Homegirl

​A crossroads of sorts:
 
At 38, after six years of online dating, and literally over a hundred dates, I accept the fact that I may never marry or have children. 
 
It is not the life I had envisioned for myself, but it is the life I am living at 38. 
 
To assuage the loneliness and create some sort of family, I decide to eschew the “Spinster with the Cat” stereotype and get a dog instead.
 
Jeff and Maddie, two of my best friends, both in serious relationships, have recently adopted dogs. (As life would have it, they will become the Godparents of my second daughter five years later). I enlist their help, because despite the ban on pets in my apartment complex, most tenants have cats. I rationalize that a dog of similar weight shouldn’t present a problem.
 
“Yes, Stephanie Young is my tenant,” Jeff lies to the Pasadena Humane Society on the phone when they call him.  “I see. What size?...I don’t want a large dog in that apartment ....What breed?... A rescue? Well, how much will it weigh when it’s grown?....”  They have no doubt that Jeff is my landlord. (He is a great writer....)
 
The Humane Society rates dogs based on how they interact with kids, other dogs, when startled, etc. The black and white dog (size of a cat) wandering the streets of Altadena is about six months to a year old (based on dental records) and receives A’s on all her ratings.  I want her. The problem is, someone else does too, and has registered for her before me.  When the Humane Society decides she is ready to be adopted (after no one claims her), the first people on the list will have half an hour in which to adopt her. If they do not, I will have one hour before they go to the next people on the list.
 
How is it that my siblings and friends seem to have married and had kids so easily whereas my even getting a dog feels so complicated?  I take a deep breath, determined to make friends yet again with resiliency.
 
I’m surprised and scared when the call comes. I rush to Pasadena, and fill out paperwork, naming her Homestead Lane Young. I choose this name for the countless carefree childhood summers on Homestead Lane in Cape Cod at my grandparents’ home.  Homestead because she will be my Home Girl.  Homestead mostly because with her I will build a Home. 
 
We bond quickly and thoroughly. She assuages my loneliness; becomes the reason I must return home. She will not only change my life, this dog. She will also change me.
 

She is as sweet as she had appeared.  But after two weeks, the landlord says I must get rid of her or be evicted. I have every tenant in the building sign a petition that they like the dog, and since they have cats, would like her to stay. Nevertheless, she must go. 
​
I scramble. My parents refuse to help. No friends in LA can help. I’m in deep.
 
While I look to move, I bemoan my dilemma to my sister in Tucson.  Her aunt through marriage who lives down the road from her agrees to foster Homie in Tucson. 
 

​Alice is the first of Homie’s many gifts.
 
An artist, Alice is warm and open and says Homie can stay as long as she likes, which ends up being six months. Later, Alice is the first family member I introduce to Jory when we are dating. When Alice comes out for our wedding, Homie is thrilled to see her. 
 
When my parents, twelve years later, move to assisted living in Tucson, I continue to find refuge and shelter with Alice. “Pain,” she shares, “Is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

​At 88, Alice still lives in her two-bedroom home with her dog Josie and cat Inky. She tutors, does water aerobics, art, and hosts groups like “Ladies in our Eighties” and potlucks for the neighbors. My daughters and I adore her. This, I realize, is how I want to age. I take notes.
 
Jory is yet another gift that Homie aids and abets in. 

​I meet Jory through an online dating app.  Allergic to all cats and some dogs, Homie is that rare species Jory can be around with no complications, and he revels in this. In fact, Jory grows to adore Homie so much that after we are married he reveals that if things hadn’t worked out between us, he was hoping he could take Homie. (Fat chance).
 
Like me, Homie adapts well to married life. She becomes a staple at a few tasting rooms where we join wine club memberships. She especially loves sitting on my lap during the long drives to Los Olivos and sticking her head out the car window, feeling the breeze. She takes such joy in the small things.
 
But not all is pleasure: Homie is attacked by another dog and almost dies. Homie gets hit by a car. Homie suffers pancreatitis – twice. Jory jokes that she is the Mr. Bill of Dogs.  I see her as my soulmate in resiliency. 
 
As the years go by, Homie, Jory and I adapt to new roles.  When I am pregnant, Homie becomes very protective of me, and starts sleeping on top of my legs, as if she intuitively knows things are different. She is both my protector and comforter. 


When we become parents, she rises to the role of nanny. She welcomes teeny Lillie Grace home from the NICU, and a year and a half later, greets Ali by licking her baby feet as an initiation into the family. Finally, four years later, she cuddles newborn Tyler, as if reassuring him that being adopted in to this family is not such a bad gig.  She naps often with the babies, and allows them to tug on her ears, drape themselves over her. As the kids grow, they share a deep bond with her, the kind that only comes when initiated at birth.

​Our days are filled with ordinary Homie moments: greetings when we return, walks, cuddles and lots of play.  
 
Homie is also a leash in creating life-long friendships. When I begin working for Silvana, we discover that she is as attached to her dog Annie as I am to Homie, and this creates a path of trust in our getting to know each other. Jeff and I convene every Saturday morning with pancakes and Homie and his dog Cocoalina to write. We think our writing will launch big careers. Hope springs eternal, but it’s Homie and Cocoalina and those pancakes that forge our iron friendship. Tutoring clients like Shelley and Lauren become cherished friends as we bond over our pups.
 
Whenever we travel, we have dear friends stay with Homie. Donna becomes Homie’s favorite, and texts us countless photos of her. You want a Donna when you are separated from one of your kids. 

​As the years melt away, Homie ages. Her eyesight worsens, as does her hearing. I age too, waking up needing to stretch and take supplements just to feel like I used to when Homie and I first found each other. Like most pets, Homie loves having us home during COVID. When we move to New Mexico, she and I struggle with the altitude change: she panting endlessly, me struggling to catch my breath every time after I climb the stairs.  
 
