Steering into the Skid

Florida as we know it has returned!

The dogs have shed their sweaters and the space heater has been stored.

Yet, I can't help feeling that somehow I've arrived at a different place. Like time has been folded and revealed a permanent alteration in my seasons, the same way my brothers and I used to fold the back covers of Mad magazines to discover an entirely different picture. And in part, I'm not ready to give up the sweaters and mufflers myself; part of me has folded a bit and longs to experience real northern winters again, if only for a few days each year.

This is a first for me. I've been content for years now to say to those who attack our southwest Florida seasons as seasonless, "We have our seasons, you just have to be perceptive enough to recognize them." One needs only to watch a Bald Cypress or Tabebuia tree to know that; however, I secretly find that I'm longing for a different sort of winter than I've enjoyed for the last 20 plus years. I miss the falls and winters of my childhood. Roasting winter vegetables and creating hearty stews seem appropriate when there's a chill in the air; cold salads and seafood on the grill less so.

At minimum, the cold weather we experienced brought me back to some basic advice I received in my youth. I've come to remember driving on snow-covered roads in Northeast Arkansas and my mother's advice: "Always steer into the skid."

Now advice like this is always ripe with metaphoric possibility and adolescent incredulity. Really, Mom? Head for danger? When I'm careening out of control, you want me to steer into the skid? I won't begin to really discuss how I've acted on such advice for the better part of my adult life, but certainly bringing Texas Pete into our home is a good and fairly recent example. We all crave a bit of danger and excitement, sometimes even when it seems inappropriate.

In reality steering into the skid was good advice; my mother was one heck of a driver. She started driving at 13 and I can remember clearly at least three times where she steered into the danger of the road and brought us through to tell about it: a drunk trucker near Marked Tree on a long two-lane bridge, an old wooden bodied Chrysler without any brakes on a steep gravel road in Hardy, and a snow-covered highway near Imboden laden with jack-knifed semis.

But then there's the advice that my mother doled out that seemed inane even at the time she gave it, like "Always wear clean underwear and don't give your real name." Or "Boys are like buses, another one will show up in 15 minutes." Or "There's more to school than books; don't forget boys and recess." If I were to try to describe my mother through these sayings I'd paint an entirely different picture of her personality and general ethics, one that is truly nothing like the extremely loyal and morally conscious person I know her to be.

Maybe she secretly longed to be a bit more wild, a bit more like our Texas Pete, and these sayings gave her a little outlet for that desire. Maybe she wished for a different life, or if not entirely different, one with a different set of seasons at least. It seems to me now that her seasons must have been something like this: Spring, the season of fixing fences, planting a garden, and chasing kids. Summer, the season of fixing fences, working the garden, chasing kids and chasing calves. Fall, the season of cutting the hay, getting it stored, harvesting the rest of the garden, butchering, and chasing kids and any remaining cows. Winter, the season of trying to keep everyone warm and well fed and wishing they were all outdoors. I'm sure there were days when all she wanted was to sleep in a bed she didn't have to make and eat a steak she didn't have a personal investment in.

I sometimes look at Texas Pete and wonder if we've done him any big favor. He is for the most part still a wild animal. Truly. Some days he seems to be moving toward becoming one of the Marshmallows, folding a little bit after a couple of seasons inside, a little more docile, a little less hostile. A friend suggested that the life he has now is the one he was supposed to live and the time he spent before us a diversion in his path. I love my Zenic friend, but I'm not good at philosophical concepts like this.

But I have a little advice for Pete. "Steer into the skid buddy; we're waiting for you just this side of danger."

A Dog's Life (x 4)

I'm working in my office at home. It's a cubbyhole really, an anthropological study of a small interior room that's been everything from a dining room (its original state where once hung a Munster-family-like chandelier), to my son's bedroom, to an office, then to my mother's bedroom, and back to an office, and then to the youngest daughter's room, then to the eldest daughter's room, and now back to an office, where, amidst the clutter of storage boxes full of papers from our recently sold business and bookshelves housing the college books and papers of the recently graduated eldest daughter and my desk (a salvaged 1955 oak schoolteacher's desk), lie a scattering of four pillows on the floor, four pillows in various shapes and levels of plumpness.

