Year after year she did everything Christmas asked of her. And more.She decorated the house, set out the manger, made cookies. Every year she steamed a plum pudding.
She often went beyond the call of duty. In early December she would hang stockings for the Feast of Saint Nicholas. Her father’s name was Nick and as a child, she lived in Saint Nicholas Parish. Read more…
He decided
to sweep his hair across his forehead, all he needed was hairspray
For a kid of his age, he watches a ton of C-Span.
He doesn’t care about the issues but he likes to study powerful people. He’s excited by how they use control. There’s that one guy, the one who calls people names and uses outrageous sarcasm to duck questions. Everybody laughs. Sometimes they cheer. “He’s authentic!”
They weren’t dog people. They weren’t cat, gerbil
or goldfish people either. They were simply parents with two children.
They lived in a part of the world where dogs are seen as source of companionship rather than protein, and where conventional wisdom holds that dogs teach compassion and responsibility to children.
You can see where this is going.
The parents bought themselves a year or two of delay by going to Barnes and Noble and buying a book with a breed of dogs featured on each spread. Every evening the man and his daughter studied those pages. They invented a game where he would cover the text and she would recite the provenance and personality of each breed. Once she had learned them all, she called in her chits.
She and her mother phoned from the SPCA shelter to describe the prettiest, nicest, smartest, (I-will-walk-him-everyday) dog in the world. He’s got a schmushed-in nose, she told her father.
The family talked it over that night. A Japanese Chen (without papers) would be a fine choice. They would pick him up first thing next morning.
But it turned out that the prettiest, nicest, smartest, (I-will-walk-him-everyday) dog in the world was nowhere to be found. The staff said he may be at another shelter, he may have been adopted, or even, ugh, you know…
The mother stayed while the staff searched databases. The man took the kids to a hot-dog place, preparing them for all possibilities.
When they came back the mother offered some hope. Yes. Maybe. The dog might be in the burbs, Expressway traffic was favorable that Saturday morning — they needed to get there before Cruella.
“It might be the one in aisle F.” the manager said. They looked into cage after cage. There was one dog that fit the profile exactly, but no, it wasn’t him. They had come for nothing. All was lost.
But then way down an aisle, through her tears, the girl saw him. There he was, looking out at her, and he was even more perfect than yesterday. The clerk opened the cage and released him. He spun around three times to sanctify the solemn moment — and then he defecated on the floor. That’s when they knew he was the dog for them.
On the drive home snorting and licking, tail doing seventy in a 55-mph zone, the animal took command of the family sedan and family in it. He ran back and forth exploring his new home. The backs of sofas were to his liking. There were places in the sun to nap and watch animals.
They gave him the name of “Sumo” and it stuck.
Japanese Chins are referred to as cat-dogs and were cultivated to live in royal cages. His new owners could spoil him shamelessly without having to worry about his character. He would learn tricks but he felt performing was beneath his dignity. “I’m not a pug, you know.” But the truth is that he would sell his soul for table scraps.
Sumo almost never barked so it was a surprise when some kids from different cultures would jump up on their chairs during dinner, terrified that a dog might touch their legs.
He was everybody’s pet and he was almost never left alone The family walked him 3 times a day, taking turns. After dark, runners would freeze in their tracks, mistaking him for a skunk. He and the boy spent even more time together after his older sister became a teenager.
The family had never said goodbye to a pet before and, maybe because they weren’t dog people, they weren’t prepared for the intensity of their loss.
The specter that has haunted us humans since the beginning, the dread of losing a child to illness, is mostly unknown to Americans today.
Except when it isn’t.
At our “office” (twelve stools in the window of our coffee shop where they let us sit and work), my friend and colleague Debi Lewis has been chronicling how a family with a member suffering from a disorder of the esophagus and the stomach, experiences day-to-day life.
Writing from a mother’s point of view, Debi’s narrative is primal. She allows us to accompany her from first consultations through testing and procedures all the way to the how-come room. Some examples:
“…Sammi had ten endoscopies. Each time, she fasted from dinner the night before until after her morning procedure. Each time, they held a gas mask over her face in the operating room until she fell asleep, and then, after escorting me out of the room, they inserted an IV with heavier anesthesia and fluids, took a blood sample, inserted a mouthpiece and fed a camera down into her esophagus.”
“…We believed in the power of information sharing among professionals, which was a mistake.”
“…He returned a moment later with a small paper cup filled with something that looked like marshmallow fluff. “It’s sweet, honey,” he said to Sammi. “I want you to swallow just one spoonful of it, and we’re going to see how fast it goes down.”
You can google “Swallow, My Sunshine” or you can use the link in the comment below. Debi’s work is beautiful. I keep it on my bookmarks toolbar.
On closer look it isn’t a wedding party in the DUMBO district at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. It is a “Quinceañera” or “Fiesta de Quince.”
The girl in her new green gown had reached her fifteenth birthday and was being debuted as an adult — this would be her day. In times past she would have been considered eligible for marriage but things dealing with family, careers and divorce are very different now.
The Quinceañera is a tradition throughout much of the Spanish-speaking Americas — but not in the Old World. There is a formal entrance, toasts, dancing (especially with the Quinceañera’s father), a feast, a 15-candle ceremony followed by cake cutting and then the pulling of ribbons, one of which has a ring tied to it.
Fifteen people who have been important in the girl’s life are formally recognized.
It is a beautiful Saturday afternoon. The Quinceañera party had just come out of the hall. Even from a quarter block away, you could see that the girl is radiant.
