Bowled Over by The Donald

 Apparently, it’s World Storytelling Day, and heaven knows there’s no shortage of stories about my mom. One day, I’ll write those down, but today, it’s a story about a guy my family calls The Donald -- no, no THAT one -- and a little Corelle bowl. My mom’s part of the story too, so that’s a bonus.

In her later years, my mom used a little Corelle bowl for her morning fruit or evening ice cream. It was small and lightweight and easy for her to handle. She was a person who did not embrace change easily, so we had to be careful to use the same spoon, the same bowl, the same plate.

At one point, my mom ended up with a broken hip and landed in Memorial Southeast Hospital for an extended period of time while she recovered and rehabbed. I was with her most of that time, coming up early for breakfast and staying through until lights out. In order to make her comfortable, I brought her special bowl and spoon (and her favorite dish towel). I guarded them all carefully, making sure to remove the bowl and spoon before the Food Service people came to take the tray away.

The Food Service guy who came in every day to take her order was a young guy named Donald. He was a short guy, kind of quiet, with longish hair, who seemed to know everyone and who all the staff knew. We joked because he was so super-mellow, we were certain he was out in the parking lot smoking weed before work. He struck us as the guy least likely to work in a hospital.

He was chatty and helpful and began to anticipate my mom’s likes and dislikes. He would ask her if there was something special she’d rather have, and when he showed up with a sweet potato for dinner one night, I knew I’d been moved to the #2 spot. He would add Diet Cokes to my mom’s order because he knew I’d like them. The Donald was a good guy. He knew about The Bowl and accepted it with good humor. I would text my family with the day’s Donald report. 

After we left the hospital, we talked about Donald and wondered if he was thinking about us. I realized
when we got home that I’d left The Bowl behind. I must have forgotten to remove it from the tray on the last day. It wasn’t the end of the world, because we had two of them, so every night I had to be sure to wash the remaining one. Still, I thought about that bowl and wondered if someone just threw it out and wondered if they knew about my mom’s affinity for it. 

Then, as happens, there was another fall and another hospital stay a year or so later. Mom, The Bowl and I went back to the hospital. We didn’t stay as long, and we didn’t see The Donald. The girl who took our order said he’d been promoted and spent his days in the Food Service Department rather than on the floor with patients. I was glad for Donald, but I really missed having his mellow vibe around. 

My mom went to a rehab center across the street from the hospital for several weeks, and one day, I walked over to the hospital for lunch. (I know that sounds weird, but the salad bar at Memorial Southeast is really good. And cheap.) I took my tray and sat down at a table. I looked up and a couple of tables over, I spied him. The Donald was having lunch with a group of people. I was so startled to see him, I guess I said, “Donald!” out loud and much louder than I realized. He looked up, saw me, got up from his lunch and said to me, “Don’t leave!” He ran out of the cafeteria. His lunchmates and I just stared at each other. 

He was back in a minute or so. With my mom’s bowl.  

And that is the story of the time I burst into hysterical tears in the Memorial Southeast Hospital cafeteria. Donald said, “I didn’t know how to get in touch with you, but I saved it just in case.” I threw my arms around him and thanked and thanked him through my tears. I tried to tell him how much his kindness meant. Being a caregiver is a hard job, and what he thought was “no big deal” was a moment that I will remember forever. For someone to remember my mom and be worried enough to save her bowl was so meaningful to me.

I was gushing and gushing about how wonderful he was, and his lunchmates just looked on, sort of confused and sort of figuring this was just part of the essence of Donald. I said, “I want to write to your boss and tell them how wonderful you are! Can you tell me who I should write to?”

A lady at his table said, “I’m his boss. I’m glad I was here to see this.” I wrote her a letter anyway so it could go in his file and tweeted it out to the Memorial Hospital account because I wanted the whole world to know how one person changed two lives that day.

The next time we ended up at the hospital, I asked about Donald, but he’d moved on by then. I think about him from time to time and remember how he made a hospital stay a little more entertaining. I think about how it felt to be the recipient of kindness and how it affected me then and how it affects me even now.

I hope The Donald knows he’s part of Horrigan family folklore. If Houdini were a person, he'd be Donald. 

