BED-DROPPING (NEW PUPPY 10 MARCH 2010)

Bed-dropping has never been on the top of my list. Had I ever thought about it, I might have called myself a ‘bed-raiser’, in that climbing up to sleep has felt a magical sort of elevation. Sure the story of the ‘Princess and The Pea’ could have been a pseudo-misogynistic tale aimed at desensitizing young women so they’d doubt their perceptions and be more receptive to advances, but if it was, I didn’t know it. I loved the idea of sleeping ten mattresses high and still being tormented by the shift in scale from one tiny pea.  So for me, the higher the bed, the more princess-sensitive the woman.

Until now that is.  New-puppy arrives in five days.  And he is going to grow into a huge dog.  And I am terrified.  Also many other things.  But right this minute, fear of failure towers above all else.  We need to bond.  We need to fall in love, without a nine month pumping of umbilical feeding to lubricate the way.   He and I need to be like one-hand-reaches-one-hand-catches, without a need for excess communication.  We need to be like Harold and Maude.  Like up and down, in and out, reach and pull.  The two of us a pair.  Lone Ranger and Tonto.  Betty and her Boop.  Romper Room and the mirror that saw every kid with every name but mine.  Except in this case, the puppy needs to be trained so excellently that no matter what lens he peeps through - how he views the world - it will be me that sits front and center for him.

The dog bowls are in their bag, waiting in the basement. The puppy chews stored separately but nearby.  A new collar and leash, colors matching, wait with the dog-treat holder and its complementary clicker.  Yes, it’s true that I have some issues with organized religion in general and many of the practices in specific but in this case, I’m not taking any chances.  If my Jewish ancestors believed in waiting to open the baby gifts until after a birth, I’m happy to hide the puppy booty until after the landing.

He’s flying in from Utah.  I don’t even know his name or if he’ll keep his gender. But I do know that lots of connecting happens in the subterranean dreamtime of sleep.  So the changes to my specifically designed princess-and-the-pea-bed are all part of puppy-prep.  The bed frame now has a location of honor in the basement.  Since I have to duck my way past this four legged-stick–out-past-where-it’s safe obstruction to get to the washing machine, this change cannot be pretended away.  My mattress sits low, right on the floor of my room.  To accommodate this I deconstructed and reconstructed both my night table and the vessel that holds my doo-dads.  Scale matters to me.  And a descent from princess-high to floor-dweller has me feeling like a munchkin in the land of Oz.  It took nearly an entire day to set things right.  Now when New-puppy arrives he can either sleep safely in the bed with me or leash-attached to my wrist next to me on the floor.

Newborn babies wear diapers in our culture.  New puppies don’t necessarily like to lie on their backs on a changing table.  The wonderful smell of baby powder and A & D ointment will not be part of this journey.  I’ve come to terms with this. This is okay.  I don’t connect easily with people who psychologically lie on their backs with all (imaginary) four feet waving in the air while they whine about their condition.  Nothing against people who wear a victim-stance like a cloak against their humanity, it just isn’t my thing.  So the fact that I already cannot imagine New-puppy taking a life-stance like this could bode well for us.  It does mean though that I will be shlepping outside multiple times a night for the next month or so. 

The puppy manuals all caution against slipper-eating.  It seems to score very high on their checklist of bad behaviors.  And we all know that blaming-the-mother dominates our cultural mores of accountability.  I don’t want to flunk mothering and I love my slippers.  What am I to do?  If I sleep in them, New-puppy might nibble while I snore.  If I leave them at ready next to the bed, they might be part of the New-puppy poop I scoop in the morning.  And quite frankly, creeping out in the night, minus my slippers, sounds not only terrifying (he’s not a guard dog yet) but blatantly cold on my feet.  I’ve always tried to be a person that cultivates a conscious living.  Dwelling within an examined life is something I admire.  To go into denial before New-puppy even arrives seems to me a recipe for disaster.  Maybe this is why someone invented slipper-socks.  I suppose they can be slept in AND used for New-puppy night forays.  This just might be the answer.  Slippers that are not.  Socks that are more than.  And mothering that allows for combinations. 

Except.  Mothering is never guaranteed.  Let’s face it.  Some Dams don’t conceive. Smart mothering isn’t automatic.  Most mothers try.  A lot of mothers succeed in some arenas.  All mothers fail.  I am about to become a mother to New-puppy.  And damn it.  I’ve already made my first mistake.  My dear editor and muse just asked me a point blank, brilliant question.  “What,” she wondered “is the difference between slippers and slipper socks when considering New-puppy munchies?”  Hmmm.  This stumped me for a moment.  Then I felt relief wash over me.  Hovering at the brink of my first gaff of an error, I realize that in fact, there is no significant difference.  The required palate for either is similar.  The materials for construction are found within the same food groups.  Whatever smell they carry from my hopefully hygienic feet will be only as much as it is.  It’s just that somehow I thought that the ease of removal might catalyze a different chomping reflex.  Upon reflection though, I doubt it.  Oops.

