance through the Spruce, Red and White Pine, Ash and Beech trees in the Shindagin Hollow Forest. Warm enough to rain instead of more snow. The dogs and I march into the night and greet the darkness and solitude. The only music here plays in my mind.

Dance me to the end of time.

Wheelies on ice.

Having learned to drive in Appleton, Wisconsin, I am a back-roads follow-the-plow kind of driver. Living now high on top of Buffalo Hill past the drifting areas across Snow farm, I navigate the eastern hills of Ithaca just fine. My mom really taught me the art of driving in this kind of weather.

The winter of 1975 had been wicked for high winds, icy patches on the road, white-out driving conditions. My mother’s white knuckled fears of me behind the wheel with my learner’s permit landed us in the school parking lot, just across the field from our driveway. I’d backed out of the garage without denting Dad’s mint green Lincoln Continental just fine.

Mom grew up on Lake of the Woods, Minnesota, where there are only three months a year that aren’t winter. So driving a car meant navigating winter road conditions. Some of her relation and some of our Appleton neighbors took to driving their cars out onto frozen lakes and rivers for ice fishing. Scared at the prospects of the family car in my adolescent hands, she suggested we practice in the ice-covered parking lot at school. Good idea.

Back then Driver’s Education was a mandated part of the state curriculum for public high schools and we had a driving course that included in-class instruction (lots of scary filmstrips about car crashes) and on-the-road supervised instruction. Three students and the teacher got into a Chevette equipped with both student and teacher foot and hand pedals. Each of us got a chance to drive through the obstacle course of plastic orange cones and practice parking and other maneuvers required to pass the state driver’s test. I knew I could do this. The in-class assignments were easy and I could pass the multiple choice test in my sleep.

Practical application in my parents’ car? An entirely different matter. Very little in the eye-hand coordination department, I had my mother worried about what would happen should I ever encounter any real slick ice; like every time I drove in winter. So I agreed with her for once and pulled into the parking lot at Appleton East High School and came to a stop with her in the passenger seat.

“Floor it. Give it everything you got.” Mom told me. She looked wild with fear. “Let’s do it. I want you to try to do a donut.” I knew what she meant. Really? You’re scaring me, mom. I floored it. Wheeeee. We both screamed and laughed as the heavy boat of this low-riding vehicle took off and the steering wheel spun of its own accord as my mittened hands lost control and let go. Peeling out at full throttle, I gave that Lincoln a gunning on the accelerator pedal and didn’t step off until we’d done a full 360.

“Do it again!” Mom seemed thrilled. My heart pounded in terror. This was scarier than learning how to skate on ice. “Come on. Do it again and when I say stop, put on the brakes.” I knew she was crazy.

I started slower this time and built up the speed across the diagonal of  the empty parking lot and then hit a patch of ice and let the car spin, again and again until it came to a stop on its own.

“Turn into it,” mom said. That seemed the opposite of what I’d been inclined to do if I could have done anything. “Turn the direction your wheels go until you catch control and then correct. Your tires will grab the road. You’ll feel it.” I wasn’t so sure. It felt reckless. “Do a donut again. You can do it.”

I looked around that open empty icy parking lot and the snow banks and the clear blue sky. I realized the worst that could happen here is I could spin out of control and hit a snowbank. She let me feel the power of 2,000 lbs of steel in my hands on a steering wheel I couldn’t manage on ice. And I felt how out of control skidding and sliding on ice presented itself as an experience. She helped it become familiar and real. To face this fear and work it through before such situations would arise every winter.

So as another winter storm crosses into Missouri with twenty inches of snow, I sit upon Buffalo Hill and contemplate the family stories. Skating on thin ice as both my mom and dad take up a honeymoon suite in room 405 at the Cox Medical Center in Branson tonight. Dad recovering quickly from pneumonia. Mom not so quickly recovering from everything as they sit out the storm and keep their kind nurses entertained with our family stories. Nobody should get in a car during this storm. We weather it by phone.

I try to turn into this. My dashboard to daily life spins out of control on this icy patch. Will I catch myself from falling? Will catching myself twist something worse? Do I fall into the snow and relax as I leave a snow angel imprint? Get traction, my tires grip the road to weary, and I resist the worst.

“What could you do in Branson?” my mother asked me. I knew the answer. Bingo palaces. Senior shuffle board? I couldn’t even apparently get there except by the most circuitous routes from Ithaca by air and it’s a 17.5 hour drive according to Google Maps. And I’m a loud mouthed New Yorker daughter who will piss off their nice doctors, nurses, therapists and caregivers they’ve come to know and love in the past two weeks. I got the picture. I’d only make matters worse.

“I love you,” dad said when he hung up tonight. He’d thought his roomie would want to talk with me but mom was having some kind of therapy and unable to talk; tomorrow. Call tomorrow.

“If only you knew how much I loved you,” mom said when she got the fresh cut flowers in her room last Friday. Like I had no idea. Sometimes too much. I knew the chaplain had been in her room just before I talked with her. I’d called during his visit and she asked me to phone back. When I did, she felt certain she’d soon be released, they could enjoy a few warm days and then drive home to Minnesota. Enough with the vacation already.

It’s wheelies on ice. Treacherous terrain. Caution. Prudence. All that stuff my mom tried to teach me. Face the fear. When things are out of your control, go into it instead of fighting against it. Burn rubber on ice.