Solstice Magic
happenstance, a wintry drive, and ground-level wonders
On the day of shortest daylight and longest night, this little ray of light entered our home, his “forever home.” The timing was simply by happenstance and the schedules of two families, but it feels magical that I brought him home on December 21st.
His name is Tjikko (pronounced “chico”) and he’s a Miniature Australian Shepherd. It’s also by several degrees of happenstance that he came to us.
Bobby and I had been talking about adopting a dog after we finished several travel events this year. One of those, in October, was a trip to visit my brother Steve and sister-in-law Chris, in Alabama. The four of us talked extensively about dogs, breeds, and other canine topics, because Steve and Chris are experts. For many years they’ve lived with whippets, occasionally entering them in shows, and they’ve even had a few champions. They’re active in planning and producing the annual show of the American Whippet Club, and they also have connections with the wider world of dog shows.
As we chatted while strolling around their farm or relaxing with the whippets in the living room, we mentioned that we liked the photos and descriptions of aussie-mix dogs we’d seen on a rescue dog website. It happened that a friend of Chris and Steve’s from the dog show community breeds mini aussies, and it happened that one of her dogs was due to give birth soon.
Tjikko and his seven siblings were born October 21st.
Over the next eight weeks we worked out how to get him from his birth home in Tennessee to our home in Maryland, about a ten-hour drive. On December 20th Steve picked him up from his breeder, who lives not far from them, and then Chris and I each drove to a town halfway between us. We spent the night at a pet-friendly motel, with Tjikko and Jack, one of Chris’s whippets. The next morning I drove home, in light snow followed by freezing rain, Tjikko sleeping in his crate in the back seat while Christmas music played on the car radio.
Of course, having any baby in the household is going to change things. You know that all your routines will be disrupted and you plan for it, and then it’s like wading into the breaking waves along the seashore: you watch the waves, back off and wait for better timing, or dive under a breaker and swim for the other side, where the water is calm.
One Challenge
I started listing the challenges and blessings of a new puppy, but so far I can come up with only one real challenge: potty-training outdoors when the temperature is 17 F, especially in PJs in the middle of the night.
Many Blessings
Finding joy and slowing down to notice the small wonders are things that I’ve aspired to for years, with little success. Even my thinking in terms like aspire to and success makes me know that I’m missing the point. All my aspirations suddenly became daily, even hourly realities, thanks to the intervention of our little fur-ball of meteoric energy.
Small wonders: all the things on the ground to chew and (if possible) eat, such as bits of bark, twigs, rocks, acorns, sweet gum seed pods, holly berries—NO!!! they’re poisonous!—and, best of all, the deer scat blanketing our back yard. (NO!!! Leave it!)
Spontaneous joy: laughing out loud when Tjikko starts a game of tug-of-war with me and a soft rope.
Days like Christmas Day, with no appointments or obligations. I want more days like this. I want my only New Year’s resolution to be “Do Nothing.”
My To Do list, ever undone, was driving me crazy every day. Now it just … doesn’t. What’s a To Do? Why did I ever think that item on the list was important?
I no longer complain when the outdoor temperature rises to the low 40s, with no wind. What’s to complain about, when I’ve stood outdoors at 3:00 am watching the frost sparkle on the grass while waiting for a puppy to pee?
And a blessing best expressed in the prayer for December 26th, from Cody Cook-Parrot’s new book of daily prayers, Look About You: A Book of Ordinary Prayers.
In this strange week amongst the holidays, we inch toward the new year. We do not take too much stock this week, it is a week of emptiness. Even if work carries on, or your creative projects need tending, this is a week when time becomes nothingness. Let it be so.
Such joy…in your sweet puppies face, his adorable one brown leg, and the happiness that jumps off the page as you write. May you have a year of nothing.❤️
This is so lovely. Thank you for sharing the gift of nothinginess in your life with little Tjikko.