Pets

I thought this week's theme on "52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks" would be a slam dunk because my own life has been so defined by animals. I've been critter crazy all my life, garnering scars from the bites of neighborhood dogs and ringworm from the feral cats that lived under Grandma's house as soon as I could walk. When other girls were babysitting, I was dogsitting, and in High School, when they wrote their boyfriend's name up by the staple on the corner of their homework (why was that even a thing?), I defiantly wrote the name of my dog, because that was where my heart lay. Later, after fifteen years in technology and telecommunications research and development, I went back to school and became a veterinary technician. Teaching in that field, I always told prospective students "if you're an animal person, sooner or later, we're going to get you."

Jean, Inez and Mom with Toby

Growing up, I knew that my mother loved animals, although she tried valiantly to keep things under control from a sanity and budgetary standpoint. She talked about Toby, the dog she'd grown up with, as another member of the family: "Mom and Jean and Toby and I went to Stub and Mabel's for Easter dinner..." or "I never told that to anybody but Toby until now." It wasn't until I went back to look for pictures for this post that I realized how many pictures of the family also feature Toby. Mom's stories about Terence, the Dalmatian she acquired once she was out on her own were hilarious -- he stood up under the Bridge table and upended the whole thing; he "introduced" her to everyone in the Michigan trailer park where she fetched up after leaving Iowa. Before she and my Dad got married, they found a little gray kitten in the median of a highway in Detroit. They barely spotted him amidst the trash and detritus, so Mom named him "Charlie," after her hometown garbageman. Charlie traveled across the country with us as Dad pursued his Master's degree. Mom took him for that last ride a couple of years after my father died, and I wish I'd understood at the time how hard that must have been for her.

One great gift that Mom gave to my brother and me was answering our questions about our father, who died when I was 8 and Patrick was just a year old, honestly. "Don't speak ill of the dead" is a deeply ingrained custom, but adhering to it can turn people into two-dimensional cut-outs. Although Mom said she never forgave him for "dying and leaving me alone to raise two children," I know that she loved and missed him the rest of her life. Through her, I've always felt like I had a very realistic picture of who my father was as a person -- his values, his sense of humor, his foibles and even his regrets. But it isn't until I ask myself a question like "did he have pets?" that it hits home how little time we had together and how much I will never know. His photograph albums that I inherited show include pictures of a dog, another miscellaneous terrier. This dog must have been important to him but I absolutely cannot begin to imagine my insular and self-absorbed grandparents ever having a pet. I have to wonder whether the pup belonged to my grandmother's parents. They lived down the street and grew up with horses and dogs and heaven knows what else. I remember Dad laughing when Charlie cat opened the sliding screen door of our California house to bring in live lizards to gift to Mom, and his pain when he finally agreed with Mom that they would have to leave the AWOL cat behind at a Route 66 motel (ten minutes down the road, Charlie crawled out from under the driver's seat). Dad was endlessly patient with my assortment of small mammals and amphibians, carting them across the country with us, too. I suppose he had a few of his own for his junior high science classrooms, although all I can conjure up are vague recollections of a row of fish tanks on a shelf.

I know that my father was incessantly curious about the natural world. I think it likely he enjoyed the company of animals even if they weren't necessary for his happiness, the way they are for mine. And I also know that he wanted the world for my brother and me, and that he would have cheerfully tolerated anything that made us happy. That will have to be enough.