scribblechic

There is no paper trail to validate this claim, no certification of care or qualification to our companion’s title. Instead there is only the quality of our days; the gentle, steadfast way she loves us. We are better people in her care.

Her affection is patient and kind, she nestles loyally into the perimeter of our attention when obligations distract us from play. There is no record of our errors, no anger in her posture; there is only the most innocent attentiveness to our emotions. She sits beside us in comfort and encouragement, a silent keeper of our worries and enthusiastic champion of good cheer.

She is the first face we see at the dawn of each day, a companionable shadow. The one who welcomes us home, with an unguarded pleasure. She moves cautiously between us and strangers with a purposeful sense of protection and, alternately, behind us with uncertainty.

Our children lean into her care, eager to tend to her happiness, but our service is deceptively unbalanced to her own. She draws us outside our rhythms of self into a sense of selflessness, from indoors to outdoors and from procrastination to play.

The part of me that resisted the unpredictable inconveniences, the mayhem of messes and the burden of need has found a greater dependency on her joy, a calmness in the chaos and a purpose in her need. I worried our responsibilities would consume our restfulness and freedom without knowing that she would rejuvenate us collectively with a reckless joy that jostled the expected into a curious new knowing.

The past two weeks have been a happy blur of holidays and home. Lingering Christmas decorations are as telling as the misplaced shoes drafted for mischief in moments of distraction.

There is a joyful chaos to the predictable disruption of order that can be measured in muddy puppy prints and unexpected puddles. Each mess is met with the comic frustration of uncoordinated damage control as we trip collectively over the rough edges of progress in a cautious choreography of care.

Simple expectations and firm boundaries have gifted us a new language as we struggle, clumsily, toward consistency. We’re teaching our pup about the space of our home, but we’re also learning a bit about ourselves and one another as we share inconvenient responsibilities and celebrate unexceptional success with notable enthusiasm.

We are laughing and sighing in unison, sharing sympathetic glances and uncovering new smiles. We’ve set aside of our worries and found extra excuses to play, spent less time planning for company and more time doing nothing, together.

This is the secret I’ve come to understand, the days are longer in puppy years for the time we cease to count while we tend to the little things that matter.