Have Dog, Will Travel: A Poet's Journey with an Exceptional Labrador by Stephen Kuusisto

Author:Stephen Kuusisto [Kuusisto, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Autobiography, Memoir, Animals, Dogs
ISBN: 9781451689815
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2018-03-12T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

My mother, Evelyn, was a saboteur of family occasions and so she arrived for graduation feeling faint. My sister and I dragged her to the kitchen for orange juice and crackers. She had diabetes, which required attention, but she also had Ménière’s disease, a disorder of the inner ear affecting balance. This meant she could fall over at any time. Added to this dire possibility was her stone-faced manner. Sometimes I thought she was just a step shy of having Munchausen by proxy—she seemed to live just to make everyone sick. She swayed and waved her arms.

“Listen,” said my father, Allan, who invariably spoke as the ship was sinking, “we’d better take her to your room.”

We moved through a celebratory throng of dogs and graduates, families, puppy raisers, trainers, my father and sister holding Evelyn by the arms, Corky and I in front. In the dorm room, alone, with only our clan for company, Evelyn was suddenly restored. She stopped depending to and fro.

Carol, who always called Evelyn “Evy Jo” because her full name was Evelyn Josephine, said: “Listen, Evy, you better sit.” And Evelyn sat on the bed and stared balefully like a dowager queen. Then she said: “You go on without me. I’ll stay here.”

“Oh no,” my father said. “Oh no, we’ve come this far . . .” He trailed off. There was too much to say. It seemed in our family there was always too much to say.

“Listen, Evy Jo,” said Carol, “you’ve got to rouse yourself!”

There was a mirror in the room and I blew on the glass while Carol talked. I wrote “Corky” in the breath mist with a finger.

“You get up!” said Carol, suddenly passionate. “This is a big day! It’s Steve and Corky’s day! Fix your makeup and let’s go!”

I wasn’t sure what I was feeling as my sister spoke.

The poet Emily Dickinson once wrote to a friend asking if growth could be taught or, as she put it: “Is it unconveyed like melody or witchcraft?”

I’d been through a month of unprecedented growth. It wasn’t melody or witchcraft. It had come from the lessons conveyed by Linda and Kylie and Corky.

I saw my mother’s sadness and felt tenderness for her. I wasn’t practiced in this. It was enough, I thought, to feel a new appreciation for my life and the lives of others. Corky and Guiding Eyes had helped me become more expansive on the inside, where our undisclosed decencies draw breath.

* * *

Enter Bill and Reba Burkett, Corky’s puppy raisers. Seeing them, Corky performed a move known at Guiding Eyes as “the Boomer Bounce.” She jumped up and down, pushing her front paws off the floor while her hind feet remained planted. The bounce was a trait of her father, Boomer, a stud dog. All of Boomer’s progeny had the bounce. The bounce often came first thing in the morning. I’d wake to find Corky going up and down clutching one of my running shoes in her mouth.

We were in a throng: graduates and their families and a host of puppy raisers, and it was a strange jamboree.

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