The Life and (Sometimes Strange) Times of a Veterinarian's Wife

The beauty of “giving up”

It’s been quite a few years since small, dimpled hands brought me sweet crayon and marker creations, lovingly signed “MOLLY,” with two backward Ls. 

I miss the drawings, but I can’t say I mind having a tidy refrigerator door. 

These days, the only adornment is a small, square black magnet with an admonishment from Winston Churchill: “Never, never, never give up.”

I bought it on a whim, when I decided it was time to take a leap of faith and try to “find an agent.”

Finding an agent is the necessary step taken by the majority of those authors of the books you see at Barnes & Noble. There are so many of those books, that wannabe authors think it must be a pretty easy task. 

What we don’t know, initially, is that for each of those books on the B&N shelf, probably a hundred other authors have tried to get one there.

For years, as I slogged through my wonderfully rewarding, yet terribly paid, career as a journalist and corporate writer, people urged me to write a book. 

But, raising a child, doing what I could to help my aging parents, and trying to maintain my happy marriage seemed like plenty on the plate.

Then, I took a seminar taught by a wonderful man and incredible writer. We worked at the same magazine and I loved his writing ability and sense of humor. He was successful in publishing some wonderful memoirs and was so down-to-earth and delighted with the experience, I let his enthusiasm wash over me.

So I wrote a book. That’s really the buried lead of this blog:  I wrote a book and I’m really happy about that. 

My mother told me a story once about my lovely Aunt Liz. My father’s sister, she married young, became a nurse and in fairly rapid succession the mother to six children. Money was tight, but one year she allowed herself the luxury of a new holiday dress. She loved it and I imagine that before emerging from her room at the annual family Christmas party she may have looked in the mirror, smiled and felt beautiful. 

But, at the gathering, another relative looked at her and said: “Oh, Liz, don’t you know you should never wear horizontal stripes?”

My book and I have begun to feel a bit like Aunt Liz and her dress. When we’re together we’re happy. It’s when others become involved that things get murky. 

I told a lot of people about my project, which turned out to be a mistake. Because, as little as wannabe authors know about the world of book publishing, the general public knows even less. 

“When will your book be published?” people began to ask. 

If I replied that it was not a when but an if, I got quite a few pitying: “Gee, your book must not be very good. Have you seen how many are on the shelves at Barnes and Noble?” looks. 

I hired a former editor of mine as a proofreader last year. My hand was shaking as I turned my manuscript over because this guy -- nice as he is-- is tough. A couple weeks later he called me: “I’ve got your book done,” he said. That was all.

“He hated it,” I told my husband, Jim, as I headed off to meet the editor.

But, he didn’t hate it. He liked it. He thought, in fact, he might be interested in proofing work for other potential authors. “Except, I’m worried I might not like their stuff as much as I liked yours,” he said.

I pretty much floated out of the brew-pub where we met. 

That’s the last time I was excited about the possibility of my book being published. 

I have not -- as I told everyone I would -- approached “every agent on the face of the earth” with my memoir. 

I approached four agents. Two of them didn’t respond. The two who got back to me were amazingly kind. These are agents for big time, bestselling authors. Without a doubt, you have heard of the authors they represent.

They were sweet and encouraging and hoped I wouldn’t quit looking for representation. What they were really saying is . . . “there isn’t a chance in hell this particular book is going to get published -- at least, right now.” Memoir is overdone. I have no platform (i.e. I’m not famous). The economy sucks. That’s what they were really saying and I believe them. 

So I have two choices. I can keep trying, and perhaps ultimately lose faith in my own ability and the book that I am so happy I wrote. Or I can bide my time. Perhaps someday memoir will be a sought-after genre again. Perhaps I’ll create more of a platform through my blog.

The beauty part is, my story will always be my story. It will undoubtedly just get richer as I age. 

So I’ve decided I’m going to go against Churchill’s advice. I’m going to be calm, listen to the only voice in this that ultimately matters and, just for now, “give up” -- which to me simply means liberating myself for awhile to pursue another dream I have. One I will share when it actually does happen. 

Our family has experienced a lot of loss and sadness the last few years and I certainly have been thinking of my own mortality and the things that are of real importance to me. If something were to happen to me tomorrow, I hope you will say this:

“She was a good mother, a wife who always adored her husband and a devoted daughter. She loved to dance and throw parties. She wrote a lot of interesting stories about other people’s lives and, oh yeah, one time she wrote a pretty darn good one about her own.”

