Dog Towels

The Canada geese glide down and ski to a stop on the brown water below us as we walk over the wooden bridge towards the dog park. It is a misty grey morning and it has been raining, so the bridge is slick. The geese have joined ducks and the invitation propels the puppy to the side, pushing her black snout through the slats, all her birding instincts commanding her to crouch, bark and attempt to simultaneously remove my arm at the shoulder and knock me off my feet by yanking forward on the leash. 

I am pulled along, the puppy zigzagging from one side of the path to the other, sniffing grass, peeing on a fence, greeting another dog until I can unhook her and toss the kong. This early the dog park is nearly deserted and the rain has left small lakes clustered all through the throwing area. I am not a dog park person, as our old Aussie mix preferred sitting on the bench with the people and we can do that at home. After a few tosses, I give the kong a throw with a bit more muscle and the puppy plows through a puddle sending up a huge spray. This puppy is drawn to the water like a toddler and this could go on for hours I soon realize.  The game winds down when the puppy starts to drop the kong further and further from me so I clip on her leash and am dragged back over the bridge to the parking lot.

On cue the puppy sails up into the back of the Jeep, sleek and black as a seal pup, her tail threatening to pull her spine out of alignment she wags so furiously.  I remind her, again, to sit and push her back, distracting her by tossing the slimy pink kong in the corner as I close the tailgate. By the time I open the driver’s door she’s in the passenger seat, beyond excited to see me again.  I get out and put her in the back, this time looping her leash over the roll bar. This is my son’s puppy, in essence my beta grandchild, so it’s the best kind of puppy.

I had lined the back of the Jeep with junky blue towels – the dog towels - and used an extra one to rub her muddy haunches as she wiggled all over me.  This towel wrestle is a familiar one. Her muscular enthusiasm echoes that of her owner’s when I used the same towels to dry his 30-pound puppy body.

These faded cobalt blue towels were once the perfect match for the blue tile that lined the shower and bathtub in my kids bathroom, though they were rarely displayed on the towel rack.  They have toweled off three slippery baby bodies. Pulled hot from the dryer they have burritoed toddlers who did not want to get out of the bath that they did not want to take 20 minutes earlier.  I’ve used them to cover a pee soaked bed I was too exhausted to change at three in the morning. They have dried dripping curls of many lengths, and been left where they drop, on the floor of the teen post apocalyptic bedroom, after lacrosse practice showers.

There was the time, not too long ago, I found a blue towel staple gunned to the polished blonde maple dining table leaf, because my eldest said he was ‘making something’.  One was discovered in my middle son’s bass drum along with some couch pillows when the drum kit was being unloaded from my car after a gig.

I washed, dried and folded the vibrant cobalt hue and fluffy texture right out of these towels. After twenty years of service, they are no longer presentable, now frayed, with holes and inexplicable stains, they reside folded in the laundry room pantry next to the leash, dog and cat food and box of poop bags.

Once we are back home I let the puppy out of the back as she was eager to get reacquainted with our cats and I gather all the wet muddy towels out of the Jeep and bring them in the laundry room.

The puppy flops down at my feet while I start the towel load, and gnaws her kong with a squeaking of puppy teeth on wet rubber. The emergency towels, the junker towels, the dog towels. They are faithful and ever ready.

I don’t know who’s more exhausted.

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D is for Depot

'meet you at the depot'

This sentence has been said and texted a zillion times in our family.  

The depot is the social core of our Northern California town, a former train station and then greyhound bus station tucked at the base of Mount Tamalpais. Now it is a red brick plaza anchored by the Depot Cafe and Bookstore, edged with wooden benches, permanent chess tables and mature trees skirted with concrete benches that house musicians and parents and dog walkers on any typical day.  The bus stops across the street now. 

In the twenty years that I have lived here, I have sat on those benches with coffee while my baby slept in a stroller; I have watched my kids climb the trees, make chalk drawings, play hop scotch, ride scooters, skateboards and bicycles.  I have brought my kids coffee while they played guitars, banjos and mandolins, busking (very successfully)for money. Sometimes I'd see them there playing when I drove by. 

I meet up with my kids there now, in town from college or traveling; it's our central meeting place to hang out or go for a meal. Recently I ran into my son there unexpectedly, not even knowing he was in town; Little kids were climbing trees, riding scooters (with helmets now), the hacky-sack kids, moms in lulu lemons pushing sleeping babies in strollers, and an old guy playing a sitar under the tree. 

Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

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Houdini Toddler

There’s a cold dark place you go when you can’t find your child.  I went there once. This isn’t the run of the mill can’t pick out your kid’s head bobbing in the pool, can’t sift through all the hooded toddlers at the park, just focused on a sale rack for a second and now you’re on your hands and knees at Nordstrom.  This is an all hands on deck, EVERYBODY is looking and minutes are ticking by and your toddler is GONE.  This is when someone gently leads you to a room so you can scream while they hold you.

I stepped into the Toddler Room to pick up my two year old son and in the scramble for lunch boxes and hanging up of jackets I couldn’t see where he might be.  The afternoon kids were settling in for lunch and the hip-height chaos was all around me.  A few seconds passed before I could move into the room and peek around the corner to the area where I usually found him painting. Not there. His teacher saw my questioning look and helped me look.  She opened the door to the outside play area, asking several parents and teachers if they had seen him.

In seconds the entire school was in lock down mode with all able bodies calling his name and looking in the garden, upper school, kitchen, parking lot, office.  This is when it became cold and dark, and I was led by the elbow into an office.  I remember screaming for someone to call 911.

Parents and teachers had begun looking in the creek that runs behind the school and were fanning out into the neighborhood, when a local resident came out of her house and asked if we were looking for the little boy she had in her arms.  He had slipped out the gate in the back of the school and disappeared up a flight of stairs leading to the Homestead Valley Community Center.  Like Popeye’s Sweetpea, skirting disaster at every turn, he had gone past the pool, through a parking lot with a blind driveway, along Montford, a typical Mill Valley neighborhood street with no sidewalk or shoulder, across Montford and up this neighbor’s steep driveway. The fact that he wasn’t run down by an SUV was a miracle in itself.

Ten years have passed since that day, and the two preschool teachers have since retired and moved away. I send them both a Christmas card each year and get one in return.  I know they went to their own cold dark place that day.

2007   originally published in the Marin Independent Journal, edited version
Mary Allison Tierney's essay The Gingerdreadman is included in the anthology Mamas Write, available at Amazon, or your local independent bookshop.

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