Tag: memories (page 5 of 6)

Things Chuck Remembers

May 23, 2011 / 85 Comments

Transmissions From Baby-Town

“I think something is happening,” my wife says.

She says this to wake me. At 1:30 in the morning.

The lights go on. Fan, off.

I don’t know what’s happening. Something. That’s what she said. Something is happening. Could be anything, I think. Leaky roof. UFO on our front lawn. Goblin invasion. Everything and anything.

“I think my water broke,” she says.

Oh. Oh.

She asserts that she has not peed herself. Which is always good news in any situation. I do this spot-check periodically in my day-to-day. “Did I pee myself? Mmm. Nope. Score!”

We call the doctor. They say to keep an eye on it. We keep an eye on it. The water, it keeps on coming.

Along with it: the mucus plug. Which has another name: “the bloody show.”

We have no idea how apropos that will be.

* * *

The wife, she puts on makeup before we go. I pack some bags, get stuff together: camera, chargers, reading material. Just in case, we think. We know this is not real. This is not really the something that’s happening. It’s two weeks early. And besides, conventional wisdom says: new moms have kids late. Everybody’s told us that. She just saw the Obi-Gyn Kenobi the day before and, in his words, “There’s no way this baby is coming early.” Except he must have — oh, just for a goof — put a small thermal detonator against her internal membranes, a detonator that went pop around midnight, because why else would her water have broken?

Thermal detonator, shmermal shmetonator. Baby’s not coming today.

We go to the hospital at 5:00 AM knowing full well that they’re going to send us home.

* * *

They do not send us home.

In fact, they inform us quite frankly: we’re having this baby sometime in the next 24 hours.

*blink, blink*

We’re in a little room. So small that the nurse is entering our information into a laptop, but her chair is a medical waste bin. Doctors and residents come in and out. The one doctor says, she’s not that dilated. And she’s not even having contractions. They say, “we’re going to get you started on pitocin.” We say, hold up. We’ve heard about that. If we need it, we want it, but we’re not sure we need it yet. We don’t want to get on the drug train, not so fast. The wife, well, shit, she’s gone nine months without a sip of wine or a single goddamn Tylenol. She’s not ready to start guzzling drugs at the finish line.

They say we shouldn’t wait. “Infection,” they say. We say, “Yeah, but we have 24 hours to deliver before that’s a huge concern.” We want to wait. And we’d like to get her up, walk around, use a birthing ball. “No,” they say. “The doctor doesn’t want you doing that.”

Then they leave us. Emergency C-Section down the hall. The room is quiet but for the sound of our child’s heartbeat out of the monitor, rising and falling, and with every rise (and with every fall), I worry: is that too fast? Too slow? Where is everybody? Am I ready to be a father? Did I pee myself?

* * *

The contractions hit. They are small and lazy, like warm bay waters lapping up on a pebbled shore.

* * *

By the time we are again attended to, it’s a shift change. Like clouds parting and a priapic ray of sun thrusting through. The new doctor says we can get up, move around, see if we can’t move this baby-bullet into the cylinder naturally. No problem waiting on the pitocin.

We do laps. Wife bounces on the birthing ball (which is not, contrary to its name, a robotic sphere that vacuums the baby out of your hoo-ha, like you might find in Star Wars). She does squat thrusts and lunges.

Doc comes in. “Doctor Black.” Sounds menacing, like some CIA operative, but she’s bubbly, warm, young, petite. She does another cervical check, which means she basically goes elbow-deep and flicks my wife’s tonsils with her thumb. Still only 1cm dialated. Contractions are still tame, like mild salsa.

Wife is weathering them nicely.

“Want the Pit?” she asks. A nickname for pitocin. Not a nice nickname.

“Two more hours?” we ask.

Two more hours.

* * *

Two more hours.

Another “oops, I lost my wristwatch in your lung cavity” cervical check.

A big ol’ change of zip, nada, zilch, pbbbt, *poop noise.*

Still 1 cm dilated.

It’s time to enter the Pit.

* * *

Pitocin. Synthetic hormone. Takes the volume knob on contractions, cranks the knob, then breaks the knob off and stabs the mother-to-be in the eyes with it.

It’s still quiet for a little while. Not much to do. We watch episodes of The Dog Whisperer. I tweet. Some people chastise me for tweeting, as if I should be doing something else. Early labor is dull as watching the IV drip. I rub feet, I get ice chips, but it’s not like every minute is a circus. Not yet.

But then the real contractions hit. The waves just got bigger. These are Oahu pipes. Surfer’s paradise.

Crashing hard against the rocks.

* * *

The wife says, “No epidurals.”

She tells everybody this. I say okay. I say it’s also okay if she wants to change her mind on that, but for now, it’s understood that my job is to help her cleave to her vision. Her birth plan.

With each contraction, she goes to her Zen place. Breathes in, breathes out. Nose, mouth, nose, mouth.

She bobs with the tides.

* * *

It’s only a few hours later that the Doc comes in, uses the wife’s cervix as a wristwatch, and informs us (to her surprise): it’s working. The wife is now at 5cm. And something is “effaced.” Dignity? Peace and quiet? Certainty? I dunno. Whatever it is, it’s gone. Or going away fast.

What’s not going away are these contractions. Now the waves are tall. Pier-breakers. Dock-collapsers. Each hitting like a fist. With each, the wife grabs the rails of the bed, holds on like she’s on a ride.

But not a happy ride. This, like a log flume through fire and bees.

I rub the small of her back with a blue plastic dolphin back massager. Not a sexual device — it’s actually shaped like a dolphin. An unyielding dolphin whose fins turn muscle to dough.

The Dog Whisperer episodes continue as the pain amps up.

* * *

Every time the nurse comes in, when nobody’s looking, she gives a little switch by the pitocin IV a flick. She’s upping the dose. This stuff is like the anti-morphine. It doesn’t steal your pain. It gives it as a gift.

* * *

It’s a tag team effort, now. Me on the small of her back. Her mother rubs her upper back or shoulders. Her aunt monitors the fan. Sometimes I pocket the dolphin, hop over and give her some orange snow-cone.

