Kathy Ewing

A few years after my dad died and very soon after my childhood dog Abbie died, I stood in a bookstore and picked up Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard. I read the book’s epigraph from Heraclitus and burst out crying.

It ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.

Another little measure went out on Monday, as we took our old, ailing dog to the vet for the last time. It’s such a strange reversal; you end his life after expending so much effort stoking the fire. It’s all up to you — food, water, medical care, grooming. We kept the fire going as long as we could, almost sixteen years.

But there came a slow, gradual decline. He lost his hearing and had trouble managing the stairs, and he went through some phases of wandering at night, seeming disoriented, and acting anxious about thunderstorms.

Then he became incontinent, and then things just got worse.

I can’t say anything special about him, except how much I loved him. He was the most ordinary dog. He barked at the mailman. He chased squirrels. He stuck his head out the window of the car. He greeted us at the door and licked our hands and sneaked food off the coffee table.

He did everything a dog is supposed to do, perfectly.

My sister-in-law Penni forwarded me an email that tells you what was happening in the year you were born. One fact struck me: Par Lagervist won the Nobel Prize for Literature that year. (I’m not saying what year that was. You can look it up.)

Par Lagervist

I hadn’t seen that name or thought of my buddy Par for many years, but he wrote a book I liked a lot when I was a kid, Barabbas, a novel about one of the thieves who was crucified next to Christ, according to legend.

This got me thinking about a few books I read as a child that were not intended for children. It’s not that I was precocious, but I had two older sisters who left books lying around, and my parents had lots of books that I’d pick up now and then. Barabbas wasn’t inappropriate in a sexual sense (or not that I remember), but it was dark and serious and spiritual.

A very different book but similarly adult in theme was A Dog’s Head by Jean Dutourd. I probably thought it was about dogs, but no. Here’s the Amazon description.

“Jean Dutourd’s A Dog’s Head is a wonderful piece of magical realism, reminiscent of Voltaire, Borges and Kafka. With biting wit, Dutourd presents the story of Edmund Du Chaillu, a boy born, to his bourgeois parents’s horror, with the head of a spaniel. Edmund must endure his school-mate’s teasing as well as an urge to carry a newspaper in his mouth. This is the story of his life, trials, and joys as he searches for a normal life of worth and love.” The New Yorker described it as “an excellent joke in the worst possible taste.”

Not exactly kiddie lit, in other words, and it did contain some sexual suggestion, as I recall. I probably didn’t catch all the connections with Voltaire, Borges, and Kafka.

I was fascinated by these books, I think, because I knew I wasn’t understanding them completely. I was intrigued by their sophistication. I’ve never reread either one as an adult, but maybe I will now.

Does this strike a chord? Can you remember reading and liking something as a child that you weren’t supposed to, for whatever reason?

My July, especially the last week or so, has been taken up with senior dog care and vacillating over the decision as to what to do. People who say that your dog tells you when it’s time to end his or her life have much more communicative dogs than mine. Or better human radar. We don’t know what our dog is telling us.

On the downside, we’re dealing with incontinence and a weak and probably sore left rear leg. He needs to be washed off several times a day, which I assume he hates. He’s barely walking. And he’s deaf, which we have gotten used to by this point. He does some wandering at night, which results in his getting tangled in furniture; he wakes us up with his frustrated cries.

On the other hand, he still loves to eat. He’s still alert and still recognizes us and still seems to appreciate affection. During the intervals when he’s calmly resting or asleep in the living room, he seems (like a sleeping child) no trouble at all.

Horace

I fixed the zippers on three pairs of pants yesterday, which had previously been held up by safety pins. (Possibly too much information, I know.) For months, I had contemplated picking up a zipper repair kit at Jo-Ann Fabrics. I recalled that my mom used to have such kits, but I didn’t know if they even existed anymore. When I finally made it to the fabric store, the nice lady directed me to a whole bunch of different kinds.

Once I had the kit at home, I was eager to try it. It’s not easy to take a zipper apart and put on a new slider, but I did it, and now I have three almost-new pairs of pants in my closet.

This gratifying experience reminded me of a favorite sentence in my classroom text, Wheelock’s Latin. In one of his odes, Horace wrote Dimidium facti, qui coepit, habet, which means He who begins has half the deed. I tell my students that tackling their translations and homework can be a formidable obstacle. Just open the book, I say, and gather some paper and a pencil. Once you’re sitting there with the book in front of you, starting your homework won’t be so hard. Don’t worry about finishing the task, just get started.

Another example is writing. We think we have to have an idea or know what we’re going to write. I found when I was writing Missing that all I needed to do was open the document. I may have been stalled for awhile, thinking I had to have to know ahead of time what I was going to say. Once I opened the document, though, and started browsing through it, I’d always find something to edit and add to, and then a couple of hours of writing would ensue.

Open the document. Make the phone call. Get out your textbook. Buy the zipper kit. Incipe, says Horace. Begin.