Not everyone in the household received the news that at long last, after a coordinated propaganda campaign in which signs saying “DOG” were taped to every surface in the house, we were prepared to get one. “Now?” said the eldest, a high school senior. “You wait until I am about to leave for college and now you are willing to get a dog?”
That her voice was soft, rather than angry or harsh, made the rebuke doubly painful.
“I have wanted a dog since I was six,” she said bleakly, and went back to her room.
It was all I could do to keep myself from pursuing her up the stairs. I wanted to pour out from the depths of my guilt all the very good reasons — good, sound, defensible reasons! — that it had taken almost the length of her childhood to get to this point. We needed to wait until the youngest child was at least four (she is six). We needed to wait until everyone was at school (everyone is). It was a huge time and energy commitment, and as the at-home parent I hadn’t been ready to take on vast extra duties (but now, gulp, I seem to be).
She knew these reasons. She’d heard them many times. But she didn’t need to hear them again right now. The bruised heart sometimes needs a moment to recover.
In the end, it took about an hour. A door opened and closed upstairs and a lighter, happy tread came down the stairs.
“I’m okay about it now,” she said, coming into the kitchen. “It’s just that leaving home is going to be hard enough without adding another loved one to say goodbye to, especially one I’ve longed for forever.”
The sadness past, she began to look forward. Ok, she’d waited seventeen years, but this dog would be as much hers as anyone else’s. She would be part of things until next fall, and when she came home for vacations the dog would be here waiting for her. Nor did going away to school automatically mean no access to pets: I passed on a neighbor’s tip that homesick college kids can often rent dogs to frisk with them on the quad at weekends. Some college counselors use dogs to comfort stressed-out students. And certain universities have cat-friendly dorms, so that purring confidantes can stroll in and out of student’s rooms, creating a homey feeling.
“What are we going to call the dog?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but under the circumstances, I think you deserve an extra vote in choosing a name.”
She brightened visibly. Nothing so cheers a person as getting a little edge on her siblings.
“We have to choose something good,” she said, “Something literary, a robust literary character…”
“Mr. Darcy?” I ventured. “Hercules?”
“No, no,” she mused, waving her hand vaguely, “No, what about the Russian novels…what about… Vronsky!”
“Um,” I said, “Probably not.”
“I know, I know,” she grinned, “but wouldn’t it be great to go to the dog park and yell ‘Vronsky’?”
It would. It’s also great that one bruised teenaged heart was feeling a little bit better.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
