Molly: Day One

For a Border Collie, Molly really is overweight. And strange. She stutters up hills and stumbles down rocks. She barks and bites at water breaking along the shoreline and tries to dig up light refracted in the waves. She forgets we’re playing stick and lies down in water that was ice one month ago.

After sharing my bed with her the whole night (the poor cat sat at the end of the bed—ousted from her sleeping spot—a heavy-eyed and hateful sentry), she woke ready for the day and pounced on me. Five minutes of sloppy kisses, and I was ready, too. I had just a few things to take care of before we could start our regimen of hikes I’d laid out for us.

Two calls in, and my morning was shot. Bad news about grant funds and a few confused campus employees and nothing figured out. It was enough to send me into a daylong despair—my entire summer plans gone in a half a second. But there was Moll, her head cocked, her eyes pleading. What could I do but load us into the car and hit the trail?

We walked, we ran, we made our way over those iffy hills. I laughed while she wrestled with the meaning of light, of waves that break and recede and seem to disappear.

It’s amusing the way she chases what she doesn’t understand. Me? I can’t explain light—the green flash at the end of the day, the fact that the sun’s gone eight minutes before I can’t see it. I accept that light is still touching me, that warmth is what I feel and it’s real.

Yet so far, the morning hasn’t made much sense. I’d like to hang my head and bark all day, to gnash my teeth at light (or incompetent Financial Aid employees), to dig a hole around a stick before picking it up because any other way means a mouthful of sand.

I might spend the whole day spitting, but for a couple of hours, I was two loose legs and a stretch of beach, the early morning smell of pine. I was nearly as oblivious—or simply as happy—as a loved dog.