How Things Break

The way our dressers broke was physics disguised as magic; riding 60 miles per hour down the interstate in the back of my brother's truck, they took flight.  They didn't fall or tip but took to the air, flying up and over the side in one fell swoop and smashing into pieces on the side of the road.  The fact that it was 11 PM and no one was following them on what can be a busy highway during the day: all magic, no physics.  Just one of the many ways things can break.

There were lots of broken things about this move, like any move, no matter how careful you are.  The Keurig fell out of Joey's hands and the springy plastic piece at the bottom of the reservoir snapped off.  It will still brew coffee, a half-cup to each cup of water poured in while the other half leaks out the bottom.  "These things happen," we say to ourselves, sighing.  I had wondered what the first wedding gift to break would be, and the Keurig -- one of the most used of all of the wedding gifts -- would be the winner.  

Even the move itself was made of broken things: a verbal agreement to renew the lease, my explicit instructions to please don't just walk into the fence because, although the dog usually isn't there, if she just happens to be, she will bite you.  And me, when the landlord called and said we would have to find  a new home, sobbing with my head down on the desk and a whole page of Craigslist ads in front of me.  

Things that we didn't break during the move: our beer glasses or Pyrex bowls, our handmade mugs or any more pieces of my first china, anything mirrored or porcelain or fragile.  Perhaps it's always the delicate things that stay intact, because you are paying more attention.  Things break more easily when they seem sturdy, because you didn't think they would break in the first place.  

The other thing we didn't break: our one-and-a-half year promise to a dog that we wouldn't let her go, even when she made things hard or when her presence in our lives demanded a sacrifice.  That our home would be her home, no matter where that home happened to be.  Even if she was the reason for the change in homes.  

Yesterday, Joey came home from work; I was napping, still exhausted from the move.  Mocha had been napping too: lying in the bed on her side, she had a series of nightmares that made her whine, growl and shake in her sleep.  They aren't rare occurrences, these nightmares, and I take them as a sign of what we believe to be a past life of abuse.  Dogs don't imagine or have abstract thinking, as far as I know; whereas humans can dream of things that have never happened to them, dogs can only have nightmares of what has happened to them.  Our dog is one of our broken things, broken by something that I can't imagine, don't even want to try.

Mocha jumped back up on the bed, and he told her to get down, and she responded by lying down on the bed like she usually does.  

"We met the neighbor," I said.  "And Mocha was a real asshole."  She had stuck her whole face through the fence at our neighbor's three dogs, contemplated their existence and started barking viciously at them.  I picked her up, all 40 pounds, and put her on my hip like a baby while I introduced myself.  "He was nice," I said, "although that wasn't really my ideal choice for a first impression."

Joey looked at her, remembering the day we picked her out.  In her kennel, she seemed calm but friendly.  Other dogs clamored up the sides of their cages, barking furiously, but she just brought her head to the door to be petted.  The shredded toys in the cage with her indicated that she had some sort of inertia to her, but she had personality in spades.  I wasn't so sure about her, but Joey lobbied her case, and I agreed.  "I vouched for you," he whispered at her, his voice almost pleading.  The love between all of us is furious and tight; I love the way he loves her against all odds because that's the way he loves me too.  

"We could have had any other dog there," I said.  It's true: the rescue was filled with dogs just waiting to be taken home.  We picked the one who had been brought back to the shelter before, the one who would bark at our friends before deciding she actually wanted them to cuddle with her, the one who would worm her way into our hearts before we could even tell it had happened.  She sucker-punched us, and we didn't see it coming until it was too late, until we couldn't imagine life without her, until we would do anything to keep her in our house.  

Joey looked at our broken little thing, lying there defiantly and safely in our bed, and scratched her underneath her chin.  "Yeah, " he said.  "But who would have loved her, if not us?"