Familyhood

  THE OLDER I GET, the more I find I treasure this sanctity—and relative safety—of my castle. Sometimes, staying home and shutting those doors sure feels like the way to go. But ultimately, we can’t do that forever. We need to go out in the world. And we need to bring some of the world back to our home.

  So what’s a reasonable king to do? You build the best castle you can, but you still have to open those gates. You want your castle to be safe, but not suffocating. Welcoming, but not vulnerable. You want the good stuff in and the bad stuff out. A moat won’t cut it. (Plus, my wife has shot down the idea repeatedly.)

  What we need is something subtler; a defense more nuanced in its give-and-take. We need a membrane. A semi-permeable membrane, like living cells have. And mitochondria. (Gee, I hope my ninth grade science teacher is reading this.) What we need is that, but around our home; a protective outer shield that lets your castle breathe and expand naturally. A delineated perimeter that continually and judiciously admits and rejects, absorbs and expels whatever it must to survive. It lets in warmth, love, support—all things Good—while at the same time protects your family against all things Bad: outside invaders, unsolicited opinions, germs, and, again, bears.

  The trick, of course, is having the membrane distinguish Good from Bad, Helpful from Destructive, Dastardly from Perfectly Nice. Bears look like bears, invading armies look like invading armies. But good friends can look a lot like not-such-good friends. Nice cousins look, to the naked eye, very much like cousins who start-out-nice-but-stay-too-long-and-along-the-way-you-learn-some-details-about-their-personal-life-you-wish-you-hadn’t. Discerning what’s what is not always easy to do.

  My solution? Again: get small. We’ve gotten into a custom in my house. Well, not a custom per se, but once in a while we . . . Okay, we’ve done it twice, but I really like it. We do this thing where we huddle up—my wife, my boys, and me—and we put our heads literally together, forehead to forehead to forehead to forehead. We put arms around each other and take a moment to lock in; to remember that this particular, quirky, remarkably imperfect foursome is, in fact, all we have, and all that matters. If all is well inside this huddle, all will be well going forth. Until, of course, it’s not. But at such time, we can always re-huddle and once again re-fortify in the solidity of our bonds.

  Generally, we stay huddled for about fifteen, twenty seconds, at which point the kids get restless and my wife feels compelled to get on with her day. And to stand up straight.

  Me? I could stay in that huddle all day. I don’t need a castle any bigger than that. It’s the most glorious and empowering fortress I could ever imagine.

  My Dog’s Father

  I never met my dog’s parents. We got him when he was six weeks old. So, in many ways, I’ve been the father he never had. To this day, I don’t think he even knows he’s adopted. Our bond is mighty and unshakable. His whole life, I have been like a father to him. And he, in turn, has been like a dog to me.

  And in every way, a perfect dog. A chocolate Labrador, named Bosco in honor of his color and my favorite syrup growing up, he is eminently loyal, attentive, and affectionate. When I come home, he bounds over and buries his face in my crotch. No one—and I mean no one—else has ever done that for me.

  He’s a loyal and fearless protector of our home and family. If a car drives within a hundred feet of our door, he is there instantaneously, barking ferociously and ceaselessly until he determines the person to be friend or foe. Though I have to say, I don’t quite understand his vetting process. He barks at everyone—whether he’s seen them every day for years or never met them in his life. But upon the door opening, he is instantly the new arrival’s best friend—tail wagging, shamelessly whimpering and ready to play. There is not even a second of evaluation going on, near as I can tell, which makes me wonder what all the barking and “mean dog” posturing is all about. I’ve decided that, given his sweet nature, the barking is not the result of perceived danger but rather his sheer frustration in not being able to personally greet the guest sooner. The big, stupid door is not letting him do his job. Because once that barrier is removed, he rockets out the door and invariably lavishes upon the visitor his boundless love. This is how sweet an animal he is.

  He sleeps in our bed, generally right between my wife and me. I don’t always want him to, but I lack the ability to deny him.

