I Came Here for This

I’ve never really trained a dog. I always start out with the best of intentions, but in the end my dogs and I just find our imperfect way with each other. And I think I like it best that way, though they sometimes frustrate me and I sometimes let them down.

Today, I let Gracie and Finny outside to dig around the wood pile. I let them do this because my day was too full for a hike, and this was what I could give them, to make up for my let down.

Finny, always anxious about my whereabouts, lasted only 15 minutes or so before she felt compelled to come in, check on me, and sit at my feet during my meeting. But Gracie, more independent and always a rascal, kept at the work they started together, and came in only when I demanded it, at the end of the meeting, nearly 45 minutes later. She’d had so much time out there, and was so intent on flushing the chipmunks from the wood pile, that after an hour at it, her muzzle and front paws were pitch black with snow-soaked dirt.

I closed all the bedroom doors, let her in and wiped her down with an old beach towel as best I could, which wasn’t very good at all. Despite my best efforts, she pressed a fresh coat of paw prints, like ink blots, onto the wood floor and then the leather couch. We were each happy, in our way. And frustrated in another.

Stephen and I wonder if we will get more dogs after these two go. They makes it hard to travel. And the house would be and stay cleaner. And we’d save money on food and vet bills and toys and treats. And we’d have way more room in our bed. We think about it, but there is no way to know.

And like so many things, more and more these days, I am trying very hard not to wish things away. Even when they are hard and frustrating. Even when I can tell myself a really good story about how much easier my life would be without them. I have had a longtime habit of wishing things away, I think because I have always found it so hard to be here — such a confounding place.

Lately, I have come to accept that it might always be that way for me. Just hard. But tucked inside that acceptance is a tiny golden thread that I keep tugging at, a tiny sliver of truth — I came here for this, for this mess, for this heartbreak, for this joy. For this, for this, for this.

I came here to cry a million tears for as many reasons. At the full moon ringed with haze. At the pink and golden sunset. At the shimmering trees. At the zip of hummingbird wings. At the first giggle of an infant. At the side of my dying father. At the sigh of the dog at my feet. At these and every other thing.

Later today, I drove on the road that goes past the house we raised our children in for the first eleven years of their lives, on the road that goes past the elementary school they walked back and forth to for six years. As I drove, I saw children walking home from school, spazzing like children do, and they were my children, and how I longed for the day that it was them walking home from school to the house where we lived. I longed for the day that I was their haggard mother waiting at the door, excited to see their faces and smell their skin when I kissed them, yet weary for the litany that awaited, which always bore down on me like a heavy weight — homework and snacks, practice and dinner, showers and chores, fights and negotiations.

As I drove, I longed for that day, though it was right there with me; gone in time yet somehow here in the now that all days are lived in.

How sweet to finally know why I am here. I did not come to be someone special. I did not come to do something grand. This is why I am here, for these comings and goings, for this messy, untrained life. To cry a million tears that spill me over with love and heartache and joy and longing and loss and gratitude and everything else this world might conjure.

This world hurts me so, and it is the sweetest hurting I know. I came here for this.