A Golden Marriage

Her memory dispatched itself on its mission. No need to make a conscious effort to send it rummaging among the dusty piles of her life experiences. Her memories stirred, oddly enough, by her present. Why that should be was a trifle confusing. Why, she wondered, would she dredge all that up in her mind, at a time when there didn’t appear any reason to. It happened so long ago, was an anomalous occurrence, and she’d been so young, so inexperienced.

This was a special occasion. Well, she considered life in general to be special, and occasionally not. Everything about her quotidian life was special, though. And the way she felt about her husband, well, she cherished him, was restless away from him. His mind fascinated her by the generosity of its content (its comprehensive scope), his store of acquired knowledge, his interests he always shared with her - not that she was always happy to share them; their interests did not always converge. But his smile lit her soul, his hugs warmed her heart, his presence comforted her. They had been together a very long time.

Back then, during the time her memory nudged into mind, she had been captivated, entranced, swept away by the heady romance of a young man determinedly directing his energies toward attracting her to him. As though that would have been difficult.

She’d met him at her aunt’s house. He was with her two older cousins, a new friend. A handsome, muscularly compact college student, studying architecture. He had a confident presence, an assured manner that struck her. He was definitely an adult, mature well beyond her years. And he was interested in her, and she found that amazing. She felt herself to still be an awkward kid. Nothing particularly distinguishing about her; not very pretty, not that interesting, just herself.

He had an odd accent. Not surprising. He was new to his adopted country that had so recently absorbed him as an immigrant - a refugee, actually. From one of the displaced persons camps that abounded in war-torn Europe. All his family had been obliterated in the Holocaust. He would be starting an entirely new life. In the country that he understood had been hugely instrumental in liberating Europe from the looming possibility of thrall to the 1000-year Reich.

In very point of fact, he looked precisely like the Aryan ideal of the perfect male figure, absent a cap of blond hair. How many Germans or Austrians (or Italians or Japanese - honourary Aryans as an integral part of the Axis), sported blond locks? His hair was dark brown, almost black. His eyes, she recalled were deep brown pools of anguished memory. It was clear, even to her, even as the young girl she was back then, steeped in her own Jewish heritage sans the religious part, and having been aware at a young age of how the Nazis had targeted Jews, that he was intent on forging his way.

She was thrilled that he was interested in her. She hardly understood why. He was six years older than her, and that age differential placed him in an entirely different dating game, if she could call it that. She thought she was almost pretty, held back though by the fact that she was physically un-sensuous to say the least, not remotely endowed with soft curves; hardly the outline to entice a mature male to cast his attentions upon. She felt, at one and the same time, flattered and frightened. What on Earth could he possibly see in her?

Still, she was young enough and imbued with enough vanity to accept her appeal to him. She felt, actually, like a country bumpkin next to his cosmopolitan elegance. For he was elegant; the way he carried himself, the way he spoke, the patience he exhibited in explaining things to her, introducing her to world affairs in a way she had never quite thought of. And then, suddenly the two weeks were over, and she and her mother were returning to Canada on the long train journey that would take them home.

She hadn’t felt guilty about her brief and exciting time with him. Her boyfriend, the one whom she had dated steadily for the past three years, was her own age. That, now, seemed passe. Two kids pretending to be adults, pretending to be deeply involved with one another, pretending that their futures lay together, pretending that they shared a deep and abiding love. After her short exposure to having a man turn his attention on her, she thought of her link with her boyfriend as expendable, juvenile, a nuisance.

For on her return home there was a letter already waiting for her, from him. He would be coming to visit with her in Toronto. He’d been drafted into the military to do his stint, and before he became really involved, he would come and visit. She had explained to her boyfriend that everything was off. She had met someone. Someone else to whom she was more attracted than to him. He’d been devastated, watching her lips form the words that seemed to destroy him. She shrugged mentally; he was young, he would find someone else.

She felt badly for him, but excited for herself. Three years earlier when they had first met at a party, she had felt a shock of recognition. Before she even turned fourteen she’d had dreams of meeting someone. Her dreams had etched that figure for her, even the face. She yearned for that person to appear in her life. And when he had, at a casual party, when they were both only fourteen, she recognized the boy of her dreams. He’d laughed when she said that, and she’d felt insulted. Which hadn’t stopped her from pursuing him. Eventually he succumbed, and they became inseparable.

She attended a commercial high school, he a collegiate. She had no special aptitudes, but he was, though a few months younger than her, in a higher grade, played school football, excelled in all his subjects. She was more than satisfied with his companionship, found it thrilling and compelling to think of herself as having a regular boyfriend. He would visit her often after school, and they’d go for long neighbourhood walks. On the week-ends, they would go to social club dances. They hung out with a group of others their own age.

The only disturbing element in all of this was her parents’ attitude toward him. He was a nice boy, they said, but he didn’t come from a good family, and they’d prefer her to distance herself. Her mother, in fact, forbade her on several occasions from seeing him again. Which she neatly ignored. But then, she was late one day for a baby-sitting assignment because she’d been out with him and forgotten the time, and she was told in no uncertain terms - this time by her father - that she was instructed to break off her friendship.

This was no friendship, she grieved, this was someone she loved. They couldn’t do this to her. So she met him covertly, at times and in places where she knew she could cover for herself. Eventually, though, the truth revealed itself and her parents relented. What else could they do, after all?

And then came that fateful trip with her mother who wanted to visit her older sister who lived with her family in the United States. And her introduction to this exciting young man, whose appeal was such that she decided she saw more in him than in her long-time boyfriend.

She tried to persuade her younger sister, then fourteen, that she should think about looking at her old boyfriend as a possibility for herself. As though through suggesting it she could manipulate such an outcome. Her boyfriend’s sister telephoned her to tell her that he was disconsolate, she found him weeping often in utter despair, and their mother hardly knew what to do for him. She tried to ignore him when she saw him hovering near her home - far from his own - on the off-chance he could see her, persuade her to change her mind. She had no such intention. She ignored his pleading presence.

By then she had left school, was out in the workforce. She worked for a health insurance company, on St.Clair Avenue, in Toronto, across from Peter Pan park. Before she had so harshly parted with him, he would occasionally meet her after work - he was still attending school - and go along home with her. Now, with their having parted, things were different. He no longer had any place in her life. She would exit the building, walk briskly along the street, and wait to catch her bus to take her home.

She often saw him across the street, waiting to catch a glimpse of her. It irritated her. Made her feel badly for him. Guilty. Not her fault. His problem. He just had to get over it. Why he thought she was such a catch was beyond her, anyway. She no longer thought that way about him. He just had to surrender to reality.

By then she’d had more than one visit from her mature and handsome boyfriend. Once, they’d gone to Niagara Falls, just the two of them. She was surprised her parents had given permission. They’d caught a bus at the terminal downtown and driven to Niagara Falls. She’d never been there before. He had thought it might make a fun trip. By the time they arrived it was dark. She saw the famed falls in the dark. Felt the soft mist fall upon her, as though blessing this union. They walked, hand-in-hand, to a nearby park, sat on a bench and kissed passionately. In a few hours they rushed to catch the bus returning to Toronto.