 

Where I'm Bound

I think I’m on record with my love of list-making, and it’s fair to say I spend a fair amount of time fantasizing about being somewhere other than working or studying. Lately, I’ve combined the two into a list of fictional places I’d like to visit. I’m not saying I’d like to live at any of these places necessarily, but an afternoon there would not be out of order. I narrowed the list down to 10, making some hard cuts as I went. 

The Night Circus. This was a book-group pick a few years back, and I really have never stopped thinking about it – the story, the writing, the imagery. Have I bought her new book? Of course! Have I opened it? No! (See above re: class.) The lighting of the clock? I would give up the 50 cents left in my 401(k) to witness that. The cloud maze? Yes, please. “There is no beginning. There is no end. Enter where you please, leave when you wish, have no fear of falling.”

Pine Valley, USA. Yeah, sue me. I was an avid All My Children watcher. Planned my days around it, learned to set a VCR because of it. Apparently, it was in suburban Philadelphia, which I do not believe and do not like and I’m happy I didn’t know that at the time. For a quiet suburb, a lot of shit went down in PV. You know what I’m talking about. I sooo would love to be lunching at The Chateau when Erica Kane Martin Brent Cudahy Chandler Roy Montgomery Montgomery Chandler Marick Marick Chandler breezed through the door. I would stop by the lake to scream, “Jenny! Get off that jet ski right this minute!” or “Nina! Wake up, you ninny! Mrs. “Sloane” is your grandmother!” Ooops, sorry for anyone who didn’t see that coming.

Rick’s Café Americain. Okay, if you don’t want to go here, check your pulse. There’s a lot of champagne cocktails being served, a jazzy piano player, and for the right person, some exquisite “jewelry” if you get my drift. If you don’t, you’re not allowed in. “What’s your nationality?” “I’m a drunkard.” Makes me laugh every single time I hear it.

Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse. (The one from the movie, not Disney World.) This swankienda in the treetops was the height (haha) of luxury to my seven-year-old self. I think I first saw it in the parish hall at Mt. Carmel when the CYO had movie night. (There was no shortage of G-rated movies there.) Those cool rope bridges and that skylight! Plus, it kept the tigers at bay. If you got bored, you could ride an ostrich if you got time off from making bombs to hurl at pirates. Bonus! You got to wear the mom’s frilly pink dress while you danced around with Fritz. (Take that, Ernst!) 

The Castle in Enchanted April. I guess this is probably a real place, but it’s my list, so I get to make the rules. Because a month in San Salvatore sounds pretty darn great (except maybe not right now…). There’s a cook as I recall, so I’ll probably spend more than a day. Probably a month. Right after March. Wait a minute…. BRB, going to look for my passport.

Grace & Frankie’s beach house. Okay, I realize technically this is a real place, but again, I don’t care. It just seems like a super-cozy spot to spend some time. Comfy cushions, chairs overlooking the beach, a pool and a fridge that always seems to be stocked. I’m in -- as long we can 86 all the visitors.

Wallace and Gromit’s kitchen. I love breakfast, but I hate having to get up and actually make it. At W&G’s, I could have the best of both worlds. More really, if you think about it, since I won’t actually have to get out of bed to reach the kitchen table.

Manderley. Yes, I admit it’s creepy, but I’d like to just poke around without Mrs. Danvers skulking about. The gardens seem pretty nice, but I am staying away from the boat house.

Frasier Crane’s Apartment. #1901 at the Elliott Bay Towers on the Counterbalance in Seattle, which I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t have to Google. I don’t want to stay long, but I would like a tour and maybe a glass of wine. Why on earth with all that room is the kitchen so small?

Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. This is SUCH a no-brainer for any list like this that I almost left it off. I don’t want anything bad to befall me, and I’m not wild about being blasted out of a building in a glass elevator, but I’d totally be up for a tour and tasting. 

So tell me, what fictional location would  you like to visit? 

#5 In My Program, #1 in My Heart

If I think really, really hard, I can remember a time in my life before I was a Johnny Bench fangirl, but it’s so hard to do that I don’t bother anymore. I’m not sure when it started, probably sometime during the heyday of The Big Red Machine in the '70s. I feel certain I was the only girl on my fifth-grade softball team in suburban Houston who could name the starting lineup for the Cincinnati Reds. 

