Mayflies and mayonnaise

According to the letter-sized sheet of paper taped to the wall of the seaside provisions market, “Justin” was a lost pet.

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Justin, the poster claimed, would answer by name and be attracted to ham and cheese sandwiches, but only those that weren’t slathered in mayo, owing to his vegetarianism.

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He’d been missing since May.

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I’m sure it was just a cheeky coincidence.

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What I was looking at in the super-detailed photograph that took up half the page’s real estate appeared to be that of an ordinary Musca domestica Linnaeus, though he was magnified about 300 times.

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That’s “housefly” in English.

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No relation to Ephemera vulgata … the “mayfly,” which, as a cousin to the dragonfly, should have stuck around through August.

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I snapped a picture as a souvenir and moseyed onward. It’s been a hot summer. The bustle on this crowded street is lacking its usual haste.

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Strange how a bit of whimsy poking through this straight-laced place, no matter the origin or authenticity, always brings me a fleeting amount of joy.

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I smiled most of the way down the block, towing our own found-hound behind.

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Despite the progress we’ve made to lengthen our walks from just a few steps to all along the beach and all the way into town, we can admit the puppy still likes to lollygag.

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He flits from person to thing, sniffs here and there, and sits with his head angled sideways. Eyes looking upward, past his wrinkled brow.

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We tell ourselves we need to socialize a dog of his demeanor. Open him up to a world of chaos and noise, and let him make sense of it; something our other dogs had been too anxious to work out.

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The shops here have been accommodating with their strategically placed water bowls, inviting us in to browse inside, not just the sidewalk sale.

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There’s always a line that promises a little taste of bliss, and with it a shady spot where the rest of the party can hunker down as we wait. You can talk to strangers. They will ask if they can say hi to your dog. There will be enough delight in that little interaction to go around even if the store sells out of whatever magic elixir it had been selling.

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Though it’s meant a pretty penny — what with the fancy accessories here and the adorable, handmade treats over there — the value of feeling welcome has few limits.

Being welcome is the thing that feels weightless.

His cute puppy face, I know, has an expiration date. Soon enough it will expand, turn rugged, his wrinkles will harden and become tightly defined. The curious expression he shows now will seem cooler and more calculating.

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The tones will translate their “oohs and ahhs” differently. Folks will stoically reclaim the space they’d given us.

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May would come again, and August would follow at a frightening speed, and everything would shift from small-world charm to large-world normal. The dog will be waiting for us at home while we stand in the queue for ham and cheese sandwiches. We’ll think nothing of the fly buzzing through the line.

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I wonder if he might be the long-lost Justin; I heard the aioli was vegan.

Police state

 It is reassuring to see so many county residents stand in opposition to the powers in Rensselaer County that are and will forever be on the wrong side of history.

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Dozens attending a public forum spoke in favor of the Governor’s law to end the so-called 287(g) agreements between federal immigration enforcement authorities and local police, which allowed some local officers to perform the functions of immigration officers, and also permits correctional facilities to house civil immigration detainees. Residents also took county leaders to task for their open defiance of the new law, which stipulates that agreements between the entities must end by August 25th.

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Both the Rensselaer County Executive, Steve McLaughlin, and the County Sheriff, Kyle Bourgault, have condemned the law, which stipulates that existing agreements between the entities must be terminated by August 25th. Both men have stated they will defy the law.

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They. Will. Defy. The. Law.

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What does that make them? Heroes? Or Outlaws?

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My belief is they are the latter.

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When they equate civil immigration actions with criminal behavior, they are more interested in politics than community.

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When they say they should be allowed to search for deportation-reachable prisoners in their system and turn them over to ICE, they are saying that justice for the local victims is of no importance to them.

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How exactly do police who will not be tethered to laws that regulate them make anyone safe?

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The answer is simple: We are not safer.

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This is what we truly need to be asking ourselves.

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Where is the oversight? Who are they accountable to?

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None of us seem to know, and no body (meaning legislative body) has the ability to tell police what to do.

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There seems to be no shared training, no true oversight; there aren’t even statutes describing what police work should entail. They make the rules they follow, and we agree to foot the bill.

ICE doesn’t even pay these deputized police to do their bidding. We do.

In deed, The Supreme Court has held on multiple occasions that police have no legal responsibility to protect anyone – even those with court-ordered protection except in very narrow instances. And that to give police any such a mandate would mean we would live in a police state.

But aren’t we in the same state when police are above laws?

I still reel from the sickening understanding — underscored by unwinnable lawsuits against departments that did not intervene in times of grave and mortal danger, qualified immunity, and the mostly toothless oversight by citizen boards — that accountability for police harm and corruption is almost unattainable.

