This, yet, on our creature kinship. Don’t miss the elephant at the end. And that’s my daddy in his plain suit—Brother Baer.
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The lies we tell ourselves. I push my nose down close to Buster’s, make like I’m about to bestow a big smacker, and the very hairs on his face go trembly. He fairly quivers with ecstasy—he loves me that much. False. Okay then, he’s wondering what I just ate. He thinks it might’ve been peanut butter. Will he get some, maybe? False again. He’s not questioning, wishing. He’s only smelling. Or that’s what my husband says, anyhow. Opposed on principle to anthropomorphism, he makes a point of reminding me—I don’t know how often—it’s just the food. Why does he do this? Why dash my hopes? Don’t you, too, like to believe your boy pooch is bats about you? Besotted? That all is as it seems? But then you’d be loving him mercilessly. You’d be sitting him up to your table, tying on his bib. Taking him to the dentist. Patting him on demand. Consoling him after his nightmares, feeling his every fear. Insisting on boots and an umbrella. Squelching his hunting instincts, because squirrels, too, w...
He’s indoor/outdoor—our Buster. Like some rugs. But plush. I’m always pawing through the fluff, digging down in, snugging. Other people’s dogs, the skulking, slink-around kind, just the thinnest skin of hair, look too sad. They’re just ribs and skulk. It’s too off-putting. It’s mean to think this, I know. They didn’t have a say in their inherited traits, any more than you and I did with ours. There was a Patty I loved, though—Jim and Valerie’s Patty. No hair to speak of, but in endearingness, a close second to babies. And now we get Lulu sometimes. Bald as a piglet, almost, she comes along with the Pittsburghers. She’s a mere mound of wriggles, her nakedness exposed. Pitiful. And it’s like she doesn’t know. She clambers onto laps like they’re rightfully hers and your heart crumbles. The saving grace is her ears, nappy and lustrous and silky. She has to drag them along. You can flip them about, twirl them, nuzzle the luxury pile. That part of her rug—her floppy ears—is shag. (Credi...
P.S. Included in the papers my husband and I left with Congressman Cline were clips of recent exchanges on Facebook on somebody named Roman’s timeline, between an Orvin somebody and a Patricia. I’d tidily stapled the pages. Excerpts: Orvin: I don’t know you but you need to wake up and listen to the facts instead of the fake news. Donald Trump has been given to the USA by the merciful hand of Almighty God. You need to be thankful to God for a President who is exposing and combatting evil Patricia: and you know this, how? Orvin: Just look at the facts. President Trump was spared by the merciful hand of God for such a time as this. No one else has had the courage to stand up against the corruption that we all knew was there. Now we see it being exposed. Patricia: and I think God spared Trump in order that he may eventually pay for his crimes. Orvin: All those charges brought against Donald Trump were bogus political charges. The evil left were trying to keep him from getting the pres...
When Emily at Congressman Ben Cline’s office called last week, my husband accidentally hung up on her. She was trying to set up an appointment. But right away, my phone rang. You answer, I hissed. So there we were, two days later, waiting in a nice outer room, dark wood floor, dark wood desk, framed certificates in a row on the wall leading down the hall. Somebody else was behind the dark wood double doors. Her voice and Cline’s leaked out but we couldn’t catch enough. Through the crack I could see she had a baby along. On the table beside me lay magazines and a Daily News Record newspaper. Paulson asked me to pass him the paper. I handed it over—just the top section. Oh. February 21, 2024. I put it back down. I riffled through. The sports section, too—there’d been a game with Hokie High. And a Food Lion flier, dated February 21-27, 2024. In the meeting room—Emily across the round table from Paulson, Ben opposite me—we tried desperately to keep our heads. As you probably know, sai...
The Book Thief Grandgirl was right . “I marvel and marvel at the writing,” I emailed. “How far through are you?” she asked. “Papa just found the Gravedigger’s Handbook when he pulled off the wet bedsheets.” “Woah that’s pretty far,” she replied. “Is it better than the one about the dogs?” “Doesn’t compare,” I wrote back. “I can barely contain myself.” The words, the words. The awful awful story. Here’s a bit from a few pages in— The last time I saw her was red. The sky was like soup, boiling and stirring. In some places, it was burned. There were black crumbs and pepper, streaked across the redness. And then, next page— Yes, the sky was now a devastating, home-cooked red. The small German town had been flung apart one more time. Snowflakes of ash fell so lovelily you were tempted to stretch out your tongue to catch them, taste them. Only, they would have scorched your lips. They would have cooked your mouth. I’m not halfway through, yet. But I know, now, whose bomb-hit lips ...
On a recent balmy day a noise came to us from the heavens, maddening, cleaving the air. Not the roar of a jet dropping its payload, exploding the trees and sending us streaming from our house and down around to the crawl-space entrance to cower behind the walls while more bombs hit. Not the BRRRRRTs of a machine gun poking from another plane’s belly, accomplishing the above plus strafing the chickens and obliterating our sandpile. Not sonic booms. Not even the whine of an oncoming drone. It whistling straight in beneath our porch eaves and through a window unpatched with tape to prevent shards of glass spraying. So that bedlam, also—needle slivers piercing the grandboy’s rising bread and ripping up the grandgirl’s pictures, and bloodying my hands still tight on our read-aloud book, and extinguishing the pages, too, or actually our lives. In fact the whump whump whumps of a thunderous helicopter bird, a skinny pole dangling (100 feet in length, was my husband’s guess), and at the ...
It’s possible that people don’t know, yet, about the parade . Nobody answered this morning when I rang the bell, so I just stuck my sign into Congressman Cline’s big industrial mailbox for constituents’ concerns, the same place where Paulson put our letter. (Was it still there? I didn’t try to get my face through the slot to see.) I had duct tape along to post it on the door, but then I maybe forgot. Or maybe I just wanted to get off the property.
Dear Congressman Cline, A person hardly knows what to do. We just keep getting these mechanical letters. Your face, all smiles, and your proud support for the Trump administration’s directives. Nothing works. We’d pray, but God might get confused. All these different screams swirling around God’s ears. Dear God, make DOGE go away. Dear God, save us from vaccines. Dear God, save the babies. Dear God, rescue Kilmar from that concentration camp in El Salvador. Dear God, catch all the gangs. Dear God, spare the billionaires. Dear God. Actually, God bless America comes out of EVERYBODY’s mouth. We’ve emailed you. We’ve phoned your office— Shirley: Hi there. Please, who am I speaking with? Are you an employee? An intern? Her: I’m Rebecca. I’m an intern. S: I don’t understand how Cline can continue his support for Trump. You, too? Aren’t you uneasy? R: We don’t express opinions. I’ll pass on your message. S: No, it’s just for you. I encourage you to resign. Another time— Shirley...