Tour Notes, part III

Tucson.

My friend Howe lives very near the hotel and after checking in I walked over to see him. Howe had in his house a little dirty blond mutt, Twilley, who looked kind of like a mix of miniature Shiba Inu/husky/fox. When I sat down at the kitchen table to drink the tea in the mug Howe handed to me, Twilley hopped up into my lap and began to lick my hand, and then my forearm and then further up my arm. This went on for a long time. Was she cleaning me? Enjoying my flavor? Was I salty?

If felt so good, so salutary, to have a dog in my lap. It had been a while. I missed my Charles so much, missed having her around all the time, my once-constant companion, She’d died a year and a half ago and I was still grieving. It was an ache, that loss of something (some one) irreplaceable. But in that moment, Twilley was helping to heal me, helping me to understand that the Charles-sized hole in me could, maybe, actually, be re-filled. Love can come in again. This was a revelation.