Puck the Dog on Freedom

I sit here wondering why I do this, why I write.  Are there not already words enough to . . . what, to lift the curtain of unknowing, to enkindle a flame of hope, to scrape against the heavy stone of our lives some flint that gives off a spark – of hope, or passion, or dream?

Kathy hasn’t said “hello” very often lately.  She hasn’t seen me returning from being absent-minded, self-centered, somewhere else right here.  For the first year or so, of retirement that is, I confess I wanted to be released; I just wanted to be free to do what I wanted.  I’d worked for 41 years, been married for 40, woken on 3000 Sundays thinking “Mass”.  She would find me arriving several times a day, returning from wherever I had been, right there beside her.  And so several times a day, she’d say “Hello.”

I took Puck for a short walk last night.  He’s a really good dog.  Our daughter and son-in-law trained him

well, and the girls have continued where their parents began with him, making him know that he is part of their family.  They were all gone when Kathy and I got home from our engagement last night, and Puck was in the basement yipping his “omigoshyou’refinallyBACK” barklets.   I took him for a walk in the back yard so he could answer nature’s call and then join us while we waited for his family to return. 

I walked him on his leash.  He’s known to take off, you see, to want to do his own thing, to squeeze between the restraining knees at the doorway of their house in the woods, to nose his way through the crack between the screen door and its frame, to run. (Do you think dogs can laugh?)

He comes back, when he has done whatever his dog-ness desires out there in the woods, allowing his ears to hear their calls, those four voices of the non-barkers in his pack.  But here in town, we’re afraid he might not find his way back to our house, and so I take him for a walk on his leash.  And I discover that he is a lot like me.  He spends some time pulling away, but a lot of time staying close.  The leash spends most of its time slack.

I write because even as I want to pull away, to do whatever it is that is my retiredness desires beyond the screen door of the structure of my life, I also know that I am part of this family, Kathy and the kids and the Church and our town (homeless and all) and you, whoever read this.  I want to be with you.  I want to slack the leash of belonging.  I want to be released from release, to be free of freedom. 

As my fingers tap the keys of my keyboard, they are tapping your shoulders.  I'm touching hour hand with my wet nose.  I’m back from the woods.  I’m here with you. 

Do you think dogs can smile?