On the Raft

The gong reminds you to arrive here, arrive now, on your yoga mat. A sturdy raft that bobs with the daily waves and carries you along, whether you can find breathing room in your ribs during downward facing dog, or not – it’s okay. If you move between poses and drop into your vibrating body enough, you can switch the brain off for a precious while, all while your calloused toes slip on the non-slip mat and your arms jiggle if you hold a pose longer than you theoretically can. If you just follow the breath, it takes you to a blissful place where thoughts don’t matter and kindly ghost grandmothers gently pat your forehead for reassurance and shining dogs bound from your fourth chakra across golden lawns, aloft in frenzied search of something to chase.

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Her first steps into your home were tentative, inquisitive even. Every corner had to be checked, but her sweet-sweet eyes asked permission before entering a new room. A larger- than-life compact bundle of damaged love that somehow fit into your bedraggled, newly purchased home for two, or two plus. You were so freaked out, you locked her in the laundry room that first night. Then changed your mind and let your spouse sleep on the couch, his capable hand resting on her soft-soft back until first light as you wondered whether you’d lost him to the family addition.

“Staff favorite,” they had said. “Loves all people. Owner surrender.”

She was featured on local TV, she sat in that cell for so long, stewing in her own desperate soup.

Four months on a concrete floor in the old shelter by the Bellingham airport had left their marks. Bare knees and knuckles. Calloused pads. Ear infection. Pills for ongoing kennel cough. And whenever you came to visit, terrifying, frenzied, spittle-spray barking. She mortified you, you who had never wanted a dog until your husband disclosed – post-marriage, post-move to another state, post-mortgage for a home you felt you needed to start a family – that he’d always wanted a dog. You came for the beagle. You left, after repeat visits, with Zoie. Zoie, yellow lab of the velveteen eyes. Zoie of the cool snout in the palm of your hand, her very own language. Zoie of patience and pat-pat-pat of tail when you came home – oh, the joy, the dance on front paws, when you came home. Zoie of the gimpy, non-weight-bearing back leg, past-life remnant. Zoie healed you, overnight, of your lifelong terror of dogs. Erased the memory of the two that bit you during childhood. Made everything okay at the end of the day when you wanted to leave the clangy world outside, the people with their tedious problems and overblown egos. Zoie knew how to just be. Zoie, your five-year old, 75-pound chubby baby who aggressed toward any others of her kind but adored the neighbor’s sneaky black cat, all human visitors, and especially your first kid.

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She knew you were going to give birth before you did. She was parked on the old beige sheepskin with you as you were doing stretches to get rid of Braxton Hicks and calf cramps, and then her sage face tilted, and her nostril twittered that silent song of curiosity, and she looked at you and she said, “Huh.” That’s when you realized you sat in a puddle on the fluffy sheep fur and baby was rushing into this world earlier than expected. Zoie sensed. Zoie knew to watch over that baby in the crib, and Zoie rested her confident chin on her front paws and wouldn’t blink when baby sat in the swing, and Zoie worriedly danced before the kitchen sink when you bathed the little one because the feeble cat noise of the premature announced that baths and her skinny blue body did not mesh well. Zoie knew you were pregnant with baby two before you did. Zoie knew to keep kiddo one calm and entertained when you were, wearily, languidly, nursing baby two and all you wanted to do was take a nap while he relaxed, too. She outshone the human nannies. Zoie just was, and when you sat on the old living room carpet, she’d rest her head by your hip and lean in just so, and that was as close to peace as you’d ever come, especially if the kids were healthy and tucked into bed, and exhausted silence spread into tired bones.

Make peace with vulnerability, says your beloved, departed yoga teacher, Anat Geiger. You devote time to that – leaning into the vulnerability, the parts of you that were once protected by hardened shields, invisible, of diamond. There’s some pain there? Say hello to the pain. Lean into it. How are you today, pain? I see you, I feel you. Now you let that thought go, breathe space into spaces, breathe life into lives. You release the memory that while your spouse underwent cancer surgery, Anat herself announced terminal cancer. You sat on your trusted raft, and chanted bija mantras with a global virtual community you didn’t know but did, and you emulated words you didn’t know yet did and rhythms set by something greater than your own heart, and you sent Anat on her preordained way.

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You never stopped inventing terms of endearment for her. Zo-Zo girl. Beauti-girl. Mrs. Bellingham. The patter of her feet at night when she’d cruise in search of locked-away treats calmed you. Her dog dreams, corn-smelling paws twitching as if shocked by a socket, those adorable whimper sounds – you’d sit there and hold hands and watch her and wonder, even after all these years, what her life was like before she found and begged you to allow her to love you.

