Monday, December 25, 2017

Christmas Star--A Holiday Story

The old lady sat in the small, wingback, paisley chair beside her table-top Christmas tree and knit on the soft, pale blue sweater she soon would send to her son living far away now. It had taken her three trips to the local yarn store to choose the yarn, perfectly matched to the color of the University of North Carolina, the school her son had attended a few years previously, and that he still loved so
strongly. Maybe “sweater” did not really describe the garment; perhaps “jacket” came closer, though did jackets ever have buttons? Whatever; she hoped he would like it, would wear it, and not throw it into a drawer or closet in the small apartment where he now lived in that faraway town, but she also didn’t count on it. For sure, he’d tell her, “Mom! It’s beautiful, thank you!” and, for sure, she’d say, “I’m so glad you like it!” and never ask if, truly, he wore it.

Sometimes truth aches too deeply to be sought. All she could do was knit or purl each stitch as best as she could, willing her mother’s love down the needle with it, yearning for him to feel that love through the material she created with her hands. Silently she prayed, “Let him wear it, let him wear it, let him feel it, let him feel it,” putting more hope in a sweater (jacket?) than any garment deserved. How he got so far from home she could not really fathom. But children do not always follow desires of parents. When they talked, and at least he did call once a week, he sounded happy.

There’s a lot to be said for happy.

Eventually, her arthritic hands begged enough for a break that she set down her knitting, rose from her chair, bringing on the groaning of her knees and back, and just stood for a few minutes till she felt she could take a step without falling on her face—if she stepped slowly and carefully. And so, slowly and carefully, she made her way to the kitchen for a glass of tea, or maybe water, even, perhaps, a bit of coke; whatever would be easiest to pour from the fridge. Passing the small trash can, she saw that the can was, of course, full and so, naturally, needed emptying.

Sigh.

If she would get a larger can for her trash, she would not have to empty it out so often. However, could she lift the trash from a larger can? If her son lived close enough to see her every day or so, perhaps… but he did not and would not, probably, in her lifetime ever again. Well, it was a trash can, for Pete’s sake, not a safe for her valuables. In that case, the safe could have been smaller than a cigar box, surely. But, now, carefully she placed her hand against the wall and used it as leverage to pull the trash bag out of the can, then set it on the floor as she slowly, carefully replaced the bag with one of the new ones placed in the bottom of the cans just for that purpose. She then tied the full bag shut with the bag ties built into the trash bag itself and made her way to the back door. 

Outside on her small deck, she carefully shut the door behind her, then huddled inside herself against the cold wind, gripping her small trash bag, shivering; not a happy outside day. Only two steps led down to the sidewalk where the large trashcan which the trash men emptied once a week stood. Letting go of the bag with one hand, she gripped the handrail tightly, lowered herself down the two steps to the trash can, stepped on the built-in lever to open the large lid, dumped in the bag with a satisfying thump, removed her foot, her movements more fluid now, the stiffness from sitting too long wearing off, desire to get out of the cold pushing her along, turned to go back inside from the cold (why put on a sweater for such a short time?), and stopped short.  

What was that?

The dog stepped as stiffly as the old lady had walked just moments ago from the other side of the big trash can, head dipped a bit, one painful looking stride at a time. Though slow, the dog did not hesitate to come up to her, then just stood. The old lady looked down at the dog, a sad sight for sure. Its black head had what must be a white stripe down the middle over its nose. The black coat of its body stuck to its back and side. The tail of the dog wafted back and forth gently. She could not really see the dog’s legs and feet under the what appeared to be frozen dirt.

“Oh, you poor thing!” she said to her unexpected guest. “Where’d you come from?”

And the dog lifted its head. The old lady’s heart melted at the sight of deep brown eyes gazing up at her. The eyes showed no fear, just questions. As the old lady studied those amazing eyes, she could have sworn she heard a question in her head.

Wait….how can you hear a question inside your head that does not come through your ears?

She looked around but saw no one else, just herself…..and the dog, who stood quietly, appearing to study the old lady. Again, the question came to her mind.

And, so, she answered the question she so obviously couldn’t hear.

