tramp
i think my earliest memory of really personal loss came when i was about seven years old. we were living in the old house on ohio street where my parents still live. wait, hold up. there's some back story.
my first memories in life are of a small trailer home where my sister, my brother, my mom, my dad and i lived. it was in a trailer park on the air base -- we lived on cherry street. they are not all good memories; my father was an abusive man and life wasn't easy. we were five people trying to make ends meet on an enlisted man's salary. my mother didn't work outside of the home. times were very tough, and even as a young kid i knew this.
but the memories weren't all bad either. i remember eating beef stew in our little dining nook. i remember my brother (who we then called pj) turning one year old. i remember playing "bum bum, here we come" with my parents out in our little yard. and i remember getting tramp on my fourth birthday.
tramp was my dog, for sure. i think he was a shepard mix, but who can tell, really? i had no idea, i'm sure he just came from the pound. but i loved the shit out of that dog. and i think he loved me. we grew up together, a little, although he outpaced me; he was my jacky paper, i guess.
when i was five we moved out of the trailer home and into our home on ohio street. it was a dump, but my parents have really worked on it over the years and built it into a nice home. they did a lot with very little; looking back on it i have no idea how they managed it all. one of the best parts of the new house was the big back yard (it had maybe 1/8 of an acre of land, b but at the time it seemed positively immense) where tramp and i could run around.
when i was six we adopted a stray and named him spot. tramp and spot were quite a pair -- we loved playing with those dogs. spot was much smaller, a short-haired, pissy little dog. and he turned out to be a bad influence.
about four or five months after we adopted spot, the dogs started jumping the fence to our backyard. it wasn't something that tramp had ever done before, and frankly i have no idea how spot managed it. but off they went, tearing through the neighborhood. at first it seemed cute. and then the local dog warden caught them and brought them back to us. he told us that if the dogs bit anyone, we would be fined by the city and we would be personally liable. mom and dad wanted to give up on the dogs right then and there. i begged for one more chance on their behalf.
in the end, they didn't learn their lesson and the guys from the pound came to take them away. the dogs knew something was up -- they crawled up under the house in the crawl space and wouldn't come out. i was sitting in the bathtub, crying, when my mom came upstairs and told me that i had to come down and call my dogs out so they could take them away. i remember calling them and calling them, but they wouldn't come. i tried whistling through my tears, but i was seven and couldn't really whistle. the guys from the pound were laughing at me behind my back, but i barely cared.
finally, the dogs came out. and they leashed them, muzzled them, and took them to the pound. where they were incinerated, i'm sure.
i still miss my dogs. especially tramp.
daily dharma: You might think that if you let go of your ego world, you might become passive and defenseless like some kind of crash dummy, and people will take advantage of you. Or that you might wander around aimlessly in the street without an agenda. If this were the case, as one contemporary Buddhist master pointed out, it would be necessary to have enlightenment wards in hospitals to take care of bruised or socially inoperative buddhas. But this is not the case. Rather than being inmate types, people who have become enlightened to any degree are builders of hospitals for other people. Their intelligence and compassion are relatively unobstructed, and they tend to become quite active and effective citizens. -- Samuel Berkholz, Entering the Stream
my first memories in life are of a small trailer home where my sister, my brother, my mom, my dad and i lived. it was in a trailer park on the air base -- we lived on cherry street. they are not all good memories; my father was an abusive man and life wasn't easy. we were five people trying to make ends meet on an enlisted man's salary. my mother didn't work outside of the home. times were very tough, and even as a young kid i knew this.
but the memories weren't all bad either. i remember eating beef stew in our little dining nook. i remember my brother (who we then called pj) turning one year old. i remember playing "bum bum, here we come" with my parents out in our little yard. and i remember getting tramp on my fourth birthday.
tramp was my dog, for sure. i think he was a shepard mix, but who can tell, really? i had no idea, i'm sure he just came from the pound. but i loved the shit out of that dog. and i think he loved me. we grew up together, a little, although he outpaced me; he was my jacky paper, i guess.
when i was five we moved out of the trailer home and into our home on ohio street. it was a dump, but my parents have really worked on it over the years and built it into a nice home. they did a lot with very little; looking back on it i have no idea how they managed it all. one of the best parts of the new house was the big back yard (it had maybe 1/8 of an acre of land, b but at the time it seemed positively immense) where tramp and i could run around.
when i was six we adopted a stray and named him spot. tramp and spot were quite a pair -- we loved playing with those dogs. spot was much smaller, a short-haired, pissy little dog. and he turned out to be a bad influence.
about four or five months after we adopted spot, the dogs started jumping the fence to our backyard. it wasn't something that tramp had ever done before, and frankly i have no idea how spot managed it. but off they went, tearing through the neighborhood. at first it seemed cute. and then the local dog warden caught them and brought them back to us. he told us that if the dogs bit anyone, we would be fined by the city and we would be personally liable. mom and dad wanted to give up on the dogs right then and there. i begged for one more chance on their behalf.
in the end, they didn't learn their lesson and the guys from the pound came to take them away. the dogs knew something was up -- they crawled up under the house in the crawl space and wouldn't come out. i was sitting in the bathtub, crying, when my mom came upstairs and told me that i had to come down and call my dogs out so they could take them away. i remember calling them and calling them, but they wouldn't come. i tried whistling through my tears, but i was seven and couldn't really whistle. the guys from the pound were laughing at me behind my back, but i barely cared.
finally, the dogs came out. and they leashed them, muzzled them, and took them to the pound. where they were incinerated, i'm sure.
i still miss my dogs. especially tramp.
daily dharma: You might think that if you let go of your ego world, you might become passive and defenseless like some kind of crash dummy, and people will take advantage of you. Or that you might wander around aimlessly in the street without an agenda. If this were the case, as one contemporary Buddhist master pointed out, it would be necessary to have enlightenment wards in hospitals to take care of bruised or socially inoperative buddhas. But this is not the case. Rather than being inmate types, people who have become enlightened to any degree are builders of hospitals for other people. Their intelligence and compassion are relatively unobstructed, and they tend to become quite active and effective citizens. -- Samuel Berkholz, Entering the Stream
posted by higgypiggy at 9:57 AM
1 Comments:
After reading the past two blogs, both deeply felt stories of loss, I noticed that there are no comments. So I thought that I would post one and was surprised to find that I was not nearly as comfortable commenting on these entries as I would have with an earlier one (for instance, about the definition of loss). I felt more comfortable addressing the idea of loss instead of the instance of it, and I think that I'm not alone. Why is that? Is our sense of empathy so strong that merely reading the story and commenting on it brings up a sadness within us that we seek to avoid? Could this be a reflection of the medium? Of having our comments posted online? Is all of this just my way of overthinking and avoiding a heartfelt comment on these stories?
Let me just say that your stories touched me and brought up a sadness within me as well.
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