The Gamut

Recently, Tim and Rhonda had to make the choice to put their thirteen year-old chow-mix to sleep. It was a first for them, as their other animals had passed away naturally, and Pumpkin had been Rhonda's baby-dog for so many years. In what I will take as a remarkable gesture of trust, Rhonda asked me to go with her. Considering how hard Rhonda has worked over the years to keep her emotions in firm check unless she was inside her own home with Tim, it was equally remarkable that she felt safe enough with me to just let it all out. Pumpkin had cancer...and it suddenly went from just being uncomfortable to causing her great pain, and the vet agreed that there wasn't anything that could done...even as he yanked his hand from her muzzled snap. Pumpkin had always been territorial, even on her good days, and the only person she really wanted was Rhonda...every one else was just barely tolerated. The scariest part (for me) of the whole experience was trying to figure out how to get a dog who was in massive pain and who had never been on a leash or done a real car trip from their bathroom into the backseat of Rhonda's car. God love her, Pumpkin solved the problem by somehow managing to walk out on her own, and with Tim's help, we got her in. They loaned us a muzzle at the vet, which was helpful, and then they gave Pumpkin a heavy sedative that kicked in pretty fast. I let Rhonda stay with her dog and while I beat a path through the required paperwork. The vet and his people were very kind, very gentle, and very straight-forward. When they moved her to the table, Pumpkin still had enough presence of mind to try to take his arm off again. I know that cancer aside, she would have tried to keep on going until there was nothing but one stubborn hair left of her. It probably felt like a million years to Rhonda, but the rest of it happened very quickly -- two quick breaths, and it was over.


She was crotchety, she had a mind of her own, and she was loyal and devoted to one person...but the truth of the matter is that in a perverse way, I owed that grouchy old girl. Years ago, I was the first girl Jon ever brought home to meet his family. The first. We came from vastly different backgrounds, we were both as nervous as hell, and neither of us knew what to expect. I came in and Tim was in his computer chair, and Rhonda was on the couch sitting next to Pumpkin. I think the Greats may have been there as well, which may explain why the only place for me to sit down was beside Pumpkin -- and her body language was already fairly explicit. I moved slowly, kept my gaze sort of oblique on the dog, and carefully sat down on the very edge of the couch. I was expecting it, not looking forward to it, and sure enough, Pumpkin reached over and locked her teeth into my right arm, and I did what I'd always been told to do. I froze, and kept my voice low and calm, and after a few minutes of solid glare from her eyes, she felt she had made her point and let go of her own accord. She had broken the skin and I was bleeding a bit, but it wasn't major. As I dabbed at my arm and heard Tim's amazed voice say, "Well, you can tell she's been around dogs before, she didn't yank her arm away." And that was my in. I had earned their respect by showing I wasn't going to get hysterical just because a dog bit me.

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Josh has connected the dots now, though it was bound to happen since everyone on Jon's side of the family keeps mentioning that they are old and could keel at any minute -- Hell, according to some computer estimates (deathclock.com) , my father in law should have kicked off his mortal coil 35 years ago, and he will proudly gloat that he's too stubborn to keel over -- and my mother has been fussing around with getting down to the business of writing her will.  With all of this talk about death and dying, Josh finally realized that Harry is also old, like Pumpkin, and therefore, at some point down the road, Harry would die.  We spent an hour and a half holding him the other night as the little sobs just rocked him over and over.  It was awful. We tried to explain that there were different kinds of "sick", the "little-sick", where you had a few rough days and got better, and the "big-sick" where sometimes you may not get better because you were too weak to fight your way back. We told Josh that Pumpkin was in Heaven and that Jesus was taking care of her until somewhere far down the road we could see her again.  We told him she wasn't hurting and she could run and play and have a great big couch all to herself that she didn't have to share with anyone, and that every time we thought of her she would be in our heart.  Josh didn't like this idea.  The look in his eye said more than his four-year old vocabulary -- "Yeah, Right, Mom.  Would you like a hoe to spread that a little smoother? "-- but eventually (for now) he seemed to have accepted things and moved on.  We had a talk with Harry (and I suppose we'll have to corner the other Greats and Grands, too) and asked if he would please ease up on the "If I live that long" or "I'll be gone long before that happens"-routines, and Harry was confused.  He wasn't saying these things to ellicit sympathy, in his head he was just being-matter-of-fact. It's the same with the others, nobody does it out of malice or to get false sympathy, but they (mostly Jon's side of the family) do tend to say these things more often and more consistantly than they may realize.  Death and bowels and dead/sick  people I have never met/that Jon might know  -- the three primary topics of conversation up here.  Don't get me wrong. Occasionally, the topic will change to a television show, or some of the yucks Tim and Larry used to/still do get up to when unchaperoned, but invariably, it all comes back to death and internal plumbing.

