Chelsea was my master, teaching me honor beauty in difficulty like I could in a gorgeous sky reflected in water.
So many things pass through my mind as I gazed at those gorgeous clouds above the water that reflected them back to the sky. Present at that moment in Spanish Fork, Alabama, I recognized the beauty I wanted to honor by capturing it with my camera. It was beautiful like Chelsea, regardless of her difficulties.
Here we are, having a seafood lunch caught from the local waters here in near Mobile, Alabama. I am visiting this area where my sweetheart grew up, for the first time. I had no idea how magnificent the sky could be.
Life is good! There is so much beauty to honor in the world, I thought, until I remembered that I found out only yesterday that my precious Chelsea Belle had cancer. “She is twelve”, I thought to myself. That is a pretty great life span for a dog.
And it is. I gave her a good life. She’d been dropped off at the vet tech’s house. I heard about her close to immediately. I had only recently decided I was willing to get a dog again. My last dog was only four when he died, also from cancer. He was a rottweiler, and also a rescue.
I am ready for a dog, again, I explained to my vet. My kitty Otter, had lost weight and she wasn’t that heavy to begin with. The vet felt concerned for her health too. Testing showed nothing amiss, but I knew. She was suffering heartbreak from Leon’s death. She needed another dog to replace Leon in her life.
My son had called me about Leon the Rottweiler. I felt skeptical. ” But, Mom, you gotta see this dog!” he pleaded. So I drove to Jacksonville. And I fell in love with him when he licked my hand. When he died I felt bereft like we pet owners do. I didn’t want to replace him. He cannot be replaced. My cat was lonely too, though, as evidenced by the lost weight. “She needs a dog to keep her company while I work”, I reasoned.
So I made a bargain with God. This dog needs to weigh less, maybe fifty pounds. Leon had been a lot to handle at almost ninety. This next dog also needs to be less fearless, I calculated. Leon gleefully sought to round up Fed Ex trucks like they were cattle he was in charge of. Once he literally threw himself at a pick up truck while I sought fruitlessly to keep him in check. “I’m so sorry!” this hapless driver proclaimed. “No, I assured him, my dog ran into you”. He was not hurt. It was cancer that got him.
I got my wish this time. God listens. I got an exactly fifty pound dog. And, instead of overly fearless, Chelsea turned out to be an anxiety queen. She was not afraid of nature, but sliding glass doors? Basketball hoops? Garbage cans along the street? these were fearful objects.
One morning in the predawn darkness a mylar balloon tied to a mailbox to announce a neighbor child’s birthday party startled her. She took off, ripping her leash from my hands! I couldn’t find her and I had to go to work.
She returned home by way of the wetlands behind our house about a half hour later. Dragging her leash behind her, covered in swamp mud, she spent the day in the garage until I could get home and clean her up. It took a lot of work to settle her down, to teach her the world was mostly safe.
And then there were the shoes. I lost 8 pairs of good shoes to her 8 month old teething. “This, I thought to myself, is why she lost her first home”. I eventually learned to put my shoes away and to make sure she had dog toys to chew. She wasn’t much on fetching balls, but she was fast! She even caught a squirrel one time.
And as expected she and my kitty Otter were best friends. It felt amazing. I still cherish and honor the beauty of witnessing their friendship. Their eventual deaths can never take it away.
While she improved, she had that streak of anxiety. Always. New manmade objects were a challenge. I saw my own mental state reflected back to me. We grew together. She traveled both the Southeast and West Coasts with me. When she survived a rattle snake bite, it was a lesson that taught me that we were both tougher than we thought. She always would rather go home than anywhere else but grew easier with the world and was now a friendly dog.
All these things pass through my mind as I gazed at the reflected glory between the water and the sky. I noted what this sky and my dog have in common. The reflections between the water and sky, my dog and my own being. The way you’ll notice life mirrors your thoughts back to you, the way it will honor your beauty and sometimes your flaws, over and over again if you contemplate such things at all.
Sometimes what the world reflects is the beauty we can find in difficult relationships, the ones that require us to grow. I see this picture and remember where I was. What was going on in my world at that moment comes back to me as something precious and beautiful despite the sorrow of impending loss.
