Snow Day (Sort Of)

Tuesday morning I awoke to the aggravating sound of sleet pelting the bedroom windows. I much prefer the soft whisper of snowflakes to the sideways assault of frozen water, for a whole host of reasons. One is that whispers are easier to sleep through.

What a snow day should look like...

Regardless, the kids were happy to have a day off from school, even if it was more of a “sleet day” than a “snow day.”

Snow days (or sleet-and-freezing-rain days) are the only chance my brood gets to sleep in during the winter. Otherwise, we are up early for school, and just as early – sometimes earlier – for weekend skiing. It was nice Tuesday not to have to drag the kids out of bed in the dark of a winter morning.

Instead, they emerged on their own time, all tousle-haired and sleepy-eyed – and confused about why they were allowed to sleep late (which, in our house, means 7 o’clock). “No school? A snow day?” asked my son when he heard the news. “Yes!”

It’s been a while since we’ve had a snow day. When the kids were younger, we used to build little kickers in the back yard on the rare weather-induced day off. The kids would fly off the jumps on sleds or skis and come back inside with rosy cheeks and wet mittens.

Or we’d make snow creatures in the front yard. Some winters we’ve had such a huge pile of snow at the edge of the driveway, the kids could build snow forts complete with sitting areas and tunnels and exit slides.

We haven’t had a snowbank worthy of a fort for a couple of winters now. In December the snow-building opportunities seemed to be looking up. The plow had made decent piles in the fort area. Elsewhere in the yard, the kids had shaped and piled blocks of snow to make the start of an igloo. There was even a small snowman – until the puppy ate it.

Alas, all that white stuff has long since melted. Tuesday’s warm temps and so-called “mixed precipitation” resulted mainly in our driveway-turned-skating-rink melting out – again – into large puddles of slush. There was not enough snow to make even one snowball, let alone an elaborate structure.

Instead, we went for a long walk in the woods, discovering ice-fringed hemlock and beech branches before the temperature warmed to a melting degree. In the shelter of the trees, the mixed precip had left enough white to make a satisfying crunch underfoot, although we had to step carefully through the not-quite-frozen marshy area along our route.

Despite the sad, snowless state of the yard, the sleet day timing was perfect. The day before, two of these children had pulled in quite the haul of birthday presents, which they now had time to properly explore. One kid was recovering from a cold, and we both appreciated the bonus relaxation time to push her back toward healthy.

The day also left us with time for catch-up chores. In the process of cleaning up, lost mittens were found buried under the birthday goodies, new clothes given as Christmas presents were unearthed in the corner of a bedroom, and long-forgotten toys were happily rediscovered.

There were also a few rounds of board games played, some quiet coloring time, bouts of spontaneous snuggling, and – of course – the arguments that come from too much together time.

By the end of the day, the puppy and I were both exhausted, even if the kids seemed rejuvenated by this bonus day off. I thought of my friend in Tahoe, where they’ve received something like 300 inches (that’s 25 feet!) of snow this month. Her kids have had 10 snow days in the last few weeks. That means they’ve been out of school almost twice as many days as they’ve been in.

While the occasional snow day is a nice pause in routine, I’m not sure I’d take 10 of them in a month. But I sure would like some of that snow.
 
Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 27, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Snow Globe World

It is snowing as I sit at my desk. Fat flakes sifting down outside the window. The evergreens along the driveway are, suddenly, adorned in winter white. The red splash of a December-blooming geranium on the inside of the glass contrasts with the snow globe scene beyond.

After last winter’s dismal snowlessness and too-warm temperatures, I’m almost afraid to hope the snow will stay this year, hesitant to picture the brown of the field buried in a blanket of cold white. But somebody is shaking the snow globe hard today. I hope it keeps coming.

In this busiest of busy months – with presents to select and wrap, decorating to do, cookies to bake, Christmas cards to write, parties to attend, school concerts – it is easy to feel overwhelmed. I love Christmas – the magic and festivity and excited anticipation – but in these busy December days I sometimes feel far behind, stressed out, overbooked.

Snow makes it better.

It also makes it harder to concentrate. I want to get outside, back on my skis, back on the mountain. We had one measly excuse for a powder day last year. Maybe, I think, this will be my only chance. But there is too much to do today. Too many deadlines. There is no time for a long outing to the mountain, booting up, riding chairlifts, floating through new snow.

Instead, I’ll dig out the old cross-country skis I never used last winter. Find the faux leather boots that are cracking at the edges. Glide through the field, whose stubbly vegetation, cut roughly by the bush hog, catches my skis now and then.

