Sit and Die

When I was in public school in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s the major social concern that was being taught was “Smoking Kills.” Some of my teachers were drug users so this was before “Just Say No to Drugs.” AIDS was just a plural form of a verb so by all means, children, experiment sexually. But they had these lessons on the horrors of smoking where my teacher would smoke a cigarette then exhale through a white handkerchief and pass around the yellow-brown gooey tar that would be lining our lungs if we smoked a cigarette. They had just started putting the Surgeon General’s warnings on the sides of cigarette packages. They showed films of people with mouth, throat or lung cancer speaking through a tracheostomy speaking valve. We drew class posters with slogans like “Kissing a smoker is like licking an ashtray.” It became a reflexive action to be repelled by anyone who smoked. It was this generation of indoctrinated children in California that voted to ban smoking in all public places.

Not only did they warn us students to never, ever smoke, they sent us home with tricks for getting our parents to stop smoking. I was advised to go home and hide my mother’s cigarettes. I did so. I suffered. I was advised to save my mother’s life by cutting her cigarettes in half. I did so. I suffered. My mother gave up cigarette smoking some years later and she made little “no smoking” signs to post in the bathrooms and on the dining table so visitors could suffer. My point is that I learned what every person interested in world domination knows: influence the young if you wish to enact social change.

So imagine my gut reaction to the magazine headline “Sitting is the New Smoking.” Cigarettes kill people. Now I risk life and limb by sitting down? According to the article in the AARP magazine “Sitting: Hazardous to Your Health” by Elizabeth Pope “Sitting for long periods increases the risk of obesity, diabetes, cancer, and early death.” I immediately envisioned children going home and hiding their parents’ chairs. I could imagine children drawing class art for the mural, “Have a seat – if you want to die!” Some youth slides into the seat on the bus ahead of the old lady and tells her, “Grandma, I’m just doing this for your own good.”

The high school kids who wait for the bus on the corner by my house smoke like chimneys but the stigma they can’t live down is if they are overweight. The president’s wife has as her social cause the fight against childhood obesity. My “the medium is the message” sensibilities notice the children’s art hung by the salad bar restaurant of evil sweets and cupcakes being run over and whipped by bicycles and jump ropes. I suspect they show grade schoolers the clip from WALL*E of all the humans who have sat so long in their hover chairs in space that they’ve lost all their bone mass and have become human elephant seals. A February 7 web-article from The Editors by Joe Kita says that businesses are posting signs by the elevators that say, “Burn calories not electricity – take the stairs” and just by posting the signs stair usage is up 35 percent. The advertisement that goes with that article is for woodway.com’s office treadmill. At the push of a button your desk’s surface raises and a treadmill slides out so you can walk while you handle business phone calls at work. The other image I gawked at was that of two women in business suit dress, right down to their high heeled pumps, having a meeting while sitting on Pilates exercise balls. Work those core muscles while you work!

Believe me, I’m watching my step these days -- counting them actually, since I got the high tech pedometer for Christmas. I take walks outdoors, I pace while I talk on the phone, I stand at the counter to do certain office tasks. But it still comes down to this: smoking is an unnatural activity for human beings with potentially lethal consequences. One chooses to smoke (at least at first). Sitting is something we're, well, designed to do. As Harold Hill recommends to Miss Marion in The Music Man, "Miss Marion I'd discuss anything in the world with you. But couldn't we do it sitting down? You do sit? Your knees bend?" So when did the blame for obesity fall upon the all-too-natural action of sitting? I know, I know, it's the sedentary lifestyle represented by sitting. Just don't be too shocked when in twenty years the current crop of government schooled children manage to ban sitting in all public places.

Bite

My first clear dental memory is being four or five years old and studying my abscessed molar. It had been extracted and, since the Tooth Fairy was a major source of income at that time in my life, I had insisted that the tooth be put in a jar of water so I could put it on my nightstand and exact a big payoff. Surely the Tooth Fairy would fork over extra coinage for my pain and suffering and the opportunity to collect such a gloriously hideous specimen with pus and bloody roots still attached! I think I got a whole quarter. It set the stage for my future dental health to be both disturbingly bizarre and expensive.

