Walking with Dogs, Angels

I see people walking their dogs on my drive home from taking the kids to school, and I think, How can they do that? Aren't they scared?"

Yet walking is my preferred form of exercise. I used to love to walk my dog, though I was always nervous when large dogs barked and lunged at gates as we passed.

Then one day while passing a house, a pit bull or boxer mix ran out and attacked our dog, Taz. Danny, my little boy, was with us on his scooter. I yelled at him to ignore the dog and to stay away, and he cried as he watched the big dog grab our terrier by the neck and shake him in its mouth twice, maybe three times. I thought Taz was going to be killed, and that my little son would have that terrible memory of watching his pet being throttled to death. The lady who ran after the big dog did not know how to control it and did very little except to squirt water from a bottle onto its muscalur neck. Then she asked me to pick up my own dog. I am ashamed to say that I didn't want to, terrified that her animal would turn on me. When I finally grabbed Taz, the larger dog stalked us, eyes concentrated on my poor furry friend. I told Danny to go ahead of us, to keep his distance, but at one point, as the other animal still trailed us, I looked around, rotating, and cried aloud, "Where can we go? Where can we go?"

I was not very brave, and later I agonized over how well I protected Danny by merely telling him to stay away from Taz and me and the other dog. I also wondered why, in situations where I find myself controlled by fear, I do not cry out silently to God for guidance. For I have asked him for guidance in other situations, and often his answer has been instantaneous.

However, with my wail of, Where can we go?,  there came an answer. Two good Samaritans, male neighbors of the woman, showed up. One had a garden rake or broom in his hand, and he used it to keep the dog away from us. Then he brusquely told the woman to grab the dog by his collar. As she did so I wondered why neither of us had thought of that. I wondered for no more than a moment, though, because I was busy telling Danny to go quickly on the scooter to stay ahead of me as we made our retreat. Sobbing, I did turn my head as we went, and threw several garbled thank yous back at those gentlemen.

Our dog survived that attack, and as I bathed him that morning, I did not even find the blood and lacerations I was fully expecting. I can only think that his long hair and collar offered protection. I was a bit of a mess as I told my husband of the events and later a close friend on the phone.

We never ventured down that street again. Trying to walk my dog after that, I kept a golf club close at my side, but the excursions became successively shorter and closer to home. I was terrified of another incident and became even more fearful for my children's safety, something with which I already struggle a great deal. Several homes in the neighborhood have large dogs who are kept confined much of the time, making them aggressive I suspect.

Nevertheless, our dog still desires walks, and he would prefer it if we actually journeyed more than a few yards each way down our street.

One Sunday I caved in when my kids begged to take Taz on a walk. My husband opted out; walks bore him. I wanted him to come, because fear holds little sway with him, but I comforted myself that Berto, my big twelve-year-old boy, had more than triple my courage in hairy situations.

The loop around the block went alright until we got down the main drag and saw a little black dog running free. Our Taz goes spastic in the presence of cats or other dogs, so I picked him up in order to avoid even the smallest fight. As we rounded the corner onto our street, we no longer saw the other critter, but I still nervously scanned the road as I cradled Taz in my arms. Then just as we passed a home with an open gate, a pit bull charged out at us.

Fear grabs me by the neck in such cases, making my eyes bulge as everything seems to happen simultaneously at lightning speed and agonizingly slow. Foolish woman, I had been walking too fast in my anxiety and was ahead of all my children, though not much. I turned and saw the animal brush past my kids, and I thought clearly, He is going to bite one of my children!

Out of the corner of my eye I saw someone off to the left on a bike, someone we had not seen on the street when we turned. The dog charged the person and then without any perceivable cause abruptly turned tail and ran back inside the gate.

I was already telling my children to come NOW! Ella took off on her scooter. Daniel was fumbling with his, so I told him to leave it; we would come back, and I grabbed his little wrist in a vice grip and trotted with him toward the house. Ana followed us close behind, and Berto grabbed the scooter and brought up our rear, holding the metal toy at the ready.

The dog never came back out. Daniel rebelled against my propulsion.

"You're hurting me, Mama!" he cried. I hadn't meant to, but I was desperate not to let my littlest one be in another scary situation.

