Following the painful breakup of a serious, yearlong relationship I entered a period of depression in June, and am only emerging–slowly–very recently. One symptom of depression is excessive sleeping, and boy have I been sleeping excessively! Last night I fell asleep about half an hour after “dinner,” and about an hour after I returned from work. Which means I fell asleep about 7 pm! I’ve done that a lot lately. But this morning when I woke up, stiff and achy, at 3:30 in the dark, I knew I had to pull myself out of bed by my bootstraps . . . or something.
Making a pot of coffee and heading out to the patio to have the day’s first cigarette, I was startled to hear a jingling sound approaching out of the surrounding darkness. There was no breeze–the desert night was still. So it wasn’t the wind chimes above my patio table. As the sound got louder and closer, but no more menacing, I discovered the source . . . the collar and tags of a small, Bubble-type neighbor-dog.
He and I had crossed paths before, about a month ago. A visitor had opened my security door, and the dog dashed into the living room as if he belonged there–which the first-time guest, a friend of my tenant, assumed he did. The dog was a confident, if slightly nervous and needy pup. And fast off the mark, too! I caught him and brought him outside, with a parting injunction to “shoo.” He didn’t. Something about the way he stood there, expectantly, made me re-enter the house to fetch him a bowl of water–it was July in Las Vegas, after all. The dog gave it one lap, then promptly put both front feet into it. “Poor thing,” I thought. “His feet are scorching. Where are his owners and what kind of people are they. . .?”
He came into my yard again this morning, when I was having my 3 am coffee and cigarettes. He trotted around, annoying me, while I was trying to read my recovery books and work on my sponsor’s assignment. “Oh, all right,” I sighed, and got up to get him something to eat, which his high-pitched whining seemed to indicate he wanted. I berated myself: “You’ll never get rid of him if you feed him.” But as I put down another bowl of water and some hastily-microwaved chicken nuggets (it was that or a can of tuna fish), I didn’t really mind. Something about amends, and Bubble, came to mind. I turned back to my “spiritual” reading thinking that sometimes you can pray by being kind.