That’s a mystery to me. No food or drink. Except she can have ice chips or a flavored snow-cone. When a snow-cone melts, it becomes a drink. Because ice is — as it turns out — just liquid, frozen.

And yet, no foods, no liquids.

That Gatorade I’m drinking? She can’t have it. But she can have a cup of melted orange flavor water.

“You cannot have this thimble of water, but you can have this thimble-shaped ice cube.”

Damn you and your mad logic, horse-spittle. Damn you.

* * *

The contractions are punching her in the back now. We’re afraid it’s “back labor,” where the baby is head down but facing the the more difficult way. (Curiously, it’s not.)

Her whole body twists with each tsunami crash. She’s like a sailor on that boat in that movie, except here there’s no George Clooney. He was sort of a dick in that movie anyway.

The whole time, though, she’s polite. She doesn’t yell out. No cursing. She’s nice to me the whole time even though I can do little more except stand over her juggling Snow-Cone and dolphin massages. It gets so she can barely speak: her words are breathless rasps, and even the effort it takes to make them is hard-fought. She sleeps between contractions. And the contractions are coming hard and fast now. Every minute, a new shelf of snow tumbling upon her.

“Bowel-twisting.” That’s how she refers to them. Like a kinked up yard of gutty-works that undoes itself after a minute, maybe a minute-and-a-half. But the twisting comes faster and faster.

They check her again, just an hour and a half later. She’s now 7cm.

* * *

She maybe wants the epidural. She doesn’t know. It’s hard to tell. She’s so tired. And it hurts. It hurts like a sonofabitch. Mean invisible hands twisting her guts and stealing her strength. Incubus hands.

It’s not that she thinks the epidural is the demon’s seed or anything. It’s not going to turn a good child bad. But it’s also not ideal. The baby might come out a little groggy. Maybe he won’t want to nurse. Could be that it’ll give him horns, or a tail. We know that the epidural can be nice and ease labor. Of course, pitocin is supposed to ramp up labor. You have an epidural, they might need to kick more pitocin. Which could lead to a longer labor overall. Or fetal distress. That train ends in a part of town called C-Section. (That morning, C-Sections all around us. A troubling warning sign.)

I tell her, give it 15 minutes. If you want a epidural then, you got it. If you don’t, then we go another 15 minutes. And on and on, in equal iterations. Agreed? She’s good with that.

We go 15 minutes. She says, “No epidural.” Not yet.

We don’t make it the next 15 minutes because next thing you know, she’s telling everybody she has this urge to push like she’s pooping, and that urge persists beyond the contractions.

They check. She’s 10cm dilated.

Shit just got real.

* * *

Ambrosia salad with a toupee on top of it. That’s the first glimpse I see of our son. That’s what he looks like coming out. An unformed deflated head that looks like gelatin. Gelatin covered in hair.

Birth is both a miracle and a misery. Like Buddha said, all life is suffering. He meant it in a good way. Or like in the Princess Bride: “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”

My wife is surrounded by a cheer squad of lunatics. Doctors in doctor garb, nurses, me, all cheering her on to push push push, bear down, push past it, keep going, breathe in, push, stop, relax, do it again. Everything is red faces and sweat and bright lights and lots of pain and yet despite that there’s this airy, eerie feeling of euphoria, this blissed-out top-of-the-rollercoaster sense of promise and possibility that hints at a secret truth, a truth that says that yes, indeed, all life is suffering, and that all the best things in that life require effort and pain and sometimes even misery to succeed.

Sometimes, it’s all about pushing past the ring of fire.

* * *

Nobody ever turned the TV off. It’s a special on Nat Geo about squid. Humboldt Squid.

I hear the phrase, “A thousand biting squid.”

And I think, maybe it’s time to turn the TV off.

* * *

Over the last nine months I’ve seen scads of videos of mothers birthing babies, and in every video is one moment I dread: the baby emerges, he’s purple, he’s blue, he flops over like a rubbery puppet whose strings just got snipped, and then they have to jostle him — only a second, maybe two — to get him to resurrect, a rebirth trapped in a birth. I’m not looking forward to this.

But a strange thing happens. His head pops out and he’s already looking around, his mouth moving. They corkscrew his body out on the next contraction and he’s red as a beet and dancing around and crying. No prompting. They give him an Apgar score of 10. They say they haven’t seen a score that high in a long while.

Then he’s with Mom. His crying quiets as he hears her voice.

* * *

I cut the cord. They don’t give me those kindergarten safety scissors I keep hearing about. These are small and sharp. Even so, it’s like cutting through calamari.

(“A thousand biting squid”)

* * *

They take him. Just for a few minutes. For the cord clamp, the measuring, the weighing, the warming.

I hover over him as they do all kinds of shit in the robotic embrace of a Robbie-the-Robot looking thing called a Panda Warmer. A tiny part of me cries out — No, that’s the wrong device! He’s not a panda! This insane robot is going to try to feed him bamboo! — but the fear is gone as they warm him up and prick his heel and squirt goop in his eyes and suck out some other goop from his face.

Then he’s back with Mom.

The wife looks to me and says, “No epidural.” She holds up her hand to high-five.

We high-five.

“Go Team Wendig,” I say.

And then, just like that — *snap* — we’re a family.

* * *

Benjamin Charles Wendig — aka “B-Dub,” or “The Little Dude” — is downstairs with Mom and Grandmom as I type this. Chilling out after the first feeding of the night. He’s cluster feeding, now, which means he likes to eat a lot in very short order. He’s like a shark the way he shakes his head and approaches the nipple. (“Boppy goes onto the bed. Wife goes into the Boppy. Baby’s on the bed. Our baby. Fairwell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies…” “We’re gonna need a bigger boob.”)

The kid’s got witch nails, so we have to cover his hands because he seems hell-bent to tear his own face off.

He’s got hair that’s equal parts black, brown, and blonde.

His skin is as soft as the toys you give babies.

Today he looks like a baby. Moreso than yesterday. Definitely moreso than the day before, when he looked like a angry little goblin man, a changeling who stole our original child.