I lived for Johnny Bench. I checked the box scores to see when he hit homers. I would race home from school to watch the World Series day games. When the Reds came to town to play the Astros, I begged my dad to take me. When #5 fired down to second base to cut off a runner, it was like a religious experience. Those arms! That smile. Even now, I’m a sucker for a cute catcher. Johnny Bench’s personal life was not really discussed in our house – for good reasons. Let’s just say…. it’s checkered. 

But I was hooked. I hung a Johnny Bench poster in my bedroom closet, where, I might add, it stayed for 40-something years until last fall when I finally had to take it down when we sold the house. I started the Johnny Bench fan club of my besties on the street. They all had to agree on certain inalienable truths: Johnny Bench was the greatest ball player of all time, 5 was our favorite number and red was our favorite color. I think my dad even took the three of us to a baseball game to see him play, which frankly (haha) probably qualifies my dad for martyrdom.

My worlds collided when Johnny Bench appeared on an episode of The Partridge Family (not as momentous as the Bobby Sherman guest spot, but darn close). It was season 3, when they all go to a theme park in Cincinnati. Johnny Bench plays a waiter, and while he only has one line, “Can I get you something to drink?”, he knocks it out of the park so to speak. (haha #baseballjokes)

I’m telling you all this so that you will understand how I came to be shrieking in the mail room of the NCIDQ offices in the late '90s. By shrieking, I mean making noises that had my coworkers running back to see if I was okay, only to find me shaking, unable to speak and holding a postcard from the Cincinnati Convention and Visitors Bureau. I was registered for a big event-planners’ meeting, and the Cincinnati CVB was bringing Johnny Bench to work their booth! My postcard listed a time for me to show up (lest Johnny Bench be mobbed by fans?), and believe me, from that moment on, I was lasered in to the schedule.

My mom was a rabid Pete Rose fan (a topic for another post), and she actually mailed Charlie Hustle birthday cards pre-scandal. She made me swear I’d ask Johnny Bench if Pete Rose ever got her cards. Admittedly, this was going to be awkward since by this time, Pete was long since disgraced. But I promised her I would.

When my time approached, I purposefully made my way to their booth, and there he was. The man of my childhood dreams. My heart was pounding. I was this close to the greatest catcher of all time. Part of the attraction in the booth was that the CVB people would take a Polaroid photo of you with Johnny Bench, and he’d autograph the photo holder. I think he might have put his arm around me; that part’s a bit of a blur. He was kind enough to tell me to take off my name tag so the picture would look better. What a nice boy, as my mom would say.

Anyway, I’m certain I babbled and said stupid things about the Johnny Bench fan club. I do recall asking about Pete Rose’s birthday cards, and I think that’s when Johnny Bench decided he needed to talk to someone else. 

I took my autograph and went to find a quiet spot in the convention hall where I could call my mom and tell her what had happened. I realized as I was talking to her that I’d left my name tag in the Cincinnati booth. I backtracked to get it and I could see it on the counter right by where Johnny Bench was standing. As I walked up, he called out, “Hey Kathleen! You left your name tag!”

In that moment, all I could think of was JOHNNY BENCH KNOWS MY NAME! It was the greatest moment of my life. Me and Johnny Bench – on a first-name basis! He clearly remembered me, probably because I was the only person in the entire convention hall who was such a super fan and such a sparkly conversationalist. 

It was probably 10 or 15 euphoric minutes later when it hit me: It was a name tag. With KATHLEEN printed on it in big black letters.

Out by a mile.

One Picture, 1000 Words*

Twenty years ago last weekend, I was in Miami running Christmas in April’s Kickoff to Rebuild event. Christmas in April partners with the NFL to rehab houses in the host city each year. (Christmas in April is now called Rebuilding Together, btw, and they’ll be in Atlanta on Saturday working.) The year I did it, it was the hardest job I’ve ever had. It was pretty much five months of non-stop work. By non-stop, I mean, phone calls on Christmas Eve about Coke sponsorship kind of non-stop work. It was the only time I ever heard someone say to me, “Miss America is on the phone for you.”