Then my parents’ quality of life precipitously declines.  I see this decline in Homie. Everything ends. But this I do not want to end. We must carry Homie up all stairs now, even over the doorstop outside.  Her back legs are stiff with arthritis, her eyes clouded with cataracts, her hearing impeded. I intend to post on Facebook for Homie’s fifteenth birthday, but can’t face how much she is aging. Just as my mother’s dementia flares, I feel in my gut that Homie is slipping away from me too.  
 
Homie spends more time sleeping now, often up against the floorboards. She no longer goes on walks.  We take her outside regularly to do her business, and she will spend fifteen minutes in the backyard, then bark at the windows for us to carry her back in. Once inside, she will poop on the rug. Our new family room rug reeks of urine, despite all our efforts to clean it.  We know she is failing, but live in a relative cloud of denial.  She is not in pain.
 
On the morning of Tyler’s fifth birthday, I carry her outside. As I place her down, her back legs give way, and she gives me a long look. “Sorry pal,” I tell her as I go back inside. She manages to stand, do her business, and bark. I bring her back inside. 
 
A few hours later, I am frantically trying to finish a book for a discussion I am slated to lead when Jory urgently yells for me to come downstairs.  I arrive to see him and our houseguest John bereft. “Homie’s dead,” he tells me. “What?!” I respond, because although I heard him clearly, I cannot process those words. He repeats himself, and adds, “She’s at the bottom of the pool.” 
 
The pool is at the other end of our yard, and Homie always avoided it. Although we had wanted to convert it to salt water, finances dictated that it stay chlorinated. Later, I remember that Homie’s smell and sense of taste were completely intact. We had been at this home for ten months, and she hated going over to the pool. Even when we sat by the pool, she always wanted to get away from it. It dawns on me later that she knew what she was doing.
 
John had let her outside, as we always do. After ten minutes, he went looking for her.  
 
Jory and John are standing there, clearly in shock. Fully clothed, I jump in to the water to greet her one last time. I take her in my arms and bring her to the surface. I lay her on the pool side and pull myself to her side. It is obvious that she is gone. Wet and sobbing, I also later realize that the tears are for me, not for her. She has a look of total peace on her face. She was ready to go.
 
Hovering over her body, all I can think to do is thank her again and again for being my companion, my buddy, my guide, my soulmate. She walked with me into middle age, from an unattached girl to a wife and mother of three whose body is aging, whose parents are dying, who understands all too keenly the fragility of our lives.
 
The kids say their goodbyes and Jory makes all the arrangements. I cut Homie’s fur for us each to keep (having made her clay footprints at the same time I had them made of the babies). It is still Tyler’s fifth birthday. Homie has passed the torch from the first adopted kid to the last.
 
Hours later, I call Jeff crying. He had done the same with me, when his Coco died years before. Likewise, I text Silvana in Milan to share the news.  Annie and her next dog Bolt have both already left her. She understands. Shelley sends out a book for the kids about The Rainbow Bridge.

Days later, Donna drives out from Los Angeles with a treasure trove of Homegirl stories and photos. “Don’t you remember?” Donna asks, “The first time I stayed with Homie you told me: anytime something is bothering you or confusing you in life, rub Homie’s belly and she’ll give you the answers you need.”  I had forgotten. Donna shares that the day we moved from Los Angeles, she came to not just wish us well, but also to rub Homie’s belly.
 
For the first time since I can remember, the weight and warmth of Homie at the foot of the bed are gone. I long to hear her snore when asleep and pant when awake. I think of the many cherished life lessons she gave me. The one important thing she did not teach me, I now realize, is how to live without her.
 
Overnight, the storm clouds of grief have lodged in my lower back, embedded themselves in my hips, entrenched themselves in my shoulders and neck. My body feels twenty years older. For the next week, I embark on daily neck work, yoga/stretching, scalding baths for muscle relief, time in the massage chair, long windy walks on the ridge.  All of it helps. None of it helps.
 
Only hours before she left us, we had purchased tickets to Albuquerque’s Indian Pueblo Cultural Center for the following day. Now none of us feels like going, but we go, knowing that we must get out of the house. There we are reminded that we are only stewards of all that surrounds of us, not owners or masters. That the earth and all in it have intrinsic wisdom, and that life is cyclical. Things my head knows, but my heart rebels against. Homie knew it was her time. I must respect the order of things, even when they break my heart. 
 
The Master Potter of the Acoma Pueblo Marilyn Ray is at the Center that day. Ray creates her pieces with native Acoma clay and natural pigments. We all do a double take: there on the table is a handmade figurine of a little black and white dog sleeping peacefully, with a bird on its back.  Our friend John buys the piece for us, and as Ray wraps it, I ask her to include with it an Acoma blessing. Having just lost her dog a month ago to bladder cancer, Ray’s eyes well up with tears and she gives me a bear hug. 
 
A week later, Homie’s ashes return to us. Unbeknownst to Jory, the urn he had selected the day before we met Ray is a perfect match for her pottery:

It’s simple physics: Matter can neither be created nor destroyed.  So Homie is still with us, just in a different form I remind myself. My openness will determine how well and how often I see her: in the flowers she used to stop and smell, in the enthusiastic greeting Josie gives me when I visit Alice, in Ali’s requests for massages and cuddles at night, in the joy that is there in simple things if only I notice and take it.
 
I often find myself stopping by Homie’s urn, lightly rubbing the side of it. Sometimes I am seeking answers, sometimes just her gentle reassurance.

Literally: this was at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center the day after Homie left us....