Happy Birthday to Mama Dog (a Love Note)
If you’re the sort who doesn’t care to see overtly romantic sentiments expressed in a public forum, you may want to skip over this one. I’m with ya there. Re-read the one where I call the Post Office lady a fucktard instead.
Six years ago I was rather a wretched specimen of humanity, a quite literally hopeless one. I had arrived at the point where I felt that life had nothing further to offer me and that all I had to look forward to was a very long period of stasis followed eventually by decline, decay, and death. It was very difficult to discover what Mr. Springsteen called "a reason to believe."* And then there was Mama Dog. Why is that always the way with loneliness? You decide that it’s all over for you, and then along comes someone who sees the worth in you that everyone, including you, has been overlooking for years. Back then if I thought about the future at all I generally imagined it involved forty or fifty years worth of mouldy rooms with dingy futon mattresses dented on one side, a lot of TV, cold pizza for supper, and alcohol as needed. Hey – and here I am, with the loving wife, the happy home, the faithful dog, and the gorgeous daughter just starting to squawk like a jungle bird. I have no idea how I got lucky enough to be here instead of there, but I know that all good things in life descend from the day Mama Dog took a look at me and decided I was a fixer-upper worth a second glance.
Happy birthday to you, my darling. Today and every day I’ll be thinking of you and doing what can be done to justify the faith you’ve shown in me. Thank you for being my love, my wife, and my daughter's mother. Thank you just for being.
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* Say what you like about Mr. Springsteen, but I still think that song has a wicked trenchant first stanza: "Seen a man standin' over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch/He's lookin' down kinda puzzled pokin' that dog with a stick/Got his car door flung open he's standin' out on Highway 31/Like if he stood there long enough that dog'd get up and run."
Six years ago I was rather a wretched specimen of humanity, a quite literally hopeless one. I had arrived at the point where I felt that life had nothing further to offer me and that all I had to look forward to was a very long period of stasis followed eventually by decline, decay, and death. It was very difficult to discover what Mr. Springsteen called "a reason to believe."* And then there was Mama Dog. Why is that always the way with loneliness? You decide that it’s all over for you, and then along comes someone who sees the worth in you that everyone, including you, has been overlooking for years. Back then if I thought about the future at all I generally imagined it involved forty or fifty years worth of mouldy rooms with dingy futon mattresses dented on one side, a lot of TV, cold pizza for supper, and alcohol as needed. Hey – and here I am, with the loving wife, the happy home, the faithful dog, and the gorgeous daughter just starting to squawk like a jungle bird. I have no idea how I got lucky enough to be here instead of there, but I know that all good things in life descend from the day Mama Dog took a look at me and decided I was a fixer-upper worth a second glance.
Happy birthday to you, my darling. Today and every day I’ll be thinking of you and doing what can be done to justify the faith you’ve shown in me. Thank you for being my love, my wife, and my daughter's mother. Thank you just for being.
______________
* Say what you like about Mr. Springsteen, but I still think that song has a wicked trenchant first stanza: "Seen a man standin' over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch/He's lookin' down kinda puzzled pokin' that dog with a stick/Got his car door flung open he's standin' out on Highway 31/Like if he stood there long enough that dog'd get up and run."
posted by PapaDogDuvalier | 10:12 AM
1 Comments:
Sounds like my descriptiong of my wife and life... so I can relate.
As an older guy, I am watching most of my colleagues going through a long slow drift into divorce, or worse, not getting a divorce when they stopped loving each other a decade or more ago. Those of us still in love with our spouses are blessed beyond understanding.....If anything, I love my wife far more today than when we married....
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