How safe are we when police refuse to wear body cameras or turn them off, or when they provide contrary accounts than witnesses? What happens when they lie with immunity?

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Immigrant criminal defendants are entitled to all the rights that citizen defendants are entitled to; it’s the most effective way to ensure CITIZENS are treated fairly and have access to our rights. It’s also important that crime victims have access to justice, too.

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Democracy depends on the rule of law; it also depends on holding power to account.

Love in tatters

  I noticed the fraying bits and groaned.

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Ughhh.

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Another power cord turns into just another found-object art piece … made possible by the natural talents of the artist’s sharp puppy teeth working quickly against the momentary inattentiveness of whichever adult was in the room. Quite possibly me.

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Ughhh.

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I attached the wonky wire – now looking more like a gnarled, thorny vine – to my laptop, and it immediately started glowing with a satisfying orange light as electricity flowed.

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The repair list gets one, the replace list gets nil, though the two inventories are currently racing neck and neck.

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So far the tally includes two wicker baskets; three pairs of shoes, leaving all the right shoes unscathed; seventeen puppy pee pads, none of which had been soiled; four power cords, one for a vacuum cleaner; one for a cell phone, aforementioned lap top, and cord that came out of my favorite purple hoodie, which was still sad even though that cord only electrified me.

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Deep breath. Take a deep breath. Just breathe.

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Maybe it’s a gentle little reminder not to get attached to things.

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“Ah, I had almost forgotten those days,” laughed our neighbor as we greeted each other over the fence to swap news of the day … and various vegetables, as neighbors tend to do. Neither of us could remember when their dog was as small, or as destructive, as ours. The kids, however, could pull all the receipts, starting with a kitchen table that had so much of its foot whittled away that it seemed to be a fido-feat that it was still standing at all, let alone level and sturdy.

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One look … head cocked at a certain angle … a little whimper  … and all is forgiven.

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Though we know the blame is ours: we should retract the cords, or coil them up and put them away when not in use. We should confine the puppy to a crate or to a part of the room where he can be safe, and where things can be safe from him. It just takes a little more time, a little more effort, and a ton more resistance to his plaintive howls that such minor restrictions are causing him to suffer.

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Horror upon horror that he should sleep alone. In his bed. Without us cuddling with him under the cozy blanket. Without him pushing us with his paws to the farthest edges.

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He’s smarter than we are.

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I suspect this, not only because we have fallen prey to his sad eyes and the adorable puppy prance he performs when he hasn’t seen us ALL minute, but also because he has never once destroyed, damaged, or even performed a non-invasive squeaker-ectomy on a single one of his toys. He will drag them through the house, toss them up in the air, and nibble them as if he’s grooming them for fauxfleas, all the while cranking every decibel possible from each squeaker and every piece of crinkle fabric hidden inside. Yet not one tuft of fluff will be harmed. Not even the tag.

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But turn your head for long enough to listen to the sound of water boiling on the stove (watch pots), and somehow the toe loop on the left sandal you were still wearing is missing.

​I am not unmoved by this memory still in its making. They are like the noseprints on the window glass in the bedroom … the ones the puppy covers with sniffs and light kisses… The ones I couldn’t bear to wash away this time a year ago. The sandals won’t harbor space in my memory the way these translucent smudges have held space in my heart.

Animal instincts

“I’m going into the MATRIX,” my son announced. “Or more accurately, I’m getting the matrix out of me,” he laughed. “And I’m just telling you because I’m probably going to need a few days off of work next week.”

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It was a big moment for both of us.

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Since he officially became an adult a dozen months ago, he has managed most of his routine medical care without me. He’s dealt with dermatology, dentistry, and now the fascinating world of podiatry with a kind of determination I didn’t really expect.

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This procedure - a Matrixectomy - was a little difficult to wrap my head around… So I Googled what turned out to be a surprisingly generic description of the permanent removal of the toenail.

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It was the first medical decision he’s made on his own, having visited the podiatrist on numerous occasions hoping to fast-track the healing of a toenail that had become ingrown after an injury in high school.

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As I perused the pros and cons—conveniently highlighted by green checkmarks and red Xs, respectively—I had some concerns. For one, the word “PERMANENT” haunted me.

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Like the feeling of unease I felt when I had been the one in charge of signing off on his first-ever cavity filling and forgetting to specify that he would probably prefer a tooth-colored filling instead of one of those silvery ones that seem to make everyone look like movie villains, or at the very least like they’ve got a wad of licorice stuck to their teeth.

