Animal Hospital Walls

01-04-08.



I've only been in a veterinary clinic once before, but I remember a similar motif to the one I visited today: uncoordinated wall colors, and random framed drawings of assorted household pets. We were the only ones in the waiting room, but it still took about five minutes for Pete to sign papers authorizing the euthenatia, and another five for the vet to prepare. I started at one side and worked my way around the walls of the animal hospital.

First picture, first question: why would someone draw a picture of such an ugly cat? He or she must have really loved the cat. Still, wouldn't this artist realize that even though she loved the cat, no one else would value a framed picture of such a hideous looking creature? An inscription was printed on the bottom right corner of the matting: It's always hard to lose a family member. Thank you for easing my pain. With love, Cindy.

I moved on to a picture of a man with a fishing pole, glancing over his shoulder to his trailing dog. It was the very picture of man and his faithful companion - I don't know when artists will realize that this picture has been painted a thousand times over. I told Pete my theory that a dog is everything a man wants in a woman: good listener, rapt audience, non-argumentative, adoring. He nodded but didn't smile.

Across the room was a bulletin board smothered in animal-themed note cards and holiday pictures. One picture was of of a 30-something couple and seven rottweilers. I wondered if this couple had security issues or if they couldn't have children. The names of the dogs read like a top-10 baby names for the past ten years: Emily, Isabelle, Ethan, Ava, Michael... I decided that they couldn't have children. They looked really happy. The Christmas card said Happy Holidays from the Wilson Family!

The private waiting room was the color of a kiwi and had a couch covered in animal fur. Pete sat on a stool and I sat on the arm of a chair. "She was a good bird," he said, and I agreed. The vet came back with Max, who was still moving slightly but quickly stiffened in her hands. "She went to sleep very easily," she said. "I don't think she had a lot of blood left."

We wrapped Max in a cloth and placed her in a box. We thanked the wonderful vet who had said all of the right things and carried Max with such care. I glanced again at its walls covered by the affection of a rare breed of people: animal lovers. I thought, If I were to make an addition to these walls I would inscribe this verse:

Matthew 10:29: Are not sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God.

I have always had a somewhat sarcastic bent towards animal lovers. Yet somehow, I think their Christmas cards and ugly cat drawings - and our tears over Max - illustrate a small portion of God's love for his creation.

His eye is on the sparrow.

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Dreams of Jesus

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When I was a little girl, my mom would push my hair back with the palm of her hand and pray over my dreams. "Father, give Joy good dreams," she would say. "Dreams of Jesus."

I don't remember very many dreams of Jesus Himself, but most of my dreams were fun and colorful; I feel fortunate that I escaped childhood nightmares. What I have suffered most of my life have been pre-sleep nightmares. I've had them off and on ever since I was about 12 years old.

My pre-sleep nightmares occur when I get into bed and close my eyes. An image will come to my head - sometimes from a movie, other times from an article or book, and sometimes just from the recesses of my brain (those are the scariest). The image is of someone doing something terrible and atrocious and painful to me or someone I love. Usually I am in another country, and it is tied up in missionary work.

I don't really trust God to keep me safe. Pete said, "I'm trusting that God will take care of us in whatever way that He sees fit." I said, "I don't really know what that means." Sees fit? I trust someone if I think that he will take care of me and protect me to the best of his ability. God has the ability to keep me and my family safe, but the truth is, He may or He may not. And He hasn't promised to keep me safe; in fact, he promises that there will be hardships.

Right now, I care about my body and my emotions and my life more than I desire to glorify God. If bringing God glory required me to be abused or tortured, I'm not sure that it would be worth it to me. I would wish that I had stayed home.

But I'm going because I don't want that to be the case. I want to somehow see outside of myself; I want big picture vision. I want faith. I want to trust. Maybe I'll never trust that God will keep me safe, but I want to trust it's really worth it. I want to trust that I have a strength available to me that isn't my own.

I think that my dreams have been very much protected my whole life. I don't fear sleeping. These images that I allow myself to fall asleep to... I have control over that. I can take control over that. I can fight them, change them, refuse them.