I knew the work Christmas in April did; I’d been a local volunteer and house captain for several years in DC. But what I saw in Miami was altogether different. These houses were in terrible shape. I could write many stories about that day, but I’m focusing (haha) this one photo.

Pretty unremarkable, right? Twenty years ago, this ceiling fan made me cry. The picture can still move me to tears. 

Twenty years ago, I was walking through the house, taking “after” photos, and I saw this ceiling fan. I remembered what I’d seen a few weeks earlier when we’d first met the homeowners and started to outline the work to do. There was a hole in the ceiling that opened up to the outside. Three little girls slept in one bed, and when it rained, they covered up with a piece of plastic. The mom said that yes, it was hot in the room, but if they turned on the fan, they got shocked. The girls thought they’d be electrocuted if they turned it on in the rain. The only other place they might have slept was on the floor in the living room, but the cinderblock walls were painted black for some inexplicable reason, and they didn’t want to sleep in a dark room.

So they slept in the rain, in the heat, hoping for the best. 

When I asked them what they wanted for their room, they said they wanted a roof and a fan. They could have said a new bed, or a coat of paint or some new furniture. But all they wanted was literally a roof over their head. (We got them the other stuff, too.)

That afternoon, when I stood there in their doorway and saw that fan, I cried. One of the Sears guys who’d been working in the house, came up behind me and said, “You know it’s just a fan, Kathleen.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said to him. “It’s so much more than that.” I didn’t tell him the whole story, and he walked off, probably nervous about the girl crying over a fan. 

I think about that weekend from time to time, and certain things stand out. The Christmas Eve Coke sponsorship, Kathie Lee Gifford’s insistence that she not be recognized in any way and then complaining when her name wasn’t on a chair on stage, some football players who, when I needed some appliances moved down the street to a house, just picked them up and walked up the street with them. Kevin James showing up in a limo and no one knew who Kevin James was, including me. 

But it’s the fan moment that brings me back to the purpose of why we were there. If you get the chance to make a difference in someone’s life, you should do it. 

*Really, 582 words

Full House: A Love Story

My childhood home belongs to someone else now. 

Today, after 48 years and change, we closed on the sale of 11115 Sageriver Drive.

We weren’t really planning to sell after Hurricane Harvey filled the house with nearly two feet of water last August. We thought we’d rebuild like we’d done before, but then an offer to buy it as-is fell into our laps. “Are we serious about selling?” we asked each other. “How much is the house worth?” “Should we hold out for a FEMA offer?” “What would it take to renovate it?” We begrudgingly admitted that we were all nearly 40 years older since that first flood and the five more that came after it, and we just didn’t have it in us to do it again.

And now the Sageriver house, our “home of prosperity and prestige” (as Sagemont was marketed in its early days), belongs to our plumber, Carlos. He’ll renovate it and rent it, and I want the next family to know what we’ve learned over all these years together. I feel like I should mark where the Christmas tree is supposed to go or the spot in the garage that’s best for marking heights of the kids over the years. I want to put little flags in the yard to mark the best place to hide Easter eggs or put a note in the mailbox to warn people that lizards like to hide in there. I want to leave a schematic so they know where the dad’s chair is supposed to go and where they’re supposed to put the big chair to rock the kids in. I want to show them how to make a family pyramid in the back yard. I want to explain that they should leave this hook right here because this is where you hang the annoying bell every Christmas that plays Jingle Bells and grates on your nerves but you put up every year anyway. I want to leave a note to tell them that if they put the clock here and sit here, they’ll be perfectly positioned to see the clock flip over to 6:00 every evening. I want to art direct: “Stand here for your senior prom photo; it’s a good backdrop!”

How will they know that the Easter lily goes on the right side of the window sill in the kitchen? Will they plug in a princess phone in the jack in the upstairs bedroom to the delight of a 10-year-old girl who will pretend to call David Cassidy on it? Will they know the newel post is rubbed smooth because a zillion little (and big) hands have swung around it on their way down the stairs? Will they know that the contraption we left in the garage is for picking up pecans that have dropped from the trees my dad planted in the back yard? How will they know to put their stuff up on cement blocks when rain starts to creep up the driveway?