Into the woods with the puppy.

She’s just a few months old, still learning about the world around her. A world transformed now by white. At first, she bites at the tapered tips of my skis, pouncing as they move. But she’s a quick learner, and a few glides into the trek, the pup is running alongside me. Fast, excited, wondering what this new adventure is.

She pushes her nose into the cold snow when we pause, comes up with a faceful of white.

The snow keeps falling. White fluff floating onto the wide hemlock boughs that stretch over the trail. My old skis glide across this first winter layer, skimming over the brittle, barely-frozen leaves that fell in autumn and are not yet fully covered.

The puppy runs ahead, whimpering softly now and then. She’s never been this far into the woods and is happy when we reach the yard again, relieved at the familiarity of home.

Tomorrow, as they do every morning in December, counting backwards from 25, my children will remind me exactly how many days are left until Christmas. I’ll inhale, fighting anxiety over all there is still to do. Exhale. It is snowing. I’m dreaming of a white Christmas – and more ski treks through quiet of snowy woods.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the December 9, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

Hope is a Puppy

If Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul (as Ms. Dickinson claimed), I think Joy must be the thing that clings to Hope’s wings when it rises into flight.

I’ve been thinking lots about hope and joy – and sadness, too – as we prepare to bring a new dog into our home. It’s been two months since we lost Lily, our beloved dog for more than a dozen years, and I still find myself looking for her in the regular places several times a day, anticipating her greeting when I return home from someplace else, then feeling my heart sink when I realize – again – that she’s not here.

For weeks after Lily died, my son would ask daily when we could get another dog. Nearly as soon as the question was out of his mouth, he’d say tearfully, “I miss Lily.” That conflict of simultaneously missing Lily and longing for a new pup is something we’ve all felt: when (after countless hours of searching and contemplating and – yes – crying) I told the kids we were going to get a puppy, my older daughter’s eyes brimmed with happy, relieved tears; and a few hours later, my littlest one began sobbing at the dinner table, too distraught over Lily’s persistent absence to eat.

Nothing feels quite right without a dog in the house. And while Lily was a one-of-a-kind girl, a dog we know we’ll never replace, the idea of a puppy has been comforting to all of us. It has allowed us to transition beyond our sadness, moved us from looking back to looking forward.

Just a couple of weeks ago, my solo walks in the woods – a place I’d wandered for years with Lily’s companionship – were excruciatingly lonely. Now, I think of Lil in all her favorite places and remember how she loved these walks. But I think, too, of days in the not-too-distant future when there will again be a dog wandering with me, an easy and content companion.

I felt a somewhat desperate mingling of happy and sad when I first contemplated bringing a puppy into our home, a feeling bordering on guilt. Guilt because getting another dog seemed like an attempt at replacing the irreplaceable. And guilt because this hope – for love and loyalty and lifelong companionship – seems a lot to place on a tiny puppy, who will be following in the paw prints of a pretty amazing dog.

For my husband and me, Lily was the first dog we had as adults, the first important responsibility we assumed together. For my children, Lily was the only dog they’ve known as part of our family. Lily knew them – and loved them – all of their young lives. But they didn’t know Lily all of hers, only arriving when Lil was already grown. This puppy, this little bundle of fur and hope, they’ll know for her whole life, from puppyhood to those calm (we hope) middle years to old age.

This will be the dog they grow up with, the one they’ll remember best. They’ll mature together and play together and, I hope, become steadfast pals.

There is work, of course, that comes with raising a puppy: house training and no-chewing-the-furniture training and lessons about not jumping and no biting. For years (I hope) there will be endless fur to vacuum and smelly things rolled in and other puppy shenanigans.  

It’s all a small price to pay for the love of a good dog.

“Next year we can bring our puppy on this hike, right, Mama?” one of the kids asked me the other day during a short uphill jaunt – the hike that was the children’s first, and Lily’s too. Yes, next year we can bring the puppy with us – on hikes and car rides and contemplative walks through the woods. Next month she’ll be here. Soon, there will be a wagging tail to welcome us home again.

We haven’t yet decided on a name for our puppy, and I won’t be surprised if we five humans are still debating the right moniker right up to the day we bring her home. Maybe we’ll call her Hope. Only this Hope will be a thing with fur that romps happily about, ready to share our home and family adventures. Puppies don’t sing, but they smile and they yip and they wag their tails; they are just as persistent in their joy as Emily Dickinson’s thing with feathers.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the October 14, 2016 edition of the Littleton Record.