We’re home now. He’s warm. And weird. He cries. He’s cute. Sometimes he makes these faces that looks like he’s on the edge of a smile. Other times he looks like Popeye. Or, perhaps, “Poop-Eye.”

He didn’t lose much of his birthweight, so he’s a good size — 7 lbs, 14 oz. Kid’s a rock star. And the brightest star in our constellation. And a hungry little sonofabitch.

He kinda looks like me.

Like I said, miracle and misery.

May 9, 2011 / 36 Comments

A Letter To My Womb-Ensconced Son

I figured that, while my son remains firmly lodged in the wife’s uterine grotto, this was a good time to write him a letter for when he’s born — especially since, when he’s born, I won’t have time to write this letter, I’ll only have time to wash the poop out of my hair. We are now just about at “full-term” (though we’re likely to have a handful of weeks remaining where he stubbornly hides out and refuses to emerge). So, here we are: a letter to my as-yet-unborn son. Please to enjoy.

Dear Son:

Hello, boy. Welcome to the world.

I am your ~~landlord overlord ski instructor~~ father. You will be seeing a lot of me, and so it behooves us both to find clarity in terms of our relationship. Do you agree? (Pee in my mouth once for yes, twice for no.)

I’d like immediately to express my sincerest apologies because, as it turns out, I am clueless as to how to be a father. I don’t just mean how to be a good father, but rather, how to be a father at all. One supposes that since the title is earned by dint of breeding and not necessarily by habit or by skill, I guess being a father is no more the sum of being a human piping tube whereupon I… erm, frosted your mother’s, uhhh, cupcakes and made a soft, spongy-headed cupcake baby like yourself (we’ll get into the specifics of sexual reproduction when you’re a little bit older, like, say, when you’re around 24 or so). That said, being a father is an entirely different enterprise then Being A Father, and it’s this latter identifier that gives me trouble.

Consider: I can barely take care of myself. If I did not have your mother present, one could make a safe bet that I’d be found on a ratty couch out in the woods, my hair a nest for nuthatches, my body encrusted in the debris and feces of nature. I’d be trying to play XBOX by plugging a controller into the puckered knothole on an oak tree. I’d be surviving on a diet of acorns and venison ordure, which is just a fancy of way of saying “deer poop.” (This is one skill I may be able to offer you, the skill of making things sound much better than they are. I am a writer, after all, or as your friends’ parents will call it, a “marginally-employed drunken vagrant.” We are also talented liars, and so you should expect that at least 33% of the things that come out of my mouth are utter bullshit, usually said in response to answer a question I have no idea how to answer. I will never lie to be malicious. Rather, I will lie to shellac over my ineptitude.)

The point being, I am a woefully clueless human being, and so you will come to me at times looking for answers, and because I’m kind of a dick, I’m going to pretend I have the answers rather than highlighting my own deep uncertainty. You’re going to ask things like, “Daddy, what are clouds?” or “Where do puppies come from?” or “How do I navigate the terrors of a solipsistic universe?” And, instead of being honest with you, I’m just going to make stuff up. “Clouds are unicorn farts,” I might say. “Puppies are made when human babies are stolen from their cribs and taken to the moon to be turned into werewolves.” “Because bees, that’s why.” I will pray that these answers satisfy you. Sorry if they don’t.

Actually, in thinking about it, there exists an unholy armada of things for which I should apologize.

Here they are, in no particular order.

One: I am terribly clumsy. It’s a good bet that I will drop you. So, wear a helmet.

Two: I have all the patience of an ant on a sugar rush. This, combined with my general lack of manly skills, will ensure that all your Some Assembly Required toys will in the future be put together by a liberal swaddling of duct tape and super-glue. In fact, it is safe to assume that all your toys will lie embedded in a big wad of tape with only meager hints of proper “toy shape.” This should explain your stroller, by the way.

Three: I cannot promise I’m going to be very good at assuaging your childhood fears. “Daddy, I think there’s a monster outside my window.” “Holy crap, I know, right? There’s monsters everywhere, kid. Did you see this image of the chupacabra I found on the Internet? That’s crazy, right? Not nearly as crazy as serial killers, though. Those dudes will sneak into your room and steal you away into the night so that they can use your bones to build their Scarecrow Gods. By the way, have I told you about skin cancer yet? Here, look at this mole. Does it look like skin cancer? It feels like skin cancer. I think I’m dying.”

Four: We live in a world where terrible things exist. Like, for instance, jeggings. Sorry about that.

Five: You’re going to find a lot of pressure exerted upon you to “be a man.” Nobody knows what being a man really involves except for the biological factor of likely owning and operating your own penis. Beyond that, it’s all a big hazy fog of nobody-really-knows. It isn’t about carpentry or karate, it isn’t about deer hunting or banging bar sluts. It might have something to do honor and loyalty and being a stand-up dude. It definitely has something to do with peeing in the snow while standing up. Like I said: hazy. Worry less about being a good man and worry more about being a good person.

Six: I’m probably going to make you watch a lot of Star Wars. But maybe not the prequels? I dunno. Do you really want to watch a movie that talks a lot about “trade federations?” Besides, the protagonist of the first three movies spoils the really cool reveal in Empire Strikes Back (if I recall, it has something to do with Bruce Willis being both alive and dead at the same time). Further, the protagonist of the prequels is a total douche. He ends up being a wife-abuser and a child-murderer, which puts him somewhere on par with Freddy Kruger from the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. So when the time comes where we’re supposed to believe that Darth Vader has some good in him, you’re suddenly all like, “Yeah, but that guy was a real asshole, and I’m suddenly having a hard time getting on board this whole ‘redemptive path’ thing — maybe Luke should’ve just lightsabered that guy in the head and washed his hands of the whole affair.” Plus, then Luke makes out with his sister? Wow, yeah, I dunno, maybe we’re not going to watch Star Wars after all. Too complex. Here, read some James Joyce instead.

Seven: No, really, I’m going to make you read James Joyce.

