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More from Fidelia:
One Thursday evening several months ago, I met with a mothers’ group at the church. We call ourselves the Night Owls because we meet in the evening to accommodate mothers who work outside the home, although we have plenty of stay-at-home moms in the group as well. The conversation turned, as it often does, to the exhausting work of parenting, regardless of how one does it.
In a moment of candor, I said to the group, “You know, with both my husband and me working full-time, plus two kids, our life just barely works. As long as no one is sick, and all the cars and household appliances are operational, we really get along quite well, and I love our life. But there’s no buffer. So when a monkey wrench gets thrown into our lives, things just go to pieces for a while.”
The very next day, I stood in our bathroom, not breathing, and watched a thin pink line turn darker and darker—and said hello to the mother of all monkey wrenches.
May Christ be born anew in you
this Christmastide!
inspired by “The First Noel”
they looked up,
and saw a star shining
in the east
beyond them
far—
it hung fat in the
sky
and taunted them
for days.
when they moved,
it slid alongside,
when they stopped
and turned, it halted too
and winked like an
idiot.
no-
eloquence
in its message: approach.
no-
elegance
in their response:
buzz off,
swatting it;
but a few sighed:
all right.
we’ll go that way,
just to get you
off our backs.
so they turned,
faced off with the light,
and walked a
lingering day and night,
but the further
they traveled, the more the beckoning star
remained far,
far beyond them.
___________
My husband is ambi-pet-trous, but I am a dog person. He can admire and enjoy a cat’s company, but I remain suspect that cats are secretly judging me and planning to overthrow my domestic rule at any moment. Also, they make me sneeze. I want a pet that will be slavishly loyal, that will greet me with wild enthusiasm when I come home and will gaze at me sympathetically when pastoral weights hang from my limbs. I want a dog. And, because my husband likes dogs as much as I do, to celebrate six months of marriage, we began earnestly searching for “the one.”
And, in the year 2007, it turns out that searching for the dog of your heart’s desire is not so different from online dating. Rather than trolling the aisles of Match.com for a man who seemed intellectual, but capable of intimacy, we were trolling Petfinder.com for a dog with an open, sweet face who would not bite children or defecate on the floor. Rather than speed dating, we traveled to local shelters, walked up and down the aisles between kennels and rapidly dismissed dogs that did not appeal to us (not housebroken, barks too much, jumps too high, seems scared, seems aggressive).
When we finally narrowed down candidates, we went on dates. Read more