A Girl's Best Friend

The first time we met Lily it was clear she was the rowdiest pup in her litter of four. She bounced around the other puppies, constantly nagging them to wrestle and smiling an ebulliently happy golden retriever grin as she pinned them, then rolled in the dirt, then beseeched them to play some more.

It’s been eleven years – and countless life changes – since we brought Lily home. While our golden girl’s muzzle has whitened and her step is not quite so spry as it was a decade ago, Lily maintains the lovable feistiness she radiated as a puppy.

Wanna play?

When she was tiny and newly ours and we’d take her on walks up the dirt driveway, Lily would sprint as fast as her clumsy puppy feet would allow before flopping down superman style, front legs stretched out before her, back legs flattened behind, and a look of sheer disbelief that she still had so far to travel. After a brief pause, she’d be up again and running with wild abandon for a few more yards.

Lily’s curiosity and zest for a good time landed her in some tight spots when she was a pup. She once crawled into the culvert under our driveway and was briefly – but alarmingly – stuck. Somehow we managed to coax her through to the far side, since she couldn’t back up and we couldn’t get in to reach her. She still looks longingly into culverts, although she soon grew too big to explore them.

Lily has accompanied us through all the changes that passing time brings. When we first brought her home, she had to learn to live with two cats – and found out the hard way that cats have sharp claws and short tempers. Before she was quite full grown, we moved to a different house, with lots of new scents, new things to chew, and fish to catch from a garden pond – which, inspired by Lily’s fishing adventures, we soon filled in to make a patio.

She donned a pretty purple collar one hot, late August day and stood with us – and our family and friends – in the field between the house and the mountains as we were married. And when she was not quite three years old, we came home one day with two tiny, wiggly bundles of unfamiliar smells and noises. We were entirely preoccupied with these mysterious creatures, often too tired to give belly rubs. 

Regardless, in typical golden fashion, Lily set out to love these new members of the pack. For the first week or so, whenever one of them would fuss or start to cry, Lily would come closer to investigate, offering her help (but obviously unsure what to do). Turns out two babies can make a lot of noise for a surprisingly large part of the day and night, and soon poor Lil simply retreated from the crying in search of a quiet spot to rest. How often during those exhausting days I wished I could go with her, curl up, fall asleep and dream the day away.

Before long there was another baby, and as kids and dogs are wont to do, they have all become buddies, although the old dog still retreats sometimes from the clamor. But Lily knows the children now measure the food into her bowl twice a day and feed her sandwich crusts after lunch. They rub her ears and her belly. They take her for walks through the woods and throw sticks into the cool brook for her to retrieve. Many mornings she comes with me to see the children off to school.

It is a sad reality that our canine companions age so much more quickly than we do. When we brought Lily home, I was barely 30 and she was barely weaned. Now I am in the nebulous realm of middle age, while she is something like 70 in golden retriever years. As the children have grown more independent in recent years and my work has evolved into a mostly home-based venture, Lily and I have settled increasingly into a rhythm of togetherness.

She will no longer climb the stairs to the third-floor office, and so I find space at the dining room table to work, preferring both the warmth of downstairs and the easy company of the dog. When I sit down to write, she lies nearby and is soon breathing the soft, sighing snore of an old dog. Now and then she places her head on my lap and stares at me from deep brown eyes, now enveloped in a mask of white, beseeching me to stop typing and pet her or take her for a walk.

Usually, eventually, I give in and we head into the woods together, she sniffing a dog’s treasure trove of delightful forest smells and I appreciating the a mind-clearing break and the quiet companionship of a good dog.

There was a time, not so distant, when Lily walked patiently up the hills by my side as I struggled to jog while pushing a double baby stroller, but she won’t run with me anymore. I am not a far nor a fast runner, but I’m too fast and too far-running for Lily. Normally she is up and wiggling with anticipation when she sees her people preparing to go out the door – to school or for a hike or a drive to the post office or anywhere. But when she sees me lacing up my running shoes, she sighs and gives me a look that seems to say, “Please don’t ask me to come with you.”

And so I alter my pace when I can, as Lily once did for me, so that we can go together. Sometimes we just head out into the yard for a few minutes or take a short loop around the field. This she can do alone – and often does, barking out toward the woods to let the wild things know this is her territory. But she seems to like the human company – and the possibility of a longer adventure.

