In our temporary housing, a small routine has emerged after three months, which is an impossible amount of time to even write. Three months, not in our home.
How? It remains utterly unreal.
At night, we wrap our temporary throw blankets around our knees. We pull the small kidney-shaped coffee table toward us. We heat the temporary kettle to 165 degrees. The temporary kettle keeps the water warm for when we want it after dinner, scraping up off the temporary couch to go fill two mugs with orange pekoe. We sit back down and let the television go bright again, sipping liquid that’s just the right amount of: Oh that’s hot.
*
In the mornings, a woman walks by the front window of our temporary housing — I always look out, and she always looks in.
We have a flurry of plants in our windows, every green living thing saved from the fire now gathered in one place, trying to make it on new, less light. The woman has headphones sandwiched over her ears.
“Get a dog, am I right?” J intones and we both laugh because he knows that’s what I’m always looking for.
Once, I saw a puppy so fresh that I rushed out of the temporary front door and down the temporary front steps. The puppy was so excited it did a small backflip on its way to greet me.
The puppy makes me smile, a real one, not temporary.
*
More time.
More money.
More travel.
More sleep.
More space — in the house, calendar, mind.
I am listening to a friend list all of the reasons his girlfriend now has to not get another dog after hers passed away eight months ago. I don’t know the girlfriend but I do know she went through an awful breakup before she met my friend. I know the girlfriend’s breakup was the kind where you huddle alone at night in your bed and cry into the dog’s soft scruff while holding on for dear life.
The list of reasons against a dog is not untrue but I suspect it is not really the girlfriend’s list. It is my friend’s list that she has adopted instead of another dog because she hopes to hold onto him.
It all makes sense — but then again, does it?
*
Why?
Don’t you already have a dog?
Is this a good time?
Really?
Everyone scrolls through the litter of ten puppies I know by heart and says they all look the same while I couldn’t disagree more.
To everyone, we just laugh and shrug.
I do not explain that sometimes when life tells me something I don’t want to hear, I have to say something back. No one wants to hear it, but I’ll tell them anyway.
*
“Some people seemingly get married and buy a house, get a house plant or a puppy or a kitten or even a child and life is all these steps they take, one after another, on they go…”
I am talking to a friend in the park in the soft hold of a sweet autumn. I shrug.
“You’re meant for a different way,” she tells me and I feel so much weariness that it makes me laugh and shake my head.
I don’t think she’s wrong and I don’t even think that a different way means there won’t be a husband and a house and a plant and, and, and, it’s just — it’s exhausting. A wasp comes then and tangles at our hair and we move to another bench. A pack of three beagles walks by and one has eyes rimmed with dark exactly the way a teen on the train had it — kohl black and creased and thick as if pressed on with a fingertip.
*
The day we collect the puppy we have named Ukee we stop sleeping. Ukee is curly-coated and almost exactly eight pounds. He pounces on everything.
Now, it is very hard to get any work done. Everything is nipped at the edges. There’s a lot of urine. We toss the toy back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. We try to slip the teeth of the buttercomb through the mats of puppy hair. The bank account creaks with late-night orders made in a daze.
There are a lot of questions. How did we forget to order training treats? Why is this bag of kibble only available in the Jupiter size? How many rocks can one puppy eat? Did you brush his teeth? How should we clip his nails? Should his belly be this color? When will you be done with your emails? Can you help me with him? Did you see where he’s gone?
The routine of an impossible three months shreds beneath Ukee’s little puppy teeth. The tea we worked so hard to depend on sits cold in the mug that’s rattling on the table because Ukee’s paws are up on it.
I don’t take a sip of the tea for hours. When I finally do, the orange pekoe is over-steeped and icy. I drain the whole mug. There is the life that arrives unbidden but there is also the life you choose. And, oh, how good it is to choose your own way.
*
I’m Wondering is a monthly column where I ask and then answer a question. More than anything, I hope that as I continue to wonder, it will open all of us up to paths we can’t imagine now but feel called to by a question that won’t let us go.
Amy Lin lives in Calgary, Canada where there are two seasons: winter and road construction. She completed her MFA at Warren Wilson College and holds BAs in English Literature and Education. Her work has been published in places such as Ploughshares and she has been awarded residencies from Yaddo and Casa Comala. She writes the Substack At The Bottom Of Everything where she wonders: how do we live with anything? HERE AFTER is her first book.
Header image courtesy of the author.
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