Soaking up the last days of childhood

 I might have been jealous. The neighbors had decided to ride out the final week of this New York August heatwave in Reykjavik. Iceland. 

Yes. There was no reason to be envious. We had just spent a fortnight hanging out in family hammocks and scritching our feet in the sand of a Maine coast beach. The luxury of successive weeks away from the same-old-same-old, even if it is the same-old same-old vacation, is no doubt a privilege.

But Iceland?

Just the sound of its name slipped off my tongue with a satisfying coolness.

ICE land.

But how could I be jealous of visiting volcanos on horseback … or soaking in a natural hot spring? They left their dog in our care.

A puppy.

(HOLDS HANDS OVER OUR GERIATRIC DOG'S EARS) 

The cutest, fluffiest, bounciest little bundle of bouncing fluff this side of the shared fence, which was constructed to contain her, would now be chewing up the edges of OUR carpets and eviscerating dog toys and spreading their fiber-fill guts all over the living room.

I couldn't wait.

Puppy shenanigans! The maddening, slightly painful behaviors that pet parents tend to forget about when their pooches are well past their blossoming adolescence.

But mostly, I couldn't wait to immerse myself in this next-door neighbor puppy's explosive energy, with its floppy bonelessness and unfettered joy. It feels a little like being a new parent again.

The things we all tend to forget as we settle into maturity. 

The neighbors did not want to impose.

We, similarly, didn't want to overstep.

All we needed was for the stars to align and undo one of the best-laid plans on international travel: the dog-sitter booking.

We can say with abject certainty that there is nothing in our home our dog could ruin. There is no floor unscarred by canine claws, no stick of furniture that hasn't had some animal or another curled up on its cushions. There is no rug we own that shouldn't already be recycled into packing material.

If we pull out the actuarial table of the age of our pets and the expectation that one day in the not-so-distant future when cleaning the house won't feel like shoveling before the snowstorm. 

The obvious downside not-withstanding: The house may be clean and tidy, but the children will be grown and gone. 

A temporary tidal wave of puppy antics is just what we need, I think, as the oldest packs her bags and gets ready to move states. It will also push the college freshman to consolidate her possessions to protect them from the pointy pricks of puppy teeth.

The boy thinks he remembers his own dog's antics and jokes about being proactive.

"I'm painting the chair legs with Tabasco."

But there is no need. The puppy is more interested in further defluffing our dog's previously dissected, and long-forgotten dog toys. Impressively gleaning enough fiber from the flattened floofs to fill a room with white polyester tumbleweeds.

I would delight in reporting that neither shoe nor couch cushion was harmed in the housing of their half-pint. And our own fledgeling couldn't have enjoyed the last days of childhood more.