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Finally went in to get my back checked (after about a month and a half of just hoping it would settle itself down without help)...the doc thinks it's pulled muscle, and not spine injury (as yet). Gave me a muscle relaxer and suggested that I stop throwing small boy back into his bed as though I were the Old Man and Josh was the fish.  I mused briefly that if JOSH had the muscle relaxer, he would stay in his own gosh-darn bed, and I wouldn't have to re-enact a Three Stooges sketch with only two stooges, but then my back twanged so much that I wisely decided to keep my scrip and my opinion to myself. I had just dropped off my prescription, and I decided that I would let Jon's card buy my breakfast, so I was skipping (yes, actually skipping) to the eatery when my right foot unexpectedly hit grass instead of cement, and my ankle just rolled underneath me. And of course, I wrenched my back some more for good measure. My doc doesn't have an x-ray machine, and I had been told not to take my advil with my new scrip, so I limped back into my home port.  The most "fun" part of that experience was trying to get my foot into the car, as Jon (despite being six feet of long legs) always has the driver's seat smooshed up against the steering wheel*  and I always forget to fix it when I drive. (*I believe this falls in with his master plan of when my life insurance finally matures to let the police think a really, really short person was driving the car.  My master plan when his life insurance finally matures is to set up an apartment in Half-Price Books or the Village Bookshop, and live happily amongst the stocked shelves for the rest of my life.) I was completely unaware of how many new and fascinating expletives my ankle could inspire: it was as though I had surgically attached a certain shock-jock to my right leg.  I feel I should have been taking better notes because the words and phrases rolling off my ankle were not only clever and acidic, but they were coming so fast and furious that my mouth and brain could not keep up.  I iced it, I wrapped it (and probably wrapped it correctly for the first time in my life) and I propped it up on some pillows and just cussed the pain out for a good hour or two (remember, I couldn't take anything else as yet), and then I drove down to pick up Josh, driving with my sprained foot. After phone calls to the Sprain Gang (my brothers, my dad, and my mom) for their considered opinion -- namely, did I really need to get an x-ray for a lousy sprain (no matter how much it hurt)-- everyone agreed I probably did, so I got Josh in the car and drove up to Urgent Care, noting that my foot liked going up and down (which was convenient because, you know, it was on the gas and break pedal) but sideways or diagonal movements hurt like a "sunnybeach". Josh was very sweet.  He decided he was going to be my protector and make sure that I wasn't scared or worried. He kept petting my arm, and blowing kisses to my foot, and telling me "It's okay, mommy.  It's okay."


I got the x-rays, and then Josh and I drove back, pulling in around 7:45 that evening, and poor, whuppered Jon volunteered to stay in town and get my Naproxine, an exercise that kept him away from home until about a quarter till 10 that night. (It was only later that I found out that one little box of Aleve would have done the same thing in less time. Arrggghhh!) Even after our sorry butts were in for the night, my foot continued to be a bringer of joy.  Josh would get excited and dance like a crazy thing and consequently landed full on my ankle a good five times, and each time my ankle jarred me up to the ceiling.  I'd try propping up my foot and the cats would land on my knee, causing my knee to over-extend and my hip joint to scream.  This was also the first night of Snow-meggedon or Snowpacalypse 2010. So, everyone was out on the road, freaking out about the impending blizzard.   We had water, we were stocked up, and our little house is solid and warm. As long as our power stays on, and the branches stay off the lines, we should be just fine, but I tell you, it was disturbing listening to the great clumps of snow dropping wetly off of the branches and onto our roof.  Jon's had more days off this year (before his real vacation starts) than he has had in the last three years.  Last year, he had far too many scares with our little light car, and so he's been more than a bit leery of driving in snow and ice this time around.  Josh, however, sees no problem in the crappy weather.  He's made about  a dozen snow angels, he's been trying to get his limping mother with snowballs (though he's perfectly happy getting anyone else with snowballs, too), and he and Uncle Harry have made a noticeably bent snowman out on our porch. (My theory is that even the snowman has had enough of this berserker weather and is bowing in submission.)

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And now you're all caught up, for today is Valentine's Day.  It is my tenth Valentine's Day with Jon, a fact that is disconcerting and silly and wonderful because I can't believe we've had that many years already. He keeps saying, "Yes, TEN." And I keep answering, "Really? How did that happen?" Today we did it low-key.  A pot of cinnamon-hazelnut coffee for late breakfast (Josh was up until 10 last night watching Olympics), chinese for lunch/dinner, small boy jumping on our heads after, we've been nibbling on candy, the cats have been nibbling on us, we have nibbled on boy's ears...


There's much to be said for the roses, the drama, the constant one-upping of the previous years' romanticsms...but I don't think enough can be said about the way it feels to have someone hold my hand ten years down the line, and how perfectly it fits against my palm.  Or how wonderful it is to put my ice cold feet on his nice warm feet, and how he won't pull them back (partly because he knows that my feet will find his no matter where they hide, and partly because even the touch of my cold feet is still a welcome touch).    There aren't enough worlds to describe his sleepy, scruffy morning smile, the way he is the only one who keeps pace with my tangents...and how every day I find him amazing, challenging, exasperating, ornery, and pretty damn wonderful.  I'm truly, madly, deeply in love with a very married man...

and I can't think of a better way to pass the time.