I've noticed that whenever I've started to learn a language in a classroom setting, the building blocks arrange themselves differently from how they do if you're picking it up on the linguistic hoof, as it were. When in Italy on an art history study program, I found that I very seldom used the basic classroom building blocks-- ho una penna (I have one pen)-- but instead learned what was absolutely necessary to get by in an everyday setting-- vaffanculo (go f**k yourself) and vorebbe una birra, per favore (I would like one beer please). Such is the difference between learning and doing.
Back in a high school or college classroom, though, the first orders of business tended to be, for whatever reason, weather and family members. That it is unlikely I would ever walk up to a German person and say enthusiastically "Das wetter ist nett, ja?" seemed not to matter to my German professor. (I did, however, pick up from a German classmate the very useful phrase "ich habe doch keine anung-- verpiss dich," meaning "I have absolutely no idea-- piss off.") I suppose family members were a little more practical, but the language introduced to describe family-- generally father, mother, sister, brother-- was always very limiting, I thought. The colorful line drawings of families in their various capacities always seemed to be missing something to me, and I wondered: Wo ist der hund?
Where is the dog?
Our most beloved corgi left us more than two years ago. He was named for a 1950’s film noir actor, but was more commonly referred to as “Booger.” Even now, when I go home, getting up from the couch, I will check to make sure he is not sitting in his spot immediately below my feet. I listen for his collar and his brisk, businesslike trot across the hardwood. My parents’ house has an uncomfortable emptiness to it, and I honestly believe it is not because all of their children are grown. I believe it is because they don’t have a dog.
My family and I are, quite simply put, dog people. While we thankfully never reached crazy dog breeder levels of devotion (watch the Westminster dog show sometime-- some of those people are just plain weird), we also never saw the role of "family dog" to be essentially transferable; that is, we never thought that as long as a canine is in the role, one is pretty much as good as another. In fact, after our golden retriever, with whom my older sisters grew up, died at the ripe old age of fourteen, my parents never thought they could have another dog, because they had had the definitive dog. How can you replace the canine love of your life?
The truth is, you can’t. In a few years it became clear to my parents, however, that I needed a dog. There are all sorts of theories about how having a pet teaches responsibility, etc., but I don’t think it was about that. There was something elusive, some quality I just wouldn’t quite understand, if I did not grow up with a dog. It’s an environmental thing, something you need to soak into your skin at a young age, like a first language.
Since the thought of another golden was too painful for my parents, we looked into corgis at my grandmother’s suggestion. This suggestion eventually led us to a breeder and to our beloved Booger. The three of us, my mother, father and I, were down on the floor with him in about four seconds flat. My mother confided in me later that she never thought she could love another dog as much as she had loved our golden, named for a Welsh word meaning “beloved,” and she had been right and wrong. She loved them both intensely, but not in the same ways. After all, you never love two people in the same way, and in our family, you never love two dogs the same way.
Now, out on my own, living in a small studio apartment in the city and working a nine to five, I realize the folly in my wanting a dog. I couldn’t be a good dog owner. I’m barely a good plant owner (my African violet is much sturdier than it looks, let me tell you). But I still ache, really, honestly hurt for a dog. I’m that person who will ask to pet your dog with an almost pathetically hopeful expression on my face, and almost before you say yes, I’ll be down on the ground in a wool gabardine suit skirt speaking some language of endearment that only vaguely resembles English.
No dog will ever replace my Booger; I don’t think I could ever have another corgi. But I do know that I have this untapped reserve of dog love in my heart. I am putting down tentative roots as an adult: I own a sofa, I dust things, I hang pictures. In short, I’m making a home. And there will be a dog out there, someday, who will be miraculously shaped just right to fill up this odd hole I have in my life.
The whole is more than the sum of its parts. I never learned to speak enough Italian or German to differentiate linguistically between “house” and “home,” but in English I could tell you that home is a lot of things, which combine into a very powerful whole. And for me, one of those parts is inevitably going to shed and need to go out to pee in the middle of the night in the middle of the winter.
So then, standing by the back door in a draft, waiting for the dog to do his business so I can go back to bed, I’ll know that I’m really home.
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