Happy Thanksgiving, friends! Recently I was looking through last year’s Ask Me Anything when I came across a question from my friend Steph (HI STEPH) that I had yet to address, ten and a half months after the fact. I did not mean to be so tardy in my response, but it turns out that the timing is perfect, as you shall see.

Steph asked: How did Rex come into your life? I remember you saying it was a surprise and I wondered what the story was. Saturday marked four years to the day since Rex came into our lives, but in order to tell that story, I need to first tell the story of Barkley, our beloved brown Labradoodle.

Barkley came to us in 2008 as a 13-week-old puppy, and the boys were 3 and 4 years old, so they all grew up together. The boys didn’t remember a time without Barkley; he was our childhood dog. He was a stuffed Gund toy come to life, fluffy and sweet and, like all Labrador-blends, a bit of a piggy. We all loved him excessively, but as an at-home parent, I spent the most time with him. We walked daily, he curled up by my feet as I wrote or sat with expectant and hopeful eyes while I cooked. He would never allow the boys to be in the back yard on their own, he had to be guarding and watching them at all times.

Throughout Barkley’s life, I vowed I would never have another dog; I loved him so deeply that I could not fathom my heart allowing another dog in. In January 2021, he was diagnosed with cancer in his mouth; I was given the option of giving him chemo, radiation, or removing his jaw. I said How about we just let him live out the rest of his life in peace? I did not think he’d last until the spring, however, he lived another year and a half. I think it’s because we completely stopped disciplining or scolding him in any way, and just fed him a constant stream of treats, since we just wanted him to be happy for whatever time he had left. Now THIS is worth living for, we assume that he thought, as he had his twentieth treat of the day. When he was, to my surprise, still there in the summer of 2021, I never told him to get out of the garden as he trampled through the hostas. They never did recover from that trauma.

I was so happy to have that extra year and a half with him, but as anyone who has had an old, declining pet knows, that year and a half was very difficult. The vet had told me it would be time for Serious Thoughts when Barkley stopped eating, wanting to go for walks, and being happy to get eyedrops, the latter of which was a strange but exciting part of his day. Indeed, until the day he died, he enjoyed all three of those things; in fact, the morning that he died he gobbled down his breakfast the way he had every day of his life. And so I continued with our everyday life, walking him on our slow-boat-to-nowhere route every single day, and every single day we would come home from our walk, with me on the verge of tears.

Barkley was very obviously not well, as anyone sighted could tell you. He had a very large lipoma on his side which did not hurt him or alter his mobility, but it was dramatically noticeable, and something I learned over those eighteen months is that people can be really, really thoughtless and cruel. Every single day we would walk and every single day someone would comment on his appearance. What’s wrong with your dog?, they’d ask, or, inanely, Did you know your dog has a lump on his side? One atrocious man passed us as we slowly ambled up the sidewalk and said sharply WHEN are you going to put that dog down already?

All of which is to say that when he died, on June 30, 2022, I renewed my vow that I would never have another dog. In addition to my feeling that I could never love another dog, I was sure that I could never go through the trauma of the decline again. I spent the summer radiating waves of sadness, walking around with a fuzzy, Barkley-shaped hole in my life and in my heart.

Meanwhile, as I was spending the summer staring at my ruined, dogless hosta garden and avoiding the dog park, my husband was in conversation with one of his colleagues who, for several reasons, was sadly coming to terms with the fact that she was going to need to rehome her Bernedoodle. I did not know about these conversations, which started in July. Barkley died, as I said, June 30. My husband would occasionally mention his colleague’s terrible predicament, and I would shrug and say That’s too bad. He would show me photos of this Bernedoodle, and I barely looked at them. In fact, I said I don’t think he’s cute at all, and asked him to stop showing me photos. As I sadly watched the grass in the back yard become lush and green again, he was secretly telling his colleague to please talk to HIM before anyone else, should she need to rehome the dog.

Eventually, in late September, the colleague had a trip to the emergency room, and her two little boys – who were responsible for the name T-Rex Stegosaurus – said We just want Mommy to be okay and for a family to love Rexie.

Well, I’m not made of stone.

