I am 10 years removed from college.

This past weekend, my collegiate class – the Georgetown Class of 2009 – returned to campus for our 10 year reunion.  Although I did not endure the cross-country flight to formally attend, I immersed myself in the experience online via social media and in my own cringe-crusted memories and nostalgia.

I am alarmed by how quickly 10 years can pass.  The decade felt so short, but also long enough to have created something of meaning and significance.  In this “longest-shortest” time frame, I often oscillate between feeling excited about how far I come and disappointed that I haven’t come far enough.  I am both proud of the life I have cultivated in 10 years, but also caught in moments where I feel that I didn’t live up to the time I was given.

On the night before I graduation, I got into a taxi cab (yes, I’m that old) where the driver asked me how my night was.  I had just treated my family to a dinner that I was able to pay for.  I finished a writing project I was incredibly proud of and felt so much possibility in my creative career.  I was going to move to San Francisco.  I felt absolutely luminous.

It is now 2019 and I wouldn’t say “luminous” is how I feel.  In 10 years, I’ve learned to add qualifiers to my twentysomething qualities – I am “cautiously” hopeful, “strategically” generous with my time, and a “part-time” writer.

A lot can happen in 10 years and so can very little.  My main reflection this past weekend was whether I still feel as idealistic at 32 as I did when I was 22 – was that 10 years enough to chip away at my once impenetrably hopeful disposition?

Here’s the product of my reflection – a chart of my last 10 years measuring units of idealism versus time:

  • 2009 / Age 22: “I’m gonna change the world!”
  • 2010 / Age 23: “I can’t afford to stay alive.”
  • 2011 / Age 24: Party on Tuesday, work on Wednesday.
  • 2012 / Age 25: “Yay!  Grad school!”
  • 2013 / Age 26: “God, I’m still in grad school.”
  • 2014 / Age 27: “I get to live with my partner!”
  • 2015 / Age 28: Another fight at Ikea.
  • 2016 / Age 29: The Election.
  • 2017 / Age 30: Hurricane Harvey.
  • 2018 / Age 31: Re-evaluating what’s important.  Also, having symptoms of acid reflux…
  • 2019 / Age 32: Recognizing what’s actually important.

I am remembering Scotty.

More than a week ago, my family terrier, Scotty, died suddenly and under very challenging circumstances. He was 9 years old.

Upon hearing the news of this death, I felt mired in melancholy. There were very few things that I loved in life more than playing “catch” with that dog – “catch” being a misnomer. What we played was more like, “Chase me mother fucker because you’re not getting this god damn ball.” In play, I somehow found incredible joy in being annoyed by this 10-pound asshole of a dog.

I often think it is silly to feel intense sadness at the death of an animal, especially amidst so much human pain in the world. However, Scotty was a dog that joined a very human family and remained family despite our hefty imperfections. He lived through the cycle of working class life – job losses, a dearth of money, more job losses, divorce, a destructive hurricane that destroyed much of what my family worked for, and imminent financial uncertainty. Despite living through a household of 4 that gradually dwindled in presence as he aged, Scotty was never angry. All he ever wanted to do was play “catch”.

Scotty died on a Wednesday after his health quickly deteriorated. My mother found him still warm, but absent of breathe, laying on the ground in the wing of our house that he is never in – the hallway leading to my room and my sister’s room. He was alone.

“I think it’s because he loved you two so much,” my mom said to my sister and I over the phone. If this is true, we were only there 1-2 times a year. And yet, he still loved us despite it all – always waiting for us to play “catch”.

In my grief, I have found myself ruminating a lot about time. Time has been unrelenting in its quickness – we are now more than halfway through 2018 and I am closer to 32 than I am to 31. Everyday, I am reminded of how time travels faster than I can process and, a times, handle. I hear it in the way my parents sound on the phone. I see it when I look at a clock wherein the hours have transpired, but my writing has not. I feel it in the financial concerns I harbor about my family’s future. Playing with Scotty was a way to stop time because he was never fixated about the past, had no obsession with the future, and only concerned himself with the resolute urgency of now – with ball, ball, ball, “catch”, “catch”, “catch”.

On the Friday after his death, I drove home after a long week of thinking about time, guilt, and sadness. On my way home, I noticed that the San Francisco Bay was blanketed in a magnificent, late summer sunset. It was a brilliant palette of rouge blending effortlessly into a hue of powder blue. The sunset was oddly late for an August evening and it lasted from the moment I walked out of my office, continued through my 10-mile traverse across California’s longest bridge, and remained as I inched closer to the San Francisco skyline where I met my partner. We watched the sun fade slowly as we ate dinner from a hilltop. I was convinced that it was Scotty.

“Thanks for the sunset, Scotty. You’re a good boy,” I said to no one.

When I visited Peru last year, I became infatuated with the country – the food, the biodiversity, and its rich indigenous history. I especially loved the country’s strong reverence for dogs. Peruvians believe that when humans pass away, it’ll be dogs that guide them across the river to the after-life.

I am not a religious person, but I am excited about the idea of seeing Scotty again, at a bend of treacherous river, with a ball in his mouth ready to play “catch”. I’m not sure how helpful we will both be in that situation given our talents (or lack thereof), but what’s the worse that can happen? We’re together, already dead and won’t be worried about time.

I am talking to my mom.

In a previous post, I wrote about my conversations with my father, which have always been short, direct, and full of understood silence.  With each conversation, I have been trying to stretch the minutes with my dad.  As we both age — he in his 70s, me slouching through my 30s — we have developed a mutual understanding that the number of conversations we have left together is limited.  Every minute counts.

My mother, however, is a different story with a binary problem.  I have never had an issue stretching the minutes — only cutting off the rhythm of her exposition, especially in circumstances where I have to go to the bathroom, I’m hungry, or I’m just really exhausted.  A combination of all 3 happen during a single conversation.  Although drastically different from my father, I also value these conversations given how valuable our time is together….but, I have needs too.

Here’s an anatomy of a conversation with my mom — a 3 act play, if you will.

Act I: “Can You Hear Me Now?”

 

Act II: “Inception.”

Act 3: “Desperate, Regrettable Measures.”