issues when I am in a vehicle on a slope. Not heading up, nor heading down. I can do those fine. But sideways? The feeling
of leaning over
like that?I become consumed with the thought of toppling over, rolling down and down and down into hell itself, and that’s basically why I hyperventilate the way I do. Tippy issues.
Would that I had discovered this disorder before I found myself living on a farm made up of nothing but large lumpy hills, and before I got me a husband who so loves motorized vehicles that the sound of his revved-up four-wheel-drive ATV turns him into He-Man who wants nothing more than to strap his woman onto the back of that thing and haul her off into the tippy sunset.
“Maybe another time,” is how I usually answer these invitations.
But not that day, a messy one by anyone’s measure. It was dusk. It was not a pretty dusk, the fog and the rain holding the sky close. Of course I got on the ATV with Alex. Of course I did. Soon I was hanging on to He-Man’s chest with my every fingernail fiber as we went bounding sideways forth and I was thinking:
tippy, tippy, tippy, tippy
. Followed by:
If this isn’t true love, I don’t know what is
. Followed by:
tippy, tippy, tippy, Hail Mary full of tippy, tippy, tippy
.
“Do you see that white thing over there?” he asked. “Is that her, or is that a sheep?”
“It’s too dark,” I said, which I’m pretty sure would have been true even if I were able to open my eyes. “We’ll have to try again tomorrow.”
“This is a disaster,” he said.
“Well, at least we didn’t bond with the dog,” I said, clinging to all there was to cling to.
In the morning he headed off again and I got out of thewhole tippy deal by volunteering to make lost-dog posters. I tried to avoid saying the obvious: This lost dog was a lost cause. We knew nothing of the dog’s habits; she was probably on her way home to South Carolina. We hadn’t even had a chance to put a collar on her, and she’d barely gotten a chance to sniff out our place and mark it with her own scent. Alex would hear none of this. In the afternoon he left with the lost-dog posters, said he would put them up at the post office and the hardware store and anyplace else he could think of.
Alone in the house, I thought: We should have never started this whole stupid sheep enterprise. But at a time like that it’s hard to tell where, exactly, the beginning of the story even is. Maybe we should never have started the whole farm enterprise. Maybe we should have bought a house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with an asphalt road out front and the kind of lawn people had other people come by and spray to discourage dandelions.
I was doing dishes when I saw Skippy up on the hill, staring east. Just frozen there in his posture of concern and dismay. That mule had long ago emerged the king of all our animals, and he took the responsibility seriously. Skippy was always on the lookout. I looked out. I traced his line of sight as best I could, across the fence and into the woods. And then I saw it: a large ball of white.
“The dog!” I hollered. I ran out in now my second pair of soggy slippers, up the hill, flip-flopping through the field to the edge of the woods. “The dog!” I yelled. “Skippy, you found the dog!”
“Oh, puppy, puppy, puppy!”
I yelled in the high-pitchedsqueal humans instinctively use to talk to puppies.
“You came back! Come to Mamma, sweetie
.” And
“Poochie poochie poo
.” I was crouching on my knees holding my arms out, like you do for any lost dog, even though I wasn’t supposed to be doing quite this with this dog. Um. How do you get a dog to come home if you don’t give it some loving to come home to?
More to the point: How do you not bond with a beautiful white dog that has come back to you after a night of running and whose coal black eyes look hungry and scared and who comes at you wagging her tail feverishly with love and apology?
“Luna, girl! Come to Mamma! Mamma
of leaning over
like that?I become consumed with the thought of toppling over, rolling down and down and down into hell itself, and that’s basically why I hyperventilate the way I do. Tippy issues.
Would that I had discovered this disorder before I found myself living on a farm made up of nothing but large lumpy hills, and before I got me a husband who so loves motorized vehicles that the sound of his revved-up four-wheel-drive ATV turns him into He-Man who wants nothing more than to strap his woman onto the back of that thing and haul her off into the tippy sunset.
“Maybe another time,” is how I usually answer these invitations.
But not that day, a messy one by anyone’s measure. It was dusk. It was not a pretty dusk, the fog and the rain holding the sky close. Of course I got on the ATV with Alex. Of course I did. Soon I was hanging on to He-Man’s chest with my every fingernail fiber as we went bounding sideways forth and I was thinking:
tippy, tippy, tippy, tippy
. Followed by:
If this isn’t true love, I don’t know what is
. Followed by:
tippy, tippy, tippy, Hail Mary full of tippy, tippy, tippy
.
“Do you see that white thing over there?” he asked. “Is that her, or is that a sheep?”
“It’s too dark,” I said, which I’m pretty sure would have been true even if I were able to open my eyes. “We’ll have to try again tomorrow.”
“This is a disaster,” he said.
“Well, at least we didn’t bond with the dog,” I said, clinging to all there was to cling to.
In the morning he headed off again and I got out of thewhole tippy deal by volunteering to make lost-dog posters. I tried to avoid saying the obvious: This lost dog was a lost cause. We knew nothing of the dog’s habits; she was probably on her way home to South Carolina. We hadn’t even had a chance to put a collar on her, and she’d barely gotten a chance to sniff out our place and mark it with her own scent. Alex would hear none of this. In the afternoon he left with the lost-dog posters, said he would put them up at the post office and the hardware store and anyplace else he could think of.
Alone in the house, I thought: We should have never started this whole stupid sheep enterprise. But at a time like that it’s hard to tell where, exactly, the beginning of the story even is. Maybe we should never have started the whole farm enterprise. Maybe we should have bought a house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, with an asphalt road out front and the kind of lawn people had other people come by and spray to discourage dandelions.
I was doing dishes when I saw Skippy up on the hill, staring east. Just frozen there in his posture of concern and dismay. That mule had long ago emerged the king of all our animals, and he took the responsibility seriously. Skippy was always on the lookout. I looked out. I traced his line of sight as best I could, across the fence and into the woods. And then I saw it: a large ball of white.
“The dog!” I hollered. I ran out in now my second pair of soggy slippers, up the hill, flip-flopping through the field to the edge of the woods. “The dog!” I yelled. “Skippy, you found the dog!”
“Oh, puppy, puppy, puppy!”
I yelled in the high-pitchedsqueal humans instinctively use to talk to puppies.
“You came back! Come to Mamma, sweetie
.” And
“Poochie poochie poo
.” I was crouching on my knees holding my arms out, like you do for any lost dog, even though I wasn’t supposed to be doing quite this with this dog. Um. How do you get a dog to come home if you don’t give it some loving to come home to?
More to the point: How do you not bond with a beautiful white dog that has come back to you after a night of running and whose coal black eyes look hungry and scared and who comes at you wagging her tail feverishly with love and apology?
“Luna, girl! Come to Mamma! Mamma
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