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Luckily, the dentist has phased out the mercury amalgam fillings now that modern technology has made the more popular composite resin version equally durable.

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Still, it didn’t seem right that he should go by himself … so I offered to drive him … you know … just in case the procedure hurt so much he didn’t feel comfortable behind the wheel.

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“Technically, this is a surgery.”

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He understood my reasoning, and obliged my concern. Also, he made no secret of his aversion to needles, nor did he disagree that maturity had not ameliorated the condition. It would be nice, after all, to have a hand to squeeze … for luck.

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Which is what I fully intended to be … a silent presence with an available appendage for moral support.

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And I was able to do it all through the preliminary moments … when the doctor – in one of the nicest offices I had ever seen – was dutifully preparing his big toe to have a portion of the nail excised and asking all the medical questions one would ask to be thorough.

My son answered with ease and accuracy as I sat mum and bounced my leg nervously.

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But when all was set and ready to start, the needle being the worst part, the doctor began asking other questions … ones I knew wouldn’t be able to distract him from the “pinch.”

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“Do you have any pets?”

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“We just got a puppy,” I exclaimed with the exaggerated excitement of a bad actor breaking out in their first role in community theater.

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“Mom, let’s just let your son tell me.”

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I took no offense. I understood what she was trying to do, and in a moment, with his face all scrunched in pain, she would understand what I had been trying to do.

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That’s about the time the office therapy dog moseyed in and began sniffing our shoes, then curled up in a corner and became a silent presence.

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“He does that when someone is anxious,” the doctor explained. “Somehow he knows.”

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“Honestly, I think he’s here for my mom.”

Suburban safari

Did you know a group of skunks is called a Surfeit? An overabundance of things. Other names, according to the Wild West Web, include an “Array” (referring to how families sleep in a den) and a “Stench,” which seems rather rude if not oafishly obvious.

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This is what went through my mind when I saw the low-slung mass of fur crossing the road ahead of me. I slowed, frantically checking my mirrors to determine whether the car following closely behind had noticed my caution. Then I stopped, completely, while continuing to monitor the rearview mirror for signs that the driver reflected in it would try to inch around me.

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My inner voice hammered loudly in my head: Where are the caution flashers? Switch on the flashers!

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I wasn’t sure what I was seeing at first: at a distance, it seemed to be some strange kind of fur snake, but up close, I could tell it was a mama skunk slowly bringing a train of six kits across the abnormally unbusy two-lane road.

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Which is why I felt mostly safe coming to a full stop so as to let the animals cross to the other side.

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I saw the other driver relax when the parade I was witnessing finally processed past the edge of my bumper and into his field of vision.

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I could tell from his expression he’d never seen anything like this either, and he was no longer perplexed by my maneuvering.

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I haven’t always been so lucky. Well, I have been lucky, but the Gaze of raccoons that wandered into the path of my car late one night in the summer of 1991 left their mark on my psyche forever.

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Truly, every bump I’ve felt under a tire after catching a glimpse of a hop-toad or a chipmunk, or a zig-zagging squirrel in the glare of my headlights has etched themselves indelibly on my soul.

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Which is probably why I’ve tried to think about all of the other wildlife encounters I’ve witnessed (joyfully) while on my “commuter safari.”

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The turtle I helped cross the road near school.

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The pair of rabbits that seemed to greet each other in the crosswalk in town.

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The fox twins playing near an alleyway in the city.

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The moose, moseying in the median somewhere on I-95.

Oh, and I nearly forgot the red-tailed hawk that dropped its dinner - a furry little package I assumed was a field rodent - on my windshield as I cruised home one evening on 787. … probably slipped my mind because I felt bad for the mouse.

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Finally, there was the solo white-tailed deer that leapt straight up, landing safely and soundly on a rock ledge six or seven feet above the sheer slate wall that bordered the roadway. At the time – the fall of 2018 – it seemed miraculous.

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Of course, it’s not a marvel … it’s just multiplication.

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As we meander around and carve new pathways into nature, nature has no choice to meet us on the road.

Baby, sit

The puppy is still cute.

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In the 21 days we’ve known him, he’s spent about nine of them asleep.

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But now his wide-awake hours are expanding exponentially.

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He barks at his toys when he’s happy. He barks when the cat won’t play with him. He barks in his sleep. Otherwise, he quietly studies us as if he were a mad scientist in a past life.

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The things we need to pay attention to include:

Poo on the carpet.

Pee on the woodstove plate.

Piranha puppy teeth on electronics charging cords.