I’m sure I’ll find other things for which to apologize. Keep an eye out.

All that being said, this feels like a good time to let you know of my Blueprint For Fatherhood, which is to say, the designs I have for you, my son. Some parents have great, often vicarious aspirations for their children: “He shall be a doctor.” “He will be a powerful litigator.” “He will marry a woman with good breeding hips and a kick-ass dowry.”

My aspirations are admittedly meager in comparison.

These are my aspirations for you.

First, that you are not eaten by squirrels. I figure that, as a father, my first task is to keep small woodland creatures from trying to eat you. They will constantly be trying to eat you. I am the thin bearded line between life and death by squirrel-nibblings.

Second, that you grow up and become a functional human being who can exist amongst others without pooping up the metaphorical hot tub that is our society.

Third, that you are not a drug addict. Or a Republican.

I’m just kidding. You can be a drug addict and we’ll still love you.

Fourth, that you love books. And also, that you love stories in general.

Fifth, that you become a famous anthropologist, just because it’d be really cool for me to tell other parents, “That’s my son, the famous anthropologist.” To be clear, I might tell them this anyway. So, you don’t actually have to become a famous anthropologist. In fact, we might just make that your first name. “Ladies and Gentlemen, Famous Anthropologist Wendig.” Nickname: Famanthro.

Sixth, that you’re not a jerk. The world is home to too many jerks.

Seventh, that regardless of all of the above, you’re a healthy and happy little human. Or, if you don’t end up being human, that you’re a happy and healthy robot, Sasquatch, demigod, or dryad.

Oh, and eighth, that you don’t end up being a writer. Because those guys are fucking crazy.

To recap:

I don’t know what I’m doing, I will lie to you, but I will protect you from squirrels.

In return, you will be a famous anthropologist who reads books and isn’t a jerk.

One day I hope that you look back upon this letter and realize that, despite the face of confidence I put forth, I actually don’t know anything about anything and that it’s okay that you don’t necessarily know anything about anything either, especially when the time comes to have a child of your own. I also hope you think back to those first moments, days, even years of your life, and this letter helps to explain the competing looks upon my face of Pants-Shitting Terror and Blissful Wonderment. Because I must say, I am eagerly looking forward to meeting you, my son, even though your first instinct will probably be to poop in my hair. In fact, that will probably also be your instinct through much of your life, especially when you become a dread teenager. It’s okay. You can poop in my hair and laugh about it. It’s part of our contract, I suppose.

I expect to meet you soon. Likely in the next month or so. Even though I do not yet know you, you are my emergent progeny, my heir to der Wendighaus, my cherubic spawn.

I love you, son.

Peace in the Middle East.

Love,

Your Father

P.S. If you happen to be a girl, that’s okay, too, though you might have some explaining to do in regards to the so-called “turtle shot.” What was that thing, then? The Loch Ness Monster? Regardless, your nickname will still be Famanthro, so don’t think you’re wiggling out of that.

P.P.S. Your mother is awesome. We’ll defer to her judgment in times of confusion.

May 4, 2011 / 13 Comments

WWYD: “What Would Yaga Do?”

I think I’m supposed to be using my bloggery-space today to talk about the death of Osama bin Laden. Eh. Nah. You’ve already heard it all and the great thing is that we live in a country where we’re all allowed to express whatever it is we think, be it triumph or bloodthirst or outrage or fear. For my perspective, I was raised in a house where a kind of frontier justice was the order of the day, so do with that as you will. Even still, today’s post then perhaps comes at a good time, where I decide to turn my old dog’s blissfully ignorant ways into a brand spanking new religious path. Please to enjoy.

The old religions just ain’t cutting it no more. And so I like to let my brain visit the territory of “new religions,” coming up with spiritual paths that have not yet before been seen, imagined, or followed. It’s like, I’ll run into the living room and I’ll yell to my wife: “Tacos! What about a religion based on tacos? It could be, I dunno, Tacoism, or, The Church of Fuck Yeah, Tacos. What do you think? We could write the holy book on a flour tortilla, the words written with grill marks!” And at that point she looks at me like the lunatic I am, and I run off to…well, probably chase moths or gum a light-switch if I know me.

And boy, do I know me.

This time, however, the idea for a religion was not mine, but rather, hers.

We were in the car a day or two after putting our old shepherd, Yaga, to sleep, and we were reminiscing: how she’d chase him around the living room, how he’d eat great muzzle-fuls of snow, how he’d lay under the table and get up suddenly and whack his head on the table without giving a shit. We joked, even with tears in our eyes, about how even though he was gone he’d never be gone because we will endlessly find piles of his hair in untold corners — they’ll blow in like tumbleweeds, a fuzzy reminder of the dog we had, the dog we loved. I even said, hey, if we really wanted, we could just collect some of that dog fur and tape it all together, then stick on a pair of googly eyes and we could have another Yaga — if not a doppelganger, then at least some kind of hairy idol, a graven image of the old beast.

Mostly, though, the talk orbited what a good, sweet, and dopey dog he was.

It was then that she said, “We should aspire to be more like him. Instead of What Would Jesus Do, it could be WWYD, What Would Yaga Do?” It seemed like a good idea. Our modern lives are filled with a number of woes and stresses that are largely manufactured for no other reason than to fill spaces: whether it’s getting angry in traffic or feeling self-conscious about X, Y or Z, we all have our own self-spun stressors.

So, I thought, hell with it. Let’s do it. Let’s print that shit. Let’s get a gospel together and throw together some tenets and — boo-bam — we have ourselves a religion. I always say that those we love gain immortality through our memories, right? Why not take it one step further and make a whole damn religion? That requires, though, that I come up with some precepts based on WWYD, and here they be.

Yagaism. The Gospel According To Goofball. WWYD?

Ignorance Is Truly Bliss

Yaga wasn’t dumb, though you’d think it, sometimes. He’d have this look on his face like… “What? Is something happening? Where am I?” Hell, other times you wouldn’t even glean a confused internal monologue: instead in that stare you’d hear crickets chirping, brooks babbling, a breeze shaking a field of wildflowers. But he wasn’t dumb. He figured things out all the time: doors, baby-gates, how to steal food when nobody was looking.

