Special Delivery

For a while, the Captain of our Kennel discovered he could waylay any latent longings for new experiences in motherhood I might display with the addition of a new pet. Pets aren’t less expensive than children, but in rare cases their obedience training is actually effective. I am now the Angelina Jolie of the animal world. Presently I have six animals representing various cultures lounging on the living room furniture, ringing for takeout.

The cats are no trouble. They thrive on indifference. And aloe plants. Aloe plants that you’ve pampered and promised roomy new pots to if only they will “Live, please, live just one more day!” Shortly after a feline gourmet vegetarian meal, you will discover that fillet of aloe plant makes them puke fancy green spearmint gum-type designs on the new living room plush.

I can also keep up with the Labradors. Chunk a ball down the driveway and they will knit themselves into a scarf trying to be the first to grab it up and chew it like Double Bubble. Big dogs are easy. They know they’re dogs (okay, they also know they’re people and feel entitled to at least half of your sandwich, but that’s another thing entirely.) The thing is, they EXPECT to chase a ball and to be invited outside of the house for personal chores, such as watering topiaries and chasing squirrels. They come in the house to sleep or to help with the vacuuming or to beg for potato chips.

It’s the Dachshund that gives me trouble.

So far she has successfully trained me to retrieve a toy, give her a treat, and dress appropriately for carrying her outside under the umbrella in inclement weather. I’m striving for more complex achievements, but if she thinks I’m good for agility training, she’s going to be disappointed. I’m 51 years old. I don’t always make it safely through the hallway obstacle course on my 2:00 a.m. bathroom expedition. For me, agility is the ability not to trip over shadows and to open the bottle of pain reliever without calling for the Jaws of Life.

Occasionally, I will look down by my chair to find the little darling gazing up at me with the kind of eyes that would make Ebenezer Scrooge sign up as a Salvation Army bell ringer, attempting to assimilate me into her thought processes. Usually I’m not adept at picking up other languages, but now I recognize Dachshund for “play,” “treat,” and “let’s send the big dogs to live with your brother.”

As an added embarrassment, she doesn’t care for clothes like the movie stars' dogs do. Oh, she’s up for sleeping on your new sweater or dragging your soiled underwear through the dining room to pad her bed when company is passing the sugar bowl for tea. But she turns surly if you present her with a set of twinkling reindeer antlers at Christmastime, and no matter how nicely you ask, she won't let you tie the chinstrap in a fetching bow.

She once shunned a beautiful sweater, knitted entirely by the hands of her loving auntie, to shield her from the winter wind. She pulled her head and paws in like a turtle so that trying to dress her was like stuffing a sausage. And I’m quite certain that the thoughts parading through her stubborn Dachshund brain were particularly unladylike. I informed her straightaway that I knew a little Pug that would love to have that sweater, and with one look she invited me to pack it up and send it along special delivery. And the Labradors along with it.

I think I’ll need a bigger box.

Kitchen Crisis

“Mom! Ryan stuck the vacuum cleaner hose up under the stove and now there’s smoke coming out of his pants!”

I opened one eye and waited while the whirling scenes behind my eyeballs settled into recognizable figures. A young boy stood by the bed, the very bed upon which I collapsed in the early hours of the morning after arriving home from an intimate anniversary trip to the coast with my husband and his MasterCard. This must be a dream. I closed the errant eye gratefully.

“Mom. The turtle is missing out of his pocket!”

I’ve heard you can change the course of your dream if you concentrate. I concentrated on Continental breakfasts on the hotel terrace. I concentrated on platters of pastries and piles of fragrant fresh fruits of the season. I tried to concentrate on going back to sleep, but this act is difficult when confronted with a young boy leaning in close enough to breathe your exhaust and visions of Hoover-bound turtles are dancing in your head. Unless that turtle was Michelangelo or one of his Teenage Mutant Ninja buddies, he was probably exiting my son’s shorts in a puff of I Dream of Jeannie Smoke.

Fine. If reality was going to intrude into my unconsciousness and stomp barefoot across my fantasies, I’d get up. I swept down the hall in a swirl of pink nylon and polyester lace to take command of the sandstorm.

“What are you doing?” I shrieked, fanning away the clouds of dust that threatened to cover my body like a “just add water” mud pack.

“Good morning, Mom,” Ryan greeted me calmly without looking up from the task at hand, which seemed to be a daring attempt to suck the oven’s inner workings piece by piece into the vacuum. “Jeffrey’s dinosaur head rolled under here, so I thought I’d get it out so he wouldn’t bother you.” A fresh pillar of dust-filled smoke arose as he hit a warren of dust bunnies that didn’t need to worry about finding a place on the endangered species list.

Son Two, The Informer, was right. As Ryan knelt on hands and knees on what must be the kitchen floor, jabbing at the stove with a vacuum cleaner bayonet, the clouds appeared to be passing through the billowing folds of his star-spangled shorts. I couldn’t imagine a prettier picture to greet me after a week of soaring seabirds and glimmering shells at sunset. A threadbare moon in my kitchen.

I wrenched open the kitchen door and turned on the ceiling fan, industrious actions that succeeded in creating a tornado-like whirlwind that rerouted the dusty smoke back up Ryan’s boxers. Seen through sunlight filtered by vacuum exhaust with dust clouds rolling up one leg and down the other, my oldest son looked like a “person of interest” in a Stephen King novel.

“Here, let me,” I screamed over the roar of the vacuum sucking up dust clots, Jeffrey jumping up and down like a caffeinated flea, and Lucy the semi-dachshund barking disapproval of the chaos. I grabbed the vacuum hose from Ryan and knelt down to survey the situation. As I squatted, not wanting to commit to a full bend and kneel unless absolutely necessary, the vacuum hose brushed the flimsy pink folds of my gown and sucked a foot or so of the delicate fabric inside. I immediately voiced my surprise and disapproval in a calm and controlled manner.

“Stop screaming and stand still!” Ryan grabbed one edge of the flimsy material and began to heave mightily in the manner of someone wrestling an unruly reptile.

“Help!” I squealed back as the struggles resulted in a blow to my left eye and a near-miss indiscretion involving my modesty.

“Excuse me. Is this a bad time?” asked a friendly voice. I squinted through my remaining good eye and discovered the local pastor peering in the open kitchen door from the steps outside. Dropping by to inquire about my trip, the good man took in this lovely picture of family unity: Me, dabbing at my swollen eye with a dishcloth, my nightdress sucked down the vacuum hose while the three of us--the vacuum hose, the nightdress, and me—snaked around my teenage son whose heavenly-body boxers flapped as he endeavored mightily to wrest me loose, and my youngest offspring jumping about excitedly in backwards pants with a lizard’s tail flapping from the back pocket which was now in front.

“Can I be of assistance?

“Pull the plug!”

Responding to emergency situations is an important part of a pastor’s life’s work and he responded admirably. He lunged through the door and remedied the situation with a yank to the snarling monster’s cord.

Slowly, my night dress drizzled back down my thighs and the swirling clouds of dust began to silt at our feet. I stammered and sputtered, looking for an explanation that didn't involve animal abuse, child neglect, or chiffon in the kitchen after breakfast time.

The good pastor collapsed in a chair at the kitchen table as dust bunnies swirled around his head in a halo pattern before coming to rest on his shoulders. He took in the situation with a soulful look and began to laugh.

“I’d use you in my sermon this week,” he paused to wipe his eyes. “But I don’t know if you would fit in better with The Good Samaritan or,” he winced as he pulled a small, surprised turtle out from under him, “the Ten Plagues of Egypt.”