On our walks, whether brief or ambling, Lily will sometimes lag behind, investigating a particularly interesting scent. When I turn to call her, she comes bounding my way, ears back, eyes laughing, tongue hanging sideways from a smiling mouth. In that happy stride she still looks like the puppy we brought home one spring day a lifetime ago: a little bit wild, infectiously joyful, and always ready to play.

Original content by Meghan McCarthy McPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the January 23, 2015 edition of the Littleton Record.

Puppy Love

Banshee

My brother and his girlfriend got a new puppy this weekend. She is 8 pounds of pure, fluffy, black-and-white, wet-nosed joy named Banshee.

Banshee is an Icelandic sheepdog, the first specific-breed dog my brother has ever had. We were a mutt family growing up, and when Billy was living in Colorado, he got a puppy whose mother was some kind of Norwegian elkhound mix and whose father was unknown. He named that puppy Teocali, after one of the most beautiful mountains near the town where we both lived for several years. Teo went everywhere with Bill, including to New Hampshire when he moved back East.

Teo was the smartest dog I’ve ever known and the most loyal. He was cute in a disheveled sort of way. He would play fetch with any willing participant, including my small children, who could only throw a tennis ball a couple of feet. And he would fetch endlessly, finding a ball or stick wherever it landed – the tall grass of a vast field or the tangled undergrowth of a forest – until Billy told him, “Take a break.”

Anyone who knows my brother also knew Teo, because Teo continued to go everywhere with Billy. He spent a lot of time camped out in the pickup truck – in front of the Village Store, on the job site, outside the bar. From his perch in the truck, Teo would acknowledge you only if you were in his inner circle. If not, or if he simply didn’t feel social at that moment, he’d cast a bored sideways glance and keep staring out the window, looking for Billy. Or he’d hop calmly into the back seat and lie down.

He was playful, but not overly exuberant. He didn’t jump around or lick people or clamor for attention. Teo just did what Teo wanted to do, which was basically hang out with Billy. Or play fetch. Or stare at cats. That was one of his favorite pastimes from puppyhood, just staring at cats. Not trying to chase them or play with them, just staring. Billy thinks it was some kind of herding instinct.

Teocali

Teo was so nonchalantly charming, so unconventionally handsome, that a virtual stranger asked Bill if she could breed him with her female Chow. Billy got pick of the litter, and now my parents have Teo’s son, Gunnison, named for the town where Billy lived when Teo was a puppy.

When Teo died two summers ago, it was crushing. For a decade he’d been my brother’s co-pilot, his friend, and a constant companion through many changes. Some people, when they lose a pet, want to get another one as soon as possible, seeking to fill that hole in a life and a heart. For others, there is no filling the hole, and the reminders are everywhere – the water bowl you can’t quite bring yourself to put away, the leash hung behind an old coat and discovered months later, a stray tuft of fur blown into some rarely cleaned corner, the loneliness of a run or a hike without canine companionship, the empty spot in the truck.

My father in law keeps in his office the ashes from his beloved golden retriever, Alex, decades after Alex ceased to run around chasing his tail. So much was Alex loved, that my husband and I now have a wonderful golden, and both his siblings have goldens. For their family, there is no other breed. For my father-in-law, there is no other dog, and since Alex, he has never brought home another pup.

We all knew there was no way another dog could ever fill the hole Teo left. Billy and Laura buried Teo in their back yard. They planted a tree and created a garden there. Those actions were about both grief and remembrance.

Then two weeks ago, Billy started talking about a breed of dog he’d seen in a National Geographic article. Icelandic sheepdogs seemed a lot like Teo – the same wise look and calm expression, the same unexuberant joy, the same disheveled mane of thick fur standing out around the neck. They even have similar personality traits – smart, loyal, patient, mellow.

Saturday Banshee came home. An Icelandic sheepdog from Limerick, Maine. A happy little bundle who played with my smitten children, sniffed at the snow, and curiously chased after the three cats of the household.

She’ll grow to about the same size Teo was and will probably sleep on his old bed and drink from his old water bowl. She’ll learn that cats have sharp claws, and to stay away from the electric fence around the pig enclosure. On hot days, perhaps she’ll rest in the shade of Teo’s tree. And I bet she’s going to be great at fetch.

Banshee will never be like Teo was. She’ll be like herself. She’s already stealing hearts and causing spontaneous outbreaks of grinning. That’s what puppies do. They create joy. And if we’re lucky, they remind us of the dogs we’ve loved before, and those empty spaces in our hearts start to fill in just a little bit.