Day's End

This morning, I was going to post a “Better late than never” prediction of who would win the Oscars.  So, in that spirit, why not?  I predict —Birdman!  But at the end of the day, a long day even before the four hour Oscar show began, I have something else to share.  After turning the television off and finding Andrew asleep on the couch —and it was an especially long day for him —I decided not to herd him out of the living room and instead tucked him in, turned off the light and said good night.  Yoshi was curled up at his feet, and that seemed the best way for Andrew’s day to end.

It was sixteen hours earlier that we had left the house for another fencing tournament, and Andrew fought hard for seven hours, losing to a nemesis teammate in the first foil event but persevering and earning a third place medal in the afternoon epee event.  He barely missed a chance to advance to the finals, and Andrew felt sure he would have won the whole thing if one director’s call had gone his way in the last bout.  So we drove home, feeling a little proud but also a little frustrated, quiet and tired.  And when we got home, Andrew went into his room without a word, but then, almost immediately he called out in a hushed tone , “Dad. Come here. I think Lana is dead.”

Hedgehogs, they told us, were expected to live no more than two or three years, but Lana was only seven months old.  We had some premonition, as she hadn’t touched her food from the day before, but before that, as recently as a day earlier, I had joked with Andrew about how she had no personality, always burrowing under the wood chips and saving her wheel exercise routine for the middle of the night.  Andrew had taken this from me for months, and often quietly defended Lana, but the other day he had answered, “Yeah, Dad, you’re right.  She doesn’t do much.”  And yet this afternoon, finding Lana unresponsive and no longer burrowed into the chips really hit Andrew hard.  

I texted his sister and asked her to call him with a cheer up call, and that helped a little. Meanwhile, I proceeded to make some dinner and wash the dishes.  On most days I would have called Andrew in to help with the chores, but I decided to let him be.  Later I told him we could replace Lana with another pet, maybe a less prickly, more friendly animal.  “You mean a second dog?” he asked.  He had been working this angle for months in fact.  No, I told him, that was not what I meant.

It is good, though, to have a dog in the house.  I still remember 1989, when Bruiser laid his muzzle on my knee after I had heard Dad had died.  Or 1987 when I watched Duncan breathe his last while the rest of the family was in Hawaii and I was home, tied to work and school.  Or 1980, when Walter Dog had run away from his transplanted farm home back to our house, reclaiming his spot on our front steps.  And now, 2015, I can add this: Yoshi curled up at Andrew’s feet, just when he needed him most.