ManicDDaily

Place of Love's Offices

Those who follow this blog know that our old dog, Pearl, has recently suffered a problem with her spine which paralyzed her hind legs.  Under the influence of steroids (go Floyd!), she’s doing somewhat better, but still not walking.  Nonetheless, we have to be very careful where we leave her in the apartment as, when she is left alone, she insists on dragging herself to her “office”, a cluttered, dark clothes closet.

There are many meanings of the word “office.”  One is Pearl’s closet; another, perhaps more accurate use, refers to duties or functions. pIn a beautiful poem called “Those Winter Sundays”, Robert Hayden writes of “love’s austere and lonely offices,” describing his stern dad’s early rising on frigid Sunday mornings, hustling the house fires back to life with competent, chapped hands, and polishing the shoes of the son (poet.)

I love the poem.  It does make me wonder, however, why so many of love’s offices in my personal experience involve, not home fires, or even scuffed shoes, but plain old bodily fluids.  I’m not talking sex here, but of the effluvial tides of sickness known to almost any parent, pet owner, (woman).  These have poured from a host of sources–from travel with children (at least, my children) on sea, air, or roadway; to shepherding them through flu’s, colds, allergies, nights out, even cuts and cold sores.  In family life, stuff flows.

And now, here’s my little half-paralyzed dog.

I should be (and am) happy that even under her current difficulties,  she has retained pretty iron-clad bladder control (except for the other morning, just as I got her down the stairs into the building lobby).  But the lack of functioning hind legs makes such matters difficult for a dog.

So, now, love’s office involves carrying her down to a small fragrant square of dirt on the Esplanade by the Hudson River, squatting there to hold her up with the help of an old but strong and soft silk undershirt slung under her belly, waiting….waiting…trying, while waiting, not to worry too much about the spindly tree that somehow lives in that besotted patch of dirt.

Since she cannot exactly say what she wants, love’s offices also involve waking up several times during the night to try to figure out why the dog is struggling to a seat or shaky stance, and then propping her up over some folds of old newspaper.

Love’s moist and ignoble offices.