Ladies and gentlemen, an announcement: we’re getting an emotional support dog.
I know. This is a big deal. We already have Penny the Wonder Dog. Why would we want another? I’ve been told she’ll be our last dog, and I’m pretty sure she thinks the same, or at least the only dog we’ll have while she’s around. So, like I said, a big deal.
Late last week, as we pulled up to an event center at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, I flashed back to the moment we arrived at a hospital more than seventeen years ago. I felt the same kind of excitement and fear now as I did back then, minus the Lamaze breathing.
“I have no idea what’s about to happen.” I told Mike.
We’d been looking forward to seeing our son, but for most of the past six weeks, knowing he was safe and also not under our roof, what I’d been feeling mostly was relief. After a difficult year and excruciating last three months, we’d needed the respite.
That’s a hard feeling to have about your child.
I was on a run one morning a little while ago and disturbed a family of geese, two adults and about half a dozen goslings. They darted out from their grassy spot on the canal bank and began crossing the road.
I passed and they settled again—right in the middle of the road actually, a few of the babies plunking themselves down on the dappled pavement. A car approached, slowly, and I kept running, figuring the geese would get out of the way eventually.
Except they didn’t. I turned to see two more goslings had settled onto the asphalt, the parents in no hurry to move them along. The woman in the stopped car shrugged at me.
I returned and tried shooing the geese off to the side. The mama closest to me hissed, so I squirted her with my bottle, and then aimed the water at her brood, who finally decided it was time to stand and continue crossing. Momma kept hissing as they all got to their feet and meandered off. The woman in the car rolled forward and thanked me as she passed.
Stupid goose mom, I thought. So focused on me, she can’t see her whole family’s about to be squashed.
Then I realized how appropriate that metaphor was for me, in light of the ass-kicking parenting has given us these past few weeks.
