I Wanted My Dog Dead

sweet white dog

“But I’m Finding Compassion Instead”

I’ve threatened to kill Luna.

I’ve cursed her name. I’ve smacked her on the butt a few times in her life. Oh, and maybe kicked her lightly once as she went out the door.

Luna is the family dog. Throughout the 13 years of her life with us, she has deposited pee, poop, puke, and piles of her white fur on every inch of my floors and carpets. Her fur is woven into the upholstery as well as into my clothing, especially my favorite black polar fleece jacket, a magnet for her stiff white hairs.

In the family we like to say that Luna has been everywhere we have been, all over the world, really. Her hair is in our suitcases and guitar cases, on our coat sleeves and the soles of our shoes. I have had a hard time finding compassion for this animal. As far as I go, try as I may, I can’t get away from Luna.

finding compassion learning lessons for graceful aging from my dog
Young Luna with my youngsters

We all loved her from the start. She was so sweet and shy when we rescued her as a puppy. The kids and I thought her shyness would melt with our love. The people at the shelter said she’d been found in a ditch, possibly abused and abandoned. We all showered our cream-colored pup with affection as we brought her up in the safety and security of our family.

Thirteen years later, she still flinches at quick-reaching hands and threatens to bite those hands that have fed, petted, and thrown countless tennis balls across the lawn. She’s an emotional wreck when any family member comes home — doing her weird whiny throat yodel — as if she’s surprised we haven’t abandoned her. Lunacy! Her defensiveness and neuroses are mysteries we may never understand.

All The Rage

Now that she’s older, she’s decided to potty-train in reverse. I am finding fresh pee stains on my new shag carpet. She can’t hold it as she used to, and she seems confused by body signals that used to tell her to go outside.

So it’s back in the kennel at night and when we go out, the one we used for potty-training when she was a puppy. I’ve even purchased some doggy diapers at the pet supermarket. As I run the vacuum, I realize that her fur accounts for 85% of the dirt I’ve sucked up for 13 years. Why do I even have dogs in my house?

And as I watch her age, my rage grows. It’s not just the fresh pee or the perennial fur. Luna is the embodiment of all that I cannot control.

We’re both getting older. And we’re both wearing out.

We spend a lot of time together now that the kids have grown up and out of the house. In the mornings, she’s a little leg-stiff. Me, too. We both hobble out of our beds and head outside to scan for life on the lawn. Squirrels and birds scatter as we step onto our mossy grass and sniff the wind. We find a comfortable seat and settle in, staying out there under the trees all day when it’s warm. We like to go for afternoon walks in the woods with our other dog, sweet (non-shedding) Josie. We keep moving even though it would be easier to sit still.

 

finding compassion learning lessons for graceful aging from my dog
A walk in the woods with Josie and Luna

Graceful Aging

Luna was a great athlete in her youth. Her sport of choice: Tennis Ball. She awed everyone with her soaring mid-air catches. Our joy was in recognizing her joy, the embodiment of doing exactly what she was created to do: run, leap, land, and loop back to do it all again. And again. And again. And again.

Perhaps too many rough landings led to those shaky back legs of hers. I admire how, even now, she’ll surge after a squirrel, though she’ll pay for it in pain later.

I can sometimes see her attributes:

  • She stays clean and white and doesn’t smell bad.
  • She cleans sweet Josie’s eyes and ears.
  • She accepts each day as it comes and lives in the moment.
  • She doesn’t seem to worry about what the future holds.

I’m trying to learn from Luna. Soon enough, one of us will die, and the odds are against her.

My brother’s dog, Annie, died last month. He and his family are heartbroken. She’d been a part of their family for a long time. I think I would miss Luna if she died today.

Finding Compassion

She has become a mirror for me. After years of our love/hate relationship, I have reached a new awareness: If I can learn to find compassion for this dog, perhaps I can find some for myself.

