In the past two weeks, I’ve written a couple posts on the crazy busy-ness of May with three teens and a kindergartner in the house, a globetrotting college student returning home, and a 10-month-old puppy in a dog’s body underfoot. The schedule has not relented: Continue reading
blessings
Airedale Chronicles: My Lord and My Dog
Bruno underfoot…
One of the best and most trying aspects of owning an Airedale “puppy” is Bruno’s relentless desire for affection and affirmation. In our household we joke that I finally have someone else who shares my primary love languages: physical touch and words of affirmation. If that’s true, I know now why I drive my wife and children as crazy as I do. As a little pup, this constant desire to be in contact with us and praised by us was adorable—less so when a fifty-pound dog (however young) piles into the back of your knees on the stairs, when he circles your feet while you are carrying groceries or sits on them while you are walking.
And sometimes I get impatient, forgetting he is not quite ten months old, and wish he would “move!” “get back!” or “go lay down!”
A week or so back I came home from work, and Bruno was waiting at the top of the stairs above our split-level front door, sitting lopsided on one hip with his big front paws on the first step down so he could better see who was coming. As I came up, he came down, making it nearly impossible to pass, and I told him to get back. He followed at my knee, nosed my hands as I sat to take off my shoes, then licked my pant leg. Continue reading
This Week Has Been Good to Us
It’s been a heck of a spring so far. I’ve been buried in work, not to mention snow and unexpected auto repairs. Jodi and I are like ships passing much of the time, except morning prayer, which we’ve managed to maintain. I’ve missed as many of the kids’ activities as I’ve made in the past month, but I see them in while I run, stop to stop, dropping them off and picking them up.
And Bruno waits at the top of the stairs, watching for someone to come in and up, casually stretching, closer and closer, straining for a pet or a pat, hoping for a walk or a car ride at least.
It’s go, go, go as the school year winds down—but this week has been something else entirely. Continue reading
Reflections on ‘Vocation: The Universal Call and the End of Man’
Blogger’s Note: This is a short reflection I wrote on Deacon Joseph Michalak’s Catechetical Institute Formative Session talk, “Vocation: The Universal Call and the End of Man.” Since I missed the session traveling to Michigan to see my folks, I was asked to write a short essay to show I had listened to it on my own.
Some years ago I wrote an essay about “the Jim in my Head,” a version of myself who is always a gentleman, always charming and courteous, always knew what to say and when to be still. That Jim, if he existed, would be loved and admired by others…but he became a source of frustration to me.
When I wrote about the Jim in my Head, he was meant to be a humorous sort of inspiration, but he became a yardstick with which to beat myself. I acted as though everyone else saw the imagined ideal and could judge to what extent I came up short. I fell into the “if-only” trap: if only I were in a different situation; had a different job; had more time and money, a different degree, etc. I finally saw the trap for what it was a year or so ago when I caught myself thinking, If only I had different gifts. The implication was that I would be a better person if God had made me better—as if the One who is all love had withheld something from me, or the One who is perfect wisdom had made a mistake. Continue reading
Airdale Chronicles: Blesséd Bruno
Bruno is eight months old today, napping in his crate in a Super 8 outside of Green Bay while Gabe and Trevor read and I write. We spent the past few days at my folks’ place in Michigan, which means Bruno got to spend time with their dog, Maggie, an older, big-boned Oorang type Airedale. Too old to roughhouse too much, but not too old for Bruno to begin to notice something different about her.
What’s it like having an eight-week-old male Airdale pup? I’ve said it before; I’ll say it again: like having a preschool boy who’s somehow going through puberty.
He got his first adult haircut a week ago. What a difference a day makes: he went in a big, woolly pup and came out a much lighter, leaner dog, clearly an Airedale despite a shorter than average cut (due to matting) and his corkscrew ear. He seemed an odd combination of energetic and embarrassed when we brought him back from our groomer—especially when Rosebud said he was naked. Continue reading
