My heart plummeted. I’m sure an x-ray taken at that moment would have shown it dropping floor-ward at the speed of light.
I held the cold bit of glass in my hands and looked up at my parents. Utter disappointment must have laid a pall over my face.
“I thought…” I let the dog fall back into its tissue paper bed. Overwhelmed by grief, I jumped to my feet and fled to my room.
My father found me there a half-hour later. He was carrying the china dog.
“I wanted a real dog!” I sobbed as I had for the past thirty minutes. “Nothing else! No baby, no china ornament! Just a real, live dog!”
“Gail, real dogs get old and die.” My father’s voice was soft. I remembered him telling me about the husky named Jack he’d had as a boy and the terrible pain he’d suffered when the old dog died. “I don’t want you to get hurt. My father recited a bit of a poem to me just before I got Jack. I wish I’d paid attention. It went something like this, ‘Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware; Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.’ He was right.”
“Oh, but Daddy, think of all the love and happiness in between!”
With a weary sigh, he took out his wallet, and handed me a crisp twenty-dollar bill. A child of the Great Depression he still believed money could heal a lot of ills.
“Buy whatever you want,” he said resignedly handing it to me.
With a pang of guilt I realized I’d let my distress color what for him and my mother must have been a glorious time. They’d wanted another child for over a decade and now, finally, they would have one. I took the money, knowing to refuse it would only wound him further.
After he’d left my room, I sat down amid stacks of dog books, magazines and pictures and fingered the money absently. My father’s words echoed back to me: “Buy whatever you want with it.”
Suddenly, as it had so often done and would continue to do throughout my life, inspiration struck. The next morning, Boxing Day, I donned warm clothes and headed up the street to our town’s only veterinarian’s house.
“Dad, will you drive me to Douglastown tomorrow?” I asked him over supper that evening. I fancied my words trembled I was so full of a violent mix of trepidation and anticipation.
“Why?” he asked looking up from his turkey pot pie. “Do you have a friend you want to visit?”
“Yes, well…no…well, sort of. But not just visit. I want to bring him back here…to live.”
Both my parents stopped eating and stared me.
“Live?” My mother, not easily daunted, this time obviously was.
“Yes.” I drew a deep breath and summoned all my courage. “He’s a puppy…half German Shepherd and half Collie…with something wrong with his tail. I bought him this afternoon.”
Two forks clattered onto matching Christmas plates. I have never to this day been stared at so astoundedly.
“You what?” My father was the first to find words.
“You said I could buy anything I wanted with that twenty dollars.” I felt alternately hot and cold, shaky and solid, but I’d come too far to turn back now. “So I went to see Dr. Jarvis. I told him I wanted to buy a Collie pup but he said a purebred would cost more than twenty dollars. He thought for a while, then he said he knew a lady in Douglastown who had one puppy left for sale. It was a German Shepherd/Collie mix. She might let me have him for twenty dollars because he’d been borne with a crooked tail. So he called her and she said, yes and I told her I’d pick him up tomorrow.”
At that point I ran out of breath and words simultaneously. The tightness in my chest and throat had overwhelmed me. I could only glance from my mother to my father and then down at my plate. I couldn’t bear to let them see my expression if they vetoed my purchase.
For the longest hiatus in the history of my twelve years, silence held our kitchen in its grip. Cars swished by on the street outside, the refrigerator started, and the furnace kicked in. I felt as if I would surely die if they didn’t speak soon.
“You did say she could buy whatever she wanted,” my mother said finally. “And we are having the baby. She deserves something special of her own, too. And you did say…”
My heartbeat began to upgrade from a weak flutter to a steady drumbeat.
“Yes, yes, I know what I said.” My father got up and went to the stove to refill his teacup. He poured slowly while my pulse pounded in my ears. Please, please, please. My thoughts were a chant.
When he finally turned back toward the table, he paused, then sighed and let a cautious smile seep over his face.
“Okay,” he said.