You swallow, hard, when you remember that day. Tears, there you are. Sure, come on out. Your husband convinced you to come closer to her kennel in that nightmare of a hallway, lined by noise, oozing with the smell of fear and something even sharper you could not identify back then. She’d looked so ferocious when you first came in, you avoided eye contact and walked right by her, hoping for something little, something calm and cute. And here was your husband, his hand against the rusty bars, and on the other side this large creature loomed, lowered her nose. Miraculous, really, the way she squished her forehead partially through the bars and invited touch. You didn’t feel the trust right there and then, but you caught a tantalizing whiff of it. Enough to try. Enough to admit: this feels serendipitous. It feels like … it feels like … belonging.

You take her for a spin on the shelter’s old leather leash. She is gigantic once out of the kennel; the volunteer can barely hold her as she barrels through the doors and out into the murky parking lot. A late spring day, dandelions dancing everywhere, red robins crooning about the afternoon light, while a smelly, chunky dog careens down the sidewalk-less country road, your former-football player spouse hanging on for who knows what.

Ten minutes later, you are back at the shelter, apologetically embarrassed. She’s covered in mud from toes up to her back. So is your husband, who had to try to coax her out of the swampy ditch she obstinately chose as her destination. She frolicked there as if she’d never smelled and felt dirt and snail shells before. The shelter staff laugh carefully. “We’ll just hose her down and put her back in the kennel. These things happen.” Their shoulders sag a little. You can tell they had high hopes. You look at him and he looks at you, and you say: “We want to take her home.”

More than a decade later, you have to help her home. The unthinkable, unspeakable. For years, you’ve worried. What if. We can’t. Then what. And then, you just know. A stunning, sunny September day. Your parents have flown in from your home country, the little house is full to the brim. Your dad and son squeal as they throw things around that shouldn’t be thrown. Your mom and first kiddo whisper-plan snacks and scribble first letters and inspect every plant. And Zoie, somehow, is missing. You find her pacing the yard, in a way you didn’t know she could move, would move. She’s been so weak, so creaky for months now. This, this is different. She starts to scream. Rocks. Stares into space and won’t make eye contact with you. She’s never not looked you pupil to pupil. This is terror. You did not know a live being could make these sounds. The emergency vet where you whisk her on this, the anniversary of your own born-again day, shakes her overworked head. The day you survived an unimaginable, unspoken-of heart surgery as a child becomes the day you nod at the concerned doctor who confirms what you know: this is sheer suffering. Inhumane. Twisted intestine. You give the go ahead and take in the blurry outlines of the sterile room, the rushed coming and going of the assistants, the needles, the tubes, the liquids – all your worst nightmares – while you do the one thing you can: you push all your love and gratitude through your heart into your hands into her shivering body and you lock crying eye to crying eye and you tell her, “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.” You become her raft.

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There are no words for that moment when the soul leaves the body. You know that now. Another Zoie lesson. Another Anat lesson. “It’s going to be okay,” you tell your husband who bawls in the car. A pouring rain outside now, and his cry is a torrent of all those who’ve gone before. He can’t grab the wheel for hours. “It’s going to be okay,” you tell the kids when you break the news to them. Your son toddles off, too little to understand. Your firstborn drops onto the slippery sidewalk, holds on to her knees, sobs, “No-no-no.”

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Once upon a time, before a yoga mat or baby one or baby two joined, there was a young couple who looked forward to having dinner together every night. One evening, as the husband had sat the pizza on the coffee table, strategically before the TV, he and the wife returned to the kitchen for drinks and silverware. They were gone two minutes, tops, and then stood in the living room, stunned. There was a blank plate on the coffee table. Inscrutably clean. They turned to each other. In the corner, the yellow lab was fast asleep on her bed. A tiny bit of red sauce clung to the corner of her smiling mouth. Her eyebrow twitched, and they could have sworn they heard her say, “If you tell my stories, it’s all going to be okay.”

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You don’t need words to feel what matters. Off the mat, on the mat, there’s a truth of love and compassion, and if you tap into those, you can convince yourself, for a blink. Despite the pain. Or maybe because of it. Today, the newest family addition, one of currently three rescue dogs in your crowded house, takes flight: Dachshund body, pitbull jaw, determination of a tick. Somehow, this mutt has wings and decides she needs to launch herself over the hallway barrier you’ve erected to flow without interruption on your yoga mat. And her sandpaper tongue is now in your ear. Her feathery tail, cotton-candy cloud, smacks you in both eyes and nostrils at once. She grins like only Billie can grin as you tumble and accept the fall from grace. Hey, are you alright? ask her button eyes.