They happen on a Monday morning when it’s humid and threatening to rain and doesn’t smell like fall and everything is grey except the overflowing bowl of grape tomatoes your husband has brought in from your garden.
They happen getting the dog from Day Camp, because the day is still grey and it’s not a fun drive – busy and industrial – and she sees you and frantically wags her tail and you head outside and a little dog starts barking and except for the dog that’s barking everything gets silent and motionless but there is a pulse of electricity that’s coursing through your dog’s soul.
She will growl.
She will lunge.
She will leap.
She has the ability to throw this dog that belongs in a purse and who is screaming at your dog, into Ohio.
“Look at me Corby,” you say and she doesn’t, but then she does. Then she sits and you kneel in front of her and say, “YES. Good dog. Good girl!” It is going to rain any second, and you are on your knees in a parking lot hugging your dog.
They happen picking your daughter up early from school for a dentist appointment and no doubt the sky will rip open from all the rain it’s holding and it will happen while you’re walking to get your kid and this wouldn’t be an issue if you could park in the school’s lot but there are already three billion cars in the carpool line blocking it, so here you are walking and someone’s dropped a pencil on the sidewalk and it is as bright as the tomatoes were red this morning against this grey day. You think about picking the pencil up and keeping it for yourself – you love perfectly sharpened pencils and the clack they make on one sheet of paper. You don’t, though. You step over it, keep walking, and think maybe someone else will see it, pick it up, put it in her backpack, and take it home.
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