on looking and finding and feeling

sometimes new beginnings feel as heavy with grief as they do with joy

Our beloved dog, Magnolia died last March.

It was relatively sudden and crushing and came soon after a similarly heartbreaking end to something else, which led to my several botched attempts at drawing over the pain with the temporary fix of magic markers. Which worked for the first few strokes before the ink started to fade. Black more like gray and red more like pink and you can’t draw over much with either color.

Not when the ink beneath the scribble is jet black.

It came from a deeply irrational place, this urge. But pain is seldom rational and I was in desperate need to take the edge off. My dog was dead and I couldn’t bear to go another day without her… so… I went with the next best option and went looking for a replacement. Petfinder as drug of choice.

There are a thousand ways to attempt to draw over pain and I have flirted with almost all of them. But for the sake of this post, I’ll attempt to draw within the lines of this particular metaphor, at least for now because it feels accurate. Because no matter how hard you press on a drying marker, when it’s out of ink it’s fuckin out.

the late great Magnolia

And even if it isn’t, you can’t draw over grief with something that washes out. You have to just learn to live with it on the page. Decorate it if you must. Add hearts to its I’s. But you can’t strike-thru it you just can’t.

And I know because I have tried like it’s my job. The greys and pinks of constant scrolling. Of infinite potential. All of those images, cropped and well-angled. All that eye contact. All those what ifs.

I’m talking about looking, bitches.

I’m talking about one after another after another.

I’m talking about the distraction of endless options.

Hope that springs eternal in the maybe-sos. In the possibility of an alleviated heart and a cuddle buddy when it’s cold and raining outside.

I’m talking about adoptable dogs here but of I’m also talking about being a person with a phone that has apps on it. Who can spend an entire day memorizing the lines of strangers’ lives, tracing eyeballs around silhouettes in the windows of screens. Looking on our lunch breaks. Looking as we wait for our morning coffee to brew. Looking as we’re stuck in traffic even though it’s against the law. Looking because what if. Looking because what now. Looking because what the fuck. Looking because we can. Looking because we can’t stop.

All we have is the option to look.

Look at this.

Now at this.

Just one more.

This could be the one that changes everything.

This could be the one you fall in love with for real.

This could be the one who shits all over your house.

Scroll. Swipe. Click.

***

I have been flirting voraciously with every dog I’ve come across since Maggie died in March and no one has felt right to me because no one has been her.

This is the thing about grief, it carves a shape within us that just sort of gapes and shifts and occasionally bumps against something that feels like gauze until it falls off and then it’s like oh right. That’s still there. I’m just the girl who’s full of holes.

Every dog we’ve come close to meeting or wanting to adopt, we’ve ended up changing our minds about. Not really giving anyone a chance because, if it isn’t perfect it’s not worth it. Because yes I want a dog but only if it’s the right dog. Only if it’s the perfect dog that fits seamlessly into our day to day lives without overwhelming me more than I already am.

We had it once. That. With Maggie. That’s what it felt like. Or, rather, that’s what I remember it feeling like all these months later.

I didn’t realize this was how I was feeling until Revie — Maggie’s other mother and my co-parent in pet-ownership-life — said it out loud.

“All of these dogs just make me miss Maggie. She was the perfect dog.”

(ED: Mags slept with Revie every night. She was her dog when she wasn’t mine. And while this process — this looking — has been a family effort, Revie and I have led the charge together: both of us dog people to our core.)

I have followed and then unfollowed and then matched with and then talked to and then ghosted and then fallen for and then ignored and then deleted the apps and then reinstalled the apps and then hated everyone and then hated myself a thousand times in the last year. And yes, I’m still talking about adoptable dogs cough cough ahem but I’m also talking about being a person with a phone that has apps on it where you have access to an infinite number of people trying to pitch and sell themselves.

Because looking is so easy, you know?

Looking is harmless and validating and fun. Looking isn’t a commitment or a reminder of what you’ve lost. Looking is full of hope and wonder and awwwww how cute, I love to window shop!

Looking is a New Years Eve countdown every time you open your phone.

***

I’ve been thinking a lot about January — the Sunday of the year… when everything feels both hopeful and hopeless and you have no choice but to pick up where you left off and call it new.

But after that initial high of THIS TIME I’M GONNA DO IT ALL DIFFERENTLY MOTHER FUCKERS. THIS TIME I’M GONNA BE DIFFERENT. THIS TIME I’M GONNA REALLY FUCKIN LET THAT SHIT GO… there’s still an alarm that goes off at 6:30. There’s still work to finish and dinner to make and and early morning drop-offs on the other side of town.

I feel relieved to know it’s February for that reason. The Sunday evening of months. Less pressure to succeed at knowing better/doing better/being better…

And yet. There’s still that feeling. The one you hate but can’t control.

Lately I have been drowning in that feeling which is why I sat down to write a post about my new dog, who I adore, and started writing about my dead dog instead.

I mean, what kind of person writes about her dead dog in a post announcing her new one.

Me, I guess.

***

Before we adopted Travis, there were something like ten different dogs I had reached out about at the same rescue organization. All of them were either being adopted already or there was a waiting list or they weren’t good with kids or or or…

But when I reached out about Travis (then George) I was told I was the first to respond to his posting, which meant, if we were interested we could come meet him right away.

