Parenting

Our dog died last weekend. We had two dogs: Duke and Bella. And now we have Bella - and our new dog, Bruce. But this isn’t about our dogs. Rather, this is about parenting, and raising a family, and of the changing tempos of parenting, and of our children becoming their own, and - along the way - how we came to lose and gain a dog in the same weekend.

Duke died on Friday afternoon. He ran into a school bus. My wife was home and the first to see Duke. He died instantly. She called me, hysterical, distraught, wailing. I rushed home to find my wife was sitting and crying in the driveway on ice and slush in the -5 degree windchill. Her friend was gone.

I laid down a blanket, picked up his body, and put him in the bed of our truck, covering him, tucking in his legs and tail. I gave him a hug. I told him I would do him right. I cried. I went to the back and got a shovel. I stared out across our yard to where we buried our rabbit years earlier, to where we collectively had agreed to bury our older dog when it would be her time. I stared at the expanse and the nearly two feet of snow and felt the wind and cried. I set down the shovel and went back to my wife still sitting in the driveway, and together we walked into the house. My friend was gone.

I called our son - he is a senior in high school - and he didn’t answer, he was still at wrestling practice. I paced in the living room. I sat down. I stood up. I called again. I sent a text asking him to call me, and another a minute later that he wasn’t in trouble. Our daughter - our second edition - facetimed, just to say hello before she prepared to go out for the evening. I asked her if she had to work that evening, if she was talking in a private area, and then I told her. I watched her gasp for air, the tears coming on as a tsunami of incomprehensible disbelief. My wife cried that she loved her. I told her I would come to get her as soon as I talked with her brother. She asked if her sister knew yet. Her friend was gone.

I mumbled aloud how to tell our older daughter. My wife suggested I call her boyfriend. I told him, he went to her, took her back to his apartment, and let me know she was safe. I facetimed her. And it hurt all over. Her friend was gone.

I kept calling our son. My wife suggested I go to the school. I didn’t want to tell him until he was home, didn’t want him to have to drive with that knowledge, with that grief. He’s seventeen. I’m 44, and who am I kidding, I did no better than could be expected of myself. After nineteen calls - impatient with my spiraling lack of control - we connected. He rushed home, I met him in the driveway, didn’t want him to see the blood. He screamed, cursed, shouted, and fell into our arms - the three of us, my wife and my son and I, standing in the waning daylight. He held us as much as we held him, standing there in shorts and a t-shirt with the January winds of northeast Ohio, the snow and the ice stinging us less than our tears. His friend was gone.

We walked inside, he wasn’t ready - didn’t want to see Duke’s body - yet. He collapsed on the couch with my wife. I held him to look at me and told him I was going to pick up his sister, told him to stay with his mother. He shook his head that he heard and understood and would do just that. I went to her, and she held my hand in silence as I drove the thirty-five minutes back home. Once home, together, they went to Duke. Their friend was gone.

We sat together, pulling each other close. We said - to no one and to each other - Duke helped us, he was there for me, he was there for you, he saved us, he kept us safe, he kept us together as a family. My son pulled me closer, laying my head on his shoulder and saying that Duke was - in some way - going to love and serve and be with a new family.

I cried. My wife cried. Each of our children cried. Our older dog - Bella - cried. Her friend was gone.

A few years ago, when we decided to get another dog, it had been me - an off-hand comment about a friend for Bella in her older years that started this particular journey. I didn’t think any of them would take me seriously. We had been sitting around the dining room table, eating together as a family. A lifetime ago. Not just because that was before the pandemic, but a lifetime ago because that was when all of our kids were at home. When they were each just beginning - or we were just beginning to become aware - of the travails of teenager-hood that would befall each of them in their own way. They were just kids, and we were eating dinner, together, around the table.

This weekend, when I tried to recollect how old (young) Duke was, my wife showed me the picture she took when we brought him home. He’s there in the middle, sitting next to Bella and surrounded by our kids. Everyone, including both dogs, is smiling. It feels like it was ages ago. It was four years.

And this is where the story switches from being about our dog - who was a very good dog, and the best of friends to each of us, and saved us and kept us safe, and helped us in so many ways that words will never actually capture - and becomes a story of parenting, and becoming adults, and of family.

We went to every game and meet, shuttled them to and from practices, arranged friendships, scheduled classes and extracurriculars, and made the preparations for activities, adventures, and endeavors. We attended open houses and conferences, checked grades and homework routines. We met friends, and the parents of friends, coaches and teachers, followed social media and schedules. We were in control - total and seemingly absolute. Their lives were by default arrangement, extensions of ours. This wasn’t ever the explicit goal, it was - however - the implicit design.

We thought we were doing what was best. We looked around and that was what we saw. We looked around and would remark, without the slightest trace of self-aware irony, that at least in our house we weren’t doing X, or Y, or Z.

But, the facts and the situations and the steps along the way added up that in our house we were doing X, and Y, and Z - that every house, every family, has situations, obstacles, life. The facts are that raising a family isn’t a straight line, that there is no finished product, and that we’re in this together with our children - not as unwilling or unwitting or unknowing participants, but as active, caring, engaged collaborators.

These past years have been a seemingly unending rollercoaster for us as a family: curfews and drivers’ licenses, moving a business and working from home, changing friendships and social media drama, teenage parties where Duke snuck in (and out) the basement window, and his snuggles and hugs with so many break-ups, and him following along with each of us and keeping a protective shepherd-like distance to ensure good choices were being made.

