Читать книгу The Forging and the Death of a Reflection - Dr. Peter J. Swartz Swartz - Страница 8

Looking down at the wriggling mass of eight-week-old puppies, I might have been a thrilled eight-year-old boy.

“Pick one out,” my father directed.

I shot back a look of disbelief.

“Really, I mean it. Hurry up. Which one do you want?”

I registered a by-now-familiar sense of guardedness against any emotion.

Without the ability to savor the decision, I quickly pointed.

“That one.”

“OK, he’s yours.”

There must have been some kind of a squeal going on somewhere inside me, but it was silent and unavailable to me.

Where was it?

How had it been lost?

And I would not remember one single further verbal exchange with my father about that dog, ever.

My father embodied the color gray—sort of a dense low-lying fog.

I knew it was there—all around, in fact, covering everything; but it could never be touched.

And as it lacked physical form, it created fear.

Sophisticates and intellectuals praise the value of discerning various shades of gray as a marker of one’s, well, sophistication and intellectual prowess.

But developing human beings need to know where they stand.

They need practice standing on the ground of their own feelings.

A dense low-lying fog makes it impossible to distinguish oneself from the background.

It negates clarity. It feels dangerous and lonely.

The puppy was distinctly marked brown and black and was with me for six short, brilliant months.

His soulful chocolate eyes spoke to me daily. They would say,

“When I look in your eyes, I see your heart.”

“You are the greatest.”

“You are so good to me and I love you for that.”

And I would feel valued.

And I would remember how that felt every day.

And the puppy’s eyes would also say,

“When I put my head down in your lap, I feel safe and comfortable.”

And when he did that, I felt that way too.

When we played with a ball or wrestled on the floor, the puppy’s eyes would say,

“We’re good pals, aren’t we.”

And I learned what that was like and how important that felt.

My father’s good intentions in bringing home that puppy were, sadly, lost in the turnaround six months later when my father’s abrupt, unexpected, and unexplained “allergic reaction” made it necessary to find a new home for the puppy.

My mother told the news.

“The neighbors will take him.”

They had a son just about the same age as me.

Here the fog enveloping all emotion came in very handy.