In grade school I wrote an essay on how I thought the worst job in the world to have would be that of a dentist. I didn't like putting my fingers in my own mouth and the thought of having to spend the workday with my fingers in somebody else's mouth was totally repulsive. I had a lot of time in grade school to consider this because I had cavities, extractions, and numerous adjustments of my space maintainers which pulled me out of some of the best parts of my class day. In my college years I had to have my four impacted wisdom teeth chiseled loose from my jaw. The oral surgeon said his fingers hurt for days afterwards from all the pounding and hammering he had to do. My perspective on the event put it around #4 on my life scale of painful experiences. In my thirties I had three root canals and an insanely expensive bridge installed. The bridge was made out of some substance (we'll call it Wonderdentium) that I was told would outlive me. My life expectancy was brought into question when it broke two years later and I could make it go "sproy-yoy-yoy-yoy-yoing" with my tongue as if it were a diving board.

I should make it clear at this point that I don't hold any malice towards dentists, hygienists, oral surgeons, endodontists or periodontists. They have done their best with what I gave them to work with. They have had to deal with the oversized teeth in the undersized jaw, the super-tight jaw muscles preventing me from "opening wider," and the saliva glands that can nail a dental assistant within a six feet range ("careful, she spits.") Without the valiant efforts of dental professionals I'd have teeth that looked like a picket fence after a tornado hit it and probably suffer any number of health infirmities because of the inability to chew my food. In an earlier century I would not have lived past fifty and my teeth would have easily contributed to whatever else did me in.

Still, when in consultation with my endodontist and my dentist this week, I was informed that my body was reabsorbing the anchor tooth for my bridgework, I was seriously tempted to just bite somebody. My family consoled me by taking me out to a BBQ restaurant and letting me gnaw on a 1/2 rack of ribs. I have had two bridges anchored on this tooth and two (count'em TWO) root canals on it. It is so stressed that apparently my body is just eating it from the inside out. It will have to be extracted sometime this year. I'll lose the bridge. I'll have to have a bone graft on my jaw. Then they'll see if my jaw will accept implant screws. I'll have to have two screws crowned and possibly a crown on the back anchor tooth giving me more crowns than most royalty. As I think of the coming two years of oral surgery I'm having trouble not grinding my molars. Oh, well, maybe I'll lose weight on the liquid diet and end up able to bite through steel cable like Richard Kiel's Jaws character.

New Year's Aspirations

I can't make New Year's resolutions because of the word "resolution." In this context it means a "fixed purpose or determination of mind," (Webster's 1828) or "determining upon an action or course of action, method, procedure, etc." (Dictionary Online). To make resolutions I would have to believe, like the poet of Invictus that "I am the master of my fate: the captain of my soul." As a Christian I have come to grudgingly accept that I am not in control of my fate and my soul has been redeemed by someone else. So it is an exercise in futility for me to "resolve" that this year I will do this, or that, or change myself. I'm not here in 2012 for my own self-improvement projects. When the Westminster Catechism asks "What is the chief end of man?" the correct response is: "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever."

So rather than make New Year's Resolutions that are doomed to failure as life unfolds over the course of days and weeks and months, I do have New Year's aspirations. That word, "aspiration" stems from the same lovely, breathy, root as inspire. Even in 1828 Webster said it meant "breathing after; an ardent wish or desire, usually for what is noble or spiritual." Today it has synonyms like longing, aim, ambition, or goal. If my aspirations can line up with glorifying God and enjoying Him forever, I believe the Holy Spirit might show some support for the activities and I stand a better chance of actually achieving something worthwhile.

I have three aspirations for 2012. The first is to read through the Chronological Bible. I started this last year with the goal of reading through in a year. I read, but too slowly to get past the prophets. It was silly of me to set a timetable, even though there is a lovely one in the back of the book that tells you how far to read each day. Rather than abandon the project as a failed resolution, I've decided now to see if I can read through the Chronological Bible in two years. Like graduating from college, it make take some extra semesters for me to complete the required work.