As for the biker, our friend, he came slowly behind us, an empty baby trailer attached to his bike. Realizing his pace and that he was basically securing our escape, I turned and said breathlessly, "Thank you for being braver than I am."

He responded by saying he was glad he was there.

Ella said, "That was a pit bull, wasn't it?"

He nodded. "It doesn't help the perceptions people have about them, huh?"

We were at our house, and he paused at the sidewalk by our property and said, "My buddy lives there. I need to tell him about that." He pulled out his cellphone and gazed at it for a moment. I thanked him again, and then the kids, Taz and I went inside and started spilling the story to Matthew. I pulled back the curtain as I told him of the man, but he was already gone. Again, as always, I agonized aloud over how quickly I had reacted, how I could have better protected my kids. Gratefully, I turned to Berto and thanked him for keeping a cool head and bringing up the rear, protecting his siblings. I scolded Matthew for not coming with us. He responded that I needed to let it go; we were safe, and there was no use in beating the subject to death.

Late that night I lay awake in bed thinking about the strangeness of the morning's encounter: how we didn't notice the bicyclist on the street until after we saw the dog ---(Did he come from the other direction? Where did he come from?)---; how neither the pit bull nor Taz made any noise at each other; how the pit bull inexplicably ran back inside the fence after confronting the man on the bike; how I never heard the bicyclist shout anything at that muscular animal to frighten it; how the dog never ventured back out as we walked the remaining several yards down the street even though the gate stood gaping, and we were a noisy, anxious bunch; and how the man followed us with his empty baby trailer to our home and paused as we went in.

I also reflected on how my prayers for my children had changed since our car accident a few years ago. I felt at the time that their angels kept them completely free from harm, and that changed my prayers. I began not simply to pray to God for his protection over my kids' each day but to pray more specifically that their angels would walk with, watch over, and guard them.

Was that man one of those guardian angels? Laugh if you like. My husband looked as if he thought it wasn't a sound idea when I confided in him the next morning....and yet after the man supposedly called his "buddy", the yard gate still remained open that whole day.

Yes, I know. He probably wasn't a supernatural being, but I think of him often with gratitude, because I do not doubt one bit that, angel or no, his presence at that moment on a Sunday morning made a big difference for my family.


Some time ago a priest asked me to compose a personal prayer for peace, because he rightly discerned, I think, that I am often restless, passionate, and fearful - controlled by my emotions. I liked his idea, so I built one from several Scripture passages that had spoken to me reassuringly. This was that prayer, and I pray it or some form of it often when my emotions hold too great a sway over me or my fears nag me with a plague of ugly pictures:

Where sin increased Grace overflowed all the more

Lord Jesus, give me your peace

Let not my heart be troubled

Neither let it be afraid

But send the Holy Spirit

To give me courage

In every circumstance

Amen

Vile Intruder

I would tar and feather it if I could. Burn it in effigy while dancing in a circle. But I can't stand to touch the little plastic thing. Can't stand to look it in its narrow hard face. Cannot bear for it to touch me with one stiff thin antennae. My son knows this, and he thinks its hilarious.

Dammit. My husband swore he'd take the blasted thing back to work, get it out of my house and out of my life. But he hasn't. He only takes it away from my eldest son now and then, smiles with a "now cut that out" expression, and tucks it away somewhere he thinks is safe. Well, as you can imagine, every few months my son discovers it anew, then begins to laugh oddly for no reason I can see. That is until I come around the corner and he throws it at my feet or I open a drawer and it pops out at me in full grotesque glory. He can set me up several times in a day, and I scream every time, jump back, and tell him to get rid of it, cut it out, don't do it again. But I can never bring myself to touch the thing, to actually show nonchalance or jaded amusement. So it goes on and on until I'm half laughing and crying, and my four-year-old comes to hug me and says, "It's alright, Mama. I'm here."

To understand my irrational fear of something which I know is fake, you must know about the times when I have discovered the real deal in my proximity.

The first memorable confrontation in Arizona took place in our apartment when I was eight months pregnant with my eldest son. It crawled out of the drainage pipe in the sink, its body at least three inches long, as I went to wash my hands. I flung myself back against the wall and wailed with an undulating scream to rival any I produced in natural labor. My husband came skidding into the bathroom.