He had groped her breasts, and she was excited and breathless about it. Worried, too. Because they were so … insignificant. She thought he would realize she was too immaturely formed, not exciting enough, hardly material for an ongoing relationship. He would look around, make comparisons, find someone else. And she’d be left.

Of course it wasn’t the first time a man had touched her breasts. Her young boyfriend always did that, and the touch elicited the same sense of physical enticement, and excitement that she’d experienced now. She compared her reactions to each. Thought of how hard and muscular his neck was when she wound her arms around it, pulling his head down to hers for a long embrace and kiss. Tried to recall whether her old boyfriend felt like that. It was so compelling, so irresistible, so amazingly exciting, that hard, muscular neck on his hard, muscular body.

But she was familiar with another hard, very well-muscled body, one she had seen unclothed, and whose conformation and bulging manhood had delighted and intrigued her, reminding her of statues she had seen of Greek male beauty. No, they had never had sex, that is penetrating sex. They had shared other urgencies of sexual gratification, never the final one.

Finally, once he had returned back to the U.S. after his second visit with her, when she had known him over a six-month period, she had second thoughts. She missed her young boyfriend. She began to recall all the time they had spent together, the activities they had shared, the long, intimate conversations and even more intimate physical passion. But really, it was what she knew of him, how well she knew him, his thoughts, his feelings. She was flooded with shame that she had so lightly, effortlessly discarded all that. She missed him. Terribly.

She sat herself down and wrote a long letter of explanation. To her U.S. suitor. She tried to be honest. Said how much she appreciated that he liked her company. She reciprocated, she said, she had enjoyed being with him. But she had reconsidered. She found it, she said, difficult to reconcile herself to the loss of her boyfriend with whom she’d shared three years of companionship. So the letter he was receiving was to inform him that she had decided she would no longer wish to see him. She would try to make amends to her boyfriend, ask him to forgive her.

She did that. She telephoned him. She heard the gasp in his voice when she quietly asked him to overlook what she had done. She wanted to see him. She wanted to explain her rash behaviour, her regret for what she put him through. And hoped he would agree to see her. Would want to see her, so they could talk about things. Put things into perspective, decide whether it might be possible to gap the void of the unfortunate six months, and try anew to re-forge their relationship.

She'd heard - a few years back - more, actually than a few years - from one of her cousins in casual conversation thanks to the Internet and email, that their mutual friend was a successful architect with a prosperous well-connected firm of his own, in Hawaii. Married, two children. That oddly enough, spurred memory of his long-ago careful scrutiny of her hands, his comments on how delicately well-formed they were, her nails perfect ovals, his recommendations that she take better care of them…

The little dog they had brought into their household many years after their children had moved out to form households of her own, was verging on 17. She was still bright and lively, energetic and clever. Her husband absolutely doted on the little thing. As he had doted, albeit differently, on her too over the years.

Theirs was a golden marriage, in so many ways. At intervals he bought her gold bangles to wear on her wrists. Later, when they could afford such baubles, when the children were older. The first one when they’d visited Washington for the first time, spending a week there looking at the museums, the art galleries. Another for her fiftieth birthday, an Italian bracelet, spiralled and heavy with gold. She has never taken either off her wrists.

In a month she will have her 73rd birthday. Elderly, like their little dog. Her dark hair has turned silver. Their little dog, black in puppyhood, now has grey sprouting in the strangest places; on her chin, under her tail, the joints of her legs. But she’s still sprightly, still engaged with love of life. So too is she. Still engaged with the love of her life.

He just cannot keep a secret. He’s already given her the birthday gift he’s bought. Another gold bracelet. It will join the others on her wrist. He’ll artfully create a birthday card as he usually does, to present to her on her birthday.

The Short Story

Not very enlightened
nor expressively creative,
but most certainly qualified
as a short-short story.

About life in general
and an evaporated passion
in particular degree
well beyond rescue.

They met, they tarried.
Sharing the veneer of
common interests
but not, alas values
and cultural background.

He as disinterested in hers
as she in his. Still, they married
and celebrated a scant few
years of mutual neglect
and growing revulsion.

Though neither would
offer the other release from
tension and aggravated
bitterness in expectations
drowned in grievance.

Theirs was a story
abbreviated by his final
solution. Her ultimate demand
answered by his final decision.
He did not attend her funeral.

Inflicting upon him
recrimination and blame
that only a faithless woman
is capable of wounding a man by;
her final act to seal his future.

The Bus

This was her usual bus after all, she sighed with satisfaction. She’d feared she would be too late at the bus stop, have to wait twenty minutes for the next one, and be late for her downtown appointment. Not so at all.

She settled herself into a seat on the mostly-empty bus. Watched, as she so liked to do, the bus pass by the houses on her street - critically comparing them with her own - then do a sharp left-hand turn at the corner to make its way up the main street bisecting the housing development. She waited especially to see the handful of new houses that had been built in the last few years on land that had been vacant since she’d moved there, ten years earlier. These houses were different, obviously not built by a housing-tract builder. Their differences made them interesting. Not of the same predictable mould as all the other houses. Although they too were attractive; she had no quarrel with them. She was more than happy with the two-story single her family owned.

They’d originally come to the city and anxiously looked around at the available housing. Her husband’s employer paid to put them up at a hotel-apartment complex where they were comfortable enough with their two children. The apartment in the hotel was almost like a house. They had their own little kitchen with modern appliances, two bathrooms, and two bedrooms. And, of course, a spacious living room. Their first morning at the hotel apartment her husband had arisen earlier than all of them - they were all fatigued from their long drive to the city for house-hunting even though he had done all the driving - and bought breakfast deli delights to surprise them all. They stayed there for two weeks, that’s the time they were given in which to find a suitable home for themselves, before selling and packing up their house in Toronto.

They’d contacted an area realtor and the woman took their specifics, then hauled them around to a number of different areas in the city, where there were homes for sale. They had contacted the realty office after a search on their own netted them nothing. They were, in fact, dismayed with the quality of homes; it was a tight market, a sellers’ market, they were informed. No new houses, just re-sales, and those re-sales they saw didn’t fit their bill at all. They were leaving behind a real honey of a house they’d lived in for just two years in the city they were departing, and they wanted something at least equal in quality and comfort to that one.

Eventually, after rejecting houses which neither she nor her husband liked, they did find one that they felt suited them very well. By a well-known builder, in an established subdivision not all that far from downtown, with a series of interlinked parks, nearby schools, even a library. Their backyard had mature maples and an elm tree. It backed onto one of the parks, actually. She loved looking out the small window over the kitchen sink, watching the antics of the squirrels.

Their younger son had built a birdhouse for a class woodworking project and it hung for years from one of the maple trees. She'd watched the seasons change the trees and new birds nesting in that birdhouse. Until they'd finally had to take it down, because it had rotted, and inside, on the floor of the small wood structure they'd found a mass of squirming, disgusting maggots. Not fit to return to its perch under a maple branch, welcoming new residents.

It was a neighbourhood they learned to love. One where walking after dinner was a pleasure, since they could walk as far as they wanted, through all the interlinked parks, and even further, if they went in the right direction, right into the greenbelt encircling the city proper. It's where, in the winter, they snowshoed at night, all of them, thrilled to be out there under the bowl of a starry sky, with city lights reflecting in a peach glow off the snow.

