Having a therapy dog never gets old. Here’s Rudy at almost six years old–he’s been a certified therapy dog since he turned one and he’s amazing. One of the places we visit is a special education class at our local high school, and the students made him a card and bought him a few toys. I wish you could see the faces of the students as Rudy prances into the room. He knows he’ll be adored. Given treats. The students all told him what they had done over the Christmas break, and although Rudy doesn’t understand the words, he knows they’re happy to see him, knows somehow that it’s important for him to be there.

One boy likes to play hide ‘n seek with Rudy and although Rudy cheats and watches him as he gets into his hiding place, they both have a blast. Another student, who used to be afraid of dogs, sits quietly beside Rudy and with a little encouragement, pats his black, shiny fur. Some keep their distance but are fascinated. We stay about a half hour. When it’s time to go, everyone says goodbye and after we sign out at the front desk, Rudy gets into the back seat of my car and closes his eyes. It’s hard work being adored, but it never gets old.

Here’s the inside of the card:

One of my favoirte carols is “In the Bleak Mid-Winter” with words from the beautiful poem by Christina Rossetti, music by Gustav Holst. Once I start singing this carol, it haunts and comforts me, making the short days less bleak. Last night I was speaking with a friend whose husband died a few weeks ago, and one of her neighbors gave her an amaryllis bulb. She didn’t know what it was and told me that it was an ugly stump in a large pot. That made me laugh. As we talked, I looked at the amaryllis on my kitchen counter–one that had sproutetd quickly from a similar undistinquished bulb. It has a long, green stalk and a fat bud, promising me future color. I sent her a photo of it.

Then I looked back in the photos on my phone and found one from last Christmas:

Now she was excited. Ready to hang in there. Willing to water it and wait. And that seemed to me exactly what this season requires: water and wait. Get expectations out of the way. Invite silence to visit. Or as Christina Rossetti put it:  “Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow, In the bleak mid-winter, Long ago.”

Okay, I get it. It’s lovely to sit on a bench by the harbor and watch the sun set, my dog, Rudy, happily sniffing around. That kind of waiting is fun. Relaxing. It doesn’t matter when the sun dips down below the horizen, when it gets dark, when the clouds go from light pink to deep crimson. But other kinds of waiting are awful, whether that’s being held in suspense until you get the results of medical tests, or waiting in a crowded airport while your flight is delayed, or in my case, sending off a new book to an editor, caught in a trickly balance between hope and despair.

I give myself lectures. I tell myself, “Listen up. You can’t give that kind of power over your future to someone else,” and it sounds smart and reasonable. But if you’re doing something you love, and if getting it out into the world is dependent on other people, then the waiting is dark and heavy. I’ve learned tricks over the years:  start a new project, get readers to help you see the work more clearly, tell yourself in the words of T.S. Eliot to “care and not to care.” But I do care. Especially when I’ve put the best of myself into it for several years, then it’s more than a project, it’s me and not me, a best friend. And what kind of friend would I be if I didn’t care whether or not it was knocked over, trampled, forgotten?

If you feel brave, share with  me and others what has helped you wait. Maybe you practice deep breathing. Maybe you sing or pray. Maybe you just watch your dog the way I watch Rudy, the late sun glinting off his dark fur. And just maybe, that is enough.

This is one of the things I love about summer. It slows me down. And my roses are now in their second bloom of the season–and yes, I know that the photo is sideways, but since my two dogs are looking at me with that “why aren’t we out walking look”, I’m going to let it be. The light and the heat and the colors and smells of summer bring back my favorite season as a kid–one where we were let out of school and could make up games, swim, fill the long hours with whatever we wanted. (My mother did put a limit on how much ice cream we could have.) My advice to myself is to stop, look, take in this green season. To not be busy all the time. To let go of productivity. To be like my two dogs who are now stretched out at my feet, hoping that a walk is right around the corner.

As many of you know, I’ve been working with therapy dogs for the past ten years: Bella from 2012-2018, Rudy from 2018-2022. It’s an amazing journey and brings such comfort to the people we serve. I’m doing an AARP live webinar tonight and hope you can join me. Plenty of time for Q&A at the end. It runs from 7-8PM Eastern Time. Here’s how to register:

It always make me a little sad to pick the last tomatoes and to see the vines wither and turn brown. And I really hate it when I have to buy tomatoes at the supermarket, as they don’t taste anything like the sweet ones from my garden. But there it is, the end of a season, and I remind myself that these wonderful fruits (which most of us think of as a vegetable) have sat through hot summer afternoons and warm nights. I’ve fussed over them, and have watered them and have watched with excitement as the hard green tomatoes turned red.