  He will never, ever be the one to break from a hug or a scratch. He would have you rub his ears literally until one of you expires.

  He loves our children and knows their individual habits and idiosyncrasies. He knows when to approach and when to give them their space. He knows which is more likely to drop a piece of cookie, which one perhaps some chicken. If ever he is not sleeping in our bed, it’s because he’s posted himself as sentry outside the boys’ rooms—equidistant between the two, ready to snuggle or protect either in a heartbeat. On the rare occasion that the boys are away for the night, Bosco will again place himself right outside their rooms, awaiting their safe return.

  No one could ask for a more wonderful dog.

  HE’S EIGHT NOW. By no means a puppy, but still vibrant, active, and healthy. A happy, contented dog by any measure. Yet I sense something changing; he’s not the same dog of a few years ago.

  A little while back, Bosco and I were sitting in our favorite spot in the backyard, watching the squirrels. Very interesting critters, squirrels. On this particular day, two squirrels were busily darting back and forth shuttling what looked to be building supplies—twigs, branches, a buzz saw, and an orange vest. They were very meticulously and hurriedly transferring the supplies from one tree to another. Now, why one tree was so much more desirable than the other tree is a mystery. They looked to be pretty identical. And they were only about twenty-five feet apart. But these squirrels were clearly determined to live in one tree and not the other. Maybe the new tree had better schools—I don’t know. But it was very captivating.

  As we watched these squirrels build their neighborhood (there was a little community center and a drugstore going up as well), it struck me that there seemed to be a lot more squirrels around the yard lately. And, come to think of it, they seemed a lot bolder than they used to be. It used to be they would scurry away from us at the first sound of an opening door. No more. The other day one of them actually asked to use the phone.

  And then I realized why: Bosco no longer chases them. He sees them—I can tell that he sees them; I watch his eyes as they track the squirrels running from here to there. He’ll raise his head to watch them climb a tree, he’ll swivel his neck to follow them as they round the corner of the house. He’s not uninterested, he’s just not motivated to get up and go after them. Oh, he’ll still eagerly chase anything thrown his way; a tennis ball or a ratty towel will entertain him like nobody’s business. But the whole chasing squirrels thing seems to have run its course for him.

  More and more, Bosco resembles the very syrup for which he was named: brown, sweet, and doesn’t exactly move quickly. Both Bosco the syrup and Bosco the dog are very hard to get off of carpets, and when you do, both usually leave a stain. But I digress.

  Sitting there that day, I tried to motivate him: “Bosco! Chase the squirrel!” (I meant it as a suggestion, not so much as a command, not that it matters.)

  The dog does not move. Stretched out comfortably, his large brown head resting on his perfectly good front paws, he observes the growing population of hardworking, ambitious squirrels, and ignores them. And me.

  “Taking the day off?” I ask.

  Nothing makes a man look smaller than being sarcastic to a dog. And it has no effect on the dog. Suddenly, a squirrel dashes less than a foot from Bosco’s nose and stops, terrified. This makes me happy. Bosco has not gotten that type of reaction in some time. I decide this must be a new squirrel, or maybe it was just very young when Bosco was last in the chasing business. Either way, the squirrel did not expect to see a ninety-pound carnivore within striking distance. For squirrels, this must be their wors
t nightmare; their version of driving off a cliff or showing up naked for a test they haven’t studied for. Bosco looks at the squirrel with only mild interest. The squirrel darts away. Bosco yawns.

  It didn’t used to be this way. Squirrels used to be Bosco’s main thing. Nothing could keep him from gamboling after them. Not that he ever caught one, though. In fairness, I don’t know how hard he was really trying. He may have been in it just for the thrill of the chase. I always assumed it was like his version of golf. Like any committed amateur, he didn’t seem to be bothered that nobody asked him to do it. Certainly nobody was ever going to pay him to do it. It didn’t matter. He was doing something he loved. It got him out of the house. Fresh air, good exercise, no chance of getting hit by a car; and we inside the house got a nice break from having to scratch his ass. The squirrels didn’t even seem to mind being chased much. All in all, it was good for everybody while it lasted.

