YEARS OF FUN
He smiled at my dog Casey as the three of us stopped at a light, a man neither young nor old. Whatever he was about to say, I’d surely heard it a few times before. He’s a beauty, great dog, some variation thereof. I don’t expect originality. More of the same heartfelt compliments would suit me fine. But the man in the crisp white shirt did not exclaim at Casey’s charm. Not in as many words. He turned his gaze to me and said, as if he were forming a picture in his mind, “You’ve got years of years of fun ahead.”
Not enough years, the way I saw it. I wanted Casey to stay as he was forever, jumping for his leash in eagerness to hit the street. Bouncing and shimmying into doggy day care, where they call him “spring-loaded.” I didn’t want to see him thicken and slow down with age, couldn’t bear the thought of losing him. At six a dog Casey’s size is about halfway through his life. Another six years would be gone in a flash.
On Facebook people’s dogs were dying. I read every post and lingered over every photo. The noble great Dane by the fireside, the pop-eyed pug drooling for a treat. Dogs looking out car windows, lolling on a lap beside an open book, sacked out on a lawn, spent with frolicking. Before I loved a dog, I never noticed these tributes. Now every one was a tolling bell.
“You must think he’s a puppy,” I said to the man beside me. “He’s almost six.”
“In his prime. Like I said, years of fun.”
The man’s eyes twinkled behind wire-rimmed glasses. Tender, amused and wistful, all at once. He didn’t mention any dog of his own. We had our backs to a construction hoarding that left a mere smidgen of sidewalk to people squeezing past with carts and strollers. Of all the corners where two strangers might get acquainted, we’d met at one of the worst. But in his eyes I caught a faint glimmer of his story. I think he loved a dog who died, most likely some time ago. He might have lost a number of dogs, but it was this one, his dog of dogs, that Casey brought to mind.
I saw him remembering another spring-loaded dog. He saw me measuring Casey’s life span when I had better ways to use my time. We understood each other in a minute, give or take — a minute that almost didn’t happen. The light could have been green instead of red. One of us could have reached the corner too late (a shoelace needed tying, a tourist asked for directions). Of all the ways we might have spent that minute, we happened to spend it together. A year consists of 525,600 minutes. Where most of them go I have no idea. This one goes on and on.
