Sailor on Leave

No life springs fully formed from the womb of its mother. There are back stories and then memory built upon memory before any fullness is attained. Its no different for Sailor. His story begins before his birth when we said goodbye to Angel.

In 2000, after 14 years, my first dog Angel passed. She was with me almost from my earliest moments in Colorado, rescued from the Pueblo Humane Society at the age of 2. She was with me through my brief first marriage, through reinstated bachelorhood, through meeting and marrying Jean-Marie. Truth be told, Jean-Marie's youngest Louise adopted and claimed Angel for her own before I moved in with the family. Angel's death was difficult on all of us. A couple of months after Angel left us, Jean-Marie made the “innocent” request of wanting me to go to the Colorado Springs Humane Society to just “look” at the doggies. I was not thrilled with the idea, I was still hurting from Angel, and I was suspicious of Jean-Marie’s motives. But we came away from that visit empty handed although I did accidently allowed that I found a Maltese there cute.

That slip of the tongue lead to Sailor joining our clan. He was a pup of a Maltese from a breeder in Cañon City. Jean-Marie had seen the litter advertised in the paper, called, and then asked me if she could have one of the puppies for her birthday that August. She said the breeder had told her the pup she wanted would come with papers, but was not show-worthy because he would likely be large for his breed. So we were getting him on sale! We were practically making money! I can never say no to Jean-Marie…never.

A deal was struck with the breeder to meet at the Highway 115 Truck Stop, so that I didn’t have to drive all the way to Cañon City. It all had the feeling of a drug deal going down at that lonely sun burnt location awash in dust devils and smelling of dry earth and diesel fumes. I handed the man an envelope of cash, he passed to me a small cardboard box containing a tiny white furry creature and a strip of wash cloth. He told me the puppy didn’t have a name yet, but that they called him Tongue Man, because his tongue poked out of his mouth most of the time.  Then he climbed into his pickup and waved as his tires squealed away in a cloud of dust. I turned back to our old beat up van that Jean-Marie and I used for floral delivery, and climbed in with this new family member, and headed north up 115 towards the Springs.

During that drive, the puppy wriggled from his box and managed to climb up onto my shoulder for the drive to his forever family, tongue out. I no longer remember how he got the name Sailor, but I think it is safe to place all the credit on Jean-Marie for that. It fit him in some way.

Sailor was not really a people person. In some ways he was like a cat, allowing just enough attention from a person to let him know that he was liked, and then he would  aloofly move off claiming a type of ownership to world about him. When later we got Stovie, a Humane Society dog – called an Australian Shepherd, looking like a Jack Russell, and eventually growing to a statuesque 90 pounds - Sailor tolerated her, but never quite cottoned to her. They maintained their own space, and 13 pound sailor without question became the Alpha dog in the house – that includes being my boss as well.

When Stovie passed, Sailor simply took the extra space to naturally be an expansion of his domain. He was a self-contained, self-assured, and commanding ball of white. He was our companion, our friend, and the boss of me.

When he would play with us, it was a game of toss and fetch with the promise of a treat at the end of the play. He quickly got the idea that one fetch of the gnarled little stuffed bear was enough for a treat. He would chase it, pick up, drop it, then run into the kitchen and wait. When we stonewalled, and insisted he needed to exercise a bit more before earning that treat, he just stopped playing altogether. Food was a driving force with him, but no matter how much he loved to eat, he would never let food be his master.

His old age was defined by a matured grumpiness that made him a classic curmudgeon. His active periods grew shorter and shorter, and his nap times grew longer and longer. He kept shunning proffered affection, because affection had to be on his begrudging terms. When we went to bed (he slept with us…or us with him is probably more like it), he would be sure to be curled up against me or my wife. He was always most comfortable being the initiator of contact. It was his way.

