My head filled up with Lily Lily Lily and a bunch of other stuff fell out. I look and find common sense flopping around in a puddle by my feet and barely recognize it. Practicality is there too, sitting in a diaper and slapping flattened palms against the water. Kicking around I hope that Lily has also displaced fear and distress, but those are firmly lodged like slivers small and sharp. They require something large and sharp to get them out.

Now I am waiting. Waiting for Wednesday when my real vet returns waiting for Lily to eat and actually hold it waiting for a day when I can take all the dogs on a leash and walk without fear that I’ll fly behind them like a tattered kite as soon as they lunge for a squirrel.
It snows and Lily lopes through thick drifts where her feet disappear and she glides. It’s a thick snow that surprises everyone including school bus drivers who return children to nervous parents in the afternoon as plows pass them. A few people blamed the superintendent of schools. They did put their child on that bus, didn’t they? But I understand the need to be angry.
If you step outside steaming after an argument and a guy in a suit offers you either a punching bag or an picture frame filled with some institutional color that prison officials have deemed soothing, which will you hit first?
I know Jerry wants to hit something. Probably a picture of me. Tonight: I hear him say, what’s the matter Lily? Need to go out? Is your stomach gurgling?
OK, OK! I say. I get it.
Why do you have to get like that, he asks?
Like what? I know you’re saying that so I hear you and get up.
I was talking to the dog, he said.
I say, no….

Lily and I are out in the snow again and she curves in half like a horseshoe and leaves a pile.
I am not fair to Jerry I am uptight and frustrated and keep thinking she has to hold her food longer and gain at least a pound. How much is a pound anyway? And how long could you hold it in an outstretched hand before it grows heavy?
Jerry mutters something to Lily.
WHAT, I ask? No answer so I look around the corner to find Jerry with his shirt pulled up to hide his face.

You’ll call our vet tomorrow, he had asked me?
Yes, and I want to call the other vet too, maybe get them to print all the medicines and things we have tried.
Don’t call them, Jerry said. Just go to our vet. You don’t have to tell the other guys anything. I think about it. I keep quiet.
OK, Jerry said. Do what you want…
I want to be sure I don’t miss anything.

Lily is such a good dog. I take her outside again and she makes a little pile like a wrong colored snowman that stands, then topples over.
Where will this writing take me? I never know what thoughts will come. My editor told me it’s like we put ourselves aside but an omniscient voice hovers over our shoulder. In some ways our writing might be more real or truer to the person, he tells me. I nod I grip my teacup look at the clock picture papers on his desk. I agree.
Everything we do is filtered for public approval. Our conversations and responses our actions and clothes. Everything. But writing isn’t about holding a mirror up to an ordinary day. It’s about holding up a crystal ball and seeing into it through it about it and when you put down the pearly orb, you understand.
Well, what the hell is wrong with Lily? I hold my hands in front of me and spread my fingers. Touching the tips of my thumbs I throw this little net that is my hands around Lily’s waist and wish for more substance.
Jerry went to bed I think he hates me.
I crawl over to tell him goodnight and he tells me, you weren’t very nice to me tonight.
Stress, I ask?
I am scrunched up next to him, then I feel Bandit rest his head on my hip. Looking over his droopy ears I see Ozzy sitting on the floor, puggy as ever.
I am sorry Jerry. Although the stress has dropped since Lily came to live with us, the awful responses that are snippy and short tempered have become familiar like furniture that was new 20 years ago and has never changed place.