“There are two ways of spreading light: To be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” Edith Warton
Sometimes, if I carry Max up the steps, we pass a hallway mirror. I stop, face the reflection of us, and say, “You’re the most beautiful boy-dog in the world.” He looks blankly, stoically, at glass. He won’t look at himself in the mirror.
Max is, and always has been, his own being of dignity. He seldom barks in his old age, instead he exhales loudly, scoffing his disapproval, and then moving on past the annoyance.
In much the same way, he pretends he doesn’t hear when the neighbors tell him how handsome he is, or how young he looks, or when his groomers gush over him like he is some marvel of nature. “You don’t look 105 Max,” they coo.
Max sleeps with us, between my husband and me. We touch Max gently, not wanting to wake him because he is 105…and counting.
These days Max suffers patiently when left in the care of men. My husband nor my son never stops what he is doing to listen to the unspoken questions, the gentle body language pleading for food or a walk. When forced by frustration to their less sensitive level, Max barks. The men yell back, “Bad boy, bad Max,” for having inconvenient needs.
Max knows he doesn’t have to ask me twice, with just a look I will tend to his wish of going outside, or being fed, or being lifted to his lambs wool perch on the kitchen window seat where he watches leaves unfurl, robins nest, the magnolia tree flower, and where he sleeps while squirrels quarrel and climb electric wires.
At daybreak, when I’m with my journal recording a dream floating away from my mind like a bubble, Max appears and the bubble bursts, so I tie my running shoe laces, throw on my coat, and we walk.
These recent months the miles we stroll together are fewer miles. Max only goes so far, and then he pulls his side of the leash with all his might against my leading him to stride a little farther. I look at blossoms. He pisses on petals.
Then Max decides whether we will turn up the hill heading in the direction of the larger street, or stay on the level ground toward the water following the crumbling shoulder of our routine road.
Inside the house that Max no longer wanders far away from, I watch his canine legs sometimes slip on the hardwood floors. He stands and stares at me while I am washing dishes or folding laundry, and his Paw-Pads slowly slide a little bit out from under him, until he quickly rights himself.
Sometimes his hind legs linger a step below his front paws and he looks like a cartoon character clinging onto a ledge for life. Max has learned to always get a running start when climbing. He has made momentum his friend.
If voices are raised to shouts in the house, Max disappears into on of his pillowed places, the sofa cushions, the bottom of the bedroom closet, or the part of our bed between the pillows and the headboard. I know where to find him though and tell him it’s okay to come out now.
He finds me too. I remember after my first poetry class, I had handed in my final project of my twelve best poems. I was putting my copy into the closet where I put all my completed semesters. I sat in my office chair and started to sob.
The little white furry ball of warmth jumped onto my lap and blanketed the emptiness inside, beneath my heart.
Birds were whistling and trilling outside the office window with their high-pitched bird songs. Max breathed his sturdy steady breath alongside the beat of their calls and my sobs. His coal-black eyes stared through my blood-shot blue eyes, much the same way he sees right past himself in the mirror.
River Poets Journal (2010)