I want to get into bed and have good pre-sleep dreams. I want to fall asleep to visions of Jesus.

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Poop Water

I woke up at 10:30 am and calculated the hours before I had to leave for work. Pete had just fallen into bed three hours prior after his overnight shift. I kissed him lightly and scooted out of bed. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and went to the bathroom.

The last part of this daily routine, however, turned out to be a colossal mistake. Because if you ever have spicy chili for dinner, you can pretty much bank on the fact that the toilet is not going to work in the morning. If you also ate the greasy appetizer, you should probably just find an outhouse or secluded bush. Which is exactly what I wished I had done as I inspected the toilet tank and began plunging a swamp of dirty poop water.

After about ten minutes of plunging and pulling on ever lever in the tank, it became pretty apparent that I wasn't getting anywhere. So I took a break and checked my email. Around 11:00 I went back into the bathroom, secretly hoping that poo fairies would have snuck in and taken care of it for me. Instead, I realized that the toilet bowl was slowly filling with more water. I plunged it down to a safe level, trying to use my peripheral vision to make sure that I was plunging accurately. I nearly barfed at the site of my own crap. 20 minutes later, I was angry.

"What's wrong with the bathroom door?" Pete asked.

"I slammed it," I said. "That's what's wrong with the door." I didn't care how juvenile I was being.

"Why would you slam the door?"

"Because I've spent half my freaking morning trying to get the freaking toilet to flush, and it's disgusting and I can't do it, and I need help." I plopped on the bed with childish dramatics. Then I followed him to the bathroom.

"Okay," I said, "but can you fix it without looking in the toilet bowl? Just, you know, lift up the tank lid and figure out what's wrong."He looked at me a little sideways. "Joy, why does it matter if I look in the toilet bowl? It's just poop. Do you think your poop is more gross than my poop?"

"Yes. I do."

He was being extremely patient. "Well, I want to help you, but eventually I'm going to have to look to make sure it's not overflowing."

Very suddenly, my face contourted and I started to cry. I cried big, loud sobs. I cried hiccups, gurgles, and spilling tears. "It's just so gross, and I don't want you to see it. I need you to fix it but I don't want you to see it. It's disgusting, nasty poop water and it's probably more gross than anything that has ever come out of you."

"Are you really crying because you don't want me to see your poop water?" he asked. I nodded yes, and he pulled me into a hug. Then he started laughing. He laughed big belly laughs... rolling and overflowing laughs. This made me sob even harder, so we stood together in the stinky bathroom, him laughing and me crying, and meanwhile the basin continued to fill up little by little. He took the tank lid off and began filling it with a lot more water than I had thought necessary. Then he pressed the flusher and lifted the lid to the toilet bowl. He saw me cringe and said, "Joy, it looks just like my poop water." The swamp began to swirl, and then it dissapreared. I can't imagine a dessert wanderer would breathe a deeper sigh of relief than I did at the sight of clean water. It gurgled up triumphantly and settled in the bowl

Sometimes I need someone to help me with my shit, but don't want them to actually look at my shit. It doesn't really work that way. What I need is for someone else to open the toilet bowl and then hold me.

"Your humantiy looks just like my humanity," I need to hear. "And I can help you.".

License and Registration, Please

I've been driving a car with expired registration for nearly two years now, and let me tell you that life as a fugitive has been rough. In the past when I saw a police officer in my rear view mirror I would simply check my speed and remind myself to keep a special eye out for stop signs and school buses. (Because, of course, the only time you don't notice the big yellow bus in front of you is when there is a police car behind you). But now that I've had this neon-reflective sticker on my license plate with the numbers "06" irrefutably printed, everything is completely out of my control.

I know it doesn't have to be like this. At least, I know this at a cognitive level. But between my out-of-state move, the missing title and registration to my car (as well as my missing birth certificate, passport, marriage license, and every other documentation proving that I am alive), I have started to lose hope of this process ever resulting in current license plates. Probably it will end when the government finds out that I don't exist, and they put me in exile or something, after I file my taxes, of course.