Instead, I prefer to think of him as blissfully unaware. Life was just easier when he could sit there and pant and stare. Doubly true when allowed to do so outside a car window.

The lesson: sometimes it’s good to turn your brain off. Shut that shit down. Take some time and tune out the noise: the news, social media, work, your nagging inner monologues.

Become the cricket chirp, the brook babble, the wind-in-the-wildflowers.

Pain Is Fleeting

At some point, Yaga must’ve gone from cat to cat and stolen their many lives. He was a stone’s throw from immortal, that dog. Rat poison, chocolate, onions, elk attack, Lyme disease, cancer of the paw, falling down steps, a ride in a cop car. And none of that speaks to the daily indiscretions of Yaga thunking his head on something. He’d stand up or look around and — bam — nail his head into the corner of a TV stand or the underside of a coffee table.

It never fazed him. Even the rat poison. (Not that I recommend feeding your dogs rat poison, mind you. He learned how to open a cabinet and ate a whole box of D-Con. See? He was smart. But also: ignorant.)

The lesson: Do not let pain and indignity affect you. Let it roll off you.

Endure the head-whacks, the elk-attacks, the bellies full of rat-killer.

Sometimes, You Just Gotta Stop And Sniff Some Asses

Asses and crotches, actually. I was told that he was a mix between a Belgian Shepherd and a Chow-Chow, but you ask me, he was a hybrid designer pooch born of a certified Crotch-Hound and Ass-Terrier. Come to think of it, he also had a fondness for smelling the pee-spots of other pups, wherein he was clearly deciphering some secret message left behind by the Subversive Canine Network. I guess that means he was at least 33% German Piss-hund (aka “The Urine Spaniel”), right? Yeah. Point is, he always took time out of his day to suck in a stubborn noseful of urine, crotch, or dog butt.

The lesson: Take some time out of your day to enjoy the little pleasures.

Inhale the sacred pee-fumes, crotch-vapors, and nether-scents.

When In Doubt, Pee On It

Speaking of pee, Yaga frequently contributed his own “golden messages” to the world. Tree? Lawn chair? Shrub? Small child? He’d pee on it. You give him half a chance, he’d pee on the little dog, too — she’d be squatting down and he’d figure, “I’ll add my own secret message to the puddle!” except the only problem was, he was so eager, he’d start up before she was even finished, forcing her to dart out of the way of his incoming stream. Let’s just be thankful she was quick on her feet, yeah?

The lesson: One of two, choose your own.

Either, “Mark your territory and own what’s yours,” or, “Reality is determined by those things upon which you can urinate; if you cannot cast your urine upon it, then it does not exist.”

Behold the golden truth, the gleaming stream, the pee-pee dance of leg-lifting enlightenment.

Life Is Too Short To Poop In One Place

I just can’t stop talking about one’s bodily waste, can I? Well, this is terribleminds, after all. Hey, shut up, it’s relevant. See, Yaga was not a conventional pooper. Your normal dog, well, he’ll find that one magic place to poop and there shall he deposit his little contribution. Yaga, on the other hand, was not content to merely sit still. He walked when he pooped. That’s right. He did what you might term “The Dooky Shuffle,” or, as we sometimes called it, “The Circle of Love.” He’d poop and be all like, “Hey, I want to smell that flower over there,” and so he’d shimmy his way over toward the aforementioned flower, dropping the equivalent of an upended can of syrupy yams as he went. He did this all his life.

The lesson: Life is short so be like the shark (or Snow Shark) — poop forward, or drown. Embrace life and never stop moving. Put differently: don’t let your shit weigh your down.

Unfetter yourself of spatial anchors, heavy weights, needless waste.

Unconditional Love Will Get You Through The Day

Yaga was a beast made of love (and, well, 80 pounds of black, wispy hair that had the ability to choke even the most stalwart of vacuums). He loved anyone and everyone without fear, without condition. A serial killer could kick down the door wearing the skins of our neighbors and Yaga would greet him like that serial killer was a lost uncle deserving of only hand-licks and crotch-nuzzles. I’m sure many found Yaga’s unhindered love unsettling — our other dog, the Taco Terrier, is far more like us as humans. She’s distrustful and uncertain. You come at her with a free hand she’ll wonder what you plan to do with that hand. Something sinister? Probably. Thus it is deserving of scorn.

Yaga had no scorn. Hell, the little dog would sometimes bite his face and he was totally okay with that. Tail wagging even as she clamped down on his slobbery jowl. Because, y’know, man. Love. Sweet love.

The lesson: Love beyond the margins. Love unconditionally. Find trust. Don’t be so pissed off and suspicious all the time. Bliss out. Radiate dopey-faced happy-making kindness.

Exude love despite the facey-bitings, the interlopers, the heaps and mounds of cynicism and distrust.

The Best Thing You Can Do Is Be Near To The Ones You Love

Yaga’s number one goal in life: to be near to those he cared about. He was a Velcro Dog through and through. Wherever you were, well, that’s where he wanted to be. You feel bad now because, at the time, it feels annoying. “Hey, do you mind not being up my ass? I’m trying to do laundry.” “I love you.” “I know you love me, but I need to move and not trip and die.” “I love you so much.” “Fine, yes, I love you too.” “Okay.” He was the canine version of a six-shooter or colostomy bag: forever at your hip.

It was, I suspect, his greatest pleasure. He’d sleep by our door at night. He’d hew close if outside. You move from one room to the next, even in his last days, he’d slowly rouse his numb haunches and follow you.

The lesson: The ones you love and who love you in return are the ones who count.

Become Velcro, duct tape, and super-glue when love is on the line.

WWYD?

Some dude cuts you off in traffic? Ask yourself: WWYD? What Would Yaga Do? He’d love that guy unconditionally. Or pee on his car.

Lose your job? Smash your toe on a house robot? Suffer a breakup? WWYD, motherfucker. He’d ignore the pain. He’d pretend everything was all good. No questions asked, buddy.

