Merica...

NO MORE STRAY MUTTS!
Trump announces plan to clip the feet off of all non-pedigree puppies. Says: “They won’t roam out of their own barrio and mate with the purebreds anymore!”

TRUMP TO HONOR NATIVE AMERICANS! 
Says the Dutch West India Company paid the Lenape Indian tribe too little for Manhattan Island in 1626. “It’s worth at least twice the 60 Guilders they were paid!” In a very public gesture of good faith, Trump says he wants to make amends. “As a businessman (the best businessman) I will make it right!” Promises to pay last remaining Lenape elder with a “large bowl of wampum” and season tickets to his tennis courts at Mar a Lago. “He seemed like a nice old injun.” Trump was quoted as saying. The president even wheeled the 96-year-old Lenape around the Trump owned geriatric home where he is currently living out his last days.

TRUMP BACKS BILL TO PUT HORSE & CARRIAGE MANUFACTURERS BACK TO WORK!
Says “These good people have suffered under Obama’s restrictions too long. We’ll get them back to their big, beautiful jobs!”

No unemployed horse & carriage factory workers could be located for comment on the new proposal.

Nothing to see here, folks...just another day in Merica...

To Everything, There Is A Season...

We sat quietly in the front seats of my car, basking in the early morning sun that cut through the windshield like a laser, taking the chill out of the transition from dawn to day. Sweaty from the gym, it was good to simply be still for a moment.

Carla and I both noticed the older couple sitting on the open back gate of their station wagon at the far side of the parking lot. An old grey head between them on a blanket that all three shared. It was obvious how much they loved their dog, and he loved them as he alternated his kisses, her hand then his.

As we sat there, appreciating the moment, the lady stood up and crossed the far corner of the lot, heading over to the McDonalds on the corner. “She’s going for breakfast, a tailgate picnic.” I ventured. Sure enough, after a few minutes, she came walking back, white bag and drink in hand. That old grey muzzle lifted, nose twitching, as his mom approached with her bounty. I could see his tail wagging behind him, even though he didn’t stand.

Plopping back down in her spot on the tailgate, we were surprised to see that the egg McMuffin she pulled from the bag was for their old dog, and the drink was water for him to wash it down. He may have been old, but three bites were all it took to make that sandwich disappear. Then mom pulled out one more, crumpling the empty bag and showing the dog that there were no more left…as she handed him the last one.

As “dog people” we were touched by the dog picnic the elderly couple gave their buddy.

Deciding to say hello and show our own support for their display of dog love, I swung the car over in their direction as we started to drive out and head for home.

Pulling up next to their tailgate, it was obvious they had both been crying. Embarrassed, we mumbled something about how cool it was to see them give their dog a special breakfast. They mumbled back that it was his last.

They were on their way to the vet to end the life of their best friend, whose grey head was now resting so comfortably on his mom’s leg.

Driving away through my own tears, wasn’t so easy. We know that loss all too well.

With no words between us, deep in thought and almost home, I turned onto the main street to our house.

A young woman was walking along the sidewalk there, her backdrop a green and brown salt marsh, new grasses waving with each puff of wind off the Inter-coastal. She herded a small tan puppy in front of her, no more than a few months old. Running in spurts, falling, rolling, oblivious to everything but the errant leaf that had certainty been out of line. The pup chased that leaf with everything he had as it tumbled in the wind in front of him, just out of reach.

Tree branches overhead were heavy with new leaves, spreading their wings, eager for their first taste of the sun.

And so it goes.

Kisses

I love my wife dearly, but I wouldn’t let her kiss me if I regularly saw her eat other people’s poop.

Now I’m holding the dogs to that same high standard.

I’ve hardened in my old age.

Till Death Do Us Part…

It was almost a little early for Carla to come to bed this morning. 3:17. She works a graveyard shift and usually stays up all night even when she is off, always has.

I could feel her body relax, releasing all connection to the conscious world as she slipped in on her side of the bed. Sliding up behind her, fitting like two interlocking puzzle pieces, I let go too. Although I had been about to get up and start my day, savoring the moment held me back. Lying with her there in the dark as I have for more than 40 years, still filled me with an almost giddy excitement.

It’s always been the thing I loved most, just having her with me, next to me, in our bed, together. Everything else takes a back seat. Dog water that I remembered I forgot to change, the call I have to make first thing: “Hi, Greta, I need to change my insurance and the deduction.” The never ending “to do” list that insists on a front row seat in the light of day, tugging at my shirt, demanding attention, melted away in that moment of hushed intoxication as we lay safe under the armor of flannel sheets and a tattered blue bedspread.

We couldn’t be more different, she and I. Logic dominates and controls my every step, Carla lives a stream of consciousness life without the clutter of forethought or planning,

It wasn’t always that way. My first marriage was to a college friend just like me. Same background, same balanced approach. It was my mistake to think the relationship to be more than what it was. 

Didn’t everyone get married after college when they didn’t know what else to do with their life? We agreed on most things, but had zero chemistry. It wasn’t until years later that I realized how much I needed a girl who would prance through my thought balloons and gleefully pop them with a magic pin when they got too big, overly full of my own hot air. Frustrating, alluring, necessary. Attracted to each other like the opposite poles of a magnet.

I guess the second time really is a charm.

But I knew almost immediately that I had made a mistake that first time. I was appreciative of the fact that her Mom was going to plan the wedding, as most mothers of the bride do. I only asked that it not be a big church wedding and that I have some input on the music.

We had a huge church wedding and the music at the reception was by three guys who had grown too old for the Lawrence Welk Band and now did weddings only when they were allowed out of the geriatric home.

It didn’t help that while I was waiting in the wings for the ceremony to begin, one of the bridesmaids walked past me, all red hair and freckled breasts trying to pop out of the top of her too tight dress. I felt like a starving prisoner in his cell looking out through the bars as the prison cook pushes a freshly roasted turkey with all the trimmings on a cart down the hall to the warden’s suite, now filled with Thanksgiving guests.

A natural introvert, the thought of all those eyes on me, saying those horrific “till death do us part” words, petrified me… and upset my stomach. Those were Maalox days for me anyway, even in normal times, but that afternoon I was popping antacids like candy corn.

On cue, I entered as I was told, facing the cross like a firing squad, acid reflux painting my lips with multiple cracked layers of liquefied white chalk, retching and swallowing.

It was all downhill from there.

Seven years later, most of them spent in a reclaimed bachelorhood, Carla and I eloped. Married in the front room of a Justice of the Peace whose name we can’t recall. Street clothes and one polaroid picture that never did turn out. Happily, we did.

One saving grace at my first wedding was having my good friends there, Eric and Orlando, are in this shot with me.

Other than for funerals, I don’t believe I’ve been in a church, or a tuxedo again since my first wedding day.

Somehow that seems appropriate now.

Moon Shadows...

Screaming moon, cloudless sky. 

Ten legs swish, kissing their black doppelgangers where concrete meets flesh. Fourteen feet, sole to sole, pouring outlines drawn on the inky canvas, a liquid sharpie in the hand of a furious moon. 

Streetlights wink off, and back on again, unclear as to the time of day. Our own black shadows race ahead and fall behind, growing long and short, fun-house mirror images in mercurial tar flow around us, as dogs, eager for a treat, pull me in the direction of home.

hmh