dog thoughts

I was watching my dog sitting outside on the steps this morning. I love how he goes outside and sits on the steps in the morning and just watches life around him for a while. He watches the yard and looks around at the birds. Listens when he hears another dog bark. Relaxes again. I sometimes get the feeling he is taking a deep breath, looking around him and thinking, "This is good. This is just as it should be." Then he takes another deep breath and spends some more time just enjoying life, being in his space, basking in it. When he is done, he comes inside and is just as happy to see me as he was a half hour ago when we both first woke up. There's none of this "Hurry up and let me in I have stuff to do" with him whisking past me to get down to chewing his bone more quickly so that- what? So that he can get the bone chewed and be done with it, onto another bone? He is so much about the flow and process of the moment. Even when he is thinking ahead, it usually has to do with enjoying the moment again, anticipating something wonderful about to happen, like me taking the turkey out of the oven.

What I don't imagine him doing when he goes outside each morning is going out, taking a look around, acknowledging the beauty for a second and then moving onto thoughts like this, "I really need to get out here and rake those leaves. I really need to go check on the garden and see if the cats have got in there again. I really need to stop sitting around enjoying myself like this and go inside and start doing something..." But really, it's not the thoughts, it's the thinking we have to act on the thoughts- and now.

Fall really gets me thinking about the things that we busy ourselves with. It's the leaves, I think, that do it for me. All of that moving about of the leaves that goes on. My neighbor can be so vigilant about the leaves that at any given moment I can look at her yard and not see a single- not a single!- leaf out there. Then one will fall. Then another. Then she is out there in the rain with her raincoat on, raking up the leaves. Last year she came into our yard in the rain to rake up some of our leaves. She reminds me each time she sees me of the leaf pickup that happens every other week here in the fall. I know I would be frustrated with me if I were my neighbor. I am not what you would call vigilant about the leaves.

I don't mind doing some leaf raking. I enjoy the exercise and I like to get outside. It is the attention to minutiae leaf raking that gets to me, the toothbrush cleaning under the sink kind of cleaning, that we have all somehow signed this social contract that says, "And each leaf that falls from a tree limb shall be whisked away most immediately and permanently and forever shall the grass remain leaf-free. And we shall scorn you and blow leaves back onto thine own yard if thou doest not rake thine own leaves properly and respectfully."

I felt happy for my neighbor when I saw she had finally gotten herself a leaf blower this year. It seemed like just the thing for her and I could see her shy smile, her gentle pleasure at having this bit of glory strapped to her back. At last! And then I saw her blow the leaves from her yard over onto mine where they so clearly belong. Yep. That's what I thought too. And then I had to chuckle as the wind started blowing some of those same leaves back over onto her yard again. I was spellbound. Would she blow them back over again? Would that keep her busy for the next couple of weeks until the last remnants of leaves were finally banished from our vision until next spring when we will all rejoice at seeing the light green buds appear, happy to have our trees covered in leaves again. We will allow ourselves for just that moment to love the leaves as they are and then just like that we will remember that in the fall we are going to have to rake them all up again. And again. And again. Or not. Either way, it turns out, really is just fine. At least that is what my dog says.