And that’s where they now lived, and just loved living there, too. But for a few irritants. One being the gravel pit about five miles’ distant at the top of the main road, just about where it hit the highway, where daily blasts actually rocked the house on its foundation; a complaint of all the area residents, one which the municipality claimed soothingly would soon be solved, as the pit was due to be closed. That was eight years ago; it was still going strong, and a new high school had been built adjacent to the large gravel-pit property.

The second annoyance was the very convenience of having a bus stop just up the street from their house; the very stop where her husband ran to catch a much earlier bus on his way to work. On week-ends, when they slept in, buses driven down their street, hitting a culvert close to their house, would waken them, the house shuddering from its passage.

She recalled their first week in their new house, when she scrubbed everything she could, from the kitchen cupboards to the walls where the previous owners had allowed their young children to run crayons over their bedroom walls, even on the hardwood floors, and along the mesh screens in front of the windows. She was certain those marks weren’t there when they were inspecting the house, prior to putting in their offer. She’d never do anything so uncivil as that, and she hadn’t, she’d left their old-new house in immaculate condition.

The memory of walking up the street, her housework done, children still at school, a few letters in her hand, preparatory to putting them into the mailbox, and hearing someone shout “Paki go home!”. God, she thought to herself, who on earth would be shouting something so shameful as that at some poor immigrant? She looked behind her, in time to see the figure of a teen on a bicycle, pedalling furiously in the opposite direction. And there was no one else on the street. Only her. She was the Paki. It was she who was being invited to return from whence she had come.

She steamed with fury that anyone would raise children and imbue them with that kind of social bigotry. A hateful ideology of exclusion directed at those unlike the majority. And then, after all, she was Canadian-born. And not herself from the Indian sub-Continent, as well. But she knew the syndrome well, had been exposed to it from the time she was a child, when people would question her about where she came from. But where did you really come from? they’d persist, dissatisfied with her response that she was Canadian. Most of those questioning her, she later came to understand, wanted to pin down her ancestry to determine whether or not she was certifiably Canadian-by-emigration.

She wasn’t even what the government quaintly termed a ‘visible minority’. There was nothing about her features, her colouration, that distinguished her from any other Canadian. She was of slight build, dark hair (did I forget to mention her peculiar hair-conceit, that she washed her hair daily, despite it was so thick and long and took interminably long to dry? That she made her own shampoo, from equal parts dishwasher detergent and vinegar, and three parts tap water? That she wore her hair in two long pigtails, tossed over her shoulders?), dark eyes and spoke perfect English. Why wouldn’t she, having been educated in Canadian schools?

Later, when she was a little older, and people still hadn’t figured out what ethnic group she might represent, perfect strangers would still approach her and hazard their guesses. French? No? Spanish? Incredibly, when she was in her late teens, and in the summer had acquired a dark burnished look because of her love of basking in the sun she had even been asked by someone of her own ethnic group if she was from Yemen. Aren’t people strange, she mused often to herself. Taking umbrage and at the same time, laughing at the crude incivility of it.

Now, when she looked out the bus windows at the houses flashing by, the bus gradually slowed, to pick up another passenger. At a stop, imagine, right in front of one of those new houses. An elderly man entered the bus, dropped his fare in the fare box and proceeded up the aisle. All those empty seats and he decided to sit directly beside her, to share the double seat with her. She smiled at him. He obviously lives in one of those uniquely different new houses she told herself.

He certainly was elderly, hair perfectly white, brushy moustache as well. He was neither lean nor bulky, wore a light jacket against the cool of an early fall day. He was, or had been, a tall man. He stooped slightly, and walked falteringly. She felt such compassion for this man, so frail looking, yet determined to get about on his own, not allowing his years and his obvious ill health deter him.

She decided she would offer a little chat, speak to him about the wonderful fall weather they'd been enjoying, and when the words tripped off her tongue, he turned to her, smiled widely, and said nothing. Then turned back to face the front of the bus. So she turned back to her window, and continued to look out, comfortable that she’d made the effort and he wasn’t really ignoring her, simply wanted peace and quiet.

The bus slowly filled to the point where at least fifty percent of the seats were taken, before it wheeled onto the highway and began its run straight to the city centre. She felt something odd. A hand, a hand creeping across her lap, was that possible? She looked down, to see the man’s blue-bulging-veined hand moving steadily on her lap. Instinctively she gasped, and threw his hand away. Turned and glared at him. At the side of his head that is, for his head wasn’t turned toward her; it was held fast looking ahead, toward the front of the bus. Was she imagining things, was she suddenly going crazy?

She turned back to the window, and there it was again, that same creepy feeling, and once more she glanced down, threw his hand away from her. The third time she was unable to move his hand, his arm had stiffened and she was amazed at the iron strength of his arm, his hand determined to reach its goal. And its goal? Why, to reach between her thighs. Grimly, she struggled, centimetre by centimetre nudging his hand away.

Why didn’t she scream? Why didn’t she alert the bus, the driver, to her dilemma? Well, it was a dilemma. She did nothing to indicate that she was being molested by this white-haired elderly man. She felt fear and shame flood her, even while she was struggling.

She’d get up, move away to another seat, but she wouldn’t reveal what had happened. How could she remove herself from her shared seat? He was immobile, staring straight ahead, immovable. What did she do then? Why she held her large square portfolio over her lap, hoping that would dissuade him, and it did no such thing. What it did was to shield from view, from any passenger who might leave their seat, make their way down the aisle toward the exit doors, who might casually glance down, to see what was happening. As though that was likely to happen. As though what was happening to her was likely to occur.

The bus sped on the throughway toward its first stop in the downtown area. It wasn’t a very long drive, but it felt like ages had passed, to her. Her silent struggle with this elderly, determined man, continued. She would succeed in wresting him away from her crotch, relax for a brief instant from the effort, and he would resume his own struggle to foil her, and satisfy his obstinate determination.

She felt perplexed at what was occurring, ashamed for him and for herself. She was reacting, not thinking, a victim when she needn’t be one. A loud, sharp denial. That would bring attention. But she didn’t want attention. She felt as though she was somehow complicit in what was happening. Later, when she thought about the incident, she agreed to herself, she was complicit, however unwillingly, however unmeaning.

By not insisting, loudly, that he remove himself, by not revealing to all those others seated in the bus that she was being assaulted, she had actually assisted him in his endeavours. Did she fear no one would believe her? Her word, a still-young woman, against that of an obviously elderly, patrician-looking man. A respectable man.

Perhaps he felt that her silence was acquiescence, despite her attempts to stop him. Perhaps he felt she was somehow an outsider, an immigrant whose value was less than his, and he could abuse her as he wished. Perhaps he knew, somehow, that her silence implicated her in what he was attempting. What was he attempting?

She felt nauseated, disgusted, both with herself and with the old man. How could such a frail appearing man have the brute strength her own much younger arms were unable to counteract? She felt confused, and she felt soiled. She felt pity and she felt anguish.

Finally, she half-rose, pushed him so hard he almost slid off his seat, and into the aisle. She rose fully, slid herself past the off-kilter old man, and rushed down the bus aisle to exit the opening door. She could hear a commotion behind her, as people close to where she had been seated, rushed to assist the poor old man, and offer him comfort.

