Visit to the Vet

 

June and I were at the veterinary clinic this afternoon, waiting to have her stitches removed. As it usually is that time of day, the waiting room was crowded, and I’d found an area that was somewhat removed from the others to escape the noise. Junes’ ears perked up and she rose to her feet as a family of about six came around the corner into the area near us. One of the adults was carrying a large dog with a white face, wrapped in a blanket. He gently laid the dog down on the floor and arranged the blanket carefully. One of the women sat down on the floor next to the dog, and it was then that I saw her red eyes and tear-stained face and realized this was the dog’s final visit. A couple of the older children sat silently, a younger child scrambled up onto a chair and watched June with interest, and the littlest one ran from person to person, seemingly oblivious to what was happening. A second woman sat on the floor opposite the first, and both began talking in low murmurs to the dog, who glanced our way and then focused on the faces of the beloved people. I coaxed June into a lay-down position and caught the eye of the crying woman. Tears welled up in my own eyes and my breathing became shaky. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to her, and she gave me a rueful smile and lowered her face to the dog’s head.

I turned away to give them what privacy I could, and to hide the tears that threatened to spill onto my own cheeks. I absently stroked June’s warm, smooth head and played with her ears, but in my mind’s eye I was seeing Rhody’s last moments as the vet prepared to give her the injection. She, too, had been on a blanket on the bedroom floor, and I remember so vividly her look of confusion, the final whoof of breath, and then the slow descent of her head onto my leg as she slipped away. As hard as that was, I was ever so grateful to be in the privacy of my home, and I couldn’t imagine being in the place where this family was now.

The assistant called June’s name, snapping me out of my thoughts, and I walked her quickly past the old dog, not wanting her to cause any further distress to them. I gave her over to the assistant, who led her into the back, and I found a place next to a very large German shepherd whose bellowing woofs could probably be heard a block away. A few minutes later, June was back, and happily trotting to the car, where she nimbly hopped in.

I remembered when Rhody was agile, leaping up on the bed to look out the window, chasing a ball in the school yard, herding the garage cats with precision cuts and turns, and taking long walks around town that she never tired of. 

Someday, hopefully many, many years from today, June will also be old, and her face white. I will have to lift her into the car and clean up her accidents. She will no longer strain after squirrels, and our walks will become slow. And there will be a day when the impossible decision will have to be made. This is the price of loving an animal. We go into it with full knowledge of the heartbreak to come, but we also believe, on some level, that it will never happen. Not to us. I look at June now, sitting by my side expectantly, ever ready for a walk, or a treat, or even to practice commands, and I push such thoughts aside. We have today, and it is a gift.

Fearless and Female

 

Today I sat on the floor of the Central Bureau of the Wichita Police Department with a group of women, listening intently to a heartbreaking story of a childhood friend and college roommate being murdered after going downstairs to the laundry room of her dorm. The organizer, Cindy, passed around a framed picture of her and her friend as little girls. “Julie’s the cute one,” Cindy declared. “I’m the one in the white shirt with the cigar.” At 19, Julie was brutally murdered for doing nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now, four decades later, Cindy is doing what she can to teach women how to not be victims. She tells us that the objective is to get away. To run. To survive. I’d never taken a self-defense course, but “Fearless and Female” sounded like something I could get behind, especially since I knew Cindy from my hiking group. I figured it would be useful, probably entertaining (knowing Cindy), and a chance to do some female bonding in a safe place. What I didn’t count on were the emotions that it evoked.

 

Sure, I knew all the things they tell you when you grow up female: Be aware of your surroundings, be careful where you park, carry mace or a whistle (Cindy’s air horn was seriously awesome), always keep your keys between your fingers as weapons, don’t walk alone, especially at night. We began with learning how to use the heel of our hand thrust upward to the nose, shouting “NO!” and keeping our hands defensively in front of our faces. We laughed, smiled, apologized… I commented to a woman about my age how I was taught to be polite and not be rude- even to strangers. She had, too. But Cindy wasn’t having it. “Don’t smile!” she admonished us. “Make a face! Don’t hold back! Strike and yell, NO!” As the sessions progressed, we got fiercer and louder. I imagined myself as A Force to Be Reckoned With, as I joined the others in striking, hitting, breaking a hold, rolling, kicking, and stomping. “NO! NO! NO!” we all shouted, and my throat began to hurt, so emphatic was my yelling. We were given Stabby Kitties- handy little plastic doodads with sharpened points that we could hold instead of keys (because keys might collapse on us when we tried to use them). Cindy told us if we remembered nothing else, to make as much noise as we could and use Stabby Kitty to do as much damage to the face as possible, “So you can identify the attacker in a police lineup later.” I considered the feelings that had bubbled up as I approached the rubber torso with the mean bad guy look named Bob. At that moment, I hated Bob. I hated that Bob thought I was easy prey. He was even smirking at me. I’ll show Bob, I thought, as I grabbed Bob’s ears and dug my thumbs into his blank eyes. “NO!” I spat at him with all the venom I could muster. I walked away, feeling slightly uneasy about the rage that I felt. How unfair that I must carry Stabby Kitty or pepper spray, or worry about where I park, or that I’m even taking a class like this merely because I’m a woman. I wanted to cry at the injustice of it. I wanted to cry for Julie.

At the end, we sat on the floor again, munching snacks and drinking water. Women of all ages, sizes, physical abilities, colors, races… our commonality was being female. “Because we are women, we are seen as easy targets,” Cindy said. “You don’t have to like it. But it’s a fact.” A woman raised her hand and asked, have you ever been in a situation where you had to use these techniques? All faces turned to Cindy, and she paused for the merest of moments before telling us that she had been in a situation, but it was before she knew how to handle it. She kept it to herself for 20 years, she said, and when she finally did tell her story to some friends, she learned that many of them had similar stories of their own. I looked around and saw many of the women nodding as if to say, yes. That happened to me, too. Cindy reminded us that we all know someone. A friend, a family member, a coworker- someone we know has been a victim. Don’t place blame, don’t tell them what they should or shouldn’t have done, she advised. “The best thing you can do is simply tell them, ‘I’m so sorry this happened to you, and believe them.’”  The goal is survival, she repeated. “Do whatever you must to survive. And if you survived, then you did exactly the right thing.”