All but upsetting his tea, I leaped up and rushed to hug him to within inches of strangulation.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” I cried my joy so intense I didn’t think I could bear it. “I promise I’ll take care of him. You’ll never have to do a thing…after you take me to Douglastown, that is.”
The next morning we headed out to get my very own dog.
When I first saw Prince (as I’d already named him) I became a life-long believer in love at first sight. It didn’t matter that he was the leftover of the litter because of his crooked tail. It didn’t matter that he was one hundred percent German Shepherd except for his golden brown color. It only mattered that he was mine and I was his and we’d be friends as long as both of us lived. As a twelve-year-old hugging her first very-own puppy, I believed I was as close to nirvana as I’d ever be on this earth.
That spring, the spring I turned thirteen, my brother was borne. Our family was complete and happy.
But it was not to last. Six months later my mother was diagnosed with cancer. Two years later she died.
I overheard people commenting on how brave I was as I went about caring for my little brother and helping my aunt move into our home to become our housekeeper. My father, overwhelmed by grief, barely seemed to notice. He’d been in his late thirties when he’d married. I think he’d been afraid to give his heart to anyone. His mother had died young, leaving his father a life-long, grieving widower. And then, of course, there’d been Jack.
But then he’d met my mother and love must have overcome his fear of loss. The bond they’d formed had been deep and unfailing…until now. Immersed in sorrow, he left my brother in my aunt’s care and me largely on my own.
During the day I appeared stoic, handling my grief well and with dignity. But at night alone in my room with Prince, I vented my sorrow. I’d put my arms around his neck and sob into his soft, warm coat as I clung to his broad, solid shoulders. The leftover puppy with the crooked tail never let me down. He’d snuggle close and let me release my sorrow for as long as I needed him by my side.
In the months and years that followed, Prince continued to be there for me. He shared the joys and pain of numerous teenage romances, long walks with a girl and later young woman with a penchant for thoughtful solitude, and the words read aloud from the pages of multiple Hilroy scribblers kept hidden under the bed of his aspiring-writer friend.
When my father slowly began to surface from the pain of my mother’s passing, Prince unobtrusively moved in to companion him as well. Dad owned a service station downtown and often, while I was in school, Prince would accompany him to work.
Time passed. Finally, peacefully one year shortly before Christmas, he left us.
That evening I found my father sitting alone in the kitchen staring down at the dog collar he held clutched in his hands.
“You were right, Dad,” I said my words choked with tears and bitterness. “Real dogs just die and break your heart. I should have been content with the china one.”
He looked up at me, turning the worn collar over in his hands. There were tears in his eyes.
“No, you were right,” he said softly. “You understood that all the love and joy that comes before is worth it.”
A Pink Dress and a Promise
I’ll never forget the Christmas I was sixteen. All I wanted was to have my mother attend my high school graduation the following year. She wa
s suffering from ovarian cancer and although the expressions on the faces of other family members didn’t offer much hope, I firmly believed she would recover and be there.
My mother and I had always enjoyed a special bond, perhaps because I’d been her only child for thirteen years. We’d shared a passionate love of books and reading. She’d read to me every day until I learned to master the skill myself. Afterwards she continued to share my love of stories by enthusing over my attempts at authorship. An amateur actress, she appeared in numerous local theatre productions. I grew up attending rehearsals and being able to mouth every line assigned to her on opening night.
I especially recall a small party held for the cast and crew one evening after a performance. My mother had bought a new pink dress for the occasion. In my six-year-old eyes, she looked like an angel.
When I was thirteen, my brother was borne. Six months later my mother was diagnosed with cancer. At first I didn’t worry. After all, she was my mother. She’d never die and leave me. But as one year stretched to two and she grew thinner and often despondent due to heavy medication, thin shivers of fear began to haunt my days.
Two weeks before Christmas that year her condition worsened. I tried to deny the despair I saw mirrored in my father’s face as we sat by her hospital bed. To strengthen the reality of her recovery I talked to her of the future, a future we’d share.
