So, I’m driving home, thinking.

It’s daycare Friday again, the very best day of the week for my Great Danes, Corah and Holly. The girls wake up knowing, somehow, so they hurry through breakfast and remind me where the leashes hang. They drag me out to the Jeep and help me watch the twenty-five miles of country road. Sometimes, we see a deer or a covey of partridges or a turtle, but mostly they stand by in case I need directions. When we turn into the long laneway that leads to the resort, they trade all shreds of dignity for cacophony. I unsnap them in the lobby, then they race off. They don’t look back at me, not once.

I drive home, alone.

A couple of weeks ago, I stood cold and muddy beside a construction trench dug shallow-to-deep, running down to a well that hadn’t wanted to give up its water. A long day, and a rough crew wanted to go find beers and home. I wanted that, too.

The workers stood around the lip and watched a backhoe, running expensive overtime, start to swing back-and-forth, filling the hole. Down at the bottom, I spotted movement—a flash of yellow-and-green in the dim. A Northern Leopard frog had left the nearby river to check out the new geography.

“You better move, frog,” I thought. “Pretty fucking quick.”

Of course, the frog did no such thing. She sat perfectly still, considering whatever frogs consider. The big shovel swung and dumped. I felt sure most of the group around the hole had spotted the bright flash of frog-hide. Another bucket of sand, maybe two, and they would see a creature ending.

I waved the shovel to a stop. The operator stared at me, wondering what emergency had unfolded, then put the machine into neutral. I considered jumping gracefully into the pit, but I am too old and creaky for that. I made my way around the tractor to the shallow end, then picked my way over loose dirt to the bottom. After I caught the uncooperative animal, I risked a glance at the faces above me. Serious men on serious business—to the last one, I saw disgust over home and beer and expensive backhoe delay reflected back.

When I climbed out, there might have been a snicker or two. I didn’t make eye contact. The frog and I made our way to the riverbank.

I thought I would be wiser, when I got old. I counted on having figured things out by now. As it turns out, I don’t have the answers to anything. It’s harder to tell the good guys from the bad guys. I’ve made too many left turns when the road curved right. If our Heaven is the one I learned about as a kid, I probably won’t get invited.

I do know one thing though, for absolute sure: If you can save the frog, that’s what you do. Period. No matter what. Don’t overcomplicate it.

Almost home.

A pet resort every week, for two dogs, gets kinda expensive. Friday is my day off, so I certainly don’t need babysitting and I don’t need a hundred miles of extra driving. I get lonely later, in the ancient house. I’d rather they stayed home. The Danes have each other to run with, across a backyard that rambles over trees and sand, stands of bamboo and wild plums. Their toybox overflows. They don’t need to take a swing every Friday at my credit card.

Without daycare, on the other hand, they get different. If they don’t meet strange new staff members every week, if they don’t go for a tumble in a kaleidoscope of black and brown and white dogs, without pats from strange hands and calls from new voices, they lose joy. They get reactive and suspicious. They stop seeing their place in the galaxies. The walls close in, and my sweet, gentle girls go sour.

Corah thinks a plastic bag blowing up the driveway is a threat. Holly believes the Amazon guy is here to beat us up. They both chase the squirrels who empty my bird feeders and growl at kitty cats outside the kitchen window. They forget how perfect the world is.

So, I keep blowing on my credit card to cool it off. I keep getting up on Friday mornings to drive a hundred miles I don’t have to.

I’m almost on my street when I get reminded we have an election coming. They say it’s too close to call. Monsters are real, and we’re thinking about giving the worst ones the car keys and telling them to drive. Sometimes I wonder how half the country could even consider this horror. I worry people are truly bad, and I’ve spent my whole life not knowing it.

The monsters tell us to be afraid that the “different ones” are taking over. I’ve known some “different ones” over the years—undocumented immigrants, gay folk, gangsters, a trans person or two—and they’re mostly good people who get cold and hungry and fall in love and do the best they can. It’s just a lot harder for them. Now we’re given an option to vote for making it even harder. We’ll send the National Guard to send them away. We’ll talk about abortion and vaccines and inflation and school prayer and the decay of American Graffiti America, but anger and hate are what’s really on the menu. We’re voting to vanquish the different.

The Universe forgives most things, but she won’t forgive us this possibility on November 5. Forgive them, for they know not what they do—but we do, in fact, know what we do.

In the last breath we take before we step over to whatever waits, maybe we realize that we’re all different. Every one of us is a different one, with too many scared days and not enough happy ones, and that’s why we’re so finally gorgeous. We love different when it’s too late.

The Danes say we just need daycare. We need to go for a run with black and brown and white, big and small. We need to stop being afraid of the Amazon guy and blowing plastic bags. We need every day to be daycare Friday. We need to love the world again, even when there are kitty cats.

As for me, I still just know that when in doubt, save the frog. If you can save the frog, that’s what you do. Period. No matter what. Don’t overcomplicate it.

Photos by Donnez Cardoza