My second aspiration is to return to playing a keyboard instrument. I took eleven years of piano when I was in grade school and when I graduated High School I was a good pianist. Not great, not gifted, not extraordinary, just able to plod through sight-reading just about anything and making it come out as pleasant music. I held onto a semblance of ability until my children started school and then I let piano playing go and once you stop a muscle-memory activity you retain the memory but not the muscles. I think music is one way in which humans both glorify God and enjoy God and playing an instrument works a part of the brain that is worth keeping healthy. I'm old enough now to occasionally struggle with arthritis so I will have to start back at the very beginning, taking my feeble left hand and my dominant right hand through finger exercises and scales on an electronic keyboard before I have either the strength or the dexterity to try playing ivory-laid wooden keys.

My third aspiration is to organize into formats that can be appreciated by grandchildren and great-grandchildren I may never meet, the visual documentation of the lives of my family. I managed to scrapbook 2009 last year. But there is a daunting amount of photos before and since 2009 that still need to be "dealt with" and now I have come across boxes of Super 8, BETA Max, VHS, etc. video that needs to be upgraded to digital. Not to mention the chest of archival family photos I have secured that need to be scanned and digitially recovered. I like finding (as Madeleine L'Engle puts it) the "cosmos in the chaos." My mother's memory is no longer up to the task of sorting out who's who. Even scrapbooking technology has gone digital and you do photo books before you worry too much about sticking a print onto paper. I am going to get a digital camcorder and hope I can find software for video editing that doesn't consider my computer too obsolete. It may seem a narcissistic or uselessly historical hobby but I find a special enjoyment in God's creation through photographs, both artistic and documentary.

Take the photo that accompanies this blog for example. To you, it probably looks like blobby colors. I was walking around the Madonna Inn this summer on our anniversary trip and over a patio table was this lamp from the 1960's that was exactly like the lamp that I had in my bedroom as a child. It had always looked like big candied fruit chunks stuck together. The best angle I could get of the lamp was to zoom right up into its innards. Only when I did so did I notice that there was a spider's web and a large, healthy spider operating in a candy-colored world. I was charmed by the idea that this little arachnid lived in a whimsically stained-glass-like world, luring its prey in like a witch with a house made of sweets. The photo of that spider in the web-covered plastic hunks is what exploring a New Year is all about: looking at life and finding the unexpected story. That's what I aspire to do.

The Blog is Back

One of my goals for 2011 was to establish myself as a "blogger". I like to read other people's blogs. I have ideas I want to share. I'm a writer without a particular writing forum at this time in my life. Yes, a blog would be a good thing ... or so I thought.

I managed to make about half a dozen blog posts and then the whole project fell apart. I haven't added anything since September. In rereading my past blog entries, I'm very pleased with how they turned out. So what exactly went wrong with keeping up a regular blog?

Problem #1: The Editor that lives in my brain. Over my writing career I've made more off of being an editor than I've ever made as a writer. I can't just write something and not care about the spelling, the grammar, the imagery, the artistry of my language choices. This is why it takes me forever to write a story and I've never finished a novel. I edit my work to death. If there isn't the time to re-read, tweak, manipulate, massage, and look at my writing from all angles, then I can't sit down to write. Blogs are supposed to be the raw thoughts that just drop out of our open minds. My friends document their activities and record their thoughts in words and move on because tomorrow will be another day and another opportunity to blog. I need to relax.

Problem #2: The Butterfly that lives in my brain. I have focus issues. I shed ideas like skin cells. I start something and am easily distracted by something else. I am the poster child for Random Global. I heat the water and pour it in the cup, drop in the tea bag, and then walk away with every intention of returning in three minutes. Hours later I discover the tea cup with the very dark, cold, liquid and accompanying lumpy tea bag. So I take out the tea bag and reheat the tea. Hours later I open the microwave and find this cup of very dark liquid half evaporated away. By the end of the day I have tea espresso, or distilled essence of tea, that won't scrape out of the cup. Likewise I think, "That would make a good blog post. I'll sit down and write that. Oh, wait, the buzzer on the dryer just went off. I'll change the laundry then sit down to write. Oh, I should make a cup of tea before I sit down..." I need self-discipline.

Problem #3: The Flight Controller that lives in my brain. I love it when a plan comes together. I love making plans and schedules and timetables and setting deadlines. I am Queen of the Calendar and take great delight in filling in the week's to-do activities. I told myself I'd blog once a week and publish on Fridays. Trouble was, once I missed that first Friday (see problem #2 above) then I didn't feel like I could blog until the next Friday because that was the schedule I had set. You miss enough weeks and then it gets embarrassing to show up again. This is what exercise gyms count on -- you'll sign up with the best intentions, but after awhile not show up, then be too embarrassed to show up until your membership expires and you start in somewhere else. I need to pick myself up, dust myself off, and start all over again without self-imposed deadlines.