November Snow

The sky a brooding bowl of
whipped cream slopping frostily
over the landscape newly
preparing itself for the season.

Limning shrubs, tree branches
with an exquisitely delicate
etching of snow blooming
in the gloom of another
onset of urgent winter.

A lacy tapestry of puffed fluff
weighting branches, laid over
trails, muting sound though
there are no birds anywhere.

They are suddenly absent,
the forest a hushed
huddling of small, furred creatures
seeking winter refuge.

Stumpy

She had always had a pragmatic outlook on life; never given to the useless entrapment of sentimentality. It had served her well. When her husband left her with a small child, she sturdily picked up the pieces of her minimally-shattered life, took a position with a charitable organization as their general accounts manager, and got on with things. Raising her daughter on her own, just as so many other women did their children, and somehow managing to do it right.

Carol encouraged her to get out of the house when her grandchildren were away at school. It was enough, her daughter said, that she was there, when they returned on the school bus, waiting for them at the corner to walk them home, see they had their snacks, gave them the oversight they needed, while their mother was at work. They were fatherless, in essence, just as their mother had been. But their father had left their joint bank account intact, had signed the necessary papers to have her the sole signer. Nor had he demanded they sell their house, so he could begin anew with half the proceeds. He did the honourable thing. In part, he did; he did not pay child support and since he had chosen to live halfway across the world, there was no legal way to insist he do that.

Edith thought her daughter’s advice was practical and useful, and she began taking the family’s little Pomeranian out for daily walks. She always had, but just around the neighbouring streets, not far from the house she now shared with her daughter. She wondered whether the little dog, weighing a bare five pounds, could walk further. And discovered it could, and so could she. So she began ambulating a little further day by day, discovering a network of area parks and recreation paths that began to fascinate her.

Above all, an area set well distant from the park-like façade, where children’s play equipment - different types in all of the park - had been established, and which she occasionally had taken the youngest grandchild to, before he too began attending school full-time. This other area was rough, no municipal crews ventured there to tidy things up, because they couldn’t. It was a ravine setting, a series of hills and valleys, where the municipality had set up a storm-sewage system, and where a wide creek ran constantly with muddy water, a quite unlovely natural creek. But the setting around it compensated, heavily forested with large old pines, spruces, firs, and great old willows down by the meandering creek.

She had seen a plenitude of small wildlife up above, in the other, manicured park areas, particularly in the fall when squirrels and chipmunks began frenetically preparing for winter. But down there, in the ravine, where she and Milly wandered, the little dog taken off its leash to sniff about randomly, it was a different world. The squirrels were varied and numerous, black, grey, red and quarrelsome, chattering angrily from tree branches at one another. Or were they reserving their ire for her presence and that of the little dog?

She rarely saw other people walking along in there. When Carol was casually informed one day about her mother’s new insights into suburban wildlife and the pleasure of wandering in an isolated area, she was a little upset. What if her mother was accosted by some sociopath, she asked her mother, who snorted, who would bother with an old woman like her? Not the point, her daughter said, it was possible, it could happen, and who would be there to witness it, to come to her aid? Not to worry, her mother quipped, Millicent was a dependable watchdog. Her daughter sighed, shrugged her shoulders and said her mother was old enough to know better. To which her mother responded she was old enough to be trusted to make intelligent decisions for herself. Fear of the unknown and the dim potential was not going to dominate her life.

Someone she once knew, who was committed to the humane rehabilitation of wild and feral animals used to entertain her with stories of his exploits and experiences. Her own sister, whom she considered the wrong side of eccentric, took to adopting feral cats, at the great physical expense inherent in trapping, thus rescuing them from their own frail devices; prowling about, fending for themselves, bearing countless litters; living freely but mangy, half-starved lives. Oh, and the expense involved in neutering them, then allowing them their freedom, sans reproductive capacity.

That old acquaintance would ignore his desk covered with urgent tasks, corner her at her own, usually when she was marching against a deadline, to extol his volunteer ventures. She, too polite to protest, would sit there, captured by his need to detain he, and listened resentfully, at once fascinated yet annoyed to be held back from her work. A victim of her own civility.

In any event, she heard from him on one occasion of the rescue of a nested litter of baby squirrels. Unable to exit their home, to clamber down from the tree, held fast as prisoners of their knotted, intertwined tails. He described how difficult it had been, and frustrating, to work on the frightened little creatures, to free them from their braided tails. Some might be successfully entangled, left with tails intact, others sadly and by necessity had their tails snipped off.

Then the task of nurturing the frantic animals, quieting them down, giving them food and comfort and a sense of security. No hope of ever re-uniting them with the mother that bore them. She had, in any event, likely abandoned them, unable to grasp why her litter failed to fly the coop, as it were. Abandoned, left on their own, to starve. Their piteous mewling obviously failing to move compassion in the heart of their departing mother.

She wondered, as she wandered in the ravine, watching the squirrels cavort in the spring, nest in the summer, and gather in the fall, how often that kind of anomalous small-animal tragedy occurred. Who would ever know, apart from someone so dedicated as her colleague had been, searching out these little lapses in nature’s plan?

The squirrels she saw looked healthy and saucy; intrepidly, carelessly, it seemed to her, hurling themselves from branch to branch, speedily making their way to some obviously important destination. They needed no human intervention; more than capable of themselves completing their normal life-cycle.

And then, one day as she was strolling about, the little dog busy with its own antics, endlessly sniffing, stopping occasionally to relieve itself, she noticed a small black squirrel heading directly toward her. It was unmistakable, that squirrel seemed resolved to confront her. She stopped walking, stood there on the gravelled trail, and waited. The squirrel came to a stop directly in front of her. Millie made a short, sharp dart toward the squirrel. She often indulged in such responses, but never ran after them for very long; they invariably left her far behind, leaping onto tree trunks, and into densely-leafed branches.

Edith heard a quick “no!” issue from her mouth, and Millie ran back to her side. And the squirrel, who had run off just a bit, as though sensing that this ridiculous little dog, hardly larger than it was, posed no risk, advanced again. And then stopped, directly in front of Edith. What, Edith wondered, what did it want? She pushed one of her hands into the pocket of her jacket, found a few sticks of chewing gum, elastics, a rubber eraser, and a wrapped coconut cookie, which she withdrew, pulled from its wrapping, and broke up, letting pieces drop to the ground. The squirrel darted forward, picked up a piece of the cookie, turned it a few times in its clever paws, then ran off, stopping not far away, to sit there and eat its prize. Edith stood, watching the creature, amazed. And was even more amazed when the squirrel returned and picked up another piece of cookie, removed itself briefly for another feast, and repeated its clever trick once more, before running off.

Next time Edith was shopping she picked up a large bag of unshelled peanuts. Next time she took Millie out for their daily walk she stuffed her pockets with peanuts. And began to leave them in places along the trails she took. In the crooks of branches, on top of snagged tree trunks, inserting them into holes in the bark of trees. Invariably, on her quotidian return, the peanuts were gone. And she restored them to the previous cache places. Before long she began to notice squirrels, black, grey, red, waiting at those designated places, or scrambling up to them, to see if anything had been left.

