Sometimes I like to make things hard on myself for reasons that are a mystery even to me. Sometimes it is because the outcome seems worth it, like touring with my kids when they were babies.
I didn’t want to be away from them, so, even though it was hard, I packed us all up, and we hit the road. Sometimes I even played shows with one of them strapped to my back.
It was worth the struggles; those are really happy memories now.
Sometimes it’s because I forget how hard the hard thing actually is until it’s too late, like getting goats.
Baby goats are some of the cutest babies of the animal kingdom — too cute. They are cute enough to make me forget over and over again what a terrible hassle it is to have adult goats on a homestead.
Sometimes, perhaps most of the time actually, it is because my heart is like a homing pigeon, whose navigational coordinates are a mystery.
She takes off, and I’m left trailing behind her over hills and across snow swelled streams trying hopelessly to keep up. When we arrive, I am always as thankful for the journey as I am the arrival at our destination.
I have come to trust that pigeon even if I feel a little nervous every time she starts to stretch her wings.
After we lost our beloved English shepherd, Zuzu, last fall, I thought it would be a while before we got another dog; the loss was too tender.
Puppy times two
My kids and our older dog felt differently. They were bereft and waiting a year or two in dog — or kid — time is the same as an eternity, so by Christmas we had a new puppy, a corgi-Aussie mix named Jovi.
Jovi is a delight. He is funny and friendly, in constant motion, and nothing like Zuzu. Having him made me miss her more, even as I fell totally in love with his antics.
Then, about a month after we brought him home, I found out Zuzu’s mother had had a litter of puppies. The little pigeon began to stir.
Well, that was eight weeks ago, and you can probably guess what I am going to say next: We now have a second puppy, a mostly black English shepherd named Luna.
Having two puppies at the same time is the kind of treachery reserved for the truly brave or the slightly unhinged or those of us with homing pigeons for hearts (which might entail being a combination of both.)
Luna, like her half-sister Zuzu, is a significantly more chill puppy than Jovi, but she is still a puppy, which might as well be a synonym for mayhem.
Meanwhile, Luna arrived just in time for Jovi to be pretty well potty trained and sleeping through the night, which means, if not for that darn homing pigeon, I could finally have started sleeping more too.
Let love rule
In the weeks leading up to Luna’s homecoming, I kept writing and rewriting lists of pros and cons, the evidence constantly shifting, the best outcome unclear.
But every time I stopped thinking, and let myself drop down into the narrow cavern of my chest, I could hear the pigeon cooing, preening her pearly flight feathers. If I decided to open the doors of her little cage, for once I knew exactly the direction she would fly.
I’ve written before that if you let yourself love what you love, you will not be led astray.
Waking up this morning, long before dawn, to the cold, wet nose of a puppy who needed to go pee, I was doubtful this was, in fact, good advice.
But then dawn did come, heralded by a rainbow banner on the horizon. I looked down at the two little ones by my feet, their noses upturned, ready to follow me wherever I went, ready to follow me out into that halo of brightness, and I heard that little pigeon cooing again, this time with contentment.
“Alright you two,” I said. “Let’s go.” And so we did.