Luna teaches me to get creative with aging. Some new tricks I am learning:

  • Bending over again and again to clean her mess offers me a constant choice of cursing versus gratitude.
  • Scratching her favorite spot behind her ears gives me pause to recall the years of walking this dog with my husband, kids, grandma, and neighbors.
  • Pondering the love she accepts and gives prompts me to remember the love I get and give away, too.
  • Finding compassion when she flinches for no good reason helps me acknowledge my own flinching fears, still with me after all of these years.

Something tells me I’m never going to get control of all the chaos in my life, whether it’s dog crap or my own crap. In fact, I suspect I will have less control over normal things, the older I get.

Strange how we often end the way we start: a little unsteady and needing a close eye. Like infants and the elderly, dogs like Luna often just want a little love, patience, and compassion.

I had never intended to kill Luna. I guess I don’t really want her dead.

She’s out on the porch now, barking at me through the glass, demanding to come in. Today, I will open the door and scratch her ears as she enters, offering an extra dose of love. She’ll thank me with a grunt and a shake, depositing a fresh sprinkling of her lovely white fur on my freshly-vacuumed rug.

Read next: Closer To Free

Closer to Free

finding finding freedom: woman floating down a river

“Finding Freedom To Be”

I remember the day I became a slave to my face.    old polaroid christine finding freedom

I was nine and taking some visiting kids on a tour of my elementary school. I don’t remember the occasion. All I know is that a teacher chose responsible me to lead and I was up for the job. At the end of the quick trip around the school, I stopped the small group of kids about my age outside the cafeteria.

“Any questions,” I asked.

“Yeah,” said the closest boy, “are you a boy or a girl?”

I was mortified. His question knocked me off-balance, challenging how I saw myself. And how others saw me. So began my journey of asking mirrors to tell me who I was and who I should be.

Old Polaroids

To solidify my new bondage to image, the series of shocking photos came next:

  • school pictures featuring my incongruous teeth and hair which reared their ugly heads year after year
  • the snapshot of my belly bulging in its bikini sandwich
  • the polaroid my dad took where I felt so beautiful in my pink night gown, only to disappoint again as my image materialized as not-so-pretty me

I struggled with my complexion for most of my life. Hormones and stress were my enemies. Even in my thirties and forties I leaned into mirrors, picking at the blemishes embedded in my skin. “Not better, only redder” was my ineffective mantra.

Getting older has its advantages: fifty-something skin and less stress have freed me from some of my mirror-gazing slavery.

Deeper Than the Skin

But the freedom I’m seeking is deeper than the skin. It’s farther in where heart meets soul.

Freedom from judgements: my own and those of others.

Freedom to be the real me is the center I seek.

I taste that freedom whenever I’m untethered to my image or my productivity or my critics. No lackey to fashion, no vassal of shame. No bondage to beauty as defined by me and my culture.

To me, real freedom feels like sliding along a river, body buoyant, no friction in the flow. Crank the self-conscious volume knob back to zero, I’m on a roll.

Recreation

Have you ever tried to recreate yourself? I tried once in college.

In the fall of 1982, I drove to Carnegie-Mellon University, 5 hours away from home for the first time in my life. I thought about becoming whomever I wanted to be. No one in this college town would know if I was naturally sassy or sweet, gregarious or aloof. I could present myself as the person I chose to be.

Trouble is, it is hard to stray from who we are at heart. I tried to gather my energies and garner new friends by behaving like a party girl, carefree and easy. But I didn’t have her in me. I couldn’t stick to the part and stay late in my party clothes. I just wanted to go home.

Free People

I recently wrote a song called, “Closer to Free.” The initial inspiration came as I perused the Free People clothing catalogue. At first, I thought it funny that a company would make such a statement about a line of clothing. Those hippie-esque styles in strange layers and pairings said, “be adventurous and creative and don’t worry if it doesn’t match.” The wispy indifferent models propped in languid poses declared, “we wear what we want wherever we dare.”

closer to free

They began to draw me in, these Free People. I’ve never had much sense of style. I have always admired girls and women who seemed to throw on any old thing and make it look good. Sometimes it was their sheer confidence and caution-to-the-wind that made them so attractive. Freedom from caring about what others would think seemed to set them free to flow in their clothing and throughout their lives. Like a river.

