The Tenth of August

Today marks the thirteenth anniversary of the day Bonnie came to live with us. Such a noble and big-hearted dog she was, and I miss her every day. This morning, Jinx and I walked up to her grave in the woods, and the place seemed to me to be in a holy hush, decked with dew and spider’s strands, with the quiet morning noises of the woods whispering all around us. A screech owl let loose her ghostly call, and Jinx was startled by the noise. We stood a moment at the grave, and then returned to the house, the spotted dog walking beside me with dignity and what seemed like awareness.

On the drive to work, I was listening to a recording of the classic Black Beauty, mostly listening to the lovely, first-equine account of the horse’s life, but also thinking of how I have deliberately been a solitary person for most of my time on this earth. My wife and I live very close in each other’s hearts, but we are also both very solitary and inward-focused. For me, this has led me to the place in my life where I realize that I don’t have many friends. I have a fair number of acquaintances, but very few friends. And this is all right with me.

But when I arrived at work and the crows and the sparrows and the wrens were waiting for me in their places, and when I saw the sheltering tree beneath which I park every day with her branches over my car, I thought to myself, Nonsense, I have many friends. And here they all are.

I touched the bark of the tree in passing, and saw a locust’s discarded husk attached to a limb. Such a memory of childhood, when I used to see the shells tacked onto trees and telephone poles all over our little town. I always thought they looked like they were made from pork rinds, which, in a way, I suppose they sort of are.

At work, we received news of a shooting at a local high school. I distrust everything the media has to say, and refuse to be drawn into the freak-out of shrieking drama going on around me at this moment, with all of the females in my office melting down and offering their opinion on a story that hasn’t really even broken yet. I predict that at the end of it all, it will be much ado about nothing. I pray this is so, anyway. And I am reminded of how grateful I am for our grandchildren who are being homeschooled, and how they are shielded from the rampant, wanton evil that stalks the land. How terrifying it would be to learn that your child is in a building where some maniac shot the place up, and to be unable to talk to your child or even approach the school without being treated like a criminal yourself.

The air is humid, but I can tell that the world wants to be in autumn. It is coming. I told my friends the birds and trees that very thing this morning. The world wants to be in autumn.

~ S.K. Orr