Today is February 14th. For cynics, it’s also Valentine’s Day. So perhaps it’s appropriate that today irony and coincidence collide in my world because I will be teaching my children Life Lesson number 1,429,754: falling in love means getting your heart broken.
I know I’m in no real authoritative position to be a dad. If my kids could just learn from my mistakes rather than my successes they’d be bound for greatness. Unfortunately for them, they have to watch every wild idea that never comes to fruition, strap in during the downward spirals, and laugh when the simplest of projects turns out to be one colossal disaster. But what they’ve seen in the last several days has been a new experience for them, one they haven’t been quite sure what to make of.
It all started on Friday. Had I not gotten home from work early I don’t know that I’d have ever seen her. But I did get home from work early, and I did see her.
She was pacing back and forth in front of our stairway. Short, deliberate steps. At first I thought nothing of her, she was with another guy. But then she looked at me. We held the other’s gaze for what seemed like hours. I couldn’t force myself to look away. There was something about her, something different from the rest, something that made me want to abandon everything I believed in.
The guy she was with caught our mutual affinity for each other. It was impossible not to.
“Hey,” he said. I hey’d him back. He watched as she unapologetically made her way towards me. I could feel my heart quicken in rhythm. I knew that walking past her was the right thing to do, but with each step she took towards me I felt myself losing all sense of right and wrong. “She likes you,” he noted.
Unable to make my legs work, a whirlwind of thoughts bombarded my mind. All of the conversations Traci and I’d had with the kids about choices and responsibility and timing and space began to invade my thoughts, trying to break the focus of my tunnel vision. I forced myself to break away from her stare, tried thinking of baseball. And still I couldn’t get past her.
“How old is she?” I asked, leaning down to pet my neighbor’s puppy.
“Six weeks.”
I ran my hand over her back, massaged her ears. Her black coat was smooth to the touch, interrupted only by the white patch of fur on her breast and a white tip on her tail. With every stroke she inched closer to me, eventually leaning into me as if we hadn’t only just met but instead had known each other our entire lives.
Her owner told me of how he really wasn’t her owner, but her temporary guardian. She was a rescue dog. A rescue dog in need of a permanent home. He continued to tell me how well behaved she was, and that because she was a Black Lab and German Shepard mix she’d be very loyal. He mentioned that for six weeks old she’d yet to have any accidents indoors. What he didn’t say was that she’d also be very big. Too big for our apartment.
For twenty minutes I allowed myself to live in the land of “What If” while I played with her. Despite our short time together, I knew that saying goodbye wasn’t going to be easy, but it had to be done. Before parting ways I asked my neighbor if he could do me a favor and hide the dog from my kids if he happened to be out walking her again while they were in transit from the car to home or vice versa. He said he would. I knew that he knew I wasn’t talking about the kids.
Over the course of the weekend Traci reminded me of how we’d preached to the kids that we couldn’t get a dog until we made the commitment to get a house. That was still a year off. I rebutted by saying that we weren’t just getting any dog, but a rescue dog – a dog that needed us. She couldn’t deny the idea’s nobility. But my wife defended her stance by noting we’d incur veterinarian bills, cost of food, grooming, our rent would go up, and we’d have to fork over $500 for the pet deposit. I wanted to ask her how she could be so totally right about something but still be so completely wrong. My options were limited to letting the idea go or bringing in reinforcements. I made the best choice I could at the time.
“We’re getting a dog!?” Kacie asked.
“No. We have the opportunity to get a dog,” I corrected her.
“We are not getting a dog,” our resident drill sergeant barked.
“Can it sleep with me?” Kacie asked.
“No, Kacie. It’s going to sleep with me,” Brady said.
“The dog’s not sleeping with anybody, because we’re not getting a dog.”
“Why not?” the kids asked.
“Because a dog is not financially responsible right now.”
“We’ll eat out less,” Kacie offered.
“Yeah. Daddy will eat less Raising Cane’s,” Brady chimed in. I wasn’t a fan of how easily he gave me up. But he had a point. There were a lot of unnecessary extras in our life that we could easily do without, especially if it meant rescuing such a beautiful damsel in distress.
“We’re not getting a dog.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” I said. She was being totally reasonable.
It was three against one, and yet those of us on Team Puppy were severely outnumbered. Before we disbanded, I suggested to the kids that they call their grandparents and hit them up for monetary contributions to our cause. I don’t think they ever did. The little Benedict Arnolds.
The weekend turned into Monday, and I couldn’t get the dog next door out of my mind. The talk of getting a puppy still lingered. Brady was now willing to give up In-N-Out. Kacie was willing to work extra soccer games on the weekends. I was willing to use the toll roads less. Traci wanted to come around, I could tell. My wife’s also the practical one of the lot, so it’s her job to be the killjoy in the family. It’s a role she hates but has become quite good at. Oscar caliber, even.
Monday night while filling a prescription for eye glasses, I tried telling Traci that it’d be pointless to buy a dog further down the road when we could make a difference now. She argued that the thousand dollars it’d take just to get a puppy in our home right now was not in the budget - that the unexpected prescription wasn’t even in the budget. I hadn’t thought about it that way. But I wasn’t going to give up. I reminded her of the things we could live without. She hadn’t forgotten and still had no plans of taking them into consideration. Despite my pleas, Traci wouldn’t waver in her stance on the subject: our family was not going to be a part of this rescue. Someone else would have to play the hero while I was left again as the hero wannabe, watching helplessly on the sidelines. My heart hurt. Weird, right?
My lesson here, kids? Falling in love isn’t as easy as it looks on TV. It’s hard work. Frustrating. That two hearts can fit together so completely and not belong together. That regardless of how cuddly the object of your affection might be, it’s still going to have to be walked at five in the morning and most likely going to chew on your shoes and toys, thus proving your mom right in that waiting to get a dog is probably the best thing to do right now. But please also don’t mistake the point of us not getting a dog to mean we’re going to In-N-Out tonight. That’s not happening either.
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