  For some reason, he’s given it up.

  At first we thought it could be his thyroid. Not for any reason in particular; never heard of a dog with a bad thyroid. But people we know complained about being sluggish themselves and went to the doctor and found out their thyroids were on the fritz.

  We took Bosco to the vet. The dog’s thyroid was fine. His weight was a little high, though. The vet suggested Bosco get more exercise.

  “He used to love chasing squirrels,” I offered. “Now it leaves him cold.” The vet suggested Bosco might be bored with it. I said I found that hard to believe. The vet asked why. Did I think there was something especially interesting about chasing squirrels? (I maintain she said it like she meant it to be insulting. And not to Bosco either.)

  I admitted that while squirrels were not necessarily interesting to me, as I am not a dog, Bosco, for the longest time, couldn’t get enough of them. “Unless squirrels have changed dramatically over the last few months, I presume they are just as interesting now as they were back when Bosco chased them,” I said, matching the vet’s tone rather nicely, I thought. Bosco just stared at us.

  The truth is, I’m not sure Bosco can be bored. And not because he’s such a deep thinker that he finds meaning in every little thing. I don’t mean to be cruel, I’m just saying that, having lived with Bosco since he was a pup, having spent hours and hours with him, having watched him eat, sleep, and stare, I just don’t think the intellectual curiosity is there.

  Don’t get me wrong; he’s smart. I often marvel at what he can deduce. When I come down the stairs, he can tell—before I’ve indicated a thing—if we’re going out to pick up the paper from the driveway or if I’m just crossing to the couch. (And, I’m convinced, he can tell which day is Sunday and, furthermore, what that means in terms of the heft of the newspaper we’ll be retrieving that day.)

  When you toss him a piece of food, he can ascertain—midair, mind you—if the morsel is something to be gobbled down in one chew-less gulp (cheese, for example) or something on which he’d prefer to pass (cucumbers are not a big favorite).

  This is a smart dog. In fact, he’s smarter even than he needs to be. We’re not sheep herders, nobody needs him to sniff out explosives, and we’re not planning on shooting him into space anytime soon. So the fact that’s he’s not Steve Jobs, or even Flipper, is fine with me. I just found the idea that he was suddenly intellectually understimulated a bit far-fetched.

  SOME PEOPLE ASCRIBE great intellect to their dogs. They’ll tell you about all the great things the dogs can do: bring a can of soda, respond to telemarketers, explain the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and the three dreams going on at the same time—complex endeavors.

  This is not our dog. Like most dog owners, I talk to Bosco a lot, but I don’t expect him to answer, and not because he doesn’t speak English. (Because I maintain he does.) It’s because even if he could talk, I’m pretty sure Bosco would have nothing to say. Should they ever come up with a phone app to let your dog talk, I know exactly how the conversation would go.

  “Bosco! Chase the squirrel!”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  “Why not?”

  “Why not what?”

  Like a cocktail party with painfully difficult small talk.

  “Crazy weather, huh, Bosco?”

  “Uh . . . okay.”

  “No, I mean, because, you know . . . it’s been so hot.”

  “Uh . . . outside, you mean?”

  “DOGS ARE NOT DIFFERENT than humans,” the vet tells me unnecessarily, clearly spoiling for a confrontation. “They like variety.”

  I assured the doctor that Bosco is indeed no different than humans, in that he hates variety. This is a dog that does the same thing the same way every single day; eats the same food, pees and poops at the same time, at the same locations. He’s like a big brown clock: reliable, predictable—though furry. My point being: variety is not what Bosco does.

  “And yet you yourself say he no longer chases squirrels,” the vet said. (Her meeting my “indeed” with an even more snide “yet” was not lost on me.) “Maybe if you varied his routine and played with him more, he might enjoy the stimulation.”