So, as 2011 dwindles away and 2012 steps up in its place, the blog is back. It's a humbler blog, a more forgiving blog, a sadder-but-wiser blog. It knows it might not do any better in 2012 than 2011, but it's at least willing to try again.

My Favorite Home Tours Part One

I like visiting homes that either through their creation or their occupancy have acquired some of the character of the person who lived there. You can learn a great deal about a person by their home, whether they are present in it or not. Since I love tours and my family operates on a home school schedule, I’ve been to numerous places in California where you can not only visit a person’s home, but walk around inside someone’s dream. In this first of a two-part blog I’ll give you two places along the California coast to check out.

Hearst Castle California State Park
http://www.hearstcastle.org/
On a beautiful hilltop that looks out to the sea beyond San Simeon, California newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst wanted to “upgrade” his family’s tent campsite into a comfortable vacation residence where he could entertain his famous and infamous friends in lavish style. What he ended up with was 90,080 square feet of eye-dazzling architecture that houses his museum’s worth of rare world art and fine collectibles. The California State Park’s Service has created a top-notch tourist attraction out of the estate. There’s a theater that shows a quality film about Hearst and his home, a huge gift shop, candy and pastry vendors, a cafeteria, and air conditioned busses with audio tours that take you up the hill to the estate which encompasses swimming pools, tennis courts, 96 bedrooms, 41 fireplaces, 61 baths, and 19 sitting rooms. Whether you like architecture, art, gardens, history, or interior decorating, you’ll find something awe-inspiring about Hearst Castle. And if all you’re interested in is the sensationalism, hedonism, and scandals of the rich and famous, well, there’s plenty of that, too.

I’ve been to Hearst Castle about four times now in my life and what I love about it is the humble story of Julia Morgan, the architect who started the project in 1919 and spent 28 years of her illustrious career supervising every aspect of the estate’s construction including the purchase of the Spanish antiquities, the Icelandic moss, and even the reindeer for the private zoo. Hearst paid for the castle, and he entertained in the castle, but the character of the castle is a blend between Hearst’s ambition and Morgan’s artistic vision. A San Francisco native, Julia Morgan was one of the first women to graduate from UC Berkeley with a degree in architecture. She was the first woman ever to go to Paris and gain a post-graduate degree in architecture. She has over 800 lovely architectural projects to her credit throughout California and Hawaii. She lived her talented life to an advanced age as a single, professional woman devoted to her extended family and to making the designs of buildings we live in both practical and aesthetically pleasing.

I’m not enough of a party person to have wanted to be one of Hearst’s guests at his dinner parties. But I would love to swim in the indoor pool, with its ultramarine blue gold-leaf tiles, all by myself. I’d also like to sneak up to the library and just sit in a window that looks onto the sea and read. I would have liked to go horseback riding under the riding arbor when the wisteria was in bloom and catch a glimpse of Julia Morgan directing the workman. She is someone I’d like to have split a sandwich and a cup of coffee with while sitting on one of the half-constructed walls during a construction break.

Nit Wit Ridge
881 Hillcrest Drive, Cambria CA
Michael & Stacey O’Malley (805) 927-2690

To go from taking a tour of Hearst Castle with all its glitz and glamour to a tour of Nit Wit Ridge is truly going from the sublime to the ridiculous, but seeing both sights of such extremes provides mental balance and honors the right of anyone to pursue their dreams. Nit Wit Ridge is only a short drive south of Hearst Castle along Highway 1 in the little folk artsy community of Cambria. You can GPS the address and drive by anytime, but to get in and actually walk around you need to call the O’Malley’s in advance and arrange for them to come out and give you a tour. The first time I tried to meet up with the O’Malley’s we missed connections. A few years later I tried again and was glad that I had persisted because I’ve never looked at a garbage heap the same way again.

