Category Archives: 14 Days of Love

There’s a fatal error on my blog. It’s out of memory. I can’t show you puppy love the way I want to, with the picture of the two girls, with their flannel nightgowns, only just tall enough to stand at the oven to see whats cooking inside, with the fuzzy golden dog, between them on two feet just like his girls.

Or the picture of the dog when he was a tiny puppy and I put him in the doll cradle that my dad built. I still wish I had put Lucy in it when she was a newborn. But she was a baby person and I couldn’t bring myself to do it, in case she tipped out. But a baby puppy? Cute, fuzzy, and a little less breakable.

My favorite puppy-love picture is worth 1000 words. Maybe even 1000 and a half words. The littlest girl sits in the wing-back chair. She’s wearing fuzzy polk-a-dot footie jammies and black wellies. Her hair is long, brown, and glossy. Sitting with her is her caramel colored dog with the shiny black nose. There’s an Englishness to the picture that melts my heart. But even better than the wellies is the smug look on the little girl’s face. Lucy has a dog. And you only wish you had one. Complete satisfaction at only four years old.

Our dog makes me ask, “What were we waiting for all those years?” And “How could we have gone all those years without a dog?” He loves us so much that he can’t stop tasting us.

He also loves blankets just like my kids did when they were babies.

When Norah was a little older than one I could leave her in the church nursery just by spreading her (still) favorite blanket out on the floor. I’d spread it out and smile and she would run to it and lie down with ecstasy on her face.

That’s what our dog does when we spread out a blanket too. That’s part of how we know he’s one of us.

He has a curly tail that wags like mad when we talk baby talk. He loves to run (very Hilton of him.) That time when the pit bull attacked him three miles from our house and he slipped his collar to get away? He made it ALL THE WAY BACK TO OUR HOUSE!Down one hill, up another, across the busy road and right to our door. He is SO smart!

What else can I say? I wish you could see the pictures. I wish I could show you how a family isn’t complete without a dog.

It’s every bit as fantastic as the Marley movie made it out to be. (And so far we’re only down two couches, one wing-back chair, one rocking chair, three rugs, two handmade quilts, and several stuffed animals.)

It’s day 11 now, and I find myself asking, “What else do I love?” I can’t be out of love yet, in real life I’ve got to figure out how to love for 365 days.

I know loved Thursday. I went in to the school and helped the teacher do assessments. I got to sit down with the sweetest, cutest five and six year-olds ever, as they counted, read numbers, and tried to remember the difference between doce and veinte. My little sweetie was the only one (of the handful of kids I worked with) who organized her veinte fichas into two sets of colors so she could say, “Diez amarillo y diez rojo hace veite!” Or, ten yellow and ten red make 20. The kid has more than a little of the engineer in her. I will have to hold my tongue when God gives her a serious career someday and she has to chose between staying home with her kids or using her gifts to do something big for the world. It will be a hard enough decision without my input. Right now she is torn though, between being a ballet teacher who crochets sweaters for chihuahuas or an artist who also teaches art classes on Fridays.

One of the little girls I did assessments with on Thursday sat down, looked up at me with those huge blue eyes in a baby face crowned with whispy blonde angel hair that some children are blessed to have in kindergarten still and said, “My grandpa already died.”

I asked, “When did he die, sweety?”

“Last night.”

Of course, my heart fell to my knees. I’ve met her mom, and I know all four of the kids who don’t have their grandpa anymore.

I asked her what happened and she said, “His heart went down instead of up.”

I think that must be kindergarten for a heart attack or a stroke.

I’m not faculty at the school, and I do know her mom, so I offered her a hug.

She said, “When I cried, my mommy cried too.”

And so, I think I don’t have to look that far to see something else to love. I love that little girl. And her mommy. And I love my little girls. And their grandparents, all four of them. And I am so thankful that they are all still here with us, and we don’t have to teach our kids to hope and wait for the day we can all be together again.

But I love that as well. I love that we can hope and wait because one day that little girl and her brother and sisters and mom and dad will be with Grandpa again. They all know Jesus. And I love that.