They are dog pillows and each pillow boasts a dog. Small dogs, all. None weigh more than 12 pounds and combined they couldn't form an adult-sized German Shepherd. They could bark it to death, or give it and its owner a good run about our neighborhood, but the Shepherd would still twice outweigh the collective. The four are snoozing on their pillows. A favorite pastime. I recently heard on a radio show that dogs spend about 18 hours a day sleeping and I was so certain that this couldn't be right I began to keep track of their sleep vs awake time, and I'll be...by my calculations our dogs each sleep approximately 21 hours a day, well above average, waking up only long enough to eat, go for walks, and play a game of keep-away or T-Rex or dismember a stuffed toy.

Oh, and bark. When they aren't sleeping they can bark, each with a sound as distinctive as crying babies are to their mothers. And they especially, and most notably, like to bark in their extreme disharmonies, whenever anyone comes to the front door (or I should be so honest as to add, when someone walks or drives by within 2000 feet, when a wind blows, when a leaf falls). They form what looks basically like a trapeze group pyramid, some standing with front legs atop the shoulders of others, and commence upon a communal yowling that my husband John describes as "the sound of a pack of Yetis."

But for now, they sleep. It is unusually cold and they are unusually Floridian and so they are huddled about the small space heater John has set up specifically for them ("it's colder down where they are, low to the ground" he tells me) on their individual little dog pillows.

In brief, the four: Pepper, the oldest and most revered of the pack. He is 14, a long-haired Chihuahua, black with a bit of white, and increasingly gray tufts about his slightly grumpy old muzzle. Scruffy, a pleasant gray and white Shih Tzu and best described as Gumby in canine-mode. His age is a bit of guess, as my youngest daughter, Katie, rescued him prior to his being shipped to the pound by a family who thought he was only two at the time. If they were correct, he'd be over six years now. Marisol, the only girl in the pack, three-years-old and another long-haired Chihuahua who looks like a slightly smaller version of Pepper; she is built low to the ground, all body and short legs and whose nature is as sweet as Pepper's is grumpy. These three comprise the "marshmallows"; dubbed so by my husband, John. And then there's Pete. Texas Pete to be more specific, the most recent addition to this pack, rescued nearly 18 months ago by--who else--Katie. It's best to imagine Texas Pete as ten pounds of unmitigated fury housed in the body of a well-muscled short-haired Chihuahua/Jack Russell mix. John and I have frequent discussions (arguments) on his exact lineage, but for now know that he is a rescued black and white problem-solver with extremely sharp teeth, and a sharper temper, a dog that can become surprisingly docile and loving (but I'd not allow him around children). This is the pack. Joined occasionally by their "cousin", Rasti, Katie's dog, another of her rescues that is best described as a living spring, brindle in color and extremely intelligent (he can talk, I'm not kidding). When Katie brings Rasti over from her house I get to feel somewhat like a grandmother must feel, watching a house full of dogs racing around the house at break-neck speed. Unfortunately, I can only send one of them home at the end of the day.

A final note on this very first day of my very first blogging experience. Yesterday, the mailman came to the door with a certified letter and as he watched the circus-act chaos behind the glass lite beside the wooden front door, he said "How do you stand the noise?"

"They sleep a lot," I told him. "More than most dogs even."

"I don't like dogs. Actually I don't like any animals" he said. "Sign here."

I nodded. I mean, what is there to say? I could make the usual postal jokes, but it's not really funny anymore. I thought about asking what he did like, and could I bring him some of whatever that is, play the postman myself and bring him a book about gardening, or a nice bit of chocolate cake, a seashell, something? Anything? But I didn't. I just took my certified letter and said "well, they are great to watch. They teach me a lot. And they need me."

Of course, part of that is a lie. Because when I get a certified letter, or a not-so-nice email from a student who feels I've shown favoritism, or listen to the international news, or am just feeling rather out-of-sorts, I reach to the nearest pillow where something warm and living shares a bit of space with me in my tiny makeshift office. I know I need them more than they need me.

But, for now they sleep.

Although it is just about time for the mail.