tomeubanks.com

June
by Lisa Snider
 

        It’s June and I’m soaking in the cool green muck that clings to the corners and curves of my pool. Hundred degree days invite the emerald monster to creep in despite due diligence with chemicals and brushing. 

        School’s out, which means the neighbor kids will hop the fence again while I’m at work, climb my oak trees and swim in my pool. I wish they would just drink canned beer in their own living room while mom and dad are away like normal teenagers.
        

        It’s summer and the perfume of orange blossoms and lilacs have been replaced with the stink of sunscreen and motorcycle exhaust.

        June is not my favorite month.
        

        I reluctantly wade into the pool, brush in hand, ready to tackle the task at hand. I scour, scrub and scrape, coaxing the grime away until my shoulders begin to strain. Now and then the handle slips and I grate my knuckles on the side of the pool. The scab from last week was just healing when I manage to grind it off again. I wince just as a breeze kicks up, blowing more oak leaves in. I had just scooped a net-full off. I grab the net again, scooping more leaves and a drowning yellow jacket, too, who had no doubt just buzzed in for a drink. A spider hangs off the coping and refuses to get into the net. I grab the brush again and whisk it away. A water bug swims around my waist. He’s swift and cunning, but I finally catch him and hoist him onto the deck. Sydney, my old Labrador retriever, sniffs at the hopping pest then quickly moves on to other smells in the yard. I feel something crawling on my back, scream, then realize it’s just the string from my bathing suit.

        Sydney has noticed my flailing and cursing and has come to the edge of the pool with one of my flip flops in her mouth. In her younger days, it was hard to keep her out of the pool. Now at 12 and a half, it’s usually one lap around and we call it a day. She looks eager to give it a whirl, so I take the shoe from her mouth.

        “Okay, girl, go get it!”

        I fling the flop to the center of the pool. As soon as it smacks down, she puts her two front feet on the top step for a moment, then hops back out. She does this a couple more times, with her eyes darting from me to the flip flop. I offer more encouragement and soon she is mid-air, flying gracefully and getting some serious hang time before crashing down, sending plumes of water over the deck. She snakes like a serpent through the water to the prize before scooping it up with her jaws. With the flop in her clutches, she makes her way back to the steps, panting through the sides of her mouth. As soon as she is out, she shakes off and water sprays everywhere. She finds a nearby bush to rake herself dry and I look around to admire my hard work.

        Sydney was born to a backyard breeder in San Diego. I went to see about her the day after my husband, Bill, and I bought our first house. When I arrived, she and her litter mates catapulted themselves out of their little dog house with an explosion of wags and licks and yaps. The first one out, a tiny little wriggling bundle of fur, chasing the tails of her brothers and sisters, immediately latched onto my shoelaces and started chewing. I thought it was adorable how smart and feisty and self-assured this two-week-old Lab pup was.
 

        She was a delight, but mostly, in the beginning, she was an absolute terror. I remember peeling off my nylons in the garage everyday before I got in the house because she would tear them up the minute I walked in the door. She stole socks and tried to hide them in her mouth, but her twitching eyebrows always gave her away. She also once caught a baby bird mid-flight that she had scared out of its nest. I shrieked and pried her mouth open and out it flew, unharmed.
 
        When I decided to try my hand at gardening, our teenage Labrador took a great interest in the day I spent digging holes and planting bulbs, following me from hole to hole and sniffing the freshly turned earth. When I came home the next day, my back still sore from all the planting, she greeted me with a mouth full of dirt and a daffodil bulb full of tooth marks. I took it from her and scolded her while following her out to the backyard. She pranced about proudly and picked up another bulb as I soon discovered that every single bulb I planted had been plucked out of the ground. Dirt covered the sidewalk, bulbs lay everywhere - it looked like a war scene of exploded land mines. I had a dirt garden for four years.

        I cringed when company would come over. She had no manners at all. She once plopped a dug-up femur bone right into my mother-in-law’s lap. With children, though, she was gentle and loving, especially when she took their food.
 
        Bill used to make fun of the fact that I would always say to people when introducing our wild beast, “I picked her out when she was this big!” and then I would hold my hands up about seven inches apart. It was my way of letting our horrified guests know that, yes, she was at one time cute.

        After four years of being a wild animal and behaving rudely with house guests, our Labrador became tolerable. She still had her moments, though, like the time she jumped into my mother’s peach tree and stole as many as she could, leaving spit-out pits all over her patio.

        The older she got, the sweeter she got - never, though, losing her fondness for socks. We were a family with an unlikely (and often smelly) but no-less loved fur child. She became that adorable dog I saw when she was “this big.”

        Her face became gray, her gait became slower and she slept (and snored) more. I knew the day would come, I just hoped she might actually live forever.

        For weeks after she passed, I was stunned by the silence, yet swore I could hear her toenails clicking on the floor and the jingling of her collar. Bill left his socks on the floor. I missed her stink.

        I have never had someone close to me die, which is probably why I took it so hard when my Labrador of 14 and a half years passed two Junes ago - two Junes after her last swim. Perhaps, too, it was because Bill and I have no children, and that we spent most of our adult lives with her.

        The June day we brought her ashes home and put them on the mantle, I was struck by the size and the weight of the container. I held the small round tin in my hands, looked at Bill and said, “I picked her out when she was this big.”

© Lisa Snider 2010