It's time to write about Django.

     It is very hard to describe to people who don't understand, the love for a dog. A good dog is a member of the family. A good dog is worth 100 human acquaintances. Django was a good dog.

    Django came to our family in early October. He was just 5 months old. Avalon and I visited our local shelter to say "hi" and saw him. We fell in love with his smile, and his floppy ears. He chewed, he had accidents, and we loved him. He grew bigger, chewed less, had fewer accidents and played a mean game of fetch. He climbed mountains, chased seagulls barked at sea foam, and we loved him. He could jump 5 feet into the air to get a stick. He was silly and beautiful and everything in the whole wide world to us. We loved him. We love him.

    Before we got Django, our big girl Cricket, who had a rough beginning, was scared of a lot of things, she told us by peeing on the floor whenever she was scolded, whenever we looked at her, whenever she met someone new. When we brought Django home, she stopped peeing. They rolled on the floor. They bolted through the forest beside us, together. Wild dogs afraid of nothing. The fought over sticks and tumbled in the sand. Together.

    Django was a great nap buddy, and a great friend. He had a bond with all of our children, but a special one with Flynn. He was Flynn's furry brother. They played fetch almost every day after school. Django was special and beloved. He was cherished.

    A few weeks ago, on a normal Sunday, I decided to take a bath upstairs. Josh and the kids played downstairs. Just as I was about to get out, I heard a noise that eviscerated me. Outside, somewhere, a dog was screaming. My heart told me who it was. I frantically tried to open the window and it was stuck. Still he screamed. I finally wrenched it open and saw my boy in the road, a small thrashing shape in the dusk. Cricket was next to him, seeming to urge him to get up. She pushed him with her nose. He stumbled out of the road. I began to scream then. The dogs had opened our bedroom window. We knew they could and somehow the stick in the window was knocked ajar.

    Josh brought him in. It was obvious that something was so very broken. His back legs were wrong. He writhed in pain. I called the emergency vet, and they told me it would be 1/2 hour before they could arrive at the clinic. I vaguely heard my children wailing, and someone telling me to get dressed. I knew that he wouldn't be okay, but still I hoped. Josh drove and I held him, wrapped in a blanket. He thrashed and cried. We waited in the parking lot for what seemed like forever. I couldn't help him, I couldn't take it back. I sang to him, the Water is Wide, You are my Sunshine. I held him and waited. When the vets arrived they tried to stabilize him. They immediately gave him pain medication and he calmed down. I told him I was so sorry. We kissed him, said goodbye and went home to wait. The vets brought him home. I think they knew but they tried to give us a bit of hope. They stayed with him until he stopped breathing in the middle of the night, though we didn't know until mid-morning.
    I picked him up the next day. He was in a black garbage bag. I sobbed and stumbled and carried him to the van. When I got home, I sat in the garage and held the heavy bag, still warm, and I wailed. I can't remember ever crying so hard. All of my grief in the past has been quiet, private and polite. Out here, in the wild, I can scream for the ones that I miss. I think that people are supposed to scream for the ones that they miss.

    I dug a hole in the rain, still sobbing, and planted a beautiful tree over my boy. When I was done I had a crazy urge to dig him back up and hold him longer. Instead I held my children in my arms and we cried huge, raw tears. 

   It is still so raw. He was so young and so beautiful. He was our friend. 

   Weeks later, my children are no longer crying themselves to sleep. Cricket is acting more normal. I can look at his picture with less of that horrible ache in my stomach. But I can't ever describe how much I miss him. How much I wish that something had been done differently. There is guilt, and there is anger. My son told me that Poppy and Avalon have each other, but that he doesn't have a brother, he had Django. He told me that his heart would be broken forever. I wish that I could take back their hurt and his hurt.

    It's hard to see such a short life as anything other than a waste. He barely had a chance and it wasn't his time. But it wasn't a waste. In reading about grieving, I decided to write a letter to me, from Django. What would he say? He would say that his life was beautiful. He would say thank you for the beach trips, and the table scraps. He would say thank you for the fetch sticks and snuggles. He would say that it wasn't our fault, and that he had a great time during his short stay here on earth with us. That he couldn't have asked for better, or for more. That's what Django would say with his pure doggy-heart, so that's what I hear in my head when I think of him. 

    We have so much love to give, and Django would want us to give that love to another dog in another kennel. A dog with no one. So that's what we will do. Django, who kissed Flynn all over when he got hurt, would not want his boy's heart to be hurt. Django would want his boy and his girls and his big people to love again, and remember him with the joy of a fetch-leap and a wet nose pushing against our neck, first thing in the morning. There is a big risk in loving someone with a short life. 12-18 at the very best is a devastatingly short time. But for those of us who know that love, it is worth it. 

