A few days ago, while at the grocery store, I noticed that out of the folks who were wearing protective masks, a few of them had fashioned a bow on the top of their heads with the top tie of the mask. Particularly striking was the elderly woman in the motorized cart, grabbing produce, the top ties of her mask fashioned into a Minnie Mouse bow atop her head. It seemed so out of place: a contrast of an unexpected innocence and purity amid a merciless pandemic, a swarming store of covered people, whose expressions were hidden, fighting for the best bunch of bananas, and an accidentally gleeful cartoon of a woman.
The bow was akin to a bouquet of flowers centered on a table surrounded by a bickering family. It put me in mind of the pink flower my rescue beagle, Georgie Jane, cheerfully wore.
Before she was my Georgie, CALC0E, as reads the serial code tattooed inside of her velvety left ear, spent the first six years of her existence stuffed into a communal cage, being used for laboratory testing. She was then purchased and used by a college for a veterinary class, prior to her dump at a local animal shelter. She needed a foster home: a halfway stop between her past and her future, ideally in a loving home.
All too familiar with being handled, she froze and locked her little body when I lifted her from the kennel at the shelter to take her to my house to foster. She was programmed to
brace herself, reflexively entering her self-protective state in preparation for a poke or a stick. She vomited during our car ride.
Over the next several days, I sat on the floor with CALC0E, holding her kibble in my outstretched hand during mealtime. Scurrying up to me, she would arrive to snatch the food from my hand with a strained neck and stretched, ready legs, prepared to dash off to the other room as she chewed.
She watched me constantly. She kept track of my position and whereabouts, and I witnessed her pause to discover her reflection in a mirror when her eyes left me long enough to explore. She learned to play, choosing a dancing leaf on the ground outside as her victim, rather than the furry squeaker toys piled in the corner.
She learned to let me pet her without self-protection, free from freezing into defensive please-let-this-be-over-soon mode. I clothed her in a striped sweater. She accepted a collar with a nametag and a fuschia flower, which, after signing the adoption paperwork, I decided would be her trademark. It represented the pink announcement of a birth into a new life, and the “It’s a Girl” declaration to the world, bearing the name “Georgie.”
She was at once difficult and easy to love. She was challenging and a piece of cake. She is ready and apprehensive and timid and eager and nervous and anxious always. She is every side of me I cannot stand, and every part which I love and accept in her. She never settles, and neither did I; neither do I.
I rarely tire of watching Georgie while she is in her curiosity, though on running-late-I-need-to-be-somewhere days, I am impatient with the amount of time her snout requires to discover THAT pavement smell or THIS damp leaf. I am always worried when she wades through fall’s leaves (thanks to THAT time she sniffed too close to a copperhead’s bite). I can never see my television show over her body as she stands on my chest, the pointy part of her head pushed against my face. Recently, a pillow fort was necessary to prevent her from leaping onto me post-surgery and unfixing my fixed figure.
It makes me happy to hear her beagle bark as she sasses me into a cookie (read: carrot) after potty outside. I cannot help my amusement when I see her stuffed tummy after I catch her (again) breaking into that drawer where we should know better than to keep food. I purse my lips to keep from laughing when I tell her “it’s not time yet” as she tries to convince me she’s ready for dinner. She has a million nicknames, and answers to all of them. She is happy with her entire, wiggling body.
Don’t we all deserve a CALC0E: a pink sweater; a pavement smell, a leaf-wading, wagging, sniffing, curiously timid chance of letting ourselves out of a reflexively protective life and into a Georgie Jane one? I believe we all deserve to find the Minnie Mouse bow, or the fuschia flower, in the middle of what can be a pandemic of tunnel-visioned, I-was-the-first-to-the-bananas selfishness.
Author Bio
Lauren Mosher is a self-proclaimed escapee of the corporate world. She is active in the community with her volunteer work, both in animal rescue and human welfare movements. She loves pink, has resided on both sides of the river (but won’t admit a favorite), and enjoys living the good vegan life. Lauren now resides in Midlothian, Virginia, with her two rescue dogs and her husband.
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Before becoming a high school teacher, Michael Goodrich-Stuart wrote and directed writers professionally for more than 20 years. His first career was spent working as an advertising copywriter, copy chief and creative director in Michigan, Wyoming, Pennsylvania and Virginia. During his advertising tenure, he received numerous industry awards, ranging from Addys and Tellys to Caddys and Echos. Today he draws on his career experience in the classroom – combining a love for the English language with a past that paid him well for using it. Michael is a graduate of Michigan State University, where he wrote for The State News and earned a degree in Journalism. Sumo is his second pug. He and his wife, Jill, have had Bundle and Smokey as well. He also has four accomplished children, all of whom love pugs, their other pets, and their parents.