I wrote today. That was good. What a busy, busy couple weeks. I hung with it pretty good, all things considered. Genuinely. There’s not much time for else when you’re pulling twelve, fourteen hour days with work. And those days mean recovery time for me. That’s always the hardest part for me, the recovery days where I could be writing, but I just can’t seem to get to the page. It’s burnout. I know that. But, still…any time I could be writing and I’m not never fails to make me feel like crap.
But not today. Today, after a full day of slowdown, I was back at it.
Good.
Joy is pressed up against me as I write this, just like Coco used to. Head right by my keyboard. And there’s this crow during the daytime that when the wind blows just right, or there’s enough ambient noise otherwise to make the sound just far enough away…it caws, and it sound like Coco barking. Her barks toward the end, especially, when she was hungry and demanding food, or just otherwise upset and wanting attention. Sharp, insistent barks. Not pained ones. Or angry. Just…demanding. She was bossy in her old age. We let her get away with it. She deserved it.
Coco wasn’t…mistreated in her first half of life, I don’t think. She was never afraid of people. Or other dogs, for that matter. But I think she certainly was neglected. Lots of puppy litters. Left outside for the sun to damage her eyes. And maybe in a cage, which is why her teeth were worn down to nubs. I always felt guilty about that. Made me want to give her whatever she wanted. Whatever made her feel comfortable.
I remember when she licked my face for the first time. In my memory, it was a long time before she finally felt comfortable to do it. Like, a year. Maybe two. But it probably wasn’t that long. I’ve found that I have a really hard time with time when it comes to memories of her. Like, her end felt so long…but in reality, it was less than a year. And really only four months at the very end when it was genuinely, sharply downhill. But…I remember being at the end of our bed after a walk, or something like that, and I was sitting on the floor so my head was at the height of the bed, where she was laying face-forward, chin on her paws, and she just looked at me and I could tell in a little flash what she was thinking. She wanted to know if it was okay to lick my face. And so I leaned in, and she did. She never stopped after that. She’d lick and lick and lick. Her tongue was a little rough—another thing I attribute to her rough start in life—and her breath stank kind of like a marsh. Brackish. But I loved it, because she loved it.
Miss you, baby girl. You’ve felt close to me the past few days, for whatever reason.
Night night.