    We love you Django, so much. You were perfect and beautiful. You are missed more than I can say and there is a Django-shaped hole in all of us. We will love to to the moon and back forever. Goodbye boy.

    

Glorious

Today was absolutely glorious.

We snuggled chickens.

We talked about why they have dinosaur feet.

We dug holes.

We went hiking.

We had piggy back rides.

And super-silliness.

We marveled.

We abandoned shoes.

We found footprints.

We made footprints.

Discovered treasure.

And marveled some more.

Most of all, we spent a lot of time together in this beautiful place we call home.

It was a good day.

Someday we gotta get organized.... or how you can learn to truly cherish a mess.

      This sign hangs in my kitchen. It's a part of my growing odd-ball cross stitch collection, and it is my favorite by far. In fact, it's become sort of a mantra for me. Like most moms, organization is something that feels impossible. I have tried. There have been trips to the dollar store to purchase a zillion little plastic containers. Things have been craftily re-purposed  Labels have been affixed. Hair has been pulled. I have spent hours upon hours on pinterest poring through other people's kitchens that look like this.....

     And feeling like a failure. You see, I can come home from work, and spend a good hour organizing, putting things where they are supposed to go, and then moments later it looks like this...

      That is our art cupboard. The one that we spend 20 minutes every Saturday morning reorganizing. Making beautiful. I swear on sweet baby Jesus' bald little head that it takes less than 2 minutes to get into that state. It's enough to make my slightly OCD self feel like running away to join the circus. My eye starts twitching, and I get grumpy. When I am on an organizing rampage my children stay out of my way. And that sucks, because the cupboard gets messy for a reason. It get messy because we use it. My children pull out paper and crayons, they sit down and practice their handwriting. They draw pictures like this....

      They put stickers where stickers shouldn't go. They learn, they grow, they live and breathe in this house, and that messy art cupboard is evidence. Exhibit A: Messy art cupboard. Children live here.

      Exhibit B: Two little red shoes, under the kitchen table. Not in the shoe room. This tells a story of my small, blonde girl running in from the car after preschool. She throws her backpack on the kitchen table and says "Mom, I show you dis'!" She has concentrated with all of her might, using small, dimpled hands that don't always obey her and has drawn for me three beautiful pictures. She is so proud that it looks like stars will fly from her smile. She kicks off her shoes and throws her arms around my neck. The shoes stay under the table for one full day because we are too busy to notice them.

      Exhibit C: My microwave. Here we have a preschool workbook, a lunch box, vitamins, a school fundraiser packet, a betta, the reading glasses that I should wear, but never do, and two precious Winnie the Pooh books that my mommy used to read to me. Most of it shouldn't be there, but that's where it has landed on the way from one activity to the next. It's kind of a halfway point. 

      Exhibit D: The "later" drawer. That flashlight and camera will get batteries later. I will glue that Santa's hand on later. We will blow those candles out later. There's Avalon's Minnie Mouse board book, which I am putting aside to hide in our "important baby memories" storage container (okay, containers). I don't really know what the half-eaten candy cane and Life Aquatic DVD are doing there, but every item tells a story. A story of children who live here. A story of things that get "laters", not people.

      When I look at pictures like these.....

   

      I see that indeed, their organizational skills are far superior to mine. But I wonder, do people actually live here? Do children wake up and run down the stairs to be swept into arms, to spill cheerios on the floor, to draw pictures of kittens. Do people live here, feet firmly planted on floors that should probably be mopped, or do they flit around their homes like ghosts? 

      I have watched three beautiful children grow from tiny, squinched up butterballs, to tall, brave, intelligent, independent children. I feel as though I blinked, and it happened. I know that someday, I will get organized. But it will be at the cost of closing doors, goodbyes, and towering beautiful people that I somehow birthed, and kept alive into adulthood. It will be at the cost of large hands, too large to hold mine, and other places to be. A sink with a paltry two dirty dishes. Empty silences, walls free of fingerprints. There will be no hello kitty stickers on my van windows. No handfuls of dandelions in dixie cups. No rushed whirlwind of joy and crayons through my kitchen. Someday I will get organized, but it's okay that it isn't today. I have better things to do :)

      This may seem like a very long and overly emotional justification to a messy kitchen, and that's okay. I don't want to regret another lost moment.

Perspective I'm sorry dear, you're out of socks, And dinner is late, besides, But I helped Timmy fly his kite And showed him where a dormouse hides. I'm sorry dear, I didn't find The time to take the wagon in. Today a bird fell from his nest And we two put him back again. I'm sorry dear, but I forgot About the cuffs I meant to sew. We saw two dragonflies in love And then we helped a flower grow. (I did not write the above poem, but I think it's lovely.)