JUNE 27, 2023
Time for more dog magic.
It was last November. The night was cold; Lana and I both in our coats. Her parents were on a well-deserved vacation in Mexico, and I, the auntie, got to “dog sit.”
Except with Lana….it was hardly a duty, but a respite in which I took great comfort and derived a modicum of peace, if only while we were together. Our time was special to me.
I didn’t lead the walks and it was just as well – we were on her turf in downtown Fredericksburg, and she had the gentlest AND most assertive way of saying, “no, auntie, we have to go over HERE!”
She loved the attention she received on campus, and the college kids as well as the staff were always glad to see her. One gal saw us, fresh off a mac and cheese run, and dropped all the food just to get some Lana lovin’ as she spoke of a dog she missed.
It was on that campus, late one night, that Lana told me we needed to investigate a building. As we approached, the door flew open and gave way to the secret contained within — it was the UMW band, and I gathered they were practicing for a holiday concert.
Ooph. My weakness.
Lana and I then BOTH felt compelled to sniff around that building, and we did. For a long time. We had perfect seats and could listen by section. On one side of the building we sniffed with the horns; we took selfies with percussion around the back, but if we stood near that heavy door and waited for it to open, we got a burst of the whole ensemble, like honeysuckle for our ears.
I was pretty much always in trouble as a child, but one of the big highlights of my youth was playing music in the middle school band. I was wrong in everything I did, but not when I was blowing a horn. I was moved by the notion of harmony; that we all had a part to play, and that each part contributed to an end product that was greater than any one instrument, or person, could produce alone.
The middle school goosebumps are a physiological rote response programmed in childhood, and much like the dogs we help, those engrained responses don’t just go away. The concert I overheard decades later, I am convinced, was supposed to give me pause. And I let it, Lana by my side, happy to stay out as long as I needed. As long as it took for me to receive the message she couldn’t use words to convey.
Lana was a wise, gentle, loving, and a hilariously personable girl. Even though I was named her “auntie,” she was my sage. Call it dog sitting, but I thought of it as hanging out with my friend; a break from my responsibilities. Yes, of course I bribed her with new balls and stuff, but that was only so she wouldn’t miss her beautiful, wonderful parents too much.
I don’t feel I took care of her — at least not in the monumental ways she nurtured me, but I do believe she understood me and felt my weary soul.
And that’s why she took me to a concert as one of the last things we’d ever do together, at the end of what we didn’t know would be my final auntie gig.
Today, about a month after our goodbye, her parents participated wholeheartedly in an act of love and kindness that moved me to get out my horn. And I played it, much to the dismay of Tinker Cat, right next to the microscope… because why would I use a music stand?!
My brain has forgotten what the notes are called, but my fingers remember how to play the songs, and that’s all it took for me to see why the band room felt like home.