If you’re anything like me, you resist change, while simultaneously being energized by it. So in a few weeks when I put my garden to bed for the winter, when the frost kills the last marigolds and hardy carrots, when color is erased, I have to remind myself to look closely elsewhere. Just today, for example, I noticed that the marsh grasses surrounding the nearby cove, have turned an incredible burnt orange–a color so striking against the green of other plants. And the berries on a bush I pass everyday walking my dogs are now a silvery blue.

As Keats wrote in his wonderful “Ode to Autumn”:  “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay where are they?/Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,–” I hope you find ways to enjoy this time of change and discover simple observations that warm your spirits as the days get shorter. We need each season to end. Just as we need to welcome a new one.

Rudy, my therapy dog and I are honored to be part of an AARP CT live presentation tomorrow, August 18th at 1PM, about the work of therapy dogs. I’ll cover training, what’s important in a therapy dog, and an in-depth look at the work Rudy does in schools, hospitals, nursing homes and the court house. Hope you can join us! It’s free but you must register:  https://aarp.cvent.com/DogsAug18.

Here we are almost 11 months into a pandemic that has turned our lives upside down. We’ve adjusted:  we reach for our masks, avoid crowds, don’t invite friends over, wash our hands. But today, thinking about this, I was stuck by what I miss most:  strangers. And I believe that this is particularly difficult as many of us are sustained by people we don’t know.

Before the pandemic I was busy:  I was teaching workshops for library staff, promoting my books, writing, and had an active schedule as a volunteer with my therapy dog, Rudy. We worked with special needs students in two schools, visited two local hospitals where we met with patients in locked wards as well as throughout the hospital, and on occasion, when there was a trial of a young person, we showed up in court.

Meeting strangers expanded my world. It connected me to lives that are very different from mine. It exposed me to situations I couldn’t have imagined, like a seven-year-old boy sitting by himself in a small, white room in the crisis center. It pulled me out of myself and also gave me new ways to be myself. I was the teacher, the volunteer, the nice lady with the dog. I could see the difference I made. I felt useful. (Even my dog, Rudy, seems a bit bored with no work, and I can’t say the word “work” without him running to the back door.)

I’ve been reading the letters of Henri Nouwen in a wonderful collection titled “Love, Henri”, which sums up my goals for the New Year and articulates exactly where I believe many of us are right now:

“Well, no wishes but much hope, no big plans, but trust, no great desire, but much love, no knowledge of the future, but a lot of empty space for God to walk in!”

Stonington Harbor, sunset

Here we are in the 8th month of a pandemic, and things are not a lot better. And I confess that my guard has slipped–I don’t always have a mask with me when out walking the dogs, we went to a neighbor’s for dinner and sat outside, but were not six feet apart, and last weekend we went apple picking with our daughter and her family and had one of the grandchildren sleeping in our motel room. I get this–having been so careful for so long and not having gotten sick, it feels as if it’s okay to relax a bit.

I have no medical background so this is not replacing the important guidelines we have from the CDC. This is just my story. My daughter and I were making plans for the holidays, and it occurred to me that I could ask my doctor’s advice. Here are some of things she suggested:

I really love summer. For lots of reasons. It slows me down, I get to swim and garden and eat outside and see extended family. It’s been a while since I updated this blog on our pandemic project:  Dixie, who was in a shelter for eight months. (She’s the cute one gazing out the window at the daisies.)

Something magical happened at the three-month mark just a week ago. She relaxed. She trusts us. She’s no longer charging at the window every time a car or person goes by our house. And she’s beginning to be curious. Last week we had our 14-year-old granddaughter, Molly, staying with us, and after a few days, Molly could pat her, and they even played together.

I am not a patient person, but I realize that trust takes time. Dixie knows now that she is part of our pack. She knows we’ll care for her and protect her. And new people can come into our home (just close family as we’re still very careful because of Covid), and she’s learning that they won’t harm her. How’s that for a wonderful part of summer? The pandemic gave Dixie the best transition possible:  we were home, no one came over, and we rarely went anywhere except our for walks with her and Rudy, our other dog.

It’s really hot today and the dogs don’t want long walks. But they can gaze out the window, they can relax in the cool house, and I’d say that’s just about a perfect summer day.