Homecoming

The vet instructed us to pick up Sugar sometime between 2pm and 7pm. I arranged my lunch to be able to get her at 2. Visions of her alone and scared in a strange place haunted my dreams. Kiel and his girlfriend came to help. I paid the bill and they brought her out. She leapt into my arms, licking my face, whimpering. She was shaking so hard I couldn't get her harness on her. Good thing Kiel was there.

She cried all the way home, struggling into the front seat to sit on my lap while Kiel drove. I carried her up the stairs. She was so happy to be home. We put food out for her, but she wasn't interested in eating. She just wanted to sit in the chair with me. Her stitches are sharp and wiry (she goes back in two weeks to have them removed). Her ears are droopy. She walks funny. Poor little pumpkin!

I remember when my first son was born. I didn't go anywhere without him for six whole months. No baby sitting. If I couldn't take him, we didn't go. Attached at the hip! Then we had to take a trip to set up an apartment at the college where Dan was planning to study. It was going to be a long drive and hard work unpacking at the other end. We borrowed a pickup truck and decided to leave DJ with Gramma.

I fussed for a long time with instructions and making sure Gramma knew all the little things that would make DJ happy. When we finally left, I cried for the first whole hour. Once we arrived, it was easy to keep busy unloading and arranging. We finished quite late at night, and had planned to spend the night in the new apartment, but I just couldn't stand to be separated from DJ one more minute.

I was sure he was unhappy, crying, miserable without me. So, as exhausted as we were, we headed back towards home, driving most of the night to get there, a grueling sleepless and anxious night.

Would you believe when we finally got there, DJ was happy as a clam. He hadn't missed me at all! No trouble getting him to eat or sleep. I could have left him a week and he wouldn't have minded. Imagine that! Certainly takes the starch out of your ego. Still, he seemed quite pleased to be back in his own place, tucked safely in his own crib, so unaware that his familiar world was about to change radically.

Life is fraught with change. People and places come and go. As for me, I hang on to the Rock of my salvation, the only dependable enduring entity in my life, knowing that constancy will come with my own final homecoming. Then at last I will be where I belong and where everything is familiar and comfortable. I just hope I will not cry, squirm or wriggle on the way there, like Sugar!