I did have some reservations about bringing a hundred-pound dog into our little bungalow, but we knew his temperament was gentle and sweet, and – this is key – he was well-trained, well-cared-for, and was a year-and-a-half, so past the puppy stage but still young enough to adapt easily to new circumstances. And, as my older son said, We are a dog family, Mom. We need a dog in our lives.

I was not prepared for what happened. I was not prepared for Rex to immediately bond to me and I to him. I was not prepared to have a giant dog so gently and happily devoted to me from day one. I was prepared to take care of him, but I was not prepared to love him instantly and completely.

He came to us on Thanksgiving Monday, 2022, which was appropriate, because I am so thankful and grateful for such a gift, a gift of joy and happiness. I didn’t know how much I needed him.

To quote Jerry Orbach in Dirty Dancing, “When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.”

Weekly Reading

It was a HUGE reading week for me, thanks to some short books and quick, unputdownable reads.

Dolly All The Time. I’m only a little bit late to this party! This was a delight to read. Essentially, it’s Pretty Woman without the sex work, and in a good way. There’s fake dating that – surprise – elicits real feelings and life changes, and it all wraps up in a very satisfying way. More than that, there is a theme of putting yourself FIRST, of taking care of the caretaker, and of speaking up for what you need and want. These are lessons that I think most of us could take to heart. Truly a sweet, funny, and lovely book.

The Reservation. I absolutely LOVE books like this: heavy character development, tiny minutiae of everyday life, an ordinary day that is somehow extraordinary. This book takes place in a restaurant and spans about nine hours; each chapter is a delve into each person who works there. It revolves around mysteriously missing ribeye steaks, and the soon-to-be appearance of John Grisham for dinner. I found this exquisite, with one small quibble: the chapter in which the big reveal happens was very explain-y and the dialogue was quite stilted and did not ring true. I wondered if that chapter was added later in the editing process, and I wished that the reader could have been trusted to be able to come to the conclusions in a much more nuanced way. Otherwise, this was great and I enjoyed it so much.

The Vegetarian. This was a literal fever dream of a book, a story of a woman attempting to escape from oppression and gain autonomy over her body and her life, told – interestingly and importantly – not from her own point of view, but from those around her. It’s a harrowing story and it gave me Yellow Wallpaper vibes. It was very well done and well translated, and very upsetting.

Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal. This uniquely laid-out book is so beautiful and life-affirming. I spent a great deal of time gasping and then clutching the book to my chest, tears in my eyes. There is a quote it it attributed to Einstein: There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. I FEEL SEEN. By Einstein, no less! Anyway, the entire book is just wonderful, made even more moving by the fact – told to me by my friend Elisabeth who recommended it (HI ELISABETH) – that Amy Krouse Rosenthal was dying when she wrote this. My heart. What a loss to the world.

Some Bright Nowhere. I have no idea what to say about this book. I guess….it’s an accurate portrayal of a woman dying of breast cancer, and it is breast cancer awareness month so…that’s good? I suppose the point of this book is Whose Death Is This Anyway? A woman stops her treatment and begins the palliative care journey, and she decides that she doesn’t want her husband of forty years, who has been caring for her through her illness for nine years, to be her caregiver anymore as she dies. Instead, she supplants him with her two best friends. And I will say that this was kind of awful to read. You all know I am no male apologist but wow, I felt so deeply for this husband, and I found the antics of the three women to be just cringey and awful. I go back and forth in my mind – a dying woman should be able to make her own choices, but the people left behind have to live with those choices forever. It’s a very descriptive story of the end of life, and so please be aware of that if you decide to read this book.

Some of you got an unintended preview of this post, due to my under-caffeinated self pressing “publish” as opposed to “save” when I was editing at 4:50 am on Friday. Whoops! If you too would enjoy getting the occasional accidental preview, or just my regular posts delivered to your email, why not subscribe? If you are viewing this on your mobile device, you will have to scroll waayyyyy down to just before the monthly archive menu, but if you are on a laptop or desktop, the subscribe button is in the top right of the homepage. You’ll never miss a post! I hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving weekend, and I am thankful for all of you for being here. xo