And then, I think of three fantasy-like weeks in the south of France. Of the one year anniversary of the day I met Lola. Of long summer days with Lola lying in the shade of my first tomato crop.
"Oh my God, can I pet your puppy?" I asked the little boy walking a perfect blue Pit.
I didn't wait for an answer. I had the dog in my arms and kissed its face.
"She is six weeks old, isn't she?"
"Yes, her name is Diamond" he breathed.
It was like holding baby Lola again. Same colors, same markings. Same little chunk of a body, same little licky face.
"She is just like my dog was a year ago".
"How long she take to get big?" he asked, smiling and childlike.
"Um, I guess about ten minutes. She's eighty pounds now".
"Well, the bone is healed!" Spider Pig announced.
"Do you think anything will ever change with how crooked my finger is?" I asked carefully.
"Probably not. You'll get used to it".
"The physical therapist said he can't get any more mobility out of it."
"Yeah he's right, but it's pretty good. It'll take months for the swelling to go down too".
I looked at my hook like finger that is sore every morning and sways unnaturally to the right. It doesn't bend or straighten all of the way. My knuckle has gone from a seven ring size to a 10.5. The entire hand literally has half of the strength of my right hand.
Yeah, it's pretty good.
"Okay so Ms. Wagner, when I was little, I had this gerbil that died....."
It takes nothing to ignite a couple of my classes into rampant, 'when I was little' conversations. Their stories are hilarious but I have to remember to stop them and do the right thing and teach some, uh, Spanish.
"Oh God," I responded, "when I was little my hamster killed and ate my sister's hamster. It was horrible".
I was surprised when the only Senior in my freshman Spanish class raised his hand. He never contributed to these little chats, just put his head down and headphones on. The freshman are afraid of him. He's black, older and has tattoos.
"Okay so when I was little, I had this AC unit in my room. One day, I went to school and forgot to turn it off. When I came home, my hamster was frozen stiff. I put it in this little bag and built a little coffin out of a tissue box. My dad said we'd bury it, but he forgot until the next day. When we went to bury it the day after, the little ziplock was torn and the hamster was gone. Something had got to it. He still wanted to try to bury something but I just said Dad, things are goin' from bad to worse...".
Fire trucks were going by, lots of them. It was loud. Lola slowly rose from her slumber, stretching her body up into a sitting position. I watched her in the dark as I laid in our bed. She looked like Snoopy when he rises up in the Great Pumpkin patch and fools Linus into thinking that he IS the Great Pumpkin. Her throat stretched out and her nose rose straight up in the air, like a western silhouette drawing of a coyote. A low, long, evenly paced howl emitted from her throat and through her upraised snout. She echoed it with a second long coo. And then, she looked at me with an almost clandestine look on her face that seemed to say, yes, this is something I do that you didn't teach me. I just knew how to do this, I have instincts. She seemed to smile wisely.
Then, she curled up against me and went back to sleep, her nose pressed to my cheek.
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