And she also recognized the first little black squirrel that had originally accosted her, he was the only one among all those she regularly saw who boldly confronted her, then sat quietly until she retrieved a peanut from her pocket and tossed it to him. No mistaking this little fellow. Where all the others had long bushy tails they often flicked contemptuously at Millie, daring her to rush them, he never ever did that. He had no tail to speak of. He had a little brush, a stump of a tail, its end pure white.

She named him Stumpy. When she told her grandchildren about her special squirrel, they winced, said that wasn’t at all polite, and surely the squirrel would be insulted. Couldn’t she name him something nice? Stumpy he remained. Their relationship grew, she became accustomed to seeing him every day, greeted him by exclaiming Stumpy! And he appeared to recognize her voice, that she was calling him.

This was, of course, sheer anthropomorphism, she knew that. He had his smarts, but he was a squirrel. Although sometimes he looked, with his back to her, turning one of her offerings around in his paws, more like a rabbit. Rabbits were also seen down there, in the ravine, but infrequently.

She also saw Stumpy raiding some of the caches she left along the trail, and this reassured her. For there were days when she might miss seeing him, and she’d worry, wonder whether his lack of tail put him at a disadvantage. She visualized to herself all manner of difficulties he might encounter; his stump of a tail would require a different sense of balance, surely it impaired him for leaping as normal squirrels did, from branch to tree branch. Once, she missed seeing him for an entire week and was convinced he had met his end.

And then he turned up. Nonchalantly advanced toward her as he always did, Millie dashing toward him. Sometimes Stumpy held firm, refused to give ground for Millie, and Millie invariably went so far, and no further, before resuming her place at Edith’s feet. And that made Edith worry that Stumpy was too trusting, too courageous, and that would surely result in catastrophe, should he attempt this approach with others along the trails with their dogs.

And had she ever seen anyone else in there, much less someone with a dog, other than herself and Millie? Rarely. Once a truly cantankerous elderly man walking a regal-looking standard poodle. The way the man ignored her greeting, and prodded his dog along, when it evinced curiosity about her and Millie offended her greatly. She reasoned that doddering old gaffer wouldn’t venture far, before turning back to exit the ravine network. And she was right; she never saw him or his dog again.

Stumpy, meanwhile, availed himself of what she left, in active challenge to the other squirrels who on some days almost swamped her with their presence, leaping about everywhere she looked, all of them seemingly concerned to arrive at the peanut depots before their challengers. She watched, bemused, sometimes, as a grey squirrel would manage to stuff two peanuts at once into its little maw, then leave, triumphant. She always felt a compunction to return, re-deposit peanuts for those who arrived late, and she did, then watched at a distance, as each retrieved their trophy.

It became a standing topic of conversation, a jocular one, at the dinner table, with Carol asking her mother how her ravine jaunt had been that day, and the children chirping in after their mother. Good, she always assured them, going on to outline her day’s adventure there. It was an adventure, it gave her such an peculiar sense of pleasure to be there, to observe, to interact as much as she was able to. Nor did she miss the presence of other creatures; occasionally a raccoon up on high branches of an old pine, snugly curled, asleep.

Woodpeckers, from the tiny downy, the larger hairy and still-larger pileated, that drummed on the tree trunks, the latter extracting huge white slivers in its search for insects, littering the ground around the unfortunate tree, left afterward with wide, white-gaping wounds, sap dripping from them.

But it was her anticipated sightings of Stumpy and his bravado, that endowed her with that warm feeling of having made contact with something worthwhile in the world she alone inhabited. Did she, she asked herself, have so little of value in her world, that she expected so much of a small animal that had suffered hard times? What of her relationship with her daughter, her care of her small grandchildren, what of that?

What of that? her other self challenged.

Living Adventurously

If Miharu’s mother had any questions about her young daughter’s friendship with an occidental woman clearly of her own generation, she betrayed no unease as she greeted Elinor in the tight confines of the family’s apartment, above the offices of the family business. Elinor knew they owned the building, a five-story concrete behemoth. It was a successful business, selling high-end second-hand construction machinery abroad. And renting appliances inside the country. But the Japanese, she had learned, shunned ostentation, were discreet about wealth. Above all, they were accustomed to living in close confinement in a country whose geography left little to accommodate its large population. Downstairs, the building held the company offices and showrooms. Other floors were rented out to unrelated businesses.

The family’s wealth could not, clearly, be seen in their domestic circumstances. The concrete floor of the family apartment laid with the same utilitarian indoor-outdoor carpeting as her own little apartment, halfway across the city. The public room she was shown into - the family living room - shabby and sparsely furnished, not all that much room even so, to move about. Typical of urban dwellings, although she had seen stand-alone several-story-tall homes shoe-horned into the slenderest of spaces between commercial buildings. Some homes simply cramped together precariously in crowded urban areas, other truly humble abodes even hung onto the overhead tracks of rail crossings. Most people in Tokyo, though, lived in steep, concrete high-rise apartments, stippling the city’s vast landscape.

There were obvious exceptions. Where famous Japanese couturiers had their custom-built homes in streets backing off Aoami dori, for example. With their postage-stamped, walled gardens where grew plum or persimmon trees, or delicate red-leafed Japanese maples. Not all that far from the Aoami dori cemetery with its orchard-setting of cherry trees, a pink-and-white-blossomed sight to behold in the spring, where the city’s inhabitants spread blankets and had their picnics under the trees, blossoms raining petals in the slightest breeze. Where, also, in various areas of the city were situated those discreet courtyards within which Japanese versions of western-style homes housed the families of foreign diplomats.

Actually, Miharu’s family, because of their business which had introduced them to western culture in a more informal way through business acquaintance, was a little more relaxed about customary treatment of foreigners. Few foreigners, in fact, were welcomed into the homes of Japanese. Entertaining took place outside the home, in restaurants. Not only for business purposes, but social entertainment as well; extended family and friends entertained in the auspices of commercial enterprises set up specifically for that purpose. This was an especial courtesy, an acknowledgement of her relationship with the younger daughter of this prominent business family. Their older daughter lived now in the Philippines with her husband, an area representative for the family firm.

A week later, when Miharu came by Elinor’s apartment she brought with her a surprise. She unwrapped something loosely hidden beneath a canopy of colourful rice paper. It was one of the most lovely miniature gardens she had ever seen. A Ficus Benjamina bonsai, with minuscule lantern and figure, the area beneath the ancient gnarled trunk covered with lush mosses, an urgent bright green that almost lit up the dun colours predominating in her apartment.

For me? She gasped, prepared to insist that she could never accept such a valuable gift. No, Mirahu, had smiled, a loan-presento from her mother, a symbol of her kindly regard, her trust. She almost panicked. She had no idea how to care for such a living treasure. What if her neglect and ignorance killed it? What then?

No worry, said Miharu placidly. Just use common sense. She’d had indoor plants before, hadn’t she? Well, yes, but nothing like this. She knew that this was important, this was a family heirloom. Just water it sparely, once a day. Once a day? she almost screamed, surely that’s too often! Miharu was unperturbed at her obvious anxiety, said she should relax, just enjoy having the bonsai for a little while. She’d retrieve it in a month or so …

Elinor, visiting the Happoen down the street, knew how deeply she was affected by any kind of green in this city of bland concrete walls climbing to the skies. How she reacted, in fact, to the carefully tended shrubbery, the rhododendrons in bloom and the azaleas, the colourful flowering cabbages, hibiscus, camellias, tended by municipal workers, the awesome ginkgo trees, the plane trees, maidenhair fern, with their colourful bark, their breadth, width and beauty.

