February 4, 2020 – Zinnia and I took our afternoon walk in the woods today, we mostly had the road to ourselves, but towards the end of the walk, people showed up with four of five raunchy, sweet and loud rescue dogs.
On this walk, I let Zinnia wander a bit afield, pursuing smells and sounds that only she smelled and heard. And my mind raced – I thought about friendship and obligation, about survival and openness.
The geese are on the move again, heading North. Their sound echoes through the forest.
I get a kick out of Zinnia, this privileged Waspy Princess nose-to-nose with these wonderful and scruffy dogs, each one as loved as she is. Sometimes I imagine the people on the trail clucking about me to their friends, he bought a dog!
Still, they are very nice.
Our connection and trust both continue to deepen on our walks, which have become a form of meditation for me. Zinnia and I are together, even when we are not. Such a connection is one of the most wonderful and mystical things about dogs and people.
I trusted Zinnia to stay in touch with me, and she did, I would turn and see her thundering down the road, ears flapping up and down through the woods to find me if I got too far ahead. Let a dog be a dog sometimes; it’s a trade-off. She gets to be a dog; I get a wonderful dog.
The ratty but loving dogs we met were great, and they and Zinnia made a healthy din together.
I am working to acclimate Zinnia to other dogs, I ask her to lie down whey they come, and then we walk alongside them (with permission). This walking on unfamiliar territory is effective.
In a few yards, the dogs are all walking side by side, noses to the ground. Most dogs have better things to do than fight. I love seeing her figure out that they are dogs, just like her.
I see that Zinnia has never been exposed to dogs she hadn’t lived with. So they are new to her, like any other animal. I didn’t think of it.
As she gets to see and know them, she is settling down. She is a grounded and bright dog; she is figuring this one out. I have more work to do. She barks and huffs a few times, and then gets down to sniffing butts, the national dog pastime.
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As I walked, my mind turned again to the I thought of my friend and the difficult images from Sunday. She is in the hospital, getting excellent care, feeling better, more coherent. I am going to see her tomorrow. Maria is coming also.
I’ve arranged for hospice to visit her and spoken with her case manager and social worker.
Tomorrow, a friend of hers is coming to take her dog to a foster home while she is in the hospital or a rehab center.
I believe my role in this is coming to an end. I’ve done what I can do, the people closest to her will take it from here.
I see my boundary clearly.
Every friendship is different. To help isn’t to save or take over or enmesh. This isn’t a tar pit to fall into. This isn’t an integral part of my life. She has friends much closer to her than I am.
There is always a choice, there is always a boundary. Does that perhaps sound cold?
Maybe, but it may be my hardest won lesson in life.
And I never forget it. Boundaries don’t just define life, they protect against fear and confusion and misunderstanding. They help everyone be safe. It’s so easy to give pieces of one’s life away. I will not ever do it again.
There is a difference between help and the loss of self.
Boundaries are the foundation of a healthy life and true friendship.
With the foster homing of the dog, I believe my work is done – Maria can speak for herself, I think she agrees.
It is always essential, speaking of honesty, to understand self-interest. I don’t need to take over someone else’s life so that I can feel like a hero and soak up praise. And I love praise.
And I do not need to reveal her identity. This isn’t a crossword puzzle or a game, it’s a life.
My friend is sick, not a war criminal. There is no need to hide her identity, but she has a lot of things to deal with right now, and visitors and phone calls are not high on the list. Some people seem to need to figure out who she is. I am sorry for them.
But I don’t need to identify her, and no one else does either; she and I have no qualms about my writing about her this week. Decisions about her identity are hers, not mine.
On the walk, I kept thinking about identity and openness, about my decision to share my long journey towards broken-wholeness. Sharing my story in the open has helped me to feel less alone. It has given me strength.
I put my name on everything I write. That is about integrity to me.
The sky doesn’t fall when you’re honest.
The word integrity comes from a root word that means “intact.” That has to do with being “integral” or whole and undivided. To be honest means embracing our brokenness as an integral, even sacred, part of being human.