Now I know that I’m destined to scuff up the path at three o’clock in the morning with only heel callus between my bones and raw earth.  My first conceptual flub has already happened. This might not be the disaster it appears.  This could be the precedent that allows me the latitude to let my fallibility show.  In humans, we see such an obvious unwillingness to increase our ability to tolerate discomfort.  So perhaps I can reframe my snafu as a good thing.  In our species, intimacy grows through a marriage of love AND disappointment.  Yet most parents try so hard to hide (deny) any propensity for bloopers.  Teenagers grappling with their legitimate rage when they discover that what their parents presented as absolute truth is often false, are seen as difficult.  Prone to argument.  Malingering.  Crazy.  Given that I’ve inadvertently set a stage that will require New-puppy to grow an ability to accept an accidental muddle (because when does mistake number one ever escape being followed by an erroneous number two?) it could be that New-puppy has a chance to be well adjusted.  Phew.

POINT OF ORIGIN

It's not that often that a major left turn in a life-story starts with a stolen, antique, cast iron, three hundred and fifty pound, claw-foot tub.  Theoretically anyway, the statistic could hover below the 1 percent possibility point.  And yet, the theft of this tub (not just any old bathing receptacle but a genuine art object, labored on (by me) for a full three weeks) has catalyzed just this.

When the bathtub disappeared it left a gaping hole.  Not just the obvious one where its presence marred the grass that didn't grow well underneath.  And not even the one where the empty-vessel-feel it engendered could (if the world was believed to be multi-dimensional) energetically carry away the ugly-s and invite in the lovely-s.  No, this robbery facilitated a hole of gargantuan proportions.  An opening so quickly filled with fear that it barely seemed an aperture at all.  So, not-withstanding the fact that I've been told all my life that "... ninety nine point nine percent of all people don't think like you... don't feel things like you... don't see things like you... and are perfectly happy not to", and that therefore, I naturally (it's almost organic I think, if it comes special delivery from your own mom) have a slight propensity to self-negate, self-invalidate, self-deprecate  (because with such a tiny percent possibility of ever finding my tribe I'd have to destroy any self esteem on my own) and self-doubt, this breach created by my missing tub and so quickly filled with fear made me suspicious.  Somehow the vacancy's just too peculiar.

Granted, it's not inconceivable to me that a three hundred and fifty pound tub could fly up and out of my yard.  I certainly hear weirder stories every day on the news.  You must have heard about the military officer at Fort Hood. That poor man who had such vicious Post Traumatic Stress, apparently from honorably doing the wrong thing for so long that he had a flashback and killed thirteen people.  That story is clearly more odd than the hole in my heart due to the orifice created by my absent bathtub.  I mean it's so obvious to a random on-looker.  Anyone who's been responsible for teaching people that wrong is right, that killing is 'not' in certain contexts, and that although the pretext under which you thought you were working was mostly lies, you will not be helped or assisted when you get home, must feel pretty bad inside.  And this is all before that poor Army man didn't receive what we so readily know is required in terms of PTSD treatment. 

So, although in moments of clarity I am well aware that my tub will not arrive back in its precious spot, wing-laden or not, I still periodically check the cloud cover.  The fear though, that's seeped in like a long lost tributary, simply doing what water does best: flowing the path of least resistance, even if it's less desirable (not unlike a lot of human behavior if you think about it), is a part of the left turn in my particular life story.

You see without dissociation, I would be one groveling, shaking, shattered, blubbering piece of fear.  It couldn't be otherwise, given the three violent rapes in my life and the pervasive denial in the prevalent environment in which I've dwelled.  Unless of course I was to take drugs, which evokes a whole separate set of issues.  (And incidentally is something I adamantly refuse to do because of my belief that if I become a reflection of the denial, by disappearing my pain, it will hurt - not help - the world.)  If I were not dissociative, this rapid onset of fear would not surprise me.  But it does.

Now that three black male thieves, un-apprehended (and unlikely to be) by the police, have disappeared my tub, and in so doing, have helped me break through my dissociative barriers so that the SHEER ENORMITY of my fear is suddenly visible, I know that I need to take some sort of action.  Before the theft, the regular old come-a-little-go-a-lot fear I'm accustomed to was easily remedied by making art, writing an essay or doing something connecting with my kids.  It's always been important to me to be a proper contributing member of our species, so creating something wonderful out of something other than that was an accessible diversion.  But since I now know that I carry this monumental sized fear, I know that I need to do something so that my personal bathtub-of-psyche has a greater repertoire.  I mean who'd want to get to the end of their life (unless they were the ninety nine point nine percent of all people my mother's assured me are real) and reflect back to see a self that simply wasted this precious gift of living in a body with activities limited to door locking, door checking and door guarding? 

This seems to me one of those rare life questions with an obvious answer: No one.

So I need to feel safe or risk failing at this business of living as a person.  Please don't misunderstand me here.  I am in no way willing to propagate a belief in a feeling of utter safety.  I use the word 'safe' strictly in a context of relativity.

The idea that people can buy locks that are sound enough, alarms that are loud enough, and/or building materials that are solid enough to create safety, is ludicrous to me.  However, the understanding that the feeling of safety is possible in any context, through our magnificently human ability to choose our life-stance, is pertinent here. 

If I feel safe, then I am safe, all the way until I'm in a moment when I'm not safe.  Until (and if) such time then, feeling is paramount. 

I'll put it to you, dear reader.  Can you imagine stealing my bathtub, antique or not, in the middle of the day, if you had to cross a great big beautifully trained guard dog that loves me, in order to do so?  I cannot.

Can you guess the left turn I am about to take?

The new puppy arrives at 9:18 PM, one week from today.  I am alternately terrified, excited, panic stricken, happy, overwhelmed, confident, hopeful and bathtub-full-brimming-over with yearning.