“And when you come to my graduation, will you wear your pink dress?” I asked her as she lay weak and thin on December 9th.
“Oh, honey, I don’t know.” She forced a hint of a smile. “That old thing? Really?”
“Yes, yes, please promise.”
“All right, if that’s what you really want…I promise.” The words were barely above a whisper.
An hour later she passed away.
Somehow I forced myself through the next year and a half of school. My father had drifted away in his own world of grief. My aunt who came to take care of my two-year-old brother had no time for me. When graduation rolled around, both declined to attend.
As I sat on the platform with the other graduates, I felt hollow and utterly alone. I’d believed my mother would get well, I’d believed she’d be there for this milestone in my life. No one could possibly feel as bereft of happiness as I did at that moment.
Then the principal was announcing the prize for literature, for outstanding work in creative writing. The student on my right prodded me. “You won, you won!” she hissed.
Stunned I remained seated. And then I saw her. Standing at the back right hand corner of the auditorium, my mother, wearing the pink dress, was applauding vehemently.
I stood and made my way to the podium to collect my award, all but staggering under the overwhelming sense of joy. She’d come. She’d promised and she’d come. And she was wearing the pink dress. The moments fluttered wildly in my heart, a beautiful butterfly of joy. In a cloud of happiness so intense I could barely control my movements, I returned to my seat. But when I looked at the back right hand corner of the room she was gone.
Later as I walked home alone in the soft, warm darkness of the spring evening, my award and diploma clasped in my hand, my attitude changed. Anger suffused me. Why had she come only for an instant? Why couldn’t she have stayed?
I sat down on a park bench by the river and stared at the calm water. Slowly understanding came. She couldn’t always be with me, not anymore, but she would be there when I needed her most. She’d kept her promise, hadn’t she. She’d worn the pink dress.
Without Words
So many Christmas memories warm my heart during the Yuletide season but those of the times spent with my paternal grandfather and sharing the deep and abiding love we had for dogs and horses are in a class by themselves.
Granddad was deaf. Not stone deaf but sufficiently hearing impaired to make communicating with him a chore. He stubbornly refused to wear the hearing aid the family had purchased. It was more bother than it was worth he’d mutter. Frustrated in his attempts to interpret what was said he became gruff, taciturn, and withdrawn.
Most of the family, equally frustrated, minimized their conversations with him. Left largely on his own, Granddad turned to the dogs and horses that had always been a big part of his raison d’etre and joie de vivre.
A shy, introverted child who preferred the written to the spoken word and an equally passionate canine and equine fancier, I fit hand in glove as Granddad’s companion. Each Sunday afternoon when my parents and I visited his farm, he and I would slip away from the cacophony of the family gathering in the big country kitchen. Without a single word passing between us, we’d saunter out to the barn, Granddad’s dog at our heels.
Once inside we’d stroll past the cow stalls filled with large-eyed Jerseys in winter, empty in summer, then sit down on a bench against the wall beside the horse stalls. Granddad’s pair of Percherons, Smiler and Lou, would back their great haunches until they could turn their head and roll big brown eyes at their visitors. They’d whinny a soft welcome, then return to their hay-filled mangers.
Granddad would pull a couple of oranges from his mackinaw pocket and hand one to me. In companionable silence we’d peel and eat.
When we’d finished, Granddad would go to the back door that accessed the pasture and throw it wide open. The horses, in anticipation, would stop munching and begin to move restlessly. Slapping them on the rumps to get them to move aside, he’d go into their stalls and release first one, then the other.
With eager snorts and dancing hooves, they’d back themselves free, whirl, and thunder out of the barn, iron-clad hooves echoing over the plank floor.
From the doorway, Granddad and I would watch them race away, tails and manes streaming, spirited beauty on the hoof, over brilliant green grass in summer and glistening snow in winter. Glancing up into Granddad’s bright blue eyes, I knew he shared my joy in those moments that were perfect for both of us.
