Golden Retriever Mysteries 10-12: Dog's Green Earth, A Litter of Golden Mysteries, & Dog Willing by Plakcy Neil S

Author:Plakcy, Neil S. [Plakcy, Neil S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Samwise Books
Published: 2021-10-05T22:00:00+00:00

Story 5: For the Love of Dog

Part 1 – As White as Flour

As I read through my online news feeds I kept stumbling on deadly stories of love gone wrong. Was it the approach of Valentine’s Day that led husbands to shoot wives, wives to stab husbands, and spurned lovers of all kinds to strike out at those who were supposed to be closest to their hearts?

I was lucky to have my loved ones close—Lili, sitting across from me at the dining room table, working on her laptop, and Rochester, sprawled at my feet.

“Take a look at this student portfolio.” Lili swiveled her laptop around to face me. “The assignment was to take photos that represent a particular word, and she chose love.”

Rochester recognized the word love, which I used on him all the time, and he sat up so that I could stroke the silky fur at the top of his head.

“The portfolio isn’t sappy, is it?” I asked.

“Not at all. She went back to the ancient Greeks and their four words for love: agápe, éros, philía, and storgē.”

She pointed to the screen, a photo of a group of parishioners outside a church I recognized as St. Ignatius in Yardley, one town downriver from where we lived in Stewart’s Crossing, a Philadelphia suburb. The word agápe was at the bottom of the photo, along with what I assumed was the same word in the Greek alphabet. “I thought agápe was brotherly love,” I said.

“It is, but it’s also the love of God for man and the love of man for God,” Lili said. She was the chair of the Fine Arts department at Eastern College, where I also worked, and she taught photography classes as well.

She flipped to the next photo, a collage of images of people kissing—a young man and woman, two elderly women, two thirty-something men among them. Éros was at the bottom.

“Romantic love,” I said. Rochester had enough affection for the moment, and he slumped back down on the floor, resting on his side with his legs out.

“Exactly. A bit too politically correct—I think she could have used just one of the images. But she’s a college student so I’ll cut her some slack.”

The next photo was what looked like a group of college students at a picnic. “Philia,” Lili said, pointing to the word at the bottom. “Friendship, affectionate regard.”

The kids were all laughing and engaging with each other, so I figured that was a good match. “And finally, storgē.” Lili pronounced the hard G with a light e at the end.

The photo showed a young woman sitting in a Morris chair at what looked like a coffee shop, breast-feeding an infant. The photographer had lit the photo so that the mother’s dark skin glowed with an inner warmth.

“I can’t say I’ve ever heard of storgē,” I said. “What does it mean?”

“I had to look it up myself. It means the affection between parents and children.”

I nodded. “And again, a bit of political correctness. Breast-feeding in a public space.

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