I’ve posted at Feral Mom, Feral Writer for five years now, blogging a random act of desperation I took so I’d have a writing deadline when I was nursing my third child and wondering if I’d ever get back the brain-cells that seemed to be siphoned out with the breast milk. But I’m seriously considering a dog blog: Thorn In My Side: Not Your Usual Dog Lover’s Blog. Because I both love and can’t stand the fact that having launched all three children (the youngest started kindergarten this fall), I suddenly have a fourth. She’s the runt of the litter, a beautiful, troublesome Siberian Husky my husband brought home to protect our family for the times he has to work away from us.
I’m walking the black borealis of the glittering diamonds of sand, signature of last night’s rhythmic retreat of the tide, wishing mother earth were not mere metaphor but an actual entity with the power to keep my three children alive for the duration of this week’s vacation in San Diego. My husband works til five, so solo I’m tracking three bobbing black dots, the chinned hoods of our children, one child boardless, drifting further out, a little in trouble I realize as I walk towards the surf zone dragging the reluctant Husky, the lifeguard pulling up behind me, megaphone chirping as he orders my flailing eight year old to stay where he can stand because of the rip tide.
A gradual dread sneaks up on me as the hours wear on and the waves thunder in and the kids beg to surf some more. This kind of parenting requires full body, full psyche engagement, gauging the lips of the advancing waves, gauging the froth and height of water for the five year old, tolerating the distance the ten year old and the eight year old drift away from me in long diagonals as they defiantly turn their backs to me despite my gesticulations to return to shore.
I decide to anchor the dog, wedging her leash under the cooler. She’s a couple hundred yards away from me as I stalk the sweep of five inch water before the buffers of broken waves trying to stay close to my little guy when a dog my dog barreled the day before appears over the dunes, leashless and sauntering towards our towels. I turn my back to the sea and my children, just managing to arrive in time as my dog bares her teeth and braces to charge.
I’m not sure where the break down occurs—it is usually an accretion of tiny, seemingly innocuous details. That’s how motherhood goes. I call the kids in and suggest they make drip castles on the shore; they fume and criticize my verdict while I fume and criticize our plight in my head, cursing my stupidity to not have stood better ground with my husband when I said I didn’t want to bring the dog on vacation.
Leaving the beach, we have less than two hundred yards to make it to the car. The youngest cries about a plastic truck he found and then lost in the surf. The middle child mocks him relentlessly. I’ve a wetsuit bag, a food cooler, a backpack, four towels, and now the five year old crying, “Carry me, Mom.” There’s a further skirmish over who gets to drag the favored yellow boogie board. To break it up, I order the middle child to take the dog for me. But within seconds, the dog escapes to nuzzle a military couple doing pushups near the outdoor showers. With a mere 100 yards to reach the car, the sun sets, my skirt salty and cold. The dog, when I get her back, pulls so violently on the leash she hacks her own breath short into hoarse coughs and sands the skin off my wrist.
Once my husband gets off work (ten minutes later) and meets us at the car, he doesn’t stand a chance. Neither do I. There’s finger pointing about the dog, retorts about who earns the money and who should take on which responsibility and jabs about the need to get outside help–none of which we can afford (the help or the jabs). I’m saying a particular swear word repeatedly I’ve never said before in front of the kids, though the littlest is still crying about the lost truck so I don’t think anyone hears me, including my husband, but internally I’m tracking where I’m going and I don’t like it.
We decide to eat. The kids peel out of the car in caustic bursts onto the grass under million dollar homes tucked behind Orange Avenue; I’m in the car alone looking for lip gloss and a dry skirt and underwear, ducking passing car-lights to change, stepping over duffle bags and DVDs and wet dog. Three pieces of pizza and a quart of lemonade later, I’m able to breathe again. Which is the point at which I make the plan to board the dog. Honey, I say, I don’t even take the dog to our beach when I’m alone with the kids, so why would I do it here in a city far from home on a high surf advisory day?
That night the images range across my mind’s eye: the look on my son’s face when he ran out of the waves to me, his breathless admission, “I was kinda in trouble.” The way my body felt when I realized I was too far away from him. The happy curl of the dog’s tail, the pale blue of her eyes, her black rimmed ever grin. Her absurdly big white fur lined ears, baby piggy pink, one with a lazy tip, the left, I think, but I have to guess, because she’s spending the night in Imperial Beach at the kennel. One more thing I could feel guilty about, if I let myself. But I just can’t go there, I’ve been all used up by the kids and chaos of the day. Or so I think.
The images persist, and before I know it, I’m up, sitting on the cold rim of the hotel bathtub, hunched over my journal. Just like before kids. Husband snoring. If I’m quiet enough I can sneak the coffee pot in here and make a cup of tea. I might even get twenty minutes of writing time before someone notices. Shhh…don’t tell anyone, I’m insanely happy: I write, I mother, and so far neither process eclipses the other.
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