"What...are you...?" he panted, looking my full trembling body up and down.

"Cock...roach," I breathed and pointed.

"What? You can't scream like that for a cockroach!" he scolded, blithely approaching the sink to beat the hell out of it. "I thought you were in labor." (It was our first pregnancy, you understand. He had no clue what a laboring woman should sound like at feeling that first contraction.)

But the time I remember best, the time that still makes me glance to the ceiling in dread now and then, is the time when my husband had to do full battle with the cockroach of all cockroaches - the General Woundwort, the Napolean, the Sauron, the Genghis Khan of cockroaches. It simply wouldn't die easily.

We were watching The Kennedy Honors on TV, a most respectable and cultured means of entertainment when your children are asleep. Whoever was being honored was someone we found truly fascinating. Nevertheless, my eyes roamed at one point up toward the ceiling, and there it was - the ghastly thing! - black, large...on the stinkin' ceiling. I flattened myself against the couch cushion, drew my legs up - ready to dive, spring or hide - and asked Matthew while pointing with an unsteady finger, "What is...that?"

I feared I knew. He got up, examined it with wide eyes, and said softly, "A cockroach....get me something."

I looked about for something heavy, something to inflict pain on this vile intruder. I didn't want to move from my position, but I ventured centimeters away from the couch, stretched my arm out to hand My Man a rolled-up magazine.  He took aim, swung, missed, and the thing took off running. It didn't scurry or crawl. The thing darted like an insect cheetah across our ceiling. I give My Man props, because he took off after it instead of huddling pitifully in the corner, whimpering and negotiating - offering it all the junk food in our house if it would just leave us alive (as I would have done).

He finally knocked it off the ceiling, but then we searched, and we couldn't find the carcass. We were determined. We needed proof, something to put on a toothpick in the front yard to intimidate fellow nasty insects. But nothing. Nothing! Until it occurred to us that it might have fallen into the bin of Christmas wrapping paper that was still residing in our house that chill February evening.

My husband carted the plastic bin gingerly outside, and the brave, brave man began to sift through its contents to find the evidence of the giant cockroach's demise as I watched from the safety of our doorway. Nearing the bottom, he tipped the bin over on the driveway, and out the damn thing ran, right at him. Such flailing of arms! Such wild prancing as he chased it, thumping the magazine down the length of the drive in a fight to the death. At length he stood over that Woundwort of Cockroaches, just beating it every few seconds to make sure it wouldn't reanimate itself like some horror movie villian. Then, weary, he took a crumpled bit of festive paper, picked up its mangled remains and dumped it in the outside trash can.

He stumbled to the door and pronounced, "It is done."

No, not really. He came shaking his head and said something like, "Wow," and, "I knew I had to get rid of it or you'd never let me rest."

So true. Now, I am sane. Truly. I do know COUS (Cockroaches of Unusual Size) are everywhere on this planet, eating our food when we're not looking, infecting us with horrible diseases, throwing parties in our cupboards when it's dark and we can't catch them. I also know that the city where I live regularly sprays the sewer heads in this town to control cockroach numbers, and that's why every little bit the revolting creatures have the audacity to come into homes, trying to escape their fate. Because they come into our homes and make us wet our pants, urban legends exist such as, An enormous cockroach ate my lap dog, or I found a cockroach in my kitchen, reclining in the chip bag and drinking my tequila, and An army of gargantuan cockroaches invaded my shower; I had to scale the glass sliding doors and pitch myself over the top to escape.

I don't know if those urban legends are true, but my story about the battle between My Man and General Woundwort Cockroach is sadly so. It's why for months after that incident I couldn't come out into our dark living room, my baby son in arms to nurse, without feeling incredibly uneasy and/or queasy as my eyes scaled the twilight of the ceiling wondering what was looking back at me. It's why to this day I kick, pat, or knock against the furniture on dark nights to discourage any insects from bearing me company in my chair.

I can't get rid of cockroaches. They're part of life, like spiders, crickets or flies (none of which I mind nearly as bad). But I have taken my stance against the plastic impostor kind, and the nine-year-old boy who aides and abets it. If he attempts to scare me again with that hideous thing, he'll be standing in the corner for an hour. And if it ever ends up in my clothes, hair, purse or car seat, I will get my husband's hammer and pummel it gleefully to see if plastic is really as strong as everyone claims it is.