I was hooked. Sold! to the woman in earth tones and sneakers. Maybe now my inner critic will nap because I’m wrapped in these fabulous fabrics. Oh, the glorious freedom of not giving a crap.

The Catch

But there’s a catch. It’s there, squeezed between the freeze-frames. If we stretch it out to see the real-life spaces where we live our lives, it gets a little messy. Suddenly we see the props and pins that keep it all in place for the shot. A make-up artist and a clothing wrangler rush in to fix the blemishes and slips. These clips and vignettes, I sometimes forget, are only old polaroids of curated unconcern. We are all truly, sadly, very concerned.

The Thirst

We are a thirsty people and there’s no sating. We are hungry for love and acceptance. We hide our shame and insecurity behind snapshots and complicated layers. We buy the lie of self-re-creation.

Yes, we can dress for success and wear our truth to some extent. But freedom, true freedom from what we don’t want to be, implies a freedom toward something. If I am free from my naturally fearful, insecure and angry self, than what am I free to become?

Becoming

Back to center. In pulling focus, I discover a door to another room: a place called Acceptance.

What if I believed God loves me and accepts me as I am? What if I accepted myself ‘as is’?

We are told that’s what Jesus does: “Come to me and I’ll give you rest. Yoke yourself to me.”

If I am tied side by side to Jesus, I’m free from any other slaveries. I suddenly become free to be who I am, the girl He made me to be. Being tied to Him is a burden but it’s easy and light compared to all those other slave-drivers out there. I am Becoming, what I once was, the girl in the mirror of His love. I am becoming. His love becomes me.

Every once in a while, I see through the facades of photos and mirror images. Like floating down a river, these moments of clarity, of sweet release, are the times when I know I am closer to free 

Listen to this song here!

You say you’re one of the free people

Nobody tells you how to live

You splash your face across the page

And spread yourself so thin

 

Yeah, you look like one of those free people

Embrace the world and make it spin

But even you can only take so much

Til something’s got to give

 

Come closer to free

Come know your poverty

Feel your thirst and recognize your need

Come closer to free

 

Your clothes don’t cover up the heart of you

And freedom’s deeper than the skin

You think you’re shining like a star

But we see the shape you’re in

 

Yeah you could be one of the free people

No need to re-create yourself

The beauty you want to so much comes

From being loved so well

 

Come closer to free

Come know a sweet release

Can you feel your thirst and recognize your need

Come closer to free

 

Come closer to free

Come know the love you really need

When you feel the hunger and it grows you know

You’re closer to free     You could be one of the free people

 

Winter Sun Lyrics

                                                  Winter Sun

You are the one that drew me here
Now that I’ve come, I find I am no nearer to you
Led by the light so dim, you didn’t even penetrate the skin
Oh Winter Sun

Promising all the answers
Knowing I could be captured with the information
Never to radiate the hidden heart or penetrate the skin
Oh Winter Sun
You’re a promise in the distance, Winter Sun

If I chase the light to find the heat
Will I feel the earth grow warm beneath my feet
Can I move beyond what you’ve begun
Oh Winter Sun

Leaving me cold and numb
Now I’m reaching in and holding out for some sensation
Burning inside of me, a flame so weak, I need a deeper touch
Oh Winter Sun
To know is not enough, oh Winter Sun

So I’ll chase the light to find the heat
And I’ll feel the earth grow warm beneath my feet
I got to move beyond what you’ve begun
Oh Winter Sun

And the shadows start to fall behind
Hope begins to rise
On the other side
I can see the other side
And I begin to come alive

So I chase the light to find the heat
And I feel the earth grow warm beneath my feet
I can move beyond what you’ve begun
Oh Winter Sun
Written by Christine Dente, Scott Dente and Phil Madeira