Crunchy is not a word that should ever describe one's bed. 



#lifewithdogs 

Silky got into trouble. 
   She was scolded and put out for the night, where she lay in her bed with her bun bun and cried and cried and cried, until she fell fast asleep. 
   In the morning, she was Silky again, bright and wagging. But she was still in trouble. Less trouble, but enough that she was not allowed inside. 
   All day she stayed out. She was quiet and calm, and when the sun set, she and Peter Pan pressed their noses to the back door, wanting in.
   'No, Silky,’ she was told. ‘No.’ 
   Silky sat and hung her head and looked terribly, terribly sad, not because she knew that she was still in trouble. For Silky, the trouble was over and done with. Forgiven. Forgotten. No. Silky was sad because Silky is Love. Pure Love. And Love just doesn’t understand not being wanted, even for one, single, minute.

“You’re it!” someone says. And in the twilight, Peter Pan is spun of moonbeams and the soft glint of stars. He races and reels, tumbles and twists, but can’t shake Harley and Silky Josephine, twin shadows Wendy-stitched to his shimmering hide.

Some girls sashay. 
Silky does too. 
Not her posterior though. 
Silky swings in the middle.


  

"Where are all the Fireflies?" Silky asks. 

   We're on High Hill, Silky, Peter Pan and I, walking and talking and wondering out loud. The sun has set. It's growing dark. Thanks to a late bit of warmth, there are still a few Fireflies. Five or six. Certainly not the hundreds of June and July. 

     "There gone for the summer, Silk," I tell her. 

     Clearly she is disappointed. 

    "The stars are coming out though," I say. "They're a little like fireflies." 

     Silky looks to where I am pointing, off to the east where the sky is most dark, and indeed there is a handful of scattered stars that sparkle like the mischief in her eyes.

     "Oh!" Silky exclaims, and she sits to watch them multiply as the night gathers around us. 

     Later, as we're walking toward the house, Silky asks, "Will the stars leave for the Summer, too?" 

     I have seen them fall and wink out. Gone. I have wished on their passing, when maybe I should have whispered a prayer. I cannot, however, imagine the night sky empty. Black as coal. Even after the Sun, stars, I believe, will shine. 

     "No Silky Josephine," I tell her. "You can count on the Stars." And we look up once more, to carry them with us, like diamonds, to bed.  

    

Since I don't know the actual day on which any of them were born ... Bobo, Peter Pan, Silky Josephine ... and I'm not especially good at remembering other people's birthdays, I gave them my own. So this morning we slept in and had a big, big breakfast and later we'll unwrap stuff and maybe eat ice cream, watch the sun set from High Hill and count the last of the Fireflies as they fade.

“Why do all the clouds look like Peter Pan?” Silky asks, “And none of them look like me?”

          We are atop High Hill again—Silky, Peter Pan, Harley, Bobo and me—looking upward into a sky afloat with white and bulbous clouds, which do in fact look a great deal like Peter Pan, in an assortment of his various sleeping shapes.

          My gaze had been intent on the smallest of these clouds, attempting to make it disperse. I held steady, noting some success around the edges, but could sense the four of them watching me, awaiting my reply.  

          ‘I don’t know’, is a phrase that does not exist in the vocabulary of dogs. For them it is better to fabricate an answer, than it is to go on without knowing. Not a lie, per say, but a true possibility.

           “Silky,” I say, aware of this thing, and look down the line of boy dogs to find her brown and anxious eyes.

          “Your clouds are night clouds.”

          Bobo and Harley look slightly puzzled, hearing me say this. Peter Pan’s ears perk. And Silky, her eyes positively dance.

   
           I go on.

         “They are rare and magnificent, black as your fur, and can only be seen at three forty-two, when the moon is blue and double full, and only the oldest of crickets is chirping.”

          I know they are coming—the questions—and stand after saying this, to brush the grass from the seat of my pants and rub the clouds from my eyes.

          So grows the history of dogs.