“Gloria,” she said. “My name is Gloria Shepherd.”

The dog blinked, the tail wagging a bit harder perhaps, but not whipping around.

“You,” the old lady (aka Gloria Shepherd) said, “need a bath badly. And you’re probably really cold.”

Once again the dog regarded the woman who, by this time, felt she should return that look, trying to assure the dog that it had nothing to fear from her—but realizing that probably she should worry a bit about where the dog came from. It surprised her that she was no more worried about the dog than she was. But, then, what better day for surprises than Christmas?

“Well, enough of this cold,” she stated. “No one’s here but me to worry about what I’m doing.” She glanced down at the dog, still calmly looking up at her. “Wanna go inside?”

To her surprise, the dog moved slowly, but with no hesitation, towards the steps up to her small deck, then painfully climbed those two steps, made its way to the door, stopping to look back at her. In her head, she heard, “Did you mean now? Are we going in now?”

Gloria shook her head and, to her surprise, much more easily than the coming down of the stairs, climbed back up those two stairs, opened the door and let the dog into her kitchen.

The dog stood still as she took a cloth from the dish cloth drawer—was she really going to use a DISH CLOTH on a dog’s feet? Well, she had plenty. Soaking it in warm water from the tap, she carefully bent over, surprised that she could stop before toppling, and washed the bottom of the dog’s feet without looking closely—just enough to get the dog to a bath. “Don’t want you muddying up all my rugs,” she said. The dog stood patiently, and Gloria learned another fact about the dog.

“Hello, Girl,” she said.

“Come on,” she said. “We need to get you to the bathtub, though how I’ll get you in, I do NOT know.”

The dog followed her down the hall and into the bathroom. Gloria pushed back the shower curtain, sat on the edge of the tub, and turned on the water, adjusting the temperature to a warm stream—not hot, not cold, but warm enough, hopefully, to warm the dog, soften whatever cold had seeped into her joints, something Gloria understood only too well.

Why wasn’t she more worried about getting her in the tub? Hmmmmm. Gloria thought a few minutes. Well, if that didn’t happen—and, really, she couldn’t lift her—she would just wash her with wash cloths, rinsing them out in the tub. That would take awhile, for sure, but by this time, the mission of caring for the dog filled Gloria. She rose from the side of the tub and went to get extra towels for the floor.

“You stay here, Little Girl,” she told the dog, those luminous eyes still watching the human’s every move. “I’ll be right back, and we’ll figure out something,” and she carefully shut the door, leaving the water slowly filling the tub, the dog standing beside it.

The towels retrieved from the linen closet, Gloria cautiously opened the door to avoid knocking the dog in any way.

But, where was the dog? For a brief moment she glanced around the bathroom, not a large room, nowhere for a dog to run, but, where was she?

And, then Gloria saw inside the tub, the water still slowly filling, and there, as calm as always, stood the dog. "Well, I don't know how you did that," Gloria said to the dog, "but I'm grateful," and she sat back down on the side of the tub.

In the water immediately around the dog's feet floated dirt loosening from the warmth and the water. To Gloria’s surprise, the dog’s feet showed white, then whiter, then whiter yet as the warm water worked its magic. Gloria leaned over, lifted a front leg gently, rubbing softly, and saw even whiter fur come to light beneath her fingers.

She had no dog shampoo, but did have baby shampoo left from company last summer—snow birds traveling through, back to New England from Florida, someone leaving baby shampoo.  Better, she figured, than her own beauty parlor shampoo.

And she put a dot on her hand and again lifted the paw. As she rubbed the shampoo in, the paw glowed white. She worked it in higher up the leg, realizing it look like the dog wore a sock, a bright, white sock. And, so, she went to work on the rest of the dog and found, to her surprise, three white socks halfway up the dog’s legs and one other white foot. Once past the legs, she found at the end of the dog’s tail a bright white couple of inches, like a flag at the end. When she spoke to the dog, the tail would wave sending a shower of droplets of shampoo and water splattering around the bathroom walls. As she washed the dog, Gloria this time checked her paws for any sores or damage from cold. Granted, she didn’t know dogs, but she had raised a son, she did know what scrapes and lesions looked like. To her surprise, she saw none. Relieved, she worked away, humming to herself, not feeling any joint pain, sensing, almost, happiness.