Parker Palmer writes that the most difficult challenge of his life was surviving himself. How did he survive himself, he wonders? Grace and forgiveness, he says, the unconditional love of friends, and the willingness of people to share their stories with him.
In my brokenness, I am not there yet. I am on the way. I’ve encountered little unconditional love in my life, except for Maria and some dogs. I’m not sure I even believe in it. Shouldn’t love be very conditional, dependent on decency and empathy?
Given all my blunders and stumbles, I am grateful to have survived myself.
My list is different from Palmers. I survived myself through grace and love and will, the willingness of people to want to read and buy and share my stories, and an enduring belief in hope and faith.
I survived myself by loving Maria; everyone knew that before I did.
I couldn’t be to end up the way I was; I couldn’t survive myself for much longer.
So here I am, writing this post. Arthur Conan Doyle wrote that “life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.”
Yes. I love my walks with Zinnia, they open me up and heal me.
Your a good man jon Katz and I truly enjoy your blog and podcast. They are inspiring and make me think more about my life and the goals I want to set with the time I have left. What your projects are doing are just great. I use to volunteer for our group save our strays but had to give it up because of family health issues. Blessings.to you all.
“Ratty but loving.” Really? Is this a thing? Does it make it ok to call someone’s dog “ratty” if you also call them “loving” at the same time? I’m sure that those dogs’ owners love their dogs as much as you love Zinnia, Bud, and Fate, and if they read your blog, I’m fairly certain it would be hurtful to them to hear their dogs being described as “ratty” and “raunchy” (seriously? raunchy? were said dogs engaging in some sort of gratuitous sexual activity?) by turns. I’ve had both pedigreed dogs and dogs of mixed heritage in my lifetime, and I fully respect, admire, and support the people who spend so much time and effort in producing purpose-bred dogs true to their standards. I also respect your decision to get a dog any way you want. At the same time, as you yourself so often point out, there is more than one right way to get a dog, and the dog YOU want may not be the one that I want, or that those people you met out on your walk today, with their “raunchy, ratty” dogs happened to want. Given that you are a many-times-over best-selling author and given all the words at your disposal, could you truly not come up with anything less pejorative to say about these other walkers’ dogs other than that they were “raunchy and ratty but loving?” Really?
Yup, really, they were wonderful and ratty..I’d suggest lightening up a bit, Brooke we all use the words we like, and there is such a thing as humor, even in America in 2020. My dogs are often ratty and these were especially ratty..As I said, I loved them… It never works to tell me what to write, if you can do better, start your own blog if you haven’t already..I will never tell you what words to use..My wish for you is to be less pompous in your writing..
Dear Jon,
I’ve been called many things, but pomposity and lack of a sense of humor are two accusations that have never been leveled at me before. Interesting Don’t get me wrong, it is certainly your prerogative to write anything you want on your blog and I was not and am not telling you what to write. What I was suggesting is that given your considerable skills as a writer, perhaps you could have chosen some kinder adjectives than ratty or raunchy to describe someone’s dogs, or, failing that, to at least consider the idea that the words you chose instead had the potential to be hurtful. I find it illuminating that your only response to my comment was to level insults at me. Pompous and lacking in a sense of humor though you may think me, I stand by my original remarks. Good evening.
Good for you, Brooke, since we are both standing by our words, a good thing, let’s move on. I have some ratty dogs to walk and visit…I have many thousands of dog lovers and dog readers on my blog, you are the only one in the whole country who took offense and wrote a snarky (and yes, pompous) message. The people I walked and write about read my blog and loved my post and their ratty dogs. Maybe they didn’t get the message that I am offensive, they haven’t perhaps been on social media today, the world headquarters of the aggrieved and offended. We’ere walking with them again today.
I’m glad to hear you have a sense of humor and are not pompous, I haven’t seen any other evidence so far in your messages. Maybe you ought to consider the idea that your message was humorless and judgemental and a waste of both of our time..we each get to choose the words we like, and I reserve the right to write whatever I want, and if it offends you, go someplace else that meets your high standards..I didn’t become a writer so that strangers on the Internet can tell me what to write.