Twisters and Monsoons (revised version)

Monsoon storms have rolled through our desert valley since Thursday. (I don't understand why they are called monsoons, since I live nowhere near an ocean or sea, but they are continually acknowledged as such by meteorologists, and so...there you go.)

They were forecasted for this whole week. As the cloud cover and humidity built up, so did my anticipation, and with each day that I saw no rain, I became more and more virulent as I talked to the clouds. And my children became concerned that Mama thought she could have a conversation with the sky.

Just when I had given up on the ability of these clouds to deposit moisture in the desert, the wind began to whip our eucalyptus trees around and drove the rain with such force that it slanted through our main air-conditioning vent and drenched the hall carpet.

By early Friday morning it was a calmer drizzle as my children and I enjoyed it from the patio. I sat in a chair with the baby, watching the birds line the branches of our African Sumac tree. My older three were happy to stand and collect the rain in buckets as it streamed from the roof, because to them rain is almost as wondrous as snow. To me it is a good friend too little seen nowadays.

In Tennessee rain was expected, but there was always the possibility that a storm system could bring tornadoes with the rain in spring and summer. True, we did not technically live in Tornado Alley, but I recall hearing tornado watches come on the television quite often, and we had a few warnings.

As soon as the television began its irritating warning beep, Dad listened intently for the message. When our county was included, he quickly abandoned his chair for the porch. I joined him there a few times. As I stood beside him in my cowboy boots, he would gaze at the sky with such intensity it was as if he expected to receive a secret communication from it, one which I hoped to interpret by carefully watching his face.

A couple times when I was small the television went static while the tornado warning was trailing across its screen. Dad did not hesitate at that point; we were told to grab a stuffed animal and blanket and head for the basement. We would navigate the narrow, rickety stairs and wait for the storm to pass in that musty cellar lit by its one feeble bulb. As we squeezed our teddy bears, we tried not to think about the spiders and various other creepy-crawlies that would not take kindly to our intrusion.

But during one of the scariest incidents of my childhood, we were not at home and therefore had no basement to scurry to.

Mom and Dad worked in the woods, rolling wreaths and digging valuable roots for a living. On this particular summer day, we kids had gone with them to explore a new stretch of wilderness while they worked. Mom and Dad quit early; there was a bad storm brewing.

We kids were hustled into the car. Dad had the radio on soon after we left the woods. The winds picked up, and the sky deepened to an unusual hue of slate blue. As we turned down Spann Road, the last leg to home, Dad was watching the sky, glancing in the car's side and rear mirror more and more frantically as the car's speed increased. I knew he was no longer examining the possibilities; he was searching for the reality of what we could hear building from that strangely-colored sky.

Because a noise which was more than that of a gale had grown out of the storm as Dad sped along the rutted dirt road. I didn't see the twister, though I remember turning in terror to look out the back window as the roar of it amplified. Suddenly, Dad swerved off the road and braked violently by a decrepit barn near the fence line.

"We won't outrun it," he said. Then he turned. "Kids get down on the floor and start praying."

Annie, Nate and I huddled down quickly. Vinca held Mom and Dad's hands in the front seat. We three in the backseat were praying aloud; one often does when desperate, I suppose. As I prayed I longed to be in the front seat with my parents. I thought about climbing the seat, because if I had to die, I wanted at least to be with Mommy and Daddy when it happened.

But in the midst of our supplications, the strange growling suddenly died. The tornado was gone, sucked back up into the clouds that began to lose their angry color shortly thereafter. The twister must have been of the fickle kind that touches ground for a few miles on a lonely piece of earth, thankfully leaving little indication of its passage before vanishing like smoke. In the eerie calm that followed, Dad started the engine, we kids climbed back onto the bench seats in that old car, and we drove the last couple miles home in silence. When I looked back I saw nothing but the rain falling on the fields, stands of trees and fence line behind. The barn which had witnessed our terror stood indifferent and untouched.

I can't help finding tornadoes fascinating because of their power. Perhaps that is because I am removed from their reality here in the Southwest where they are practically nonexistent. It has been a long time since I stood on a porch and gazed with my Daddy at the threat of an angry southern sky.