Taking Time

         As I stood in the backyard at 7:00 this morning waiting for my puppy and senior dog to finish their playing, I realized how much I have been standing around the backyard in the past three weeks.  Sometimes in the rain, often, like this morning, bundled up and waiting as the sun rose over the mountains to the east.  I looked at the sky, at the houses, at the large concrete empty building behind me, and at the dogs playing.  I exhaled to watch a trail of condensation into the cool morning air.  I watched the dogs, Sadie, the elder, allowing Cali, the puppy, to climb on top of her as she lay on her tummy and their muzzles do an open-mouthed dance back and forth.  Sadie, 40 pounds and many inches taller and heavier, could have pinned and beaten Cali, but instead, Sadie played.  I thought about the times I have forsaken play, forsaken enjoying the moment in my haste to go through my to do list, to assuage my anxiety that always bubbled beneath the surface, waiting to leak out in small movements of shaking foot or scratching my head or biting my cheek.  Then I realized a subtle shift in the nearly three weeks my focus has been on my new puppy, now 11 weeks old.  My to do list gets done, but I spend a lot of time watching and waiting.  This is a forced slower pace as I focus outside of myself.  This is somehow what I knew I needed when I decided to buy a puppy.  Trusting my intuitive self is something I do, but don't often know why until I stop to reflect.  Until the time is right to do so.
      The first two weeks were a lesson in losing control and feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and abandonment.  The first two weeks were depressing.  But now there is a kind of rhythm and I follow along.  Today I see the rhythm as having brought me to a place of understanding.  I am learning to slow my pace, to be.  I'm taking time to see, to listen.  I'm observing.  All of this is a rebuilding of a foundation that will, I think, allow me to change in ways I do not yet know, but somehow think will be positive.  That I am writing a blog again informs me that my writer self is merely dormant, not absent, not lost, not tossed out.  Citing Maslow's theory of the hierarchy of needs, I am moving up from survival, inch by inch.  I did not know, really, how much time a puppy can consume, until I brought Cali home.  But now I do know and as of now, I'm okay with that.  She's taught me to take time and live it puppy style...in the moment, in short bursts of craziness, with curiosity. I don't know if I will feel so lovingly tomorrow, but I'll see what tomorrow brings.  I have time.  I am grateful to have time.