Arthur Harold Beal lived in the “shadow” of Hearst Castle construction, but unlike the millionaire, he was the town’s garbage collector and junk hauler. He couldn’t believe the things people just tossed out that still had a lot of use in them and often a lot of artistic charm. So, der Tinkerpaw, as he was nicknamed, started creating a home for himself out of “found” materials. There’s a whole “found art” movement nowadays but in 1928 he was just considered a nitwit and the neighbors complained that he was bringing down property values. Beal ignored them and continued for 50 years to landscape his 2.5 hillside acres with 3 levels of terraced gardens, stone arches, and his small home all built out of cement and beer cans, abalone shells, broken tiles, car parts, TV antennas, and salvaged bathroom medicine cabinets. It’s the picture frames made out of old toilet seats that give a glimpse of the humor of this non-conformist. What I liked were the little found figurines, old dolls, china pieces or old salt & pepper shakers that are embedded in the mosaics of ocean glass and broken pottery.

Unfortunately, where Beal excelled in creativity, he lacked in people skills and he often had reputation-damaging run-ins with local government and the “Lookie Lou’s” while apparently being a great host to those he considered friends. After Beal died in 1992 there was pressure to tear the place down. Beal’s friends the O’Malley’s had to struggle to get Nit Wit Ridge declared a State Historic Landmark which does not carry with it the development money that comes with being a State Park but does insure that a bulldozer and wrecking ball don’t have their way with the property. The price for a tour of Nit Wit Ridge is much less than you’ll spend for a tour of Hearst Castle and there is no gift shop or modern bathroom facilities in any visitor’s center. Still, the forty-five minute tour did not leave nearly enough time to study and savor all the uniqueness going on in the place. Where Hearst had poured money into the construction of his home by an army of workmen, Beal had done the back-breaking work of pouring concrete all by himself.

Want to have a perfect tourist day? Take the Hearst Castle tour in the morning, have lunch at the State Park picnic area, then drive down to Cambria and hook up with the O’Malley’s. After a tour of Nit Wit Ridge you’ll have time to go down into Cambria and dine at Linn’s Bakery and Eatery (https://linnsofcalifornia.com/ or http://www.linnsfruitbin.com/) which is worth a trip to Cambria all on its own. We’ve never eaten anything there that wasn’t outstanding and what they do with an olallieberry is sheer artistry. Linn’s represents another form of the American Dream – a family-owned business that started out as an orchard, then a fruit stand, then a fine foods emporium and bakery, and after a fire in the 1990’s, a charming restaurant on a major thoroughfare of touristy Cambria. Be sure to save room for dessert! You’ll be able to reflect over the after-dinner coffee on a day full of inspiration.

Hounds of Heaven

People want believers in Jesus to provide them with some miraculous proof that Jesus, the Son of God, is real and alive. I think all genuine Jesus followers are the miraculous proof of life. It’s easy for Christians to forget that their lives serve as the medium for God’s message to mankind. It’s easy to become complacent about all the carefully orchestrated encounters that lead a person to glimpse a real Jesus for the first time. I do several interviews a year with people who tell me the story of their spiritual lives and how they came to believe in Jesus wholeheartedly rather than just intellectually. All their stories involve relationships with other people. Sometimes those relationships took place at churches, or Bible camps, or revivals but talk earnestly with a believer and you will discover a story of a lost sheep being herded to the safety of a shepherd’s arms by a special operations team of heavenly hounds.

Ever watch a border collie responding to the clicks and whistles of the farmer to move a herd of sheep from point A to point B? They make the sheep go where the farmer wants by every means available to a canine: physical presence, barks, and even growls. If the ewe is stubborn there might even need to be a nip here and there. From the sheep’s point of view it’s harassment but from the farmer’s point of view it’s about getting that sheep where it needs to be in order for it to thrive.

As a child, all I knew of what Christians believed was cobbled together from Christmas television specials and the “Davey and Goliath” children’s television shows on Sunday morning. I suppose that makes Goliath my first hound of heaven. I had a friend in High School that took me to a church production of Joseph and His Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. Performing in that play was a future boyfriend whose mother would try to introduce me to Advent and saying table grace while holding hands. Years later when I joined Bible Study Fellowship I discovered that she had been a BSF leader at the time I knew her. These seemingly coincidental encounters were, for me, glimpses of the sheepdogs darting behind the rocks and moving me by avoidance down broad paths. But there is nothing random or coincidental about how God woos the people He has created. We just miss the method because we’re lost in our madness.