  That comment was uncalled for, I thought. It was bad enough that I felt inadequate as my children’s father; did I need this lady to make me feel inadequate as a dog dad too?

  No man loves dogs more than I. If I loved them any more, it would likely be frowned upon. But unlike a lot of other people, I like dogs for what they are, not what I imagine them to be. Dogs offer wonderful gifts. For many people, they’re all the family they need. For many others, they can be a gateway drug to having your own kids; you start with a puppy, and before you know it, you’re hooked, and step up to raising little humans.

  But human critters change. Infants become toddlers, who start walking and talking and questioning your authority, and ultimately move out.

  Dogs don’t do that. A dog stays a dog. That’s what I love about Bosco. There’s not that much room for improvement. Sure, if I were so inclined, I could probably teach him to shake hands or roll over, but he’s never going to learn, for example, irony. Change is not what he does. Unconditional tolerance of humans? Of that, Bosco has an endless supply.

  THE TRUTH IS, the vet wasn’t wrong; I’m not a good pet dad. I used to be. Before we had kids (and I’m not blaming them), I was all over the dog. I walked him till he was exhausted; I petted him down to bare skin—there wasn’t much I wouldn’t do. I worried about his food, the luster of his coat, whether his livery pink nose was spotty enough, or maybe too spotty. My wife and I would debate whether it was cruel to clip all his paw-nails. Wouldn’t it be more humane to leave one or two long in case he needed to scratch?

  But with two kids, I just no longer have what it takes. There’s just not that much concern, patience, or time left over in me. I’m sure if we were to have another child, I would find it within me to muster what’s needed. But as it is, this is it. This is the full extension of all I can do. Deep inside, I know my dog understands this. And forgives.

  Bosco remains a part of our family, just—I’m sorry to say—not the most important part anymore. Our boys sometimes forget to feed him. They’re not beyond taking him for granted sometimes. See, they were born into having a dog. They never got a chance to want a dog, never had to beg their parents to get them a dog. There was no red ribbon around the gangly puppy’s neck on their birthday. Bosco, like my wife and me, has always been a fact of their life. So I can’t really blame them.

  To be honest, I too also forget to feed him sometimes. Because he’s almost the exact same shade as our carpet, I have occasionally and accidentally stepped on him. Because he’s also the same shade as one of our couches, I have also occasionally laid upon him. Accidentally, and only briefly, but it happens. I feel terrible about it when it does, but Bosco, true to his nature, never gets upset.

  “Uh . . . dude . . . ?”

  “Oh, Bosco! I’m so sorry! I didn’t see you there!”

  “I’ll move.”

  I feel bad for Bosco sometimes. The
least demanding, most accepting, most even-keeled member of the family receives, for the most part, the least of our attention. He thrives on our scraps—scraps of time, scraps of contact, scraps of food. Like the best of us, like the kind and sainted, Bosco accepts what we have to give him without complaint.

  We probably don’t deserve such a good dog. I can only imagine what Bosco’s friends must think of us. I bet they tell Bosco he could do better, that he ought to leave us. I can’t really argue with them. But he works through it. I’m just glad he has someone to talk to.

  AFTER WE COME HOME from the vet, I give Bosco an extra portion of dog food. And a muffin. And a little piece of steak. We sit out in the backyard. I watch him watch-but-not-chase squirrels. The squirrels scurry to and fro, building their mini-city. We sit there, enthralled. I wonder out loud if the influx of squirrels means some other group will be moving out. Perhaps the gophers. Bosco shrugs. He doesn’t know either.

  It’s moments like this that make me proud to be his father.

  Take My Kid. Please.

  Our neighborhood has a terrific public elementary school. So good, in fact, that when you enroll, the district literally sends an investigator to your house to confirm that you indeed live where you say you do; people outside the area have been known to lie about living here just so their kids can go to this school.

  Fortunately, we didn’t have to lie. We lucked out, living in the correct square-mile area. We sent both our boys to the school, and they loved it—and even shared many of the same teachers. It was a great experience.