Not sure where to go? What to do? Confused? Dub-Dub-Why-Dee. Yaga wouldn’t think twice. He’d just void his bowels and keep on trucking. Long as he’s near the ones he loves, it’ll all work out in the end.

All hail the mighty slack-jawed tongue-wagging prophet.

All hail, Priests of Yagaism.

All sing the hymn of the question, What Would Yaga Do?

Amen, so say we all, and woof-woof.

April 29, 2011 / 59 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: “A Good Dog”

I’ll warn you in advance that the post below is going to get all sappy and mushy and sad and for all I know it’s going to be hard to read because three hours ago we took my dog, who I’ve had for all 13 of his goofy insane years, to be put to sleep. Still, it’s Friday, and I think that storytelling offers us great power in terms of… well, if not understanding emotion, then at least sorting through it and getting a picture of how big it is and what it means. I hesitate to call writing “therapy” because, it certainly doesn’t ever need to be, but it can be, it can be a place where you take what’s going on in your head and your heart and dump it all out like a big shoebox of LEGO bricks. Then you build. And dismantle. And build some more.

So, if you want to read all the stuff below, go for it. If you’re here only for the flash challenge, then the challenge is this: I want you to write about a good dog. It can be any kind of story you want, but a good dog should be present somewhere in the tale (“tail”). Adhere to those three words (“a good dog”) and you’re good to go. A thousand words, if you please. One week to do it (by Friday, May 6th).

Think of this as a many-author tribute to my dog, your dog, and dogs in general.

EDIT: If you want a different (and lighter) flash fiction challenge, I’m hosting a challenge over at Flash Fiction Friday blog featuring the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, so click over and check that out. And, Dan O’Shea is running a Tornado Relief Challenge (“Have You Ever Seen The Rain?”). Onto the rest of the post.

…

Last night, my wife dreamed we had to take Yaga to the vet. A prescient vision, it seems.

I woke up on this bright-but-rainy morning and found our Belgian shepherd sleeping in my office, which was… odd, because normally he sleeps in the hall right by our door. Even though his hips were wobbly as a stack of teacups, every night he’d still struggle his way up the steps and sleep by our door while we dreamed. We tried to block him from doing this, but those with shepherd dogs know you don’t separate the shepherd from his flock. He’d bark all night. He’d manage to knock over baby gates that even I couldn’t knock down easily. He’d always find a way. But, again, he’d sleep by the door. Never once in my office.

So, I thought that was strange, but… hey, he’s old, and dogs are weird.

But then I smelled something. Smelled like he’d gone to the bathroom which wasn’t unusual in these last weeks — he’s had a few messes, for which we procured the mightiest cleaning tool in our arsenal, the SpotBot (which itself looks like a small terrier-vacuum hybrid). I went downstairs and didn’t see anything. I came back up, still smelled it.

His tail was wagging, but he wasn’t getting up.

Then I saw. He’d gone to the bathroom where he lay. (Take of this what you will, but we’d put a few tax-related documents on the floor by the closet to be filed, and he went to the bathroom all over the tax papers. I guess he did what we all feel like doing once in a while.) I tried to get him to stand but he couldn’t. Or wouldn’t. His breathing was real shallow and he wasn’t even lifting his head much. The old boy had cancer and hip dysplasia, so I already knew his days were subject to grim accounting, and at that moment I realized that today was it for him.

It took the air right out of me, that realization. You think, “Oh, god, this is it, isn’t it? This is the day I say goodbye to a constant companion, a bearer of unconditional love, a buddy, a family member, a good dog.”

So we started calling around. Vet didn’t open for a few hours but we had some emergency numbers and thought, okay, we’ve got farms around so clearly they can send vets out to euthanize at the house. You get a horse or a bull who gets sick you don’t load him up into your pickup — the vet comes to you. But no, nobody would come out. Then you think, and it’s a horrible thought but, “Maybe I can do it.” Right? That’s how we did it on the farm. Dog got sick, Dad shot the dog. And I’m thinking, okay, I can’t shoot my own dog. I don’t have the stones for that. But crazy shit goes through your head. “Okay, I can… suffocate him with my hands. No. A bag? Maybe if I scare him, he’ll just… die. Or what if I convince him? Like, I’ll whisper in his ear, I’ll coax him to sleep, and he’ll just drift off like an angel leaning back on a comfy cloud.”

Like I said, crazy thoughts.

We knew what we had to do and where we had to go, and the big thing was getting him downstairs. He’d lost a good bit of weight but he was still 70+ pounds, and I knew that me carrying him downstairs would either a) fuck up my back or b) suffocate him since it was hard for him to draw breath already. And I sure didn’t want to drop him down the steps. The wife — who has so far kept me sane today — had a great idea which was, shower curtains. We slid two shower curtains underneath him, forming a kind of gurney for him. We pinched the ends closed and were able to get him downstairs.

He was… in and out of his oblivious kind of bliss, sometimes panting with bright-eyes and a floppy tongue, other times just sort of laying there with fast shallow breaths. Before we brought him down the wife had the idea to give him some ice, and we did that, which seemed to make him happy. He didn’t want any treats, though, refusing them. Still wouldn’t get up. Still couldn’t lift his head.

And then came this moment: his eyes rolled back in his head, and he seized up. Legs curling in. And he hitched a few times and I yelled for Michelle and I thought, okay, here it is. He’s dying. He’s dying right in front of our eyes and all we can do is be with him. And it called back to when I saw my father die because that’s how it happened there, too — he was sitting down and my uncle called for me and we were on either side of him and he just… died. And a part of me thought, “Shit, this is horrible to see and I don’t want him to suffer but this is good that it’s happening with us here and at home and…”

Then his eyes shot open, he gagged, and puked.

And then his body unclenched and his tail thumped a few times — like, “Whew, just had to do that, sorry!” — and he was slightly refreshed.

