I Miss You When I Blink: Essays(54)

We timed everything to happen over the summer. We thought it would be easier to handle the move-related chaos in a season when everything’s a little more laid-back. Can’t find the box with sheets and pillows in it? That’s okay, there’s no rush on bedtime. Don’t have an oven in the kitchen yet? No problem. Throw something on the grill and eat outside. Summer was indeed a perfect time to explore our new surroundings. We could go for a hike on a weekday morning, lie around reading in the afternoon. We went to concerts, parks, and movies, and tried all our neighborhood sandwich shops and ice cream parlors. (I put on a dozen pounds in our first year there. That’s what happens when you grab hold of your city with both hands and stuff it in your face.)

For a couple of early months, Nashville was one big vacation. And for those two months, not once did either of the children say they missed Atlanta. The chaos seemed under control. Yes, we were in a new place. And yes, we’d begun renovations on our house right after we moved into it. Sometimes we woke up at 6:30 a.m. to the sound of buzz saws in our kitchen. But I made sure to keep a lot of things the same: same morning schedule of walking our dogs and making beds. Same routines and rules. The locale may have been new, but that didn’t mean everything else had to change, too.

Then, as summer got shorter and shorter, reality began to kick in.

My children, like most, have never been wild about getting pulled out of bed before they’re fully awake. They have never liked having to stop playing to take a shower or brush their teeth. They’ve always dragged their feet when it’s time to put on shoes or jackets or whatever else prevents them from running free and barefoot and barely clothed through the world the way they want to. The annual letdown of returning to the weekday grind had everyone at our house a little on edge. The more stressed they felt, the more they desired the familiar and the old. Without those comforts to soothe their anxiety, their stress came out in uncharacteristic outbursts over small things. Suddenly old complaints had a recurrent new theme.

When I told my son to put on a raincoat, he cursed Nashville’s weather: “The sun NEVER comes out!”

When I asked my daughter to pick up the piles of Legos in the hall, she broke down: “I don’t even know WHERE LEGOS GO HERE.”

They came to experience what we adults already know: When you move, you take more than just your stuff with you. You take yourself. You take all your likes, dislikes, hang-ups, hopes, and problems, and you place them in a new and unfamiliar setting. Certain things are true no matter where you are. If you’re a kid, the end of summer blows, wherever you live.

Still, we had it all under control.



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Then both children got pink eye and ear infections and nasty colds.

And a toilet broke.

And a car battery gave out.

And we busted a batch of carpenter ants living in our shower.

And just to keep things exciting, a family of mice took up residence in the garage.



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And then sweet old Phoebe—the beagle who had been with us for fourteen years and served as a surrogate parent to pup Eleanor Roosevelt—left us. She was sleeping in a kennel at the veterinary clinic, boarding while we were out of town overnight, when she died. Our vet called to deliver the news, “I’m afraid Phoebe didn’t wake up this morning.”

“Okay,” I said. “Okay.” Okay, okay, okay, I mouthed to myself as I hung up the phone.

Telling the children about their dog was so much harder than telling them we were moving.

Much sobbing ensued.

When I went in to pick up Eleanor Roosevelt from the kennel that afternoon, I made a joke about whether I’d still have to pay for both dogs considering I’d dropped off two and was getting only one back. The front-desk staff laughed the kind of nervous chuckle you do when you’re afraid of upsetting a crazy person.



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A few days after we lost Phoebe, on a hectic Monday morning, I was trying to hustle the children to the car to go meet their new pediatrician, so we could have the health forms completed for their new school. I couldn’t find my keys, it was ninety-five degrees out, and I was also wrestling a basket of laundry out the front door to drop at the laundromat, because the washer and dryer were a week late being installed. Everyone was sweating and fussing at one another.

I put Eleanor Roosevelt into the bathroom she and Phoebe had been sharing as a makeshift dog room during the construction. “You take a nap,” I said. “We’ll be back soon.”

She started howling. And howling and howling. The saddest little I’ve-never-been-an-only-dog-before-please-don’t-leave-me howl.

The pitiful howling kept up for days. Exercise, playtime, a new bone—nothing helped. She moped around the house and yard. When I was at home writing, she sat under my chair. When I left the room, she followed me. If she couldn’t go with me, she bayed at the door. She was heartbroken.

“Mom,” my son said, “Eleanor Roosevelt is lonely. Are we going to get another dog?”

Was it part of our plan to adopt a new dog the week before starting school in a new city, while our house was still half under construction? Oh, hell no. But we’re a two-dog family, and we were one dog down. This was no time for the plan.

So the next day, we headed off to the Love at First Sight shelter. There we met a yellow pup, some kind of Labrador mix brought in with an abandoned litter. He had just started eating (and eating and eating) again after recovering from a nearly fatal bout of parvovirus, and his kibble-filled belly ballooned out on either side of his scrawny ribs. This little fellow was the last boy pup of his siblings left—the others, all prettier and pudgier, had been adopted.