The bright side is that I have become an immaculate driver through this experience. This is because I treat every vehicle as though it were an unmarked police car, even the mini-vans with hand smears on the windows. All that this has really done is piss off the people behind me as I drive precisely one mile under the speed limit at all times. But the hand-smeared mini-vans have had no reason to pull me over and smack me with a ticket for expired plates, that's for darn sure.

My husband has joined me in my life of crime; his plates expired just a couple months after mine. I suppose some couples have worked out who the responsible one is going to be, but we're still battling it out to see who will cave. He did get pulled over the other day. I was in the car with him. When the lights starting swirling and he pulled over into a lot, I patted him on the knee and said, "I'm right here, honey." What I was really thinking was, Thank God we took his car, because he is going DOWN. In the end, the officer gave him a Promise to Comply, which is just like a Super Duper Promise with a dotted like to sign on. He'll probably get his plates taken care of, and I'll be forced to continue my unlawful ways alone.

Irregular Postings

Maybe now I'll get on the ball. I just read my comments from my Anne posting two months ago and realized I missed out on $90 tickets and an excuse to go to Prince Edward Island. I didn't think anyone read my blog, and come to find out that the production peeps from Anne and Gilbert the musical did.

I think one post a week sounds manageable. You can count on it. (I'm talking to you, Samantha, you encouraging and pesty woman, you!)

Suave and Death

As far as shampoo goes, I usually buy knock-off brands or Suave, which is basically a branded knock-off brand. (As an aside, it bothers me that Suave now has commercials, because I imagine they hiked the price a couple cents without my noticing for their new marketing campaign.) A couple months ago I was browsing the hair care aisle and I decided, against all of my childhood training, to treat myself with a pricey salon brand. I would use it only once a week, I decided. I chose Mondays, because it feels nice to start the week off clean and pretty. Suave and I would maintain our routine the other six days.

So every Monday around 6:00 am, I would rub approximately 25 cents worth of shampoo into my scalp, which really is a lot if you think about the people living for less than a dollar a day. And since I stayed faithful to my rationing schedule, the bottle seemed to last a long, long time. The line of liquid didn't seem to be diminishing at all. In fact, I started to think that it was like the endless bottle of oil that Elijah gave the widow; in a way I actually accepted this could be true.

But a couple weeks ago I noticed that the bottle was getting lighter. And then very suddenly, it was empty. I shook the bottle upside down and bewilderedly poured the last bit of expensive-smelling potion onto my palm. It was as I tossed the empty bottle onto the bathmat that I came to a new conclusion within myself:

Someday, I am going to die.

The eternal bottle of oil is my soul; as it says in Psalms, eternity is written on my heart. But on this earth, my Mondays are numbered just as finitely as my shampoo.

anne shirley

I admit that I am prideful about the natural color of my hair. This is not because I think the color itself is anything altogether special. Plenty of other women have auburn heads, and some even have eyebrows to match, which I do not. No, I am proud of my hair color because of how I attained it. When I was 12 years old, I gave myself red hair using only the power of my imagination. It happened in a moment of deep connection with Anne Shirley of Green Gables. And it hasn’t washed out since.

I wish that my miraculous transformation occurred as I was reading Anne of Green Gables, but truth be told, I prefer the movie. This is partly because Meghan Follows embodies the character of Anne Shirley so honestly, and also because Prince Edward Island, (to quote Anne), "is more beautiful than even I could imagine it." Also, the first sentence of the book runs exactly 152 words long, and I do not believe that a sentence of that magnitude was ever permissible, even in Canadian literature.

Watching the movie is nearly a half-day commitment, and one I never made half-heartedly. Even in my early days of Anne, around the age of eight, I would plan out my viewings with great intention, and would pause only for bathroom breaks. Despite the poor quality of VHS tapes, I remember feeling entirely transported into her world from my living room couch.