Entering temple gardens, ancient places established all over the city, there was an immediate sense of transformation; a packed metropolis of harried people and vehicles suddenly become an orderly green ambiance of silent devotion to nature where huge silver and gold carp flashed in lotus-sprinkled ponds, and rows of revered, century-old bonsai set on racks were respectfully nurtured by monks experts in their care. Expressing the Zen-Buddhist spirituality that her every breath so aromatically welcomed, strolling those pebbled pathways.

There, and in other temples, she had learned to find peace and solitude on the soul-sanctified salutary grounds of Japanese gardens. Their footpaths leading to one garden-sculpted nook after another in tidy reverence to nature’s diverse offerings. Artfully natural placing of stone and rock to resemble the lofty grandeur of mountain landscapes. Echoing the distant, readily-seen summit of the sacred Mount Fuji, from Tokyo itself.

Where indescribably inviting red-painted (good fortune!) bridges arced over placidly-floating streams, the water silvery, tinkling as it made its way through bamboo structures, all conspiring to bring human sensibilities into harmony with nature. Stepping under the city’s Torii gates made a similar impression on her; their ancient symbolic blessing soothing her sensibilities. Sight of the temple guardians with their fiercely threatening countenances did nothing to dispel the quiet solitude of rest.

The Japanese brought their reverence for nature, it seemed to her, into everything they did. On tight, narrow streets, unnamed, and unnumbered, there was a general respect for anything resembling nature’s creatures. Out from crowded interiors came vestiges of the inhabitants’ most treasured possessions. Tiny oaks and pines, expertly grown in small bonsai dishes, and ceramic-puffed fishbowls, with their single carp swimming serenely around and around. No one ever tampered with any of these private possessions, diffidently placed on public display.

There existed a social pact, it seemed to her, of universal trust. She never ceased to be amazed at the tangle of bicycles, motorcycles and electric bikes left, as though carelessly herded into livestock compounds, none of them locked, all trustingly left there, to be retrieved by their owners who had taken themselves off elsewhere in the city - on the subway line, or a rail train, a bus, or simply to enter nearby buildings where they worked, until the end of the working day, when a mass exodus would commence.

She was herself trepidatious about travelling by subway. She did have a small, bright orange folding bicycle that she had found abandoned at the back of a dark old shop. She’d taken possession of it for a few yen, still usable, and found it fine for short, local shopping trips. She shopped daily for her food, like most of the city‘s residents. Not everyone had refrigeration facilities. Besides, the Japanese were famously fastidious about the freshness of the food they ate. And so was she, now. Now that she had absorbed for herself the Japanese consciousness of nutrition and freshness.

The subway intimidated her even outside rush hours when professional pushers crammed people into already-crowded cars. She was aware of the vaunted efficiency of its magnificent intersecting meshwork of underground trains, its connections to trains, other subway connections, bus services going out of the city. All time-consuming, to learn the requisite knowledge of areas mostly mysteriously unknown to her, and their connections. The shops in the underground system selling foodstuffs and hard goods a constant source of amazement. She could buy pickles on her way home! Though she didn’t care for their limp presence, their unaccustomed taste; it was the convenience, the quaintness of the opportunity that intrigued her.

The helpful signage (hiragana, katakana) should have been of immeasurable help in negotiating her way around the city, but it wasn’t; it defeated her. Her ESL colleagues had no problems, and many of them hadn’t lived here as long as she; must be her level of confidence. She never attained the ease her colleagues did with the transportation system. She preferred buses, more her style. Less efficient, definitely slower lumbering along, their wood-platform floors fascinating her. She used them regularly on her week-end shopping expeditions to Ueno market.

Where she could walk in the park, admire the sculptures of whales, dolphins, visit the damp, cool interior of the national museum, amble along into the zoo with its excited crowds of onlookers awaiting the presence of the fabled pandas. And then, she could go to the area streets reserved specifically for housewares, or electronics, or footwear; even motorcycles. Networks of streets devoted to the sale of singular consumer items.

She’d tried, once, to go to Skiiji, but found herself disappointed. She’d have to arrive before dawn to witness the excitement of a city’s devotion to uniqueness, rarity and freshness in all the edibles of the ocean deeps. Wherever she went, though, she knew she would have to carry everything back with her on the bus, and it was a long, long trip. Over time, her arms had strengthened from their daily need to carry heavy bags. But she had also developed a chronic aching-shoulder syndrome that truly bothered her from time to time.

Mostly, she entertained herself endlessly walking in all those places. Miharu had introduced her to Roppongi, and when she’d first walked at night with a giggling Miharu, who pointed out to her which of the women wearing traditional white-face makeup and tripping along on elevated sandals, wearing gorgeous kimono were for hire to accompany men to the various nightclubs, she felt a thrill of romantic adventure suffuse her. She returned often to the area, brightly light with blaring neon signage, like nowhere else on Earth.

Although on her many returns she walked alone, she knew she was safe, since women were rarely harassed, and street crime was virtually absent. But nothing relieved her of her loneliness, it strode alongside her like a mournful shadow, reminding her that she was a middle-aged woman in a foreign country, with few friends, no family, and no obvious opportunities to extend either of those categories.

All her co-workers were young and male. Unattached young men looking for exotic adventure;men from Australia and Germany, for the most part. Living frugally as she did in an expensive environment where the recompense for their days and evening shifts patiently teaching eager Japanese secretaries, academics, businessmen and just plain language hobbyists, the basics of English pronunciation and sentence structure. It wasn’t that her colleagues, such as they were, were unfriendly. They were simply detached, she represented no advantage to them in their search for the rare and the valuable in terms of life experiences. She could offer them nothing, and made no attempt to, believing herself to be just as devoid of interest to them as they took her to be.

Still, living there excited her, filled her with a vast admiration for the society, a pulsating ingathering of humanity, sharing a culture and a restrained religion that appealed immensely to her. Their homogeneity fascinated her; walking among them, a sole westerner, in a sea of gleaming black heads, all hurriedly making their way to some destination of importance in lives so distant from her own. She loved watching young women walking along Aoami dori during the working day, perfectly coiffed, elegantly dressed in designer clothing, as though each had stepped momentarily out of the glossy pages of a fashion magazine.

She wasn’t that ignorant of the country’s past. Knew very well how hated it was by its neighbours, for its brutal occupations, before and during the Second World War. But this Japan, she felt in her very bones, was an entirely different place with a strong sense of having paid too dearly for its past political-social malfeasance. She trusted this Japan, while at the same time, deploring the Japan that was responsible for horrible misdeeds in the not-so-dim past.

Truth was, she wasn’t anxious to return home. Nothing awaited her there. True, nothing seemed to await her either in Tokyo, but at least it represented a never-ending cycle of discovery, as her mind and her soul thrilled to everything she discerned behind the façade of a western-influenced, increasingly cosmopolitan nation that stubbornly held tight to its eastern identity. The western influence was one of convenience, in a practical acknowledgement that there lay progress, while the values of enlightenment remained with tradition.