Somewhere in the midst of the trials and tribulations and adventures of these past four years we evolved from a family of individuals going in so many different directions, to a family with a code of mutual respect and support - a code based on faith and hope and love. On a windswept, freezing morning in late January, our son scrubbed the driveway with a wire brush so that no one else would have to see. And on that snowy, frigid afternoon, our children came home, came together, and held each other and their grief. And on that icy, freezing night, our children supported us as we carried our dog on his last “walk” to the vet. Each of us supported all of us, and all of us - together - made sure that none of us - as individuals - wallowed in despair.

Duke helped us get here - we just were too dumb and too self-centered to see it for what it was at the time. Duke served each of us where we were and provided us - unconditionally - with the love and support and safety that we each needed when and how we needed it. And through the fog of grief, we can see that rather than being the glue holding us together, Duke was a talisman buffeting us from the tempests of raising and being a family

My wife and I raised three young adults. They are each smart and capable and beautiful human beings. And, because they are human, they each - like their parents - make selfish and stupid and poor choices. Our children, our kids, are young adults now. Roles and responsibilities evolved during these years; we’ve each navigated, and are navigating our relationships with each other and with the world.

As we drove to pick up our daughter this weekend, my wife and I saw a dog walking alone on the side of the interstate. We pulled over and got out. He looked back at us and then walked into an outcropping of trees. We walked to where we had seen him last, looking for pawprints in the snow. We went into the sparse trees and came to a barbed-wire fence with an open, snow-covered field spread out on the other side. For over a mile we walked along the side of the freeway, along the field, and through the few trees. And then we walked back to where we had left the car running with the hazard lights blinking and the 18-wheelers screaming by, looked around one more time, and continued on to our daughter.

That dog vanished like our warm breath in the January wind. Duke died. The snow and ice will give way in the next thaw. And this is the unsustainability of contemporary parenting - of helicoptering, and hyper-scheduling, and of berating teachers, and completing assignments, and not allowing our children to grow and fail into adulthood, and not allowing ourselves to just be present with the moments - and instead, seeking - implicitly or explicitly - to control our children as extensions of ourselves.

Our children are not extensions of us. They are their own. And they are coming into their own. We can no more hold on to them as children, then we could track a dog along the side of the interstate and through an open snow-covered field, or stop Duke from running into a bus, or keep the world frozen. Give them space to grow and explore, give them opportunity to fail and succeed. Give them the space to disappear, and the opportunity to reappear as they evolve.

Contemporary parenting is doomed. It is unsustainable. It will - quite frankly - drive everyone (parents and children) mad. Our contemporary over-reliance, over-correction to hyper-focus is unhealthy for both their individual development and the functioning of our communities. Keeping at this pace, at this design, at this control, our next generations - our kids - will be incapable of deciding, acting, or doing.

I am no expert, I haven’t done it any better, having had more sleepless nights, more yelling-and-screaming matches, more pointless and purposeful groundings, lectures, and nagging than I can attempt to quantify. But, together with my wife, we’ve raised three human beings who demonstrated they can handle what fate throws at us.

On Sunday of this weekend, they held a family meeting without me. That’s okay. I’m (still) learning that sometimes I can’t be in the driver’s seat. And they decided that yes, it’s really quick, but we need to welcome another dog into our lives. They researched and searched and called and texted. And so, that afternoon, I found myself in the middle of Appalachia meeting a new friend. Like Odysseus lashing himself to the mast as the ships passed the sirens, I kept saying aloud that I wasn’t in charge, that each of them, my wife, and each of our kids, had full-veto authority.

Bruce - our new friend - is home now. I’m cautious of him because he’s not Duke, but no dog will ever be Duke. I explained to him that we have a rigorous routine to prepare for: hiking and reading and adventures. And he looked at me with his (literal) puppy-dog eyes, cocked his head, and jumped away, so I’m learning (again) that I’m not in control. He journeyed to OSU and played with our oldest daughter, my wife held him for the two-and-a-half-hour drive north to play with our other daughter, and he slept with our son (who exasperatedly declared that won’t happen again until he is house-broken).

The picture that my wife showed me to remind me how old (young) Duke was, the one where he is surrounded by the smiling faces of our kids four years ago - I love that picture because it was a lifetime ago. I don’t like it though because we’re never going back to that.

And that’s okay. Because they’re going to be okay. They picked out Bruce. We each want Duke back, one more snuggle, one more walk, one more time to play. But that can’t happen. And Bruce will be with us on this next part of our journeys.

We are a family. Just as much as we were four years ago, but better, stronger. Because now we are five adults - five adults who support each other’s foibles, pick each other up after missteps, guide each other through travails, and walk beside and with one another.

Parenting is, as anyone who is one will attest, unending. But it evolves. It must. In order to be sustainable, in order for the health of the parents and the children, for the sanctity of the partners and spouses involved, for our long-term well-being, it must evolve.

Our kids are now, have been, and always will be, our children. But they are stepping into adulthood, trying on new roles, new responsibilities, and new relationships. And we´re going to do our best to support them, encourage them, and simply be there for them - just as they have been and will be for us.

For my wife and I, we have taught our kids that we “must have a code/ that [we] can live by/ And so become [ourselves]/ Because the past is just a goodbye.” We will continue to teach our children well, to enforce our code, to become themselves, to respect their past, and to build our future.

We are a family. Without mutual support, without allowing the relationships to evolve, without giving over control to the uncontrollable, our parenting would be unsustainable. But we’re learning, and trying, and doing better.

Bruce, our new pup, will never replace Duke. But, he’ll be raised to fiercely love, to unceasingly keep hope alive, and to persist in faith. Because that - as our kids have proven - is our code. And that - to fiercely love, to unceasingly hope, and to maintain our faith in one another - is sustainable.