An old Dog, New Snow and Tears, to Play

I stood alone at the window that gray afternoon and watched my dog, also alone, playing outside. Named Snowflake by my son in Hawaii 13 years ago, she's a mix, a mutt -- a poi dog, they'd say in Hawaii -- and here in Wisconsin, she was crashing through the drifts around our frozen ponds as if in play. Without me.
It was a relatively balmy 33-degree February day and she was flocking through the huge drifts that were often softly, unpredictably giving way in that easy, windless pre-melt. I smiled but then quickly teared up: My dog's advanced dog-age heralds the inevitable. My dread of missing Snowflake-sights like this... and all the buoyed feelings like this crazy joy that she regularly inspires... welled up, hard.
And just then... exactly then, the "Tears" program came on NPR. The broadcast, it turned out, was not about Snowflake's romp, but about Taking the Pain Out of Cooking with Onions. Still, my tears melded back into a smile and until another sweet-sour time like this, the pain was taken out from what our future surely holds.
So I dried my eyes, got my coat on and went out to play in those drifts.

Feb-25-2008, All Things Considered