Living Proof
Friday, Forgiveness, And the Constant Work of Healing
When I run my hands gently across her stomach, I can feel the scar tissue underneath. The heavy nylon thread cross-stitched across her abdominal wall, bumpy like the calcified bruises along my shin. Feels like prayer beads. Every time I touch them I murmur my petition for another day with this little girl.
She is sleeping on the oversized corduroy bean bag beside the wood stove, her winter reposin' place of choice. I can’t blame her. Her black fur is warm on the side closest to the fire. Her steady breathing, the slight twitch or kick of a foot, all of it holy.
When I was a young girl, dealing with puberty and realizing who I was deep inside, I begged my parents for a dog. I didn’t want to think about being gay. I didn’t want to think about being fat. I wanted to feel loved.
When my grandmother fell ill and had to use my bedroom to recover, I was relocated to a pull-out couch in the attic, and I think my parents felt I deserved that dog for rent.
We adopted a little collie/golden retriever mix that looked like the a dead ringer for Murray on Mad About You, a sitcom popular at the time. So I named him Murray.
He was my dog. I not only gave the best care a 13-year-old could, I got him registered with an ILP number with the AKC and earned his Canine Good Citizen and Companion Dog titles. (These are judged and awarded obedience accolades.) I was really proud of the training and having such a good dog in the house. It made him more enjoyable to everyone.
When I look back at how I learned to train dogs in the early 90s, I regret a lot of it. Using things like lunge lines and choke chains, so common that all dogs in the ring of those obedience trials had chains just like that around their necks.