Sometimes we watched them for nearly an hour, not a single word passing between us. Then, as the time for me to go home grew near, Granddad would call out to them. No matter how far out across the pasture the team happened to be at that moment, they’d pause, turn, and prick their ears in his direction. He’d call again and they’d start toward him at a trot, thick necks arched, obedient out of love and respect for the man by my side.
I was thirteen that winter and totally enamored with horses and dependent on those Sunday afternoon visits to shore up my spirits for the week ahead at junior high school. To this day the scent of oranges still sends my spirit back to those wonderful afternoons with Granddad.
Glowing from my time with Granddad and the horses, I returned to the farmhouse late one November afternoon in time to catch my ride home with my parents. My heart and mind occupied with flying manes and tails and sleek, powerful creatures of incredible beauty, I paid little attention to the discussion between my uncle who had taken over the farm from my eighty-year-old Granddad and my father.
“…horses cost a lot to keep over the winter. We won’t be logging with them this year either. A tractor…”
I climbed into the backseat and closed the door on my uncle’s words. I wasn’t worried. Granddad and his horses were as much a part of the farm as the orchards and meadows.
Then came the Sunday just before Christmas. A still, hard frost gripped a still, gray morning when I awoke. As my parents and I drove toward Granddad’s farm shortly after noon I gazed out the window at the bare, brown, barren landscape of a winter’s day laying in wait for the first snow to give it life and sparkle.
I hoped there’d be snow soon; snow deep enough and soft enough for Smiler and Lou to gallop through, sprays of white crystals flying from their pounding hooves. Maybe it would snow later that day.
At the farm I jumped out of the car and headed for the barn at a run.
“Tell Granddad I’m out here,” I yelled back over my shoulder to my parents.
I unlatched the door and hurried past the row of placidly munching Jerseys. And
stopped short.
The horses’ stall stood empty. And clean. Pristinely clean. Hosed and scrubbed clean. A horrible sense of unreality swept over me. My uncle’s words resounded in my mind. I felt lightheaded, my stomach roiled. No! No! No!
“Smiler! Lou!” I yelled dashing to the rear door and flinging it open. The pasture with its frost-dead grass lay silent and empty…except for a shiny red tractor parked near the back of the barn.
“No!” My cry echoed its despair out across the field. “No!”
I heard the front door open. I turned to see Granddad coming inside. He seemed to have shrunken from his lofty six-foot-four-inch height, his broad shoulders stooped as he came slowly down the length of the barn toward me. As he drew near, I saw that his blue eyes were faded, their sparkle gone.
When he reached our bench he sat down heavily and looked up at me. His eyes filled with tears and so did mine. I sank down beside him and scrubbed them away with the backs of my mittens. He dug into his mackinaw pocket, pulled out two oranges and handed one to me.
I took it. Holding the unpeeled fruit in our hands, we sat silently side by side and watched the first flakes of winter begin to obliterate the hoof prints churned into the earth outside the back door of the barn.
I didn’t realize it at the time, my pain being too deep and acute, but in later years I’d recognize the wonderful memories those days with Granddad had made, the hours spent in companionable silence, the sharing of beauty and freedom that spoke louder than words and would forever help me find the beauty of Christmas in my heart.
Granddad and His Dog
The special bond Granddad and I had didn’t end with the loss of the horses. I continued to visit him and share what sometimes amounted to mostly silent but nevertheless important moments together.
One snowy Christmas Eve shortly after Granddad had found himself alone in the big, white farm house on the hill, I discovered him leaning on the mailbox post by the gate. Gram had died many years previous and one by one his children and grandchildren had drifted away. Buster, his Collie/St. Bernard mix stood by his side, his head drooping. Were they remembering fuller, happier times I wondered as I stopped my car beside the old man in the dipper cap and plaid mackinaw.
How My Heart Finds Christmas Page 5