Still couldn’t get him to stand, but he was lifting his head more. And again the wife with the good idea, who sent me to the fridge to get last night’s leftover grilled chicken. He hadn’t been eating treats, but fuck, it’s grilled chicken, right? Not some bullshit Snausage made from, I dunno, polyurethane and squirrel bones. So I fed him a piece of chicken and he took it happily. Went and got more chicken, washed it, brought it to him. Again, he ate it all, relishing every bite.

It’s at this point we decided to try to get the littler dog, our chihuahua-terrier mix to, I dunno, give a shit. She has all the empathy of a tin bucket sometimes, or maybe she just didn’t know what’s going on — but those sad and precious stories of one dog lamenting another’s loss did not manifest itself so easily on this day. I had to coax her over with chicken so she’d kind of hang out near Yaga, but I don’t know that the situation really presented itself.

Then, the rain stopped and the morning cleared. The sky brightened with the sun so we moved the old dog outside and lay him on the front walkway and sat there for a while, petting him, giving him ice. Trying to shoo the ants away who apparently thought, “He’s old and slow, we can eat him!” Stupid creatures, ants.

Half-past the hour came and it was time to go. We put him in the car and he seemed happy, like, actually happy. I was pleased to have cultivated in him a love of riding in cars and even a love of going to the vet. (You know how most dogs hate getting on that metal scale? He thought it was some kind of ride.) (I’ll also note here I keep writing about him in the present tense and it’s killing me that I have to keep correcting myself and write about him in the past tense, I don’t even know why I’m writing about this right now except I just… I dunno, want to talk about it, want to write about it, is that fucked up? It’s a good thing you can’t see me right now, I look like a goddamn glazed donut.) Anyway. Him going on that last ride in the car was therefore not a fearful trip. Nor did he see the vet as anything but a beneficent place where occasionally a nice man would stick a cold thermometer up his pooper.

On the way over, 30 seconds into the drive the sun beat a hasty retreat and a few fat rain drops started to fall. Then, another two minutes into the trip, the heavens opened. It was apocalyptic, I haven’t driven in rain like that in years. Couldn’t see. Sounded like we were being hit by ball bearings. (We did not know this at the time, but we were under Tornado Warnings, which is very odd for this area. In our first house the wife and I rented, a tornado came along and sideswept our landlord’s house right next door, and twisted up a bunch of trees out back like corkscrews.) More crazy thoughts went through my head: for one, you think, okay, this is a sign, I’m not supposed to do this. I should just turn around and head home and when I open the door he’ll leap out of the car, reinvigorated as a young lamb, and all will be well. But then you think, okay, that’s nuts, but what’s totally not nuts is just how horribly perfect the weather is syncing up with the day, which further leads you to believe, okay, I’m actually the protagonist in this movie and everybody else is a weird simulacrum and this solipsistic imagining must be true because of how elegantly it all dovetails.

Whatever.

We get there and it’s just — you know, it’s morose city, we’re like, the mood-killers. Everybody in the vet’s office knows why you’re there. Everything collapses in these little awkward moments: an old couple at the “you need to pay us” counter won’t look you in the eye, a young woman brings in her big dog and she tries to keep him from you like maybe the dog might catch some kind of communicable sadness, the woman behind the counter has a piss-poor bedside manner but so help me god she’s trying but she can’t help but ask if we want to go ahead and pay for this now, upfront, before we’re reduced to a blubbering jelly-like mess (“And do you want a group cremation or a private cremation?”), and you see the one attendant sneak over and steal away a box of tissues and take it into a room and you think, “Shit, I know what’s going to happen in that room, don’t I? I know who those tissues are for, too.”

The vet techs came out and helped get Yaga onto a gurney. He still seemed happy. Confused, but happy. A little brighter. Still wasn’t getting up. The one vet tech, a guy, kept calling Yaga “honey” and “sweetie,” and I knew right then what was happening — our boy dog was once more mistaken for a girl. Even at the end, a beautiful lady, was he. They wheeled him in.

Took him into the room where the tissues already waited. They lowered him down on a pile of colorful Christmassy blankets. Covered half of him with a sheet and told him we had as much time as we wanted. We petted him for a while. I’d brought ice from the car, so we gave him some more of that. The doc came in, told us what to expect — he’s a very awkward, curt vet, and you can tell he really wants to be sympathetic but that it doesn’t come precisely natural to him, but he’s still as nice as he can muster. He explained that they were going to give Yaga an overdose of anesthesia, and that when he died we could expect him to spasm even after death. Then he said something that set off klaxons in my head: “Oh, he’s not breathing as heavily as I would’ve figured,” and then suddenly I’m like, holy crap, let’s hit the brakes, maybe the dog’s okay? I even asked, well, maybe it’s just his hip? But the doc pointed out that the dog has lung cancer, and it’s bad, and hip or no hip this ride only goes in one direction — you can’t stop it, you can only slow it, and at this point, so you really want to slow it just to engage deeper suffering? Still, you think, “Jesus, this dog’s been through so much, through elk attacks and Lyme disease and a whole belly full of rat poison and maybe he can escape death one more time, maybe he’s some kind of immortal beast, some pup from Cerberus’ litter,” but that’s insane, it’s not true, that while legendary he’s not immortal, and that to stall this or halt this is for me more than it’s for him and do I really want this suffering to tumble endlessly forward?

I don’t. I didn’t. So the vet shaved a spot on Yaga’s leg, then whipped out a comically large (and comically bright blue) syringe and put it in Yaga’s leg. And he went fast. Very fast. Before the syringe was a quarter gone the vet whispered, surprised, “He’s already gone.” And he was. No spasms, no shaking, just a peaceful drift, like an angel leaning back on a comfy cloud.

And that’s that. He’s gone. Immortal not in body but in perhaps the tales we will tell of him. He was a good dog. Sweet as sugar and dumb as a box of driveway gravel. Goofy enough to be happy until the end. We should all be so lucky, I guess. I miss him terribly. The house feels emptier without him. I’m sad he’ll never meet my son because he would’ve been great with kids.

Like I said, he was a good dog.

Anyway.

That’s your task, if you care to share it. Tell me about a good dog.

