A Very Christmas Father's Day

We are now two months without a dog. For nearly 30 years, we’ve always had one, and the house is just different. It’s too quiet and too still. It’s like living in a Dorothea Lange photo. 

I thought I might find some consolation from my cat, but when I laid down next to her on the bed and sighed, “Butters has died,” she looked at me and said, “Who?”

So I’ve found myself ever present in the backyard making friends with our jays and squirrels and rabbits, who have multiplied at a remarkable pace these last 60 days. None of them are particularly affectionate, but they are food motivated, which is a comforting nostalgia. They are also relatively quiet, except when they are being pulled apart by our resident Cooper’s hawk, and then everything is ruined again. 

I have transcended love at this point, which has conveniently coincided with me settling into old age and unhandsomeness, and we don’t live in loving times, in any case, but more than likely we’ll cave and bring an unsuspecting dog back into the world, if only out of habit. 

It has been a hectic time at work this year, and I’ve continued my busy travel schedule. I was back in DC for a depressing slew of hill visits, saw a real life mermaid in Montana and next week, I’m off to Alaska for a week of deep sea fishing, with no cell phone service. I will probably catch a dog fish.

On this particular father’s day, I came across a baptism ceremony testimonial from one of my three half-sisters, recorded last year. She looks so much like my dad, or at least what I remember of him from the last time I saw him, some time back in the late 70s. In it, she says of her childhood, “I don’t think that they really knew how to be parents or how to really love, so I grew up really just doing what I wanted. It led me to get married at 16, and I just kind of fell down the rabbit hole of crime.” A little over a month ago, she was arrested for meth, having already previously serving time in prison for the same thing. My other half-sisters have had equally rough roads, one similarly serving prison time, and the other a victim of arson.

I feel like I’ve processed this already, but also have to be resolved that not everything gets closure. The science seems unclear about whether or not we inherit our parents’ tendencies, but regardless of what the IRS has to say, I’m still convinced we inherit at least a few of their debts.

We definitely need a dog.