Meet Chloe, the therapy dog
Benji didn’t even know it was
time to get up this morning, because it was so dark outside. Texas continues to
have fierce storms—more are due tonight. But this morning, the darkness and the
heavy rain gave me a nice reminder of my mom. I could practically hear her
voice saying, “Rain before seven, clear by eleven.” And sure enough, by eleven
or a little after it was a lovely sunny day with blessed temperatures in the
eighties. And it’s to stay that cool all week.
Benji had a spell of jealousy
this evening, though he was, as he always is, good natured about it. The
medical office where I had an appointment today had a therapy dog. That’s Chloe
above—a lovely (and calm) two-year-old Aussiedoodle. At one point we heard a
scratching at the exam room door, and the woman with us asked, “Do you like
dogs?” Jordan and I assured her we do, so she opened the door, and in came
Chloe with a ball in her mouth ready for us to throw. With the door closed and
no place to throw the ball Chloe allowed us to love on her a bit and then lay
down for a nice nap. Quite a contrast to Benji who jumped about wildly when we
came home and then, a few minutes later, when Mary arrived.
Benji obviously smelled Chloe
on me and gave me such a thorough
washing with his tongue that I nearly had to shower before I could fix my
supper. Now he’s trying to get me to take an old artificial bone he loves. But
I notice how rough it is, and I wonder if that means he’s chewing off
particles, and we should take it away from him. At eight-thirty, it’s the hour
when he settles down and lies next to my desk—unless something outside
intrigues him. It’s probably my favorite time of the day—the soft lamp is on,
along with the colored lights Jordan long ago put on a collection of pussy
willow. They may look like Christmas, but I find them warm and comforting in
the evening.
I read an interesting column
today about reading habits and mental decline, the latter being a subject of
much discussion today with our two aging presidential candidates. I have my own
opinions on who is in mental decline and who isn’t—I bet you can guess!—but I
won’t go into that. The suggestion in the column was that a switch from fiction
to nonfiction might indicate a slowing of brain function. Fiction, the theory
goes, requires active participation by the reader, using the imagination to engage
with the plot and events of a story. Nonfiction on the other hand lays out
facts that the mind can more easily grasp.
I would have thought the opposite. Recently I started the new Erik Larson book, The Demon of Unrest, about the period between the election of President Abraham Lincoln and the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, South Carolina, which signaled the beginning of the Civil War. It was then a period when our democracy was as fraught and threatened as it is now. Larson’s research is superb, his writing clear and compelling. I found the tension of the foreword—waiting for the Confederate guns to bark out—almost unbearable. Nonfiction at its very best.
But it was not what I need right now. My mind has enough tension and suspense of its own—I don’t need to grapple with history.. Raher, I need escape, so I turned to an unread book on my Kindle; A Big, Fat Greek Murder, by Kate Collins. It’s a cozy, no deep dark problems (except murder) and it distracted me from my own situation. What I’m trying to say is that I found—and often find—fiction easier to read than nonfiction, less demanding on my brain. How about you? What kind of reading is easier, more relaxing for you?
Thanks to Kait Carson, who
writes thrillers, often about deep sea diving, for bringing up this subject.
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