She hardly knew what she would do when her contract expired. She knew she wasn’t a very good teacher. She enjoyed amicable relations with her clients, but there was that oriental distance she could never breach, and although it didn’t make her uncomfortable, nor did she ever feel at ease, unlike her colleagues. Too sensitive to nuances, they suggested, when she mentioned it to a few with whom she had easy, but not close relations.

The thing was, she wanted to be accepted. She had no complaints; she was respected. But she wanted to be liked. For who she was. And she tried awfully hard to elicit warm feelings between herself and her clients. Some of them might share a laugh with her, over a badly expressed sentence, but this was a matter of grave moment to them also, not quite a laughing matter. They were as intent on succeeding in speaking decipherable, and decently-accented English, as she was in being accepted among them, as one of them. It took her quite a while to finally understand she never would be. There was a social, cultural distance that existed that nothing she could do would bridge.

Except for Miharu. There, with that young woman, who at 28, was the despair of her parents for her constant refusals of marriage proposals, she found solace. Miharu seemed to understand her, was relaxed with her, shared thoughts with her, told her of her disgust at the thought of becoming a typical Japanese housewife. She had received a good education, had a masters in business administration, and had no intention of agreeing to hide herself away in some dreary little apartment, looking after children. She was independent. She worked for her family's firm. She drove her neat little rag-top convertible Volkswagen anywhere she wanted to take herself.

“You don’t know, Elinor, the woman is sacrificed to the family, to raising children, making a home for her hard-working husband who puts in extra work hours, goes out tippling after work, and returns home drunk, never seeing his own children.”

“It can’t be that bad. Surely things are changing”, she responded to an obviously-upset Miharu, who’d presented herself, unannounced, after one of her arguments with her parents. Miharu hated to upset her mother. She didn’t that much care about how angry her father would be, with his pinched, furious face, with his patriarchal view of a woman’s place. It was her mother’s unexpressed pain at her younger daughter’s defiance of tradition that bothered her.

“It’s bad”, she said. “Once a Japanese woman gets married her life is as good as over. Unless she marries a foreigner, and goes to live with him outside of Japan. And then another aspect of her life is over. Once she leaves Japan she can never return as a Japanese. She becomes a foreigner and that foreignness always hangs over her. Anyway”, she sighed “my parents would never forgive me”.

Miharu told her excitedly about a group she had just joined. Friends of the Earth, in Japan. They went regularly on trips outside Tokyo, to adjacent towns, where hiking trails led up into the mountains. They could see monkeys in the trees on some of those trails. Some of the forests were comprised solely of bamboo. There were temples atop some of the summits, and ancient ginkgo trees, some reputed to be two thousand years old. There was also a temple dedicated to the Buddha who had walked from India to Japan (Isn’t Japan a series of islands? No matter) and his immense sandals can be seen there, outside the temple. Some of the hikes would take them to formal tea houses, and they could take part in a tea ceremony.

She was sold. She was still in pretty good shape for 54. They’d had to rise very early on week-end mornings. To grab a series of subway trains, buses, rail trains, and again buses, to finally get them out of Tokyo, where, on the perimeter, the final bus would finally stop outside villages and towns close to where these trailheads began. It was all so bucolic, so infused with good fellowship and adventure. There was a mixture of Japanese, Australians, Germans, and her, the sole Canadian. Mostly men, a sprinkling of women. The Japanese always wore lederhosen, their version of how mountain climbers, trail trekkers, should look. And they didn’t miss an opportunity to try out their command of English on the foreign element that made up their group, sometimes with hilarious results.

Elinor hung back, with Miharu, on the first several of what turned out to be many such outings. Miharu might be furiously verbose in her denial of taking her customary place as a traditional Japanese woman, but tradition was steeped deep within her, and she was shy and quiet, and self-disparaging, particularly in the presence of men, most markedly in the presence of foreign men.

It was on their eighth climbing adventure that Elinor decided she would exert herself a little more vigorously, demonstrate just how robust she was for her age, decidedly more advanced than any of the group. She forged ahead, clambering up the rubble-strewn trails, very well aware of how surprised everyone else was, in her wake. She heard, behind her, people speaking to one another, marvelling at the physical resources she was exhibiting, striding seemingly without effort, before everyone else. Whenever they passed a group proceeding in the opposite direction she would gasp the obligatory "konichiwa", and forge on, determinedly.

Gradually, the effort began to tax her, and she felt truly alarmed at the increasingly leaden feeling in her limbs, her stifling, pounding chest. Still, she strode confidently ahead, the others straggling behind. She felt proud of herself, glowing in the reflection of the others’ awe at her progress.

Then they stopped as usual, for a break. Everyone searched in their backpacks for refreshments. Muffins, cookies, trail mix, and water to wash it down. Elinor had sprawled on the ground, her back resting on a Paulownia trunk. Miharu seated beside her, was eating crackers and dried fish. Suddenly, Miharu lifted her head, and closely regarded her friend. Who was not eating, not having anything to replenish her exhausted resources, but sitting there, dully, breathing heavily. “Something wrong?” Miharu asked, quietly.

“No”, said Elinor. “I just suddenly feel awfully tired. I don’t know, Miharu, if I can repeat what I’ve just done. I don’t seem to have any more energy”. This admission depressed her horribly. Made her feel ashamed of her previous bravado, her obvious audacity, her showing-off, like a kid looking for compliments and admiration. What, did she think one of the men would view her differently, decide he would like to become more intimately involved with this decidedly unusual woman whose energy belied her years?

When, finally, it was time to tuck everything back into backpacks and resume the hike, everyone did so enthusiastically, and slowly everyone in their group trickled off. There were some surprised faces, looking back at Elinor and Miharu, still sitting there, making no effort to rise and join them. Elinor felt a deep blush of shame paint her face. Miharu patted her friend’s hand, whispered to her that she should rest, take her time, they would catch up. Eventually.

A Process of Elimination

Deaf she may be, but my angry face hanging so close to her puzzled one, my gaping mouth out of which springs furious sounds she cannot hear, delivers the message. She turns, slips mournfully upstairs. Accomplished? Nothing remotely useful, other than chagrin and regret on my part. She is incapable, now, of ingesting that message.

Small and delicate-boned as she is, her inconsiderable weight landing on the rug from her place on our bed, alerted me. She is dark-haired, but the white nightshirt we dress her in at night casts a soft glow, picking up the quiet light from the bedside clock that reads 3:30 a.m. The shirt a concession to the season, the cool night-time temperature we maintain in our bedroom, and her venerable age.

I watched, with half-cocked eye as she silently padded to the door, her nails faintly clicking when she reached the rug perimeter, crossed the hardwood floor. I reminded myself, still in a fog of sleep, that she needed her nails clipped. No easy task, these days. She shies away from being handled in those ways. Her hair is too long, it’s unruly, and needs a good trim. She won’t permit that, either. She always had her own mind, never was particularly biddable, but now, in her dotage, she’s positively impossible.

I waited, not quite yet willing to hoist myself out of my comfort. Sometimes she does that, rouses herself, jumps off the bed, stands quietly for a while halfway between the bedroom door and the adjoining hall, and just remains there. Then, as though somehow satisfied with the little exercise, or whatever it portends as of a silent voice speaking inside her head, she turns back, leaps effortlessly to the bed and settles back to sleep again.

