These Uncertain Times
Nearly two weeks on, the first Presidential debate feels like it was a real moment in this country’s history. I recently assigned one of my students to read and analyze the persuasive techniques used by Charles M. Blow in one of his Op-Eds in The New York Times. While the students focused on the mechanics of the essay, the content called for the end of presidential debates because “they are too much theater, too little substance.”
But Blow wrote his article the day before the debate, and while his critique wasn’t disproved (there was precious little substance in all that chaos), the debate gave Americans ninety uninterrupted and unvarnished minutes of the car crash that is President Trump.
I know some of the President’s most hardcore supporters loved what they saw, but anyone who still had a shred of an open mind and open eyes and open ears (including some of his supporters) found themselves disgusted by his vileness, rudeness, and mean-spiritedness (not to mention his support of white supremacists).
After the debate, my wife kissed me goodnight and headed up to bed. I tried to muster the ability to put on something less horrendous, but instead, I sat on the edge of my couch and cried for my country.
The Puppy Blues
Then we got a puppy. Her name is Pepper. She was just over eight weeks old when we picked her up from a friend’s veterinary clinic on the Canadian border. Like all puppies, she’s just about the cutest thing in the world. She’s a confirmed Shih Tzu, beagle, blue heeler mix, and we suspect she has some kind of terrier in her as well.
I didn’t grow up with pets (if you don’t count fish, which you shouldn’t, since fish are basically houseplants that move a little bit). In fact, I grew up with a complete phobia of dogs. I didn’t go inside most of my friends’ homes because they owned dogs. Some of those dogs were big; others were small. Some were nice; others, not so nice. It didn’t matter. They all scared the shit out of me.
But then I fell in love with a young woman who owned a Lhasa Apso, and if I wanted to spend time in her home, I needed to get over my irrational fears. Thankfully, her dog was well behaved (if a bit stubborn), and over time, he was able to teach me how to be around him, and by extension, other dogs.
With our daughter being an only child, my wife and I decided that a dog would be the next best thing to a sibling that we could give her. We searched for the perfect puppy throughout the summer, but the puppy rush that followed in the wake of the COVID-19 stay-at-home orders made it difficult to find the dog for us. When our friend let us know she had a little cutie for us, we jumped at the chance.
Here’s what I didn’t understand: how fucking hard it is to have a puppy at home. Don’t get me wrong: I totally get it. She’s a baby with nipping teeth and four fast legs. Like all babies, she has needs and impulses she cannot control, and it’s our job to keep her safe, make her feel secure and loved, and teach her how to behave. I understand and understood all of that.
But there’s a difference between knowing how hard something will be and then going through it. With the new family member, the whole dynamic of our household has changed.
By day three, my daughter confessed that she “both love[s] and don’t love[s]” Pepper, mostly because she’s anxious to be alone with the puppy because of the nipping (we’re working on it). Later in the week, her jealousy at the attention her parents and friends were giving to Pepper caused her to stomp up the stairs and slam the door to her bedroom because “No one appreciates me!”
By day five, after little Pepper took what felt to be a spiteful shit on the rug in front of me, I was exhausted. But the next morning, I heard a ding on my phone and looked down to find an email notification from Reddit, linking me to articles about the puppy blues.
As I sat on the edge of my bed reading the threads of that discussion, I began to tear up. All of those people sharing their stories reminded me that I wasn’t alone in having conflicting feelings about my puppy and that it gets better.
Saying Goodbye
Later that night, I attended a memorial service for the late father of two of my former students. It was a private affair arranged by my school, with our staff members and the members of the grieving family being the only ones in attendance. We hosted it at the cabin he built for our school, a project that saw him teaching several of our students (including his son) how to build an incredible, beautiful, and large structure out of wood. The ceremony included the christening of the cabin with a beautiful, hand-made plaque carved into a piece of local slate, naming it forever after the man who built it.
We gathered in a circle in front of the cabin, and his widow read the eulogy that she shared at the family service earlier in the week, but she followed her written statement with some extemporaneous words about the difficulties she and her late husband had, difficulties we knew about as a school because schools generally know what happens behind everyone’s closed doors thanks to the effects on the children.
The upshot of my friend’s words was found in the request she made to all of us: “Forgive someone.” She and her late husband were able to forgive each other during the last few months of his life, and they lived those months in joy with each other. While cancer ate away at the last of his body, his heart and his soul helped his family to heal.
After she finished, we all stood awkwardly silent in the circle, most of us with tears in our eyes or knots in our throat. I looked across the circle at one of my best friends, my brother from another mother, and I watched as he quietly poured a bit of his drink onto the ground in a sacred act of farewell.
I’ve stood on the edge of the Grand Canyon. I’ve watched powerful avalanches tear down Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah. I’ve seen the Mediterranean Sea from the coast of France. I’ve driven through the majestic mountains of Alaska. And yet this one act, this one moment, may have been the most beautiful thing I’ve seen.
I followed his lead, and the tears poured down my face.
Thank You, Kate McKinnon
Last night, I watched this weekend’s episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Bill Burr. From the monologue to the powerful performances by Jack White’s trio, the show reflected the anxiousness that seemed to overwhelm this country since the first Presidential debate.
During the show, one of the head writers for SNL, Colin Jost, remarked several times how dark the jokes were. As an example, Michael Che compared President Trump surviving his COVID-19 infection to “when there’s a car crash and the only survivor is the drunk driver.”
With each sketch and each joke, my anxiety about the state of our country, my puppy blues, and my grief for my friend and my students lessened, and then came the moment I needed more than almost anything: Kate McKinnon, breaking down in the middle of a bit and speaking for all of us whose state of mind is reaching its limit:
It’s all a lot right now. But we can do ‘dis. And we know ‘dis.