Aging My Way
A character in a book I was reading said that if you ever needed a good cry, do it around a cow, because dogs notice and come around with licks and kisses to cheer you up.
Thinking about the five dogs that have been my companions over the past eight decades, I couldn’t help but agree with the comment. The dogs, in their turn, each knew when a soft nuzzle was needed. And their warm bodies cuddled up next to mine always comforted me.
So, despite agreeing with the fictional character, whose name I can’t recall right now, I think I’ll stick to dogs when I cry. That even makes sense since there are no cows nearby.
Tears have long been a part of my life. I cried a lot as a child, my favorite place being inside a hedge with a small black mutt, whom I had uncreatively named Blackie. I cried because I was not popular, because my family wasn’t the fantasy one portrayed on television. I cried because I thought no one loved me. I cried if I thought someone looked at me wrong.
I was a foolish child usually crying over nothing, but the tears soothed me. In later years, I learned that tears have actually been scientifically proven to be beneficial, that they detoxify the body and restore its balance.
As a young mother and wife, I cried because my own family was not the everyone-lived-happily-ever-after kind. I cried when my children were hurt, and when my marriage dissolved.
Later I would cry because I couldn’t find my perfect soul mate. Those tears were usually shed at midnight when I was curled up beneath a quilt, and often interrupted when my dog, a faithful cocker spaniel named Peaches back then, would wiggle beneath the covers to comfort me.
I don’t think a cow could do that – not to mention I wouldn’t want it to. And neither, I eventually decided, did I want, or need, a soul mate. I was my own soul mate, and I had a good life, and a good dog. This is probably why I rarely cry these days.
Luckily, I laugh a lot. And science has proven that laughter is quite good for the body, too.
Pat Bean is a retired award-winning journalist who lives in Tucson with her canine companion, Scamp. She is an avid reader, an enthusiastic birder, the author of Travels with Maggie available on Amazon (Free on Kindle Unlimited), is always searching for life’s silver lining, and these days aging her way – and that’s usually not gracefully.
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