How will they know where to put “their” stuff in “our” house? What will it be called if it's not "the Horrigans' house"?

Many of you will remember how it came to be “my” house in the summer of 1970. It was exciting because it was the first time my parents ever relented and let me go to sleepaway camp with the Averitts. Little did I know that while I was swatting mosquitos in Garner State Park, they were moving into this house. I got dropped off at a strange two-story house with my family and all my stuff in it. My big red swing set was in the back yard. Sageriver was now “my” home.

I remember those early days well because I felt rich for the first time in my young life. This house had a double garage and driveway, central air conditioning and (gasp!) wall-to-wall

carpeting. There was a dishwasher, and it was built into the counter! I had only seen these things in movies or on TV.  It had a clothes dryer! Right in the garage! We could wash and dry clothes on rainy days. We had definitely moved up. $18,000 got you a lot of house in 1970 if you didn’t mind living in a former rice paddy. 

My dad let me pick out a paint color for my room. I chose “Crocus” even though I didn’t know what a crocus was. It was purple, and that was enough. Now, crocuses bloom in my neighborhood in Arlington, and they always take me back to that sunny purple room on Sageriver. I got a new comforter set (A comforter! In a set! Like the rich people have!), and my room really did have a phone in it. You think Sissy on Family Affair didn’t envy me? I knew she did. My dad was adamant that there be no thumbtack holes in my new walls, which posed a problem for my collection of Tiger Beat photos of David Cassidy. He made me a giant bulletin board that was probably six feet long, and I spent hours arranging and rearranging the photos. A few years later, after David Cassidy had given way to newspaper clips and high-school mementos, I lay on the shag carpet in my crocus-colored room, put some headphones on, cranked up the volume and listened to the Born to Run LP a thousand times.

My mom always said she bought the house because it had one giant living room (no dining room for this crowd) and a kitchen on the

front of the house. For nearly 50 years, we watched all the street activity from those giant kitchen windows. The kitchen table is the stuff of legends. It was more than our evening ritual spot (yes, we all ate together every night), it was Ground Zero for Sageriver.

My mom wrote her mother a letter every week sitting at that table. “Dearest Mother,” they all started. A steno pad of news between Houston and Chillicothe, Missouri every week. We had a zillion birthday cakes at it. I don’t even want to think how many green bean casseroles were served on it, how many Cheerios were eaten at it or how many cups of coffee or glasses of iced tea were served at it. Countless chocolate-chip cookies cooled on it. We wrote our thank-you notes for Christmas and birthday gifts to our relatives at it. My dad did his “homework” at it with me at his side, stapling like a fiend. Later, he tried his best to teach me algebra at it. My mom typed term papers at it (for me and every UH band kid). At least two Dobie High School yearbook endsheets were drawn at it. Jim and David hunched over the table with their black Flairs, laughing at their own jokes as they drew. Fortunes of as much as three dollars were won and lost over Tripoley games at the table. 

We sat around that kitchen table on a horrible day in the spring of 2000 and agreed to let my father die. “Are we holding on because we’re not ready to tell him goodbye?” we asked each other. We concluded easily that yes, that’s exactly what we were doing. Saying goodbye is never easy. We agreed that sometimes, though, the right thing is to let go gently and trust that it will be okay in the end. 

And so we did. And it was okay then and it will be okay now. Another family will live in this house and make some memories of their own. I doubt the term “Sageriver” will be as cemented in their family lexicon as it is in ours. I hope in the quiet moments, they will hear the echo of five decades of laughter and feel the love that manifested itself in small and enormous and goofy ways.

Today, after all the papers were signed, we discovered that one of the pecan-tree branches cracked under its own weight and fell toward the house. It hit the roof, but thankfully, it didn’t do any damage.

When a magician dies, his wand is ceremoniously broken to indicate that the magic is gone. I think that branch was my dad letting us know that this was the right time to let go. I’m just grateful that he left us a sign to let us know he was serious, but not so great that it did any real damage or can’t be easily cleaned up.

We had a good run, but now it’s time to go. Six floods and this many Horrigans – that’s a good run by any measure. We took the things that were most important (the memories and the kitchen table) and because we’re Horrigans, we left behind something that made us laugh.