Finally, she took a cloth and carefully washed the top of the dog’s head. To her surprise, at the top of the stripe on the dog’s nose gleamed a star-shaped blaze, previously totally covered in dirt. It took almost half an hour to wash, rinse, wash, rinse to Gloria’s satisfaction that the dog had truly shed all the loose and deep dirt that could be gotten. With the black-and-white coat plastered to her body, the dog showed herself thin, but not starved looking.

“Where,” asked Gloria, “did you come from?”

Gloria turned off the water, placed towels all over the floor, and looked at the dog. She hadn’t really thought of getting the dog out of the tub. She picked up a towel to put in front of her, snapped her fingers at the dog then made kissy sounds with her lips. Suddenly, she again heard in her head, “I can get out; don’t worry.”

Gloria’s head whipped around. Before she even had a chance to say anything, the dog hopped over the side of the tub and landed on the waiting towels. Gloria stared at the dog, then held the towel in her hand to her mouth and laughed. What kind of a dog was this? And did she truly hear the dog in her head?

Yet again, the dog stood calmly, looking up at her, those luminous brown, deep eyes watching her, even the blinking slow and calm. Gloria dried her head to tail, got another towel, dried her again tail to head, then smoothed the fur down with her hands as best she could, all the while, the dog staying close to Gloria as she sat on the tub’s edge.  She could feel some tangles in the coat. Tomorrow she would need to get a brush or find someone to help with those. But for now, nothing more could be done.

“What a considerate dog you are,” Gloria told her. The dog wagged her tail, a bit more enthusiastically now.

“You need a name,” Gloria said. The dog looked at her and sat down on the towels, for the first time her eyes narrowed just a bit. Gloria looked back at the dog and felt her own eyes contract a bit. She wondered if she could get to the bottom of those eyes ever. She glanced below the eyes to the blaze on the nose and followed it up to the star on her head.

“That’s it,” she said to the dog, who tilted her head so cutely that Gloria felt her heart contract in a nearly forgotten fashion. “I’ll call you Star!”


Star stood and shook, her nearly-dry coat fluffing around her, turned, and went to the door, looking up at the handle. Gloria reached around, picking up the towels, let the water out of the tub, knowing the tub would need a hard scrub before being usable again, and carrying the towels to take to the washing machine, opened the door. Star stayed with her as she took the towels to the small laundry room off the kitchen and started their washing. Then, Star sat in the middle of the kitchen and looked seriously at Gloria.

“Are you hungry?” asked Gloria?

She opened the refrigerator and saw the leftover turkey from her small turkey-piece dinner she had prepared, refusing to not cook any special food for the holiday. She had bought a turkey leg and thigh, oven-roasted it like it weighed twenty pounds, prepared other special foods in single-serving sizes, and pretended to enjoy the meal. Now there sat the leftover turkey, though she thought she had heard not to give poultry bones to a dog. She took it out of the refrigerator, got a fork, and scraped every bit of meat off the bones that she could manage. As she worked, Star, as usual, sat politely, watching, not begging exactly, but those brown eyes appeared lit from behind, shining with anticipation.

Gloria put the turkey on a small plate (“How,” she wondered, “did I suddenly become the person who feeds a dog off my personal plates?), and set it on the floor. Star neatly—and Gloria was not surprised—ate every bite of turkey, then licked the plate. As she ate, Gloria filled a bowl with water. When Star licked the last smidgen of turkey from the plate, she drank half the water from the bowl, looked up, again, at Gloria, then walked to the door that led outside.

“Uh oh,” said Gloria. “Do you want to leave me?” It shocked Gloria, how sad that thought made her. It also surprised her, though she laughed to herself, that she heard no answering thought in her head. “Don’t be silly,” she thought.

“Of course,” she said down to the dog, who, still looked up at her, “maybe you just need to go do your business, hmmm?”