Not this time. She stood in the doorway of our bedroom for what seemed like an interminable intermission. She finally began moving forward, and I got out of bed, reached for my dressing gown. Which was when she turned back, to see if I was there. Not having heard me, nothing like that, just exercising, it seems, the kind of intuition that she seems capable of. I followed her down the hallway, down the stairs, across the foyer, into the family room, and finally stood beside her, at the sliding doors leading to the deck. She waited, and I obliged, sliding open the door for her to exit.

Sometimes that happens. She will forget, when she is put out after eleven and we’re preparing for bed, why she’s gone outside. Spending her time leisurely sniffing about. Picking up scents; squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits, raccoons, cats. We’ve seen them all in the backyard. The raccoons not so much now that we’ve tightened the lid on our compost bins with bungees. Busy out there, reconnoitring, interested in the evening breeze and the emanations it wafts over from other yards. And she forgets to pee.

So now, when I’ve let her out, she’s likely doing just that. Or evacuating, who knows? I don’t exactly feel like going out with her. The temperature has dropped below freezing. Peering out the sliding glass door, over the rails of the deck, I can just make out her little white nightie-ghostlike presence moving about, and then she’s out of my sight. My fingers begin to rap, as of their own devices, on the glass door. And, miraculously, she appears, and I admit her.

Why was I angry with her? Well, we’d bought a new kibble for her, thinking that would help to tempt her appetite toward a little more enthusiasm. We’ve spoiled her badly. Too many ‘treats’. It’s not the biscuits she usually gets after her meals as extras, but the other ‘extras’, the chicken, the cheese, the heaping little salads of chopped bell peppers, green peas, kernel corn, cauliflower she is so fond of. She would happily ignore the kibble, even with those extras, and dine exclusively off the salads, if it were up to her. It isn’t. We still want to ensure her good health.

She’s lost a lot of teeth, the last few years. She’ll have reached her seventeenth birthday next month. As it is, I’ve got to help her by wetting her kibble before presenting it. I keep a small jar of chicken soup in the refrigerator for that purpose, then quickly heat it all up in the microwave for a few seconds. Sometimes she eats, sometimes she doesn’t. This morning? Well, it depends so often whether or not, when we’ve come down first thing in the morning and let her out, if she’s managed to evacuate successfully. No evacuation, no appetite. And then, no telling when we’ll be surprised.

It’s peculiar, but she will never have a urination accident in the house, never. At least not yet. But the other? On occasion. Where once she was accustomed to letting us know, verbally, by a low growl, a light bark, when she wanted to be let out, alerting us to her need, she no longer communicates with us. She will stand at the door, silently, waiting to be noticed. We’ve got to keep attuned to her needs. Else be stuck with the results.

Usually, one of us does a quick check in the backyard at her usual deposit sites, to determine whether we’re in the clear, can expect her to eat, then settle down while we have our own breakfast. Oh, and that’s another thing. We’ve managed to spoil her there, too. She knows if we’re having eggs, and waits for her portion to be served up. It’s become an unfortunate little routine. Ditto if we’re cooking bacon, or sausages. Bagels, she also loves those. I used to bake a lot more than I now do, and regularly baked croissants, even bagels, and the fragrance of the fresh-baked goods wafting through the house would drive her to distraction. Then, while she still had her hearing, she would verbalize, let us know she was there and she needed to share those delicacies with us.

She may be small, but she has a powerful personality.

Funny that. It’s almost as though she lost her language when she lost her hearing. Ever since we became aware of her inability to hear - a slow progression to be sure - we also became aware that she had fallen silent. So, if we aren’t aware of her need to go out to evacuate, on the assumption she’d already done so when she was let out first thing, we can be in for the occasional surprise.

That’s what I meant. This morning when I set down her bowl with that great lamb-rice kibble (complete with glucosamine for ancient joints) she was so interested in - replacing the chicken-rice kibble she was so bored with - she just began doing that ritual, as though she was burying it. She does that often, too. Acts out the burying routine. But this morning there was no burying routine. I just looked around for one second, busy sectioning our breakfast grapefruit halves, and there, sitting alongside her untouched bowl, was a steaming pile.

And that, my friend, is why I screamed at her. Even though it’s happened before and I’ve told myself her memory is lapsing, she’s forgetting what she’s always known, and simply responding to her body’s instructions. We love her, and cannot imagine how devastated we will be when she has finally reached the end of her life. Amend that, we can imagine how miserable we will be, and that’s what makes us apprehensive now, about her.

It’s not that she’s suddenly lost her energy, become lethargic, disinterested in everything. That’s not so, at all. Far from it. She does sleep quite a lot during the day that’s true, but most dogs do once they’re beyond puppy-hood. She gets taken out for a hour, hour-and-a-half vigorous woodland walk each and every day, regardless of the weather. She thrives on it, forges ahead, interested in everything, all the calling cards left by other dogs ambling through the woods. She no longer leaps forward and runs like the wind when there’s squirrels nearby, but she does a respectable little sprint. And sometimes she runs like a whirling dervish in a small circuit, speedy as the wind, in an exuberance of love of life.

She no longer allows her teeth to be brushed, something we’ve done regularly over the years. So we don’t press the matter. She will biddably - actually, looks forward to it - approach me when I seat myself on the floor after her dinner, preparatory to giving her an evening brush-down. She lays herself down before me, thrusts her head into my lap, and digs it in, one side, then the other, in an excess of lavish rubbing. She will emit a low moan of pleasure when I rub behind her ears, and massage her body, before brushing her hair.

Her large and beautiful, darkly-moist eyes look occluded. People, seeing her, cry out: poor thing, she’s blind! She is not. Her peripheral vision is slightly impaired.

And her magisterial entitlement remains undisturbed. She is offended, in the winter, when we put boots over her slender paws. Else, if the temperature is low enough, the snow underfoot freezes her feet and she can’t go on. First time in the season we put them on her, she walks in an exaggerated movement like one of those Lippizaner horses on pompous display.

And now that she’s elderly she no longer minds the indignity of a winter garment sheltering her from the excess of winter cold. In fact, she seems to downright appreciate it. Helpfully lifting one paw after another to be inserted into one of those sherpa-like coats of hers.

Losing her hearing isn’t all bad. When someone comes to the door she no longer barks, because she’s unaware. The sound of the vacuum cleaner no longer disturbs her. Nor do loud sharp sounds, which used to. She’s always been skittish that way. That too, only manifests itself occasionally, say for example, if something porcelain falls on the ceramic tile floor in the kitchen and shatters. She can hear that. And hustles herself out of the direct vicinity.

So, it’s clear she’s earned a certain latitude. Unpleasant in the extreme it may be, her occasional lapses, evacuating in the house. I keep telling myself we’ve got to be more aware, more attuned to her needs, scout out the premises more rigorously to ensure we know she’s already done her business. At least first-thing-in-the-morning business. There’s another evacuation that follows like clockwork, in early afternoon. Which is when we’re usually out walking. Which is why one of us carries her up to the entrance to the wooded ravine near where we live.

She has been known to suddenly squat right on the road the last year, if she’s on the leash walking up to the ravine alongside us. We try to eliminate all those embarrassing possibilities.