Adios, old friend. 

The World Serious

It’s World Series time, and I’m watching it with a plastic container of Chex Mix within arm’s reach. Why? Because that’s what my family does when it’s World Series time.

Why?

In the words of that famous baseball sage, Tevye, “tradition.”

Somewhere beginning in the early 1970s, watching the World Series with Chex Mix became a religion in our house. My brother and I would race home from school for an afternoon game and sit with our salty fingers, entranced by Rollie Fingers’ mustache or Joe Morgan’s “chicken wing.” I’m pretty sure this is when I first took notice of Johnny Bench, since it seemed like the Reds were always in the World Series. My Johnny Bench crush was real. Is real. If you can’t quote Johnny Bench’s one line of dialogue from that episode of The Partridge Family, then you are not a real fan. One day, maybe I’ll blog about The Johnny Bench Incident, when I met my baseball hero in person as an adult. It was simultaneously exhilarating and humiliating, as most of my celebrity encounters are.

Our mom was a Pete Rose fan. She sent him a birthday card one year. We knew from our mom that “Reggie Jackson bought his mother a Cadillac,” so we knew where the bar was when it came to gifts. Periodically, she reminds of this even now. Why?

It’s tradition.

This World Series of Chex Mix Eating has made me think about family traditions. What I concluded is that, not surprisingly, my family’s are funny. My family is funny. We think we are the funniest people on the planet. We think we are so funny that we are collecting sitcom material based on our family, and we have our Emmy acceptance speech nearly finished. So, we’re funny -- and overly confident. And a bit delusional.

If you ask someone in my family, what’s for dinner, they will say, “Bushes.” It’s hilarious.

If you say “Oops,” someone will immediately ask, “What’d you say?”

(Do you want to know how many Cosby albums were passed down in my family? Answer: all of them.)

Seeing a digital clock turn from 5:59 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. and being the one to say “I saw the clock turn to six” is a badge of honor. You don’t even want to know how we’ve each set ourselves up over the years to 1) see the clock and 2) prevent others from seeing you see the clock. These kinds of traditions take work.

Is it really Thanksgiving if there’s no green bean casserole on the table? You know the one I’m talking about. Not only do we have it every year, but we have it in the same dish. Speaking of Thanksgiving, if your brothers complain about lumps in the mashed potatoes every year, is it tradition or bullying? Now I purposely leave lumps in there - for spite. I mean for tradition. 

Can you create a family tradition deliberately? (Pinterest users and that awful Elf on a Shelf would say yes.) Or do they happen and eventually you notice they happen all the time? Traditions, by definition, require some intentionality. Some say they define us, providing a source of identity for a family. They create a deeper family bond, psychologists say. (I would hate to hear some psychologist ruminate on the Horrigan family traditions.) I can say with absolute certainty that we did not set out deliberately to tell each other bushes were on the dinner menu. Traditions are generally passed down from one generation to the next. In my family, I hope not. It would be too hard to explain.

Sure, we found toothbrushes in our Easter baskets and pajamas under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, but was my mom creating a tradition or just being practical? When we set out to create “family pyramids” for photos, were we just trying to see where the breaking point was? I don’t recall it being that deliberate. It just was.

Other people’s traditions seem so weird, and ours seem so normal. When I first visited my in-laws and discovered they all ate breakfast together and not in their pajamas with the newspaper in front of them, I thought that was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen. He, on the other hand, thought it was bizarre that breakfast time at my family’s house was “whenever you get up.”

When my nieces were little, for some reason we took a photo with me sitting with my back against the kitchen cabinet with little Katie perched between my outstretched legs and baby Colleen in her lap. How many times have we recreated that pose in the last 27+ years? Dozens at least. Some in the kitchen, others not, but in that same order. Is it OCD or tradition that makes us assume the position and find it hilarious every time?

I’ll bet there are families that hold hands around a perfectly decorated Martha Stewart Christmas tree and sing Silent Night on Christmas Eve. That’s not my family. For my money, that’s the best tradition of all.

Now, who wants the peanuts I picked out of the Chex Mix because that’s tradition, too.

