/ Scamperlings

Until I realized there was no future in moralities, I lived in a small western town in the right corner of my mind where only the weeds tumbled, and even then, repentantly.

I lived in one of those small western towns in a time well beyond the idyll of the greatest generations, but before the spiritual reawakening of their children, who spent the final decade of the century trying to sober up and set right their little mistakes. Every one of the grandmothers in my neighborhood was a hopeless alcoholic, but I was the only grandchild actually raised in one of these homes, so well preserved by the booze that we slept like figures in a wax museum. Whenever the summer heat of this beloved and majestic land we know as this land is our land set in, the sweat collected like droplets of oil upon our foreheads, and the ice ticked like the second hand of a clock against glass tumblers of gin and tonic, or a pinch of vermouth and a pearl onion.

Alex told me that she and her sister would fight over the opportunity to ride on their father's back during summer camp, and would probably spend more energy skipping along side him begging for their turns than if all three of them had walked on their own at some steady pace. And it's hard to remember what felt like the lion's share of time, either the victory of riding princess above the masses, or the agony of being looked down upon, un-chosen and un-admired. They were both two entirely different kinds of eternities.

My son asked one of the local mystics what sleep is, and she said it was the temporary absence of your soul. I was horrified, of course, until he said that she told him death was when this absence became permanent, and goddamn if I never equated dreaming with dying, but it makes a kind of sense when it’s a child telling you, even if filtered like must through the grapevine.

She would walk around at all hours of the night, and I didn't know this for a time, but she only slept during the day, like a child does, and probably just lay there soullessly through the night. We have been struggling against the unkind music of the last two months, blown in from the coast on its way to eat the snow on the other side of the Cascades, but things have quieted down a bit, and when I pretend I have fallen asleep, I can feel her scratch my back, gently, though I am not sure who claims the better part of the comfort, as though we are like pets bred specifically for hospice.

I am fascinated with service pets lately, if only because we have a new employee, and she suffers from seizures, and her companion just happens to be the largest Great Dane I have ever seen. And occasionally she will walk by to the copier, and behind her, this slow lumbering giant out of a children’s book throwing shadows on both sides, casting a sad smile from his mythical profile, daring me almost to choose the wrong bottle. I would, if I wanted somehow to run full standing between the animal’s paws, maybe give it all I can and jump, swing from his tail until the potion wore off.