Gloria still worried that the dog, now Star, might run off. But, what to do? She had no collar or leash—no experience with dogs at all, really, so opened the kitchen door, then the screen door, and watched as Star trotted to the deck, down the steps, and disappeared into the dusky evening. Though only about 5:00, the days got dark so early in December…..

After a few minutes, Gloria stepped onto the deck. “Star?” she tentatively called. She saw and heard nothing. “Star?” a little louder.

Still nothing.

What did she think, that this dog had chosen her out of the blue, had sensed her loneliness on Christmas Day, missing her son, trying not to feel sorry for herself, and failing dreadfully at it?

Besides, she didn’t really even like dogs. They made the house dirty….you had to take care of them. Even now, her tub waited for a blasting of a cleaning. At least the dog (she came with no name; she could leave the same way) left better off than she had come, cleaner for sure, fed.

She’d be cold tonight. But, she had made it who knows how long without Gloria. Maybe a family looked for her and would find her soon.  Gloria could not worry about her if she so easily slipped away after food….water….that bath.

Still. “Star?”

“Yes?” Gloria jumped six inches straight up and whipped around quickly, wondering when someone had joined her on the deck. No one there. Her head turned the other way—it was gonna hurt tomorrow, no doubt—and still, no one.

Suddenly something cold (and already the outdoors was COLD) touched her leg. Again, she jumped straight up. Yelping, she looked down to see Star backing up to avoid her jumping feet.

“Star!!” And for the first time in who-knew-how-long, Gloria knelt down, putting her arms around the dog, hugging her, causing that tail to wave once again.

Though she got down, Gloria did not know for sure she could get up from the deck. But, she tightly gripped the railing around the deck and pulled herself up. In the second when she felt she might tip back over, she placed her hand on Star, who stood still, exactly as she needed.

Where had this dog come from?

Feeling her fatigue now, Gloria opened the door and motioned Star inside. She locked the door behind her then made her way back to the living room, to the chair beside the little tree on the table. She sat down gratefully, not quite so stiff, not quite so sore. It helped to move—and, truly, she had moved a bit the past couple of hours. Star came and stood in front of her, then put her head on Gloria’s knee and shut those beautiful eyes for a minute. Gloria’s gnarled, arthritic hand, the one that knit with love until it got too sore to knit another stitch, the one that dialed a missing son for the sound of his voice, reached to gently rub the top of that soft, furry head, the shiny white star looking to reflect the lights from her petite tree. Star gave a huge, satisfied sigh, opened her radiant eyes and backed from Gloria’s lap. She looked around the room a minute, for all the world looking to be deciding, then stepped to her right and under the table with the tree, circled three times, lay down on the rug put there to catch any stray tree needles, and fell almost immediately asleep.

Gloria picked up her knitting, thinking to work a bit more on the jacket (sweater?) before making a bit of dinner for herself. There was meatloaf prepared last week in the freezer she could put in the oven. She wondered if Star liked meatloaf?

Her knitting sped by and the garment grew beneath her fingers until she stopped and rested her needles on her lap and looked at the dog beneath the table. Star had not moved, breathed gently, her feet twitching occasionally. Gloria shut her eyes and wondered how long it had been since the dog had slept in a warm, clean place with a full tummy. As she watched the dog sleep, she felt, again, her heart catch, and a desire to protect and care for the dog almost overwhelmed her.

Into her mind the word, “Okay,” wafted. Gloria quickly glanced down at Star, whose eyes, half open, glanced up, only to close again with another huge sigh, as the dog returned to sleeping as serious business.


Gloria laughed. If her son saw her now, he’d be looking for her a home to go into. Well, not much danger of that.

She placed her knitting in the basket on the floor, stood up—a bit more easily, she felt now—and stood looking down at the beautiful black and white dog sleeping under the Christmas tree.

Smiling, she said softly, “Welcome home, Star.”



© Jana Mauney 2017

6 comments:

  1. Ah like old times a story on 4me❤️❤️
    Thank you,
    Mary Ann

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    1. You are kind, Mary Ann. I do frequently miss those days.

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  2. Wonderful story, Jana. Resonates with my old bones that miss having a BC in the house.

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  3. Replies
    1. How wonderful to see everyone here--how kind you all are!

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