Juggling the knowledge that our “feral” cat will just as soon eviscerate him for merely gazing upon her beautiful face, while our super sweet, loveable cat – the one with the fast parasympathetic nervous system – will resign herself to his use of her as an unwitting lounge chair with barely a me-OWW.

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We have been working on our consistency.

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We clean up his mistakes without comment.

We praise his triumphs with excitement and treats.

We replace the things he shouldn’t chew on with things that are his to tear to pieces.

And we remove him from the cat and bring him to the furnishings where he’s allowed to languish.

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Our repetitive interventions are beginning to feel like a workout.

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But I don’t remember ever loving any puppy this much. I’m sure I must have, I’d just forgotten the feeling that comes over you when a bundle of fluff high-steps into the room like a miniature pony, grabs his favorite toy, and then drags it around the room in zoom-y-circles until he abruptly collapses into a faux nap on the rug.

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He hasn’t learned his name. Or how to beg. Or the names of words we hope he will one day love: Like “dinner,” and “walk,” and “treat,” and “outside.”

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The only word we’re confident he knows is “sit.”

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I can see it register in his eyes as he looks up at me as I mouth the word, and he lowers his haunches.

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I hand over the treat to his soft mouth.

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I hung a set of bells on the door that leads into the fenced backyard, and of his own volition, he has begun to ring them when he needs or wants to go out.

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We were hoping he’d be a dog-door candidate, since we have one, and the last few animals would rather have a root canal than let a door flap swap them on the backside.

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He’s halfway there. We let him out the bell door, and he lets himself back inside by the flap.

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It occurs to me that he may be training us, as we always get up to lurch over him with a humorously macabre sounding “You rang?”

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Perhaps it’s just the timing. We are ready to welcome this mini multiplier of uncomplicated joy because so much around us has felt like unnecessary hardship.

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This pup is a breath of fresh air.

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Even the long-suffering cat, who has met all of his shenanigans with soft paws and softer squawks, has shown she has a sense of humor, too. Last night, while we were chilling out on the couch, Kitty just walked right on over and sat smack dab on top of him.

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I swear, she was smiling.

Some like it hot

Some like it hot.

Not me, though. I live for layers. Sweaters, sweatshirts, long sleeves? It’s possible that my semi-annual wardrobe “change-over” - where I drag the summer tote bin from the closet and swap the clothes inside with the winter togs from my dresser - is almost too subtle to be noticed as having taken place at all by the other folks who live in my household.

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“Oh look, mom is wearing her summer parka,” scoffs my son, to which my daughter laughingly responds: “I win the pool! I said we’d see the summer scarves just before the fourth of July.”

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“If she were to go where the weather suits her clothes, she’d have to live in the ice box,” rejoins my husband. “Hey, do we have any Popsicles left?”

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My eyes float into a standard upward gaze before their lids flutter back down and squeeze tightly closed. “You laugh, but it’s hard to go from the weather-lessness of the house, the outdoor world’s over, to the arctic chill of the indoors world.”

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Thing is, I’m not sure how to gauge this heatwave. I can barely compare it to my childhood. I don’t know if I can really trust my memories of the winters being snowier or the summers having fewer days of swelter.

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I do remember my mother joking about how I’d stay in the water until my teeth would chatter and my lips would turn blue. My kids can hardly remember a pool that didn’t feel like bathwater.

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Somehow, I feel like I’ve managed to adapt.

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I have adopted the verbiage I’ve gleaned from television weather people, pointing at a blank screen that only the viewers at home can see, explaining about the stubbornness of heat domes and how the sibling rivalry between El Nino and La Nina can make it all seem worse.

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I heed the warnings.

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I wake earlier to complete shortened runs; I walk slower in the shadows of trees and sprint through the streaks of sunlight. I drink more water. I draw the curtains during the day and do my gardening at night.

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Anything seems possible if you have no better options.

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The weather records allege Troy’s most extreme temperature - 108ºF -  occurred nearly 100 years ago on July 22, 1926. I can only imagine how they must have coped without the modern wonder and widespread usage of portable air conditioning units. I picture horse-drawn carriages delivering ice cut from the river in winter and stored in an ice house until summer. But I have no one to ask who might remember the experience first-hand.

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Comparison from memory doesn’t do us any favors.

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A part of me worries we don’t really suffer enough, not with the comfort of modern conveniences adding infinitely to the making of our modern dilemma.

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We adapt to the discomfort like slow-cooked toads.

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It seems we’re all waiting with bated breath for Mother Nature to finally have had enough of our shenanigans and make good on the promise to crank the wheel and turn this car around.