That’s more than enough. And it's plenty for me. 

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The Life and (Sometimes Strange) Times of a Veterinarian's Wife

The Life and (Sometimes Strange) Times of a Veterinarian's Wife

Don’t typecast my dog

I hate flying.

I loathe everything about it, except the free cocktails I get on the (rare) occasions when I end up in the front of the plane. 

First class is my dear friend because, when I’m there, I never feel like the plane is going to crash. I probably don't feel that way because I’ve had a couple of free snorts of Dewar’s Black Label, but that’s a different story.

In any case, I’m always happy to be up front.

“Ah,” my people, I think.

Yet . . . I’m also always surprised those lucky enough to ride in first class aren’t, well, classier. 

The woman who sat next to me earlier this week forced a grumpy “hey” when I said “good morning,” then shook out her little red blanket and commandeered the armrest for her drinks, her copy of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and her used Kleenex. Unfortunately, the armrest wasn’t big enough, so she began tossing her soggy tissues on the floor at my feet. 

We were in the front row of the plane but, apparently worried she wouldn’t be the first person off, she climbed around me as I unbuckled my seatbelt then told me: “you better watch your head, I need to get my stuff,” while she hauled down her suitcase, her scarf and her purse and ordered the flight attendant to get her coat. 

“You ma’am are no lady,” I said to her (in my mind). “Also, your shoes are ugly, I’m not positive you are wearing a bra and your perm is not working in your favor.”

Reasonably, I understand that just because someone is sitting in the roomy seats it doesn’t necessarily mean they are wealthy or refined. It may just mean they have amassed enough frequent flier miles (like me) or someone else is paying for it. 

It’s just that I still carry these images of the elegant traveling experience first class should be.

My dog suffers from the same kind of typecasting.

Gabbana Huffington is a rescued-greyhound I gave my husband for his 50th birthday. He wanted either a greyhound or a pug. He’s a man of varied taste.

Gabbi -- who eats pounds of food each day and a multitude of IAMS treats and is still see-every-rib skinny -- accompanies Jim to work, where she is widely admired by clients. 

“Boy, I bet she’s a fast one,” people always say. 

“Yeah. Sure,” we answer. 

She is fast. But when I take her to my friend Sally's to run along her lakefront lawn, Gabbi will pick up speed, then stop abruptly and look into the distance as if to say: "Ooh! Shiny!" Then she yawns and eats some grass.

She will run, but she would rather nap. 

It’s probably why her former career lasted only three races and why her current career as a greeter at Jim’s veterinary clinic -- where her primary responsibility is allowing people to pet her -- is going swell.

I should probably think about the misguided reputations dogs carry with them, when I put expectations on people based on a stereotype. 

I should remember that our “fast” greyhound is a couch potato and our former Labrador Retriever, Sophie Zenkman, was afraid of the water. I should recognize that pit bulls and Dobermans and German shepherds are not innately mean, but sometimes the people who own them are. 

And I should know better than to judge humans by what they look like or where they are sitting, also. 

After my experience in first class the other day, I was actually relieved that for the second part of my journey I was, once again, seated in coach.

“Ah, my people,” I thought.

“Good evening,” I said to the woman seated beside me. 

“Hey,” she muttered. 

Then she hit me in the face with her backpack as she threw it into the overhead bin.

The Life and (Sometimes Strange) Times of a Veterinarian's Wife

Why are you playing with that tick?

I was almost 20 before I saw my father’s workplace. 

A quality control specialist for Oldsmobile, my dad rose at 4:30 a.m. for 30 years to toss down some coffee, grab a bowl of Corn Flakes, and drive 25 miles to arrive by 6. Often, I’d hear the shrill scream of his “Big Ben” alarm and creep in to see him sitting on the side of the bed, head hanging, mentally preparing himself for another day.

I always assumed he hated his job. I knew I did.

But when I was a sophomore in college he invited me on a tour during a rare employee event. He showed me how he pulled cars off the line and, with his trained eye and a huge supply of yellow arrows, marked imperfections. His knowledge was impressive and I saw that he was admired and respected among his co-workers, that he was swollen with pride and confidence when he was able to show me a part of his life I had only -- wrongly -- imagined.

Conversely, our daughter, Molly, was five-days-old when she began going to work with her dad. We changed her diaper on the -- sterilized -- surgery table and as she grew she motored around, terrorizing clinic cats and a fair share of clients in her walker. 

