A Moment
I had a weird moment today. I picked up my dog Cookie and I gave her a hug. In all of my most vivid memories, Cookie is so big and so alive and I’m always being pulled down the street by her leash or running as fast as I can around the house not being able to catch her, but today I held her for a second and this huge wave crashed down over my head. She wasn’t this huge strong super fast thing that came up to my knee and chased me around the yard anymore; she was tiny and the length of my forearm and couldn’t chase me any more if she’d wanted to. I stood there, almost as tall as the bookshelves, the old worn blue carpet that I fell on to so many times as a kid now rotting in a dumpster, and I started to cry. My knees trembled with the weight of thousand page novels and bags of button eyed rabbits banished to a stuffy attic. That moment, all I wanted was to sit under florescent lights in a plastic tree house in my basement, flip through sharp smelling-yellow pages, and pretend I was floating down a river in a barrel to fight a bright red dragon with a goblin made dagger. I had meant to go upstairs, but instead I stayed at the bottom, holding a little bag of fur and bones, buried my face into the ruff at the base of her neck and sobbed for every kid that moved away from the street, every fad that had passed, every room that was repainted, every garage sale, and every dog that got too old to run.
Sorry for the angst dump.