random brain droppings

No, this is not about politics.  I am writing about my dogs: Lili’koi and Peppa’Joy.

I’ve had those dogs in my life longer than I’ve had an iPhone.   Really.   I left Hawaii at the end of 2006 with a Blackberry I had acquired for my job as a TRS manager.   TRS, Telecommunications Relay Services: a service now as obsolete as my Blackberry, and, me. 

Bonnie had adopted, rescued, Lili, in Pecos, in the summer before I came over.  Lili’Koi was waiting for us when I arrived.  Peppa followed Bonnie home – carrying a slice of bread in her mouth – one night during the great blizzard of 2007.  It wasn’t a “great blizzard” for northern New Mexico, but it was the most snow I had seen since the last time I attempted snow skiing, forty years earlier.  It was a lot of snow.   

We let Peppa inside so she wouldn’t freeze in the snow.    Blue Heelers don’t freeze.  They were specifically bred to protect livestock in the outback in an Australian winter.  They don’t freeze.   We didn’t know that, then.   After many, many, happy days romping with Lili & Peppa in the snow on the mesas and national forests of the Upper Pecos, I got it.  Heelers don’t freeze.

We let her in. She never left.

Shortly after Peppa joined us, I assumed most, eventually all, of the dog walking chores.  I trained them, Lili & Peppa, improperly I later learned, to walk on my right side.  I wanted them on the shoulder of the highway, away from traffic.   Blackberry on my belt, before my first iPhone, I had dog leashes in my right hand.

In those days, cell phone coverage was awful in Pecos.  I changed carriers then changed phones.  The Blackberry on my belt was replaced by an iPhone in my pocket.  My left pocket because Lili & Peppa were on my right side, their leashes in my right hand, and my left hand was free to grab the phone to send an emergency text. 

For sixteen years, I had Lili or Peppa or Lili and Peppa at my right side, my phone in my left pocket.   Earlier this year, I reconfirmed my “phone on the left” habit, rule, practice … an unquestioned fact of ‘this is the way it is’.  I traded in my paid-off, perfectly functioning iPhone 11 Pro with a recently replaced screen for – essentially – a lateral transfer, a downgrade perhaps, to an iPhone 13 Mini.

This was a necessary change because – rumor is – Apple will discontinue the Mini line with the 13 and I needed a phone I could manipulate with my left hand.   My first iPhone was about that size.  Over the years, they kept getting bigger.   I needed the 13 Mini so I could manipulate the phone with my left hand.  It rides in my front left pocket.

Lili’Koi left us, “crossed over the Rainbow Bridge” just two years ago. Peppa’Joy followed her sister about a month ago.   Dogs shouldn’t die in the Spring.  They should die in the worst days of winter so you can crawl into bed, pull the covers over your head, and cry.

A few days ago…. it has taken me some time to write this.  I write a bit; go weep for a while; wipe away the snot and tears; and return to try to write some more.  

I do not want to write this.  I owe to my girls to finish.

A few days ago, I bent the pocket clip on the folding knife I carry in my right  pocket. In the first draft of this drivel, I wrote, “Yes, I am still and always have been a Dangerous Dyke”.  But that’s not completely correct.   The knife on the right appeared at the same time as the phone on the left, and for the same reason: my dogs.

Walking the girls in the Pecos wilds, I soon learned I needed to be able to cut a leash, quickly, efficiently, if the dogs got into trouble.  And they did; and I did.  And I will save those stories for another time. 

I did not carry a razor sharp blade in Hawaii, nor California, not New York or Oregon.  That habit began, in Pecos, to keep my girls safe.

A few days ago, after I bent the pocket clip, the next morning I was fumbling to get dressed; I was trying to rearrange what has become an automatic, unconscious, unconsidered, unthought about “every day carry” routine. 

Nothing worked quite right until I moved my phone to my right pocket.   My basal brainstem – monkey in the jungle brain – said, “No, it doesn’t go there.  The phone goes on the left!”

I had to sit on my dressing chair for a moment and ask myself, my higher functioning, rational, brain, “Why? Why does my phone belong on the left?”

I could not understand ‘why’ but – since it has always been this way – the phone went into my left pocket; a different folding knife, one not quite so sharp but serviceable, found the back edge of my right pocket; and I set off to do Important Things.

In the first draft of this drivel, I wrote, “I haven’t done Important Things since I left gainful employment in 2005.” But that’s not completely correct.  I was given charge of The Two Best Dogs Ever To Walk The Planet Earth and I gave them a wonderful life.  

We chased rabbits and coyotes.  We danced with a black bear.  They treed a mountain lion, twice, at least.  (That’s illegal; so, of course, it never happened.). They jumped into a cool Rio Grande in the summer, romped in snow in winter, and dove into mud baths and cow ponds all year round.   In their last chapter, in Ohio, they may have slipped their leashes and chased a deer in a city park. (Allegedly.) 

I have done an Important Thing.  I gave Lili and Peppa a wonderful life.

They did an important thing, too.  They gave me a life.  Joy. Laughter. Love.  An Important Thing.

And then, yesterday, after fumbling with my pockets, rearranging my every day carry and out for a walk alone, I reached for the phone; and I understood.   The phone goes on the left, because your right hand manages the leashes and keeps the girls safe.   The phone is on the left, and small enough, a Mini size, that you can send an emergency text if Lili or Peppa needs a ride home.

Phone on the left.  Leashes on the right.  It has always been this way.

But now, it isn’t.  My girls are gone. 

My tears can flow missing them.

My phone can live on the right side now.

In the days, the months ahead, I will find a thousand way those girls imprinted my life.  Phone on the left; knife on the right.  Another thousand little imprints, paw prints, Lili’koi & Peppa’s joy, laughter and love woven into my daily life to discover; Another thousand tears to cry missing them.