At college I met this guy who exuded peace and joy. When he smiled, his eyes became two little squinty lines and all you saw was the grin. I didn’t know it at the time, but I became the pet prayer project for him and his dormitory Bible study group. The guys told the girls’ Bible study downstairs about me. Over a two year period, try as I might, I could not shake these people. They were everywhere I went, and they were always happy to see me, like I was somehow special to them. They always offered to help me with my homework, or fix my bicycle, or carry something for me, or go fetch something for me. They would sidle up to me and start friendly conversations. They would stop by my dorm room just to let me know that if I ever needed anything, they were there for me. They had troubles and challenges and personality quirks like everybody else. What made them stand out was that they seemed genuinely hopeful. They moved through life lightly and dealt with things gracefully rather than like people weighed down with dread and bitterness. They creeped me out and fascinated me at the same time. I would tell myself I’d have nothing to do with them and suddenly find myself surrounded by them in the dining commons or the library.

Their ringleader, the smiley one, drove a tiny Civic Honda. Since he was the only car owner amongst the group, eight people would squeeze in to that Honda to get off campus for some fun. When they invited me to brunch on Sunday mornings I should have known the car would stop at church because “it was on the way.” Oh, look, the service is just starting, what a coincidence! I thought I was safe when they invited me out on a Friday night to the movies. We ended up at some warehouse showing of “The Jesus Film.” All the way home I’m sobbing uncontrollably while seven other people compressed into the car are serenely silent and tactfully passing me tissues.

My heavenly hounds’ persistence paid off. Two and a half years of Christ-inspired behavior on their part led me inexorably to my own relationship with Jesus who had given them His compassion towards me. Twenty-nine years later I’m still in touch with a few of those faithful sheepdogs who refused to let me wander off into my own willfulness. I married the Honda driver and our children give us squinty grins. But here’s to those who stalked and yipped and got the occasional kick in the chops for their troubles. I may not get to thank some of them this side of heaven but I am grateful that they surrounded me with prayer and came alongside to guide me with their friendship. And now the one they guided me to communicates His signals in His own subtle ways. It is time for this old dog to get back to work.

Old Lady in the Moonlight

Our German Shepherd/Collie mix, Lady, had seen fifteen Christmases and would not see another. She was down to one working tooth, nearly blind, completely deaf, arthritic, and incontinent. The incontinence had destroyed the wall-to-wall carpet in the living room before I had resorted to doggie diapers. I ripped up the carpet and laid down tile. Lady had the unfortunate tendency to cross the tile and end up splayed upon it like Bambi-on-the-ice, flat on her belly and unable to gain enough traction to stand up. She had lost her resonant German Shepherd “Woof” and could only wheeze “hooth.” Often at night she would hit that tile and end up going “hooth, hooth,” for a long time before someone woke up and came out to pull her back up into a standing position. If it took too long for her to be discovered, her circulation would be so bad that you would have to massage her legs and feet and sort of swing her legs back and forth until she could gain the ability to stand.

One night I awoke from a sound sleep hearing a muffled “hooth, hooth” through the wall. Lady was down and who knew how long she had been there! I flung back the covers and without taking even a moment to put on my glasses or step into slippers I ran down the hallway from the bedroom to the living room and grabbed the forty pound dog up in my arms. Twice I tried to align her four legs under her and get her to stand on her own but she’d start to slide back down. I was trying to massage circulation back into her legs but she started to gag like she was going to throw up and I quickly decided we’d deal with that outside. Awkwardly, with coughing collie in my arms, I got the side door open and was mincing painfully across the patio towards the lawn. Out in the backyard it was California “nippy” cold but not quite freezing. There was a full moon out that December evening and I had a very furry dog keeping my torso warm as I softly swayed with her to keep her legs moving.

Why was I doing this? Buying the delicatessen dog food that she could gum rather than chew, putting her food on a stand so she didn’t have to bend down for it, and changing doggie diapers throughout the day? Because I believe God entrusted Adam, and by extension humanity, with the stewardship of the garden and its inhabitants. When you agree to adopt a dog into your family you commit to caring for it, for better or worse, for as long as there is quality of life. I guess I was doing it because we all grow old and deserve to be remembered for who we were in the prime of life, not necessarily at the tail end. I was doing it because Lady could still wag her tail when I scratched behind her ears.