March 31, 2011 / 45 Comments

Your Penmonkey DNA

My father was a natural storyteller. Just how he was. He’d come home from work and tell some story about how he pulled some prank on someone (often this guy’s Dad) or how he fought to get pay raises for his guys (Dad was a plant manager, had a team of guys who worked under him). Often he’d wander off into stories: stories of him getting into a knife fight or flipping his snowmobile or how he lost his pinky finger. (I’m not making any of that up. And if you knew the man, you’d grok that. He was well-armed and certain to not take any shit from anyone. Including cops. Or the government at large.)

Some of his stories, you know, I was a kid. I maybe didn’t get them or didn’t really care. But even still, I listened and I absorbed that — and, outside of realizing, “Hey, if there’s ever a zombie apocalypse, I’m trusting my old man to lead the charge against the undead horde,” I also eventually came to realize that some of my inclination toward storytelling is very much nurture over nature. I wasn’t born with it, but rather, it was kind of passed to me — not genes, probably, but memes. Skills and ideas that survive against others.

Of course, even still, it’s reasonable short-hand to call it DNA, I think. Because over time, even though it’s something you pick up rather than something that you’re born with, it still changes your fundamental material, still tweaks your human code a little bit.

So, the question I’m putting forth to you is, who’s in your storytelling DNA? It can be writers, too — hell, I know I’m the turbid broth of Robert McCammon, Douglas Adams, Joe Lansdale, Christopher Moore, and others. But go beyond just those you’ve read and look too to those in your life. Who flipped on that storyteller switch inside your head? Who taught you to love hearing and telling stories?

March 17, 2011 / 57 Comments

The Old Dog Ain’t Got Long

On the X-ray, they looked like coins of various denominations scattered throughout his lungs. A penny here. Two dimes. A fat nickel. Tumors, the vet said. A lot of them.

I didn’t really take him in expecting a diagnosis of that nature. Cancer? Jesus. I took him in because his hip problems were worsening. He wasn’t making it up the steps as much. As a shepherd dog, he likes to be with the herd, with his peeps, and now with wobbly hips he couldn’t be with us as much. Was no longer as easy to slumber near me as I do my morning writing or come upstairs and sleep by our door at night. It frustrated him and so he’d sit at the bottom of the steps and bark at us.

“Hey. Hey! Hey. Hey. HEY. I want to come up there but I can’t and so I’m saying hey.”

I noticed that his barks were hoarse. Like they didn’t have enough air to them. Plus, at night he’d sometimes make these unproductive gagging noises. Not quite coughs. A persistent hairball.

And then, the panting. Not always, not even often, but sometimes he’d pant fast and shallow.

Vet said, let’s X-ray.

And so, lung cancer.

Fuck cancer, of course.

Fuck cancer right in its canker-sore-encircled ass.

I am tired of cancer stealing away the ones I love.

Some day, cancer, I suspect we will do battle.

The old shepherd — a Belgian shepherd, or Groenendael — is 13, now. Not a young buck by any means. Knew that one day sooner than later the time would come that something would befall him. It’s part of the deal when you get a dog. Not like getting a parrot. Parrots might as well be vampires for as long as you’ll have them. You buy a pup, though, you know that time is ticking down. Faster than you’d ever like. It’s like George Carlin says: life is just a series of dogs.

I got Yaga when I was in college. He was just a fuzzy little knucklehead back then. I had no idea the terror he would be as a puppy or how woefully unprepared I was to handle a dog of his needs. We’d always had dogs growing up, but I didn’t take care of them by myself. So, it came and went that I instilled a lot of bad habits in him not really knowing any better. He got shut of most of those habits by the time he was maybe three years old, and as I grew up I guess so did he. I wasn’t a great owner, but I got better at it. Made mistakes, but I guess none bad enough to diminish the old boy’s boundless enthusiasm and sweet, doofusy love he offers to anybody who walks in the door. Even now with hip problems and lung cancer and god-knows-what-else wrong with him (Lupus? Dogbola?) he seems without compunction or fear. Most times he wags his tail and still has that vacant, goggle-eyed look he’s so good at giving. Like, you know, this one.

I’ve recited this litany before, but I repeat it because it continues to astound:

He should be dead by now.

He’s eaten table legs, linoleum, a Playstation controller. He ate an audio tape and so I had to leash him to a stop sign while out for a walk and pull a whole reel of audio tape from his butt with makeshift paper towel gloves (my neighbors watched). He ate a big box of rat poison. He ate dark chocolate truffles and threw it up on my heating vents in winter (so when the heat came on, you first smelled hot chocolate and, seconds later, hot bile). He had a cancerous growth on his paw. He had Lyme Disease, but only showed sickness when he started taking the Lyme meds. He was attacked by a bull elk, thrown up again and again against a chain link fence by the elk’s prodigious antlers. He saved me from a fire in my double-wide trailer.

Heck, just a couple weeks ago he fell down the steps. Tried climbing up, couldn’t, and rolled back down.

Was utterly unfazed.

He constantly bangs his head into countertops and table-corners.

Again, unfazed.

He’s a tough cookie, but I don’t think this is one battle he can win.

Age is a tireless opponent, especially when cancer is its weapon.

The vet doesn’t know how long he’s got. He refused to speculate because, while the tumors look bad, the dog barely shows any signs of being affected. Could be weeks. Could be months. Could even be days. The hope is that he’ll go slow and peacefully. No cancer is pleasant, but sometimes lung cancer affords its victims the luxury of dying in their sleep. But if it gets bad, we’ll have to take him somewhere. Growing up on the farm, my father always did the euthanizing himself. A lot of our dogs met their end at the end of a gun. Sounds barbaric, and maybe it was, but that’s life on a farm. It was rare to see my father cry, but talking about dogs past was one way to make that happen.

As many have said wisely, it would be a poor effort to mourn the old boy before he’s gone, and so we have taken to spoiling him with tons of treats and foods which would normally be a luxury. The vet said we were good to have him groomed, too, so he’s now all pretty, which is why everyone always calls him “her.”

“She’s so beautiful!” people say.

And I say yes, yes he is.