Quiet (#atozchallenge)

I grew up in quiet. An only child, a large (too large, maybe) house, a father who worked a lot, a mother who believed in Montessori. I learned to read early. I spent a lot of time immersed in counterfactual worlds. Quiet is where I thrive. Quiet is where I feel at home.

But now that I have seven dogs, quiet is naught but chimera. Vain fantasy glimpsed as a shadow through mist.

Or fog. Dense fog.

Duncan & his favorite toy: any cardboard box.

There's the ripping sound of Duncan destroying a cardboard box or an old bedsheet. There's disputes about who gets to use which mat and when. There's barking, howling at sirens, roughhousing. There's nails scraping on the floor as they bolt out into the yard to chase a hapless iguana. And when none of that is happening, there's the clink of collar tags as they follow me around the house (yes, even to the bathroom).

Don't get me wrong. I love my dogs and therefore I love it, all of it. I love the company, I love the challenge of understanding their behavior and of getting them to understand what I want from them. I love to watch them interact with each other. I love to interact with them.

I love it so much, in fact, that I forget
the beauty of quiet.

And then one day I'll be at the beach with them and they all run off chasing after--well, whatever they find to chase, and I'm suddenly all alone with the wind and the ocean and the sun. And I feel recharged.

I need to remember.

I need to remind myself to get some quiet. Just a little. It makes me a better person--and my dogs are the first to benefit from that.

What do you give up for the ones you love? Have you found a way to recover it, even in bits and pieces?

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Thanks for the visit, and a special hug of gratitude to everyone that's been coming back post after post to join the conversation. Every time you share a thought or an experience, an abandoned senior dog somewhere finds a loving home :)

Happy (Easter) A-to-Z-ing!