In her youth, Lady had been a dog of extraordinary talents. We’d been told when we adopted her that she was a “jumper” – we just didn’t appreciate what that meant. We did the first time she launched herself over a six foot wooden fence in pursuit of a cat that had wandered into our yard. The kennel where we boarded her for vacations developed quite a file on Lady D. The first time we left her they tried putting her in a regular kennel and shortly after we left she scaled the six foot chain link fence. After a lovely chase from Lady’s perspective, they put her in a kennel with a roof. She watched her handlers come in and out a few times, and figured out how to flip the kennel latch herself. But in order to create a distraction for her getaway, she also flipped all the other kennel latches, releasing all the inmates in cellblock B. When they finally found her several acres away they put her in a kennel and wired shut her door. It took her awhile but she unwound the wire with her teeth and had another fun romp with the kennel owners. They admitted she was always a friendly and cooperative dog once she was caught.

Even with the gray in her muzzle and the cloudiness in her brown eyes, she was still a beautiful dog. She wasn’t one to gulp her food and when she lay down she’d cross her paws in a lady-like way. People would stop us as we were on our “walkies” to comment what a beautiful dog she was. She walked on a leash beautifully, would let you shake her paw, and she could sit, lie down and play dead on command. Her “stay” and “come” however, was based on whether she found obeying “worth her while.” She could charm a toddler out of a cookie without making a sound. I once found a fresh loaf of baked bread that I had set out on the counter to cool completely hollowed out behind the couch. Sometimes, if I forgot my sunglasses or a grocery coupon and dashed back into the house from the car, I’d find her standing on her hind legs at the kitchen counter, “pilfering” scraps off the not-yet-washed dishes. She’d look at me with some chagrin, as if to say, “Oh, I thought you’d gone already,” then slowly sink back down to all fours and saunter out of the kitchen.

For all her dainty airs, like a Southern heroine from a Tennessee Williams play, Lady had a neurotic, broken side to her personality, brought on by puppyhood trauma. Explosive noises – be it popping balloons, fireworks, gunfire, a car backfire, or thunder – transformed her from Lady Dog to Lunatic Dog. We learned we had to tranquilize her for 4th of July and New Year’s Eve or have 40 pounds of quaking, hysterical canine trying to climb into our armpits or ripping doorframes apart. She once leapt off the balcony of a two-story cabin in Lake Tahoe we were renting for 4th of July. We could only assume fireworks had been set off in the neighborhood but how she made the leap with only a slight limp to show for it we could never be sure. We once had left her contentedly in our mini-van, windows cracked, on a cold winter’s day while we had lunch at an old west sightseeing village. We enjoyed the fake gunfight between the heroes and the bandits until we got back to the parking lot and found that Lady had gone “Hulk, smash!” on the interior of the Dodge. The door whistled and leaked without its weather stripping ever after and once a repair guy questioned me whether those were blood stains on the handles of all the windows. I just told him he was better off not knowing.

Most endearing of Lady’s attributes was the way she took shepherding the children as a sacred duty. If my husband or I started to play with the children in any sort of wrestling way she’d stand and bark at us as if to say, “Enough of that rough house behavior, you behave yourselves!” She could be intimidating if she thought it was necessary, but more often she’d simply come and sit down beside your knees and put her long muzzle across them, patiently waiting for a walk, or a treat.

I was musing about that, staring ahead at the moon halfway up in the sky when I noticed Lady and I were casting a dark shadow that stretched ahead of us when it should have been behind us. I suddenly realized what the “flup-flup-flup” noise that had been steadily growing louder had to be. The shadow shrank towards me as the police helicopter skimming over my neighborhood climbed over my head. I hoped they were not videotaping their inspection of the neighborhoods. I’d hate to see the headlines, “Naked Woman Dances with Wolf,” or “Canine Cultist Moons the Moon.” I suppose they have seen stranger things and had more notorious criminals to apprehend. Once the helicopter was safely out of sight, I put down my fur coat and after a few stiff steps, she did her backyard business and then smelled her way back to me. She wagged her tail as I scratched behind her ear as if to say, “So why are we out here in the cold?”