In fact, the feeling of transportation was so complete that I reflect on Anne's story as though I lived it alongside of her. I remember sitting next to her at the orphanage as she stared into the windowpane at the friend she had made in her reflection. I remember ducking under the blossom-laden branches as she rode from town to Green Gables, soaking in the sights of Prince Edward Island for the first time. I remember feeling like the future bloomed with promise when Marilla told her that she could stay at Green Gables. I remember the flame in my girlish heart that lit up when she met Diana and finally had a true friend. I remember feeling a different kind of flame in my heart when Gilbert first entered the scene.

Anne lived her story repeatedly throughout all of my girlhood. And eventually I realized that I was not simply living alongside of her, observing her. Eventually, my memories read as though Anne was looking into the windowpane, and my face was the one reflected. And the fact that I would say something so dramatic is mere proof that Anne is somewhere inside of me, or that I am somewhere inside of her.

There was one detail that Anne and I thoroughly disagreed upon. Anne considered her fiery head of hair something to despair, while I thought it a gift to be coveted. Here is how it happened:

I was 12 years old. I was lying on the couch, holding a glass of 7up while a pan lay poised on the floor in case I needed to hurl. Anne’s eyes were glazing over as they often did when she imagined the world differently than it was. She could imagine she had a “beautiful, rose-leaf complexion,” she said, and “starry, violet eyes.” But then she looked straight into reality and said, “But I cannot imagine my red hair away.” I thought for the umpteenth time how Anne's hair perfectly reflected her passion for ordinary life, and how lucky she was to have it. And while Anne couldn't imagine her red hair away, I closed my eyes and imagined myself with hair that glimmered like a new copper penny.

That summer, mysterious red highlights began forming out of my brown hair. And by August, someone called me a red head for the first time. "You think my hair is red?" I had asked. My friend looked at me suspiciously and said, "It is red. Right?" I agreed, "Yes, it's red. I just didn't know if anyone else could see it." I had successfully imagined my red hair into existence. Actually, the result of my imagination was more of an auburn, which is what Anne had always hoped would eventually come of her hair. My eyebrows are still a dark brown, and I'm not sure if that means that the red is temporary. But I've had it for nearly nine years now.

Shortly after I married last September, I watched Anne of Green Gables and the sequel, Anne of Avonlea, for the first time in nearly two years. For some reason, I felt close to tears throughout the whole film. I cried at the appropriate times, like when Matthew dies or when Diana is forbidden from seeing Anne. But I also cried at parts that I had never cried over before. I cried when Josie Pie falls into the lake and Anne says with jealousy that it would be "such a romantic experience nearly to drown." I cried when Anne gets Dianna drunk on what she thought was raspberry cordial. I cried when Anne nearly did drown as she acted out a scene from poetry in a little boat.

It wasn't until the end of the sequel that I understood exactly what was going on inside of me. At one point near the end, Anne tells Marilla that she is “18 now, and just as stubborn as ever.” And the last scene finds Anne and Gilbert standing on a bridge at the onset of their overdue romance. It was then I realized that I was older than Anne for the first time, and that I had just spent five hours mourning the end of my childhood with her.

I still see traces of Anne inside of me, but when I watch Anne of Green Gables, I am remembering when my life ran parallel with hers. In that sense, I miss Anne. And this is okay, because every season eventually moves into our memories so that a new one can unfold. And maybe someday I will have a daughter who I can share Anne with. If she doesn't connect with Anne in the same way, that will be okay too, because this world is full of characters who we can find parts of ourselves in.

At the end of the first of the first tape, Diana is forbidden from ever associating with Anne again, and they swear to be secret bosom friends for all of eternity. With tears running down her blotchy, tormented face, Anne asks Diana for a lock of her black tresses. Diana wails, "I don't have any black dresses!" and Anne says, "I mean your hair." Diana snips off a lock of her hair, which Anne tucks into her pocket before they depart to live separate lives.

Of course, my adult self knows that my red hair was genetically destined to reveal itself in the summer that I was 12 years old; perhaps the sun drew out highlights that had been forming all year. But the girl inside of me likes to believe that they are locks of Anne's tresses that she gave to me at a time when our lives coincided. I believe that I imagined my red hair into existence. And the Anne inside is proud of the creative power of my imagination.