“Why yes, yes I know it’s the second half of January,” I posted with a photo of our Christmas tree surrounded by its reflection in the mirror and patio door. “What ever is your point?”
One of our most cherished stories is about a man who, confronted with his failings and looming mortality, resolves to keep the spirit of Christmas in his heart year-round. I’m not sure I can think of a better resolution.
A brightly decorated tree lighting the night seems just the thing to push the dreariness away in winter.
And here I go again, looking at the books and records lined up on the shelves and contemplating how many hours or days it would take to read all of the books and listen to all the waiting music.
I think about how long it takes to craft a book and send it to market, and the years spent learning to read and write and play an instrument and combine the playing with other musicians to create a song, and here are hundreds and perhaps thousands of songs and stories surrounding me just in this room.
Many of the souls who created these works have moved on to wherever souls go when their bodies are spent, but their creations remain, and they come alive again when I open the book or play the recording. Our bodies do not live forever, but the words and the music survive and flourish.
What is humanity’s greatest invention? I say words, and music close behind. They unite us in ways all other inventions can only approximate. Oh, they can divide us, too, in the wrong hands, but what we have in common is always stronger.
Summer, our year-and-a-half-old golden retriever, is always nearby, it seems. Right now she is in repose, stretched out, her nose on one paw, the snout about 4 inches away from my left foot. I can hear her steady breathing, but she is not asleep. If I were to get up and move to a chair in the next room, she very likely will come in there and settle near me again. At the end of the day, I will climb into bed and she will hop up and curl next to my feet.
Dejah, our 9-year-old puppy, will greet me with Summer when I get home after being away, but then Dejah will go about her business. She does not seek out my companionship the way Summer does.
She is barely out of puppyhood and engages in some exasperating behavior. She digs holes in the back yard. When cavorting with Dejah in the house, she will nose under an area rug to “hide.” I am constantly folding the rugs back into their proper position.
Now Summer has rolled completely onto her side and has fallen asleep, her front paws folded one over the other. I haven’t left this chair for a half-hour, so I guess she trusts that her companion will still be here if she risks a snooze. I wouldn’t mind spending a day like this.
How did we build this interspecies love and trust? Her ancestors’ ancestors would be out in the cold on a day like today, unsure where or what their next meal would be. How did they know to trust humans, and how did humans intuit that they could be trusted?
I don’t know the answers to the questions, but I’m grateful for those ancestors’ ancestors, because the sweet calm of a dog trusting me to watch her sleep fills me up.