Houdini's Last Trick

You know how sometimes you have a decision to make and you mull over the pros and cons and then in a split second, you just go for it?

That’s what I did. The Mystery of Houdini has been bugging me. A couple of days ago I was filling up the neglected birdbath at my mom’s house. I figured by now the birds were probably dehydrated and on bird IVs somewhere. Maybe Houdini would hear the splash of water and come running around the corner of the house. I looked over at his yard and noticed his food and water dishes were in the exact same spot, so that gave me hope he was coming home. (Truthfully, he might be in the backyard, but it hasn’t been mowed in I don’t know how long, and he’s not that tall.)

Later that afternoon, I happened to be outside as the kid next door was coming home from school. (When did he get back from Arkansas? Did he even go to Arkansas? And where’s my dog?) So I was debating whether to ask about Houdini. What if he said he left him in Arkansas? What if he didn’t know where he was? What if he was hit by a car? Was I going to like what I heard? How weird was this encounter going to be for both me and the kid?

Talk to him. Don’t talk to him. Talk to him. Don’t talk to him. Okay, now it’s getting weird. He’s going in the house and you’ll lose your opportunity. Let it go; the mystery of Houdini is in the not knowing.

And so in a split second, I did it. “Hey, where’s your dog been? I haven’t seen him around the yard.”

And in a split second, it happened. “We lost him.”

Lost him? How do you lose a dog that never leaves home? I had visions of him wandering off at some roadside rest stop on the way to Arkansas. (Seriously, I have got to let the Arkansas thing go.)

Deeper in I waded. “Oh no! What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. He just left and never came back.”

In that moment, I had to be the grown-up and pull it together. I told the kid I was sorry to hear that and that he was a good dog. He said “thanks” in a way that was not sad enough to soothe me. But then again, he’s had a lot more time to get over this loss. I wanted to scream, “Why didn’t you have a collar and tags on him? Then he wouldn’t be lost!” But it’s not my dog or my kid or my responsibility.

Growing up, I had a cat named Lyndon. (Texas. In the ‘60s.) I think there may have been other cats pre-Lyndon, but they all met the same fate. My dad would take them “to the yard.” He took them to run around and catch mice at the construction company where he worked. I like to think the cats lived a life of bliss, catching mice and enjoying the love and belly rubs of burly men who operated heavy machinery for a living. In our house, though (even now), “taking it to the yard” is a euphemism for crossing into The Great Unknown.

I have questions. Houdini wouldn’t run away. Hell, he never went farther than our yard. He never chased cars. Occasionally, he’d trot behind the mailman, but only for one house and then he came galloping back. The only time he crossed the street was to follow me to the pool. Plus, the kid didn’t say he got hit by a car. He didn’t say he ran off. “We lost him.” Houdini was the type of dog who would probably jump into the first car that offered him a ride, but it’s not like he was a champion show dog, so I can’t really imagine someone driving by to dognap him. Had the kid’s mom taken Houdini to The Yard?

We lost him.

Houdini is lost.

When I heard the news, I immediately ran into the house and fired up my computer to the Facebook page for lost dogs in the area. He’s been missing for awhile now, so I knew it was unlikely he’d be there, and if someone had found him, he’d be at the pound by now. I quickly scrolled, stopping at every black dog I saw. (BTW, a lot of pit bulls get loose in my mom’s neighborhood. This does not make me want to do long training walks around here.) I stopped myself after a couple of minutes because this isn’t my dog to find. And what if I did find him? Was I going to run next door and say, “Hey, I ran inside to scour Facebook and I found our dog!”?

So I stopped. Because “we lost him.”

The kid said a few weeks back that Houdini (well, I think he called him Spider at the time) was such a homebody that if they left him in Arkansas, he’d just find his way back here.

Is that true?

When a magician dies, there is something called a “broken-wand ceremony,” where the magician’s wand is broken to signify the end of the magic.

I suppose I could hold the Houdini equivalent of a broken-wand ceremony. I could take down the barriers from my mom’s side of the fence. I could remove the yellow Post-It from the back door (which looks all the more strange given that there’s no dog there).

I guess Houdini’s last, and perhaps most impressive trick, is that he turned me into a dog person.