This 10^th of October 2017 at the age of 17, almost his whole life spent with us, marked his passing. He had lost the last of his bounce, given up what smiles he could muster, was in pain from arthritis, and was slowly yielding to dispassionate and uncaring dementia. It was his time, not our choice. Dr. Wilhoit of Bijou Animal Hospital (the doctor who knew him best) was attending physician. Jean-Marie and I offered what comfort we could to Sailor as we cried while Sailor took his leave. We now sit wet-cheeked holding each other, and thinking of him. We love you sailor, we feel you in your absence, and we remember you for so many things.

Wedges

Political times are difficult these days. I watch and follow them. I listen and learn. I fear. I fear. I fear.

But how to comment? The difficulty is that if I address the NFL questions, I miss out on the larger topic of race. If I delve into that larger topic, I ignore Puerto Rico. If I dive into Puerto Rico, I forget about health care. If I chase health care, I miss tax reform. If I discuss tax reform, I leave North Korea on an island, in the middle of the water, and that water is an ocean, and it is a big ocean.

I look at all these and so much more and I reel, stagger, stumble, fall. In a daze on the ground, I realize that these topics are a distraction. That one covers for another, that to focus on one is to chase a shadow while other shadows scamper about diverting attention and energy.

I look to the constitution and find beauty in its offerings, its flexibility, its existence as a living document to make itself available to change and inclusion. But it also sows the seeds of its potential downfall. The openness it permits allows for nooks and crannies, that can be exploited by wedges.

President Trump has shown himself to be a master of wedges. In a recent speech in Alabama he said, “I brand people, that’s what I do, I brand people.”  He does far more than that. His gift for naming extends to casting expersions and doubts. What is really happening here is that we have elected a president who finds gaps then drives wedges.

As a boy, I helped my father split firewood. My father being who he was had a lot of logs for us to split and save for winters. If memory serves me, he had logs for far more winters than we would see together as a family of seven before empty nesting would set in. I loved splitting logs with dad. He would bring out the sledge hammer and his wedge, and he taught be to drive the wedge into the log and cause a rift and eventually a split. That wedge and those rifts come back to me now all too vibrantly.

We have been foolish to overestimate the progress of race relations in this country, we have been complacent in how we perceive our journalism, and we would rather think that we have nestled into our classes than see that divisions abound.

President Trump is a genius in his egocentrism. He sees all of this and more, and he sees it in the only context that he really perceives anything – himself. In his ceaseless defense of self, he has carefully selected wedges, and driven them into the heart of America in a rhythm of his own choosing.

Through the NFL he has driven a wedge between people and the safe haven of sports where we live our fantasies and hold onto teams as if they were religious icons. While we have been seeking the simple joy that our favorites are national champions or world champions or just heroes that we can carry on broad shoulders into our dreams, President Trump has made them into constitutional threats.

Through race, President Trump has exploited the fragile delusion that things are better than they are. He has exploited the subtly growing rifts to be viewed as an attack on veterans instead of a protest of inequality, and that new arrivals to this land are stealing desired jobs and wages while milking the economy and funneling in gang members and drugs. He takes a wedge and seats it firmly in the earth to push apart our trust in media, and using similar wedges to drive gaps between the populace and the congress, as-well-as between the people and the judiciary.

If you remove our heroes, if you remove our trust in the legislature, if you take away a belief that the judiciary is a necessary balancing force, if you destroy our judgement regarding the fourth estate, if you reinstate African Americans and Latinos as the insidious enemy, what is there left to believe in? The answer is obvious, inescapable, and far more scary than I would dare imagine. Our only refuge is President Trump, and that sounds an awful lot like a dictatorship.

When a leader intentionally works at stripping the bonds of society from any political and moral groundings than his or herself, they are working toward a dictatorship. They are trying to establish a government driven by a single individual instead of the constitutionality mandated by separations of power.

It is October, Halloween is coming. I was hoping to be cowered by ghost and ghoulies, to have my pulse raised by wonderful superstition and myth. Instead, I sit afraid of something much greater, my own government.