We didn’t know much about him before we took him home but we fell in love with him at first sight and it felt very mutual. When you know you know and I knew this was our dog. Even though I didn’t know anything about him. Even though the age they gave us originally was wrong. (He’s about five years old and because Maggie was around that age when we adopted her, we were hoping to adopt a younger dog so, you know, they wouldn’t die on us again. At least not for a while.)

“He’s older than we thought,” is what they told us, as I was signing the paperwork with my finger on the screen.

Revie looked over at me with big eyes but I shook my head in solidarity with every middle aged creature, like, you know what? WE NEED LOVE, TOO!

And, anyway, we had already decided on a future together the moment we locked eyes.

Because there was never gonna be another Maggie and there was no such thing as a perfect dog and at some point you just have to… move on.

Or risk getting sucked into looking forever.

Just one more…

***

We’ve now had Travis for almost two weeks. He is at my feet right now as I write this. During the day he follows me around and stares at me, downloading 42 years of information, so I do the same for him. I try to understand his quirks and triggers, work around them, adapt, compromise…

At night he falls asleep with his head on my body until it’s time for me to put him in his crate — where he was trained — in this past life — to sleep. He comes with me on long drives and loves every single dog and person he meets on our walks. He likes to be held like a baby and rests his head on the girls’ knees when they come home from school.

He is an angel dog — the kind that you cross the street to say hi to because he looks like a cartoon character and does this thing when he’s trying to play where he puts his tail in the air and smiles and it makes me laugh every time and make googoogaga sounds and I love him like we’ve had him for twenty years.

But also…

He’s not potty trained.

And has a bit of a humping problem.

And needs constant supervision — a thing I am attempting to do in a body that was already overwhelmed. And it makes me think about all the looking we do. All the fantasies we build based on what we see. How overwhelming it can be to start over.

How afraid I have been, in so many ways, to start over.

“But Maggie was the perfect dog. She never humped or pooped in the house…”

But of course she wasn’t perfect. She viscously attacked other dogs so I was never able to take her anywhere, had to cross the street on walks if another dog was coming. She got car sick every time she stepped foot in my car and when we drove to San Diego to visit family I had to sit her up front with me and hold a barf bag in my right hand for her to puke into (which she did like CLOCKWORK every time we exited the freeway.) She regularly ate things that didn’t agree with her and only threw them up on the rugs I actually cared about and her breath smelled like eggs.

But thinking about her now, it’s hard to remember any of that.

I just had to sit here and wrack my brain.

***

I have been trying to zero in on the eye of my current storm and realized the sads descended upon me soon after Archer went back to school. It was harder for him than he anticipated and a parent can only gas her kid up so much before she starts to absorb her child’s discomfort. He’s fine now. Flourishing. Which means I don’t have to be, I guess is the thing. When I don’t have time or space to focus on how I feel about my own situation, I can roll with almost anything. But the moment there’s room for me to take a breath — to slow down — I collapse.

I have a friend staying with me right now and yesterday she validated how insane my day to life actually is and I was so grateful because one of the hardest parts of parenting alone is that no one really sees you. I mean, your kids do… but only from their vantage point. And I am having a particularly challenging parenting season because everyone is older now which means all of the needs are farther away, more emotionally draining than ever before and like ten times more expensive.

Because sometimes I need someone to be like, “YOU ARE DOING ALL OF THIS ON YOUR FUCKING OWN?” So I can be like, “yes. I am doing all of this on my fucking own… no wonder I feel a little unhinged! IT WOULD BE UNHINGED NOT TO FEEL UNHINGED!”

***

We named him Travis Birkenstock because small price to pay to the party gods is what we say when things feel shitty and hard in an otherwise festive Val-party of a life.

Over the past couple of years, my kids and I have started repeating the same mantra whenever something chaotic happens — something out of our control… something one must sacrifice a few hours to, in order to resolve.

Small price to pay to the party gods.

We say it when something goes missing. Breaks. Is forgotten and left behind. When someone gets a parking ticket. Or a pomegranate stain. It also applies to break-ups, rejections, and, really, anything and everything that sucks.

It’s from that party scene in Clueless. Cher and her friends are in the middle of a making a cameo at the val party when Travis Birkenstock accidentally spills a drink on Cher’s satin shoes. “Ruin my satin shoes why don’t you!” Cher shouts. Later in the movie she will explain that those shoes were so last season what ever made you think about them, but before she gets over it she is PISSED. And Travis? As per usual, he spits straight facts in response.

Travis understood the wear and tear of being alive. He recognized that spills were imminent, that occasionally you have to sacrifice a satin shoe if you want to attend the soiree.

We all agreed on the name because what else would we call our next dog? After all the life we have lived and parties attended and tardies we have amassed as a family by far the most tardies in the class.

After all the spilled drinks on so-called satin shoes.

After all of the things that have gone sideways. The decorated grief. The gauze.

Because more love doesn’t mean less pain.

And more pain doesn’t mean less love.

And a new relationship will never replace the ones that have ended or the people and creatures we’ve lost.

Because the ughs still exist no matter how many awws we are feeling.

And somehow in this life we must learn how to hold them all at once.

Or risk holding nothing at all.

introducing Travis Birkenstock Woolf <3