My Two Writing Teachers colleagues and I are hosting the 16th Annual March Slice of Life Story Challenge, in which teachers from around the world participate by posting a story per day.
This year, the SOLSC gives me a chance to record memories of our little dog, Indie, who died in January. I want to write these down while they are still fresh, so that my family and I can read them later and remember not only Indie, but little slices of life across the years.
It was a bitter cold morning, in January of 2014. Jackson was just a newborn, and Lily was only four year old. Indie, our dog, was seven years old. It was time for Indie’s annual check-up, at the vet’s office just two houses down from our house.
When you have a baby and a toddler, nothing is easy. You can’t bundle up the baby first — they’ll get too hot and probably need a diaper change or to be fed by the time you get the toddler dressed and ready to go. If you bundle up the toddler first, they’ll fuss, and cry, and will defiantly take everything back off again by the time the baby is ready. This is a really sucky thing about being responsible for two tiny humans.
If you are chuckling at the thought of this, please don't. I think moms probably laugh at the experience of other moms, not because it’s actually funny — but because if we didn’t laugh, we’d cry. But nothing I just said was funny. For someone like me, going anywhere outside of the house was stressful and draining, not in a funny-ha-ha way. But in a way that took a toll on my mental and physical health. I love comedy, but I think people laugh too much at the struggle facing new parents, especially moms. Even with a relatively healthy pregnancy and childbirth (and many are not), my life was upended in every way by becoming a new mother. Post-partem depression, sleep deprivation, previous underlying mental health conditions, physical injuries, body dysmorphia, career setbacks, complications with prescription medications, lack of childcare, lack of familial support, isolation from friends, and the unending, unsolicited, landslide of judgement, advice, and yes, jokes.
Anyway. With all this on my mind, I managed to exit the house with Jackson strapped to my front in a baby carrier so he wouldn’t freeze in the below-zero temps, (Why was he so heavy?), squeezed Lily by one hand, and Indie by the dog leash in the other. We made it across the icy cul de sac and to the vet. All the chairs in the waiting area were taken, and nobody stood up to offer me or my squirming daughter a seat. So I stood there, desperately whispering bribes to my daughter for her to hold still and stop screaming, while Indie tugged at his leash to sniff all the new scents, and Jackson wailed. I was hot and sweaty under my puffy coat and I knew my kids were overheated too.
We had just moved a year ago from an incredibly diverse neighborhood in Brooklyn, to a 99% white town in rural Vermont. I was aware of my privilege as a white lady, and in that moment, and I was thinking hard about that, turning it over and over in my mind.
We finally got called into the exam room for Indie. It was the first time that I was the one bring Indie to the vet and not Brinton. I will remember this experience vividly, probably for the rest of my life. Dr. Barningham was a heavy-set imposing figure with pale, doughy skin, and a comb-over. He shook my hand, hard. He introduced himself to me and greeted Indie, which I thought was nice. I replied that it was nice to have a vet so close, just a few houses a way. But then he gave me a stern look and the first thing he said to me, in a voice dripping with judgement, “Well, I haven’t seen you walking him.”
I felt something break inside of me. As if something inside me had been propped up by a stick, and it had just snapped. I mumbled something about having a fenced in yard (we did) and about taking him hiking frequently (we did) and that he was off leash at my in-laws several times a week (he was).
If you’ve read this far and stuck with me, I think you’ll agree that I should have responded differently. With some four letter words. And none of those words would be WALK.