She fed baby ducks and opossums, learned at an early age that mopping up excrement is a matter-of-fact task, that death is the natural conclusion of life, and compassion the most important trait to possess. 

Her friends loved coming to the clinic to play. They locked each other in cages and ran around in surgical gowns and masks. They could amuse themselves with very few implements; she and another little girl once fashioned cadaver bags into gowns and choreographed a musical called “Scoop the Poop!” 

It was a charming childhood. Still, there were pitfalls.

I was standing in the elementary school hallway waiting for Molly to get out of class one day when an administrator approached to talk about “a small problem.”

There was a distinct odor of urine coming from the lockers and he wondered if I would please make sure an animal wasn’t using Mol’s coat as a litter pan. 

My face flushed and my throat tightened. The other hallway moms edged away. 

“Are you sure it’s coming from Molly’s locker?” I asked, trying to think if it was possible she’d thrown her pretty new jacket on the floor at the clinic and it had been befouled by some idiot feline. 

“Not absolutely,” he said, smugly. “But, I mean, it makes sense, of course.”

“It makes sense?” I huffed. “It doesn’t make sense at all. We are clean people. Why couldn’t it be from the locker of that little girl who said she wants to be a stripper when she grows up? Or that kid who asked if he could smell my breath when I was tutoring him in math, why couldn’t it be his smelly old coat, huh?”

“I trust you’ll look into it when you get home,” the administrator said, looking at me pityingly and walking away.

I did. It wasn’t Mol’s coat and the administrator later confessed they’d found the culprit; neither the wannabe stripper nor the pre-pervert.

As much as I don’t like to be stereotyped for strange smells -- or behavior -- based on Jim’s profession, I understand why it happens. 

Jim often travels to veterinary conferences, and always remembers to bring Molly souvenirs. In recent years they’ve tended toward T-shirts, but when she was small she was happy enough with the bag of candy and trinkets he would get at the accompanying trade shows. 

After one trip, I found her sitting on the living room floor unwrapping what I assumed was a beach ball. But as she began inflating her prize, I realized the ball had several legs and, more disturbingly, simulated hair. 

“What is that, Mol?” I asked.

She shrugged and continued blowing into the nozzle.

Jim came into the room, looked at the name of the sponsoring company on the wrapper, then at the inflatable.

“It’s a tick.” he said. “Look at it this way, now that she has her own she won’t always have to go play with some neighbor kid’s tick.”

The tick was supposed to be displayed in an exam room as a cautionary tale: “Careful, you wouldn’t want something butt ugly and disgusting like this in your home, so you better use our product.” 

Our tick never made it to the clinic. It became Molly’s new companion and favorite bathtub toy. It was months before it, somehow, got punctured with a dinner fork.

In the pros and cons of life as a veterinarian’s kid, the tick was probably a “pro.” Molly never knew about the stinky jacket accusation until recently, but I could tell from the look on her face when I told her she’d definitely put that in the “con” column. 

The frantic late night calls from strange clients who dragged Jim away from the house then refused to pay him would be definite “cons.” The times he let her watch C-sections and the gratitude and Christmas cookies from a multitude of wonderful pet owners are certainly “pros.”

And knowing, long before she was 20, that her father loves his job and is doing exactly what he is meant to do? I think she’d make that a “perfect.” 

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The Life and (Sometimes Strange) Times of A Veterinarian's Wife

Shame on who?

Generally, I miss my old pal, “Sophie,” a lovable yellow Lab who had a perpetual grin and the well deserved nickname: “Stink Dog.”

But lately, I’ve been a bit relieved she died almost five years ago. I worry, with her propensity for sliding the side of her face in her own excrement, that someone would have “shamed” her.

You’ve seen “dog shaming,” haven’t you?

It’s an internet fad in which people post confessional signs next to photos of their adorable pooches stating: “I ate all the Halloween candy” or “I bite the people who love me.”

Invariably, the dogs look terribly chagrined. It is that sort of begging-for-forgiveness countenance that makes the photos so winsome. It would never work with cats. Not that cats don’t commit horrific acts every day -- they’re just never sorry.

Dogs always seem apologetic, though they tend to forget their misdemeanors quickly, so repeat performances of their crimes are fairly routine. 

My mother seemed to be a ripe target for canine miscreants. 

Mom owned a Fox Terrier named “Brownie” when she was in her ‘20s. “Brownie,” the way she described him, was sort of a forerunner to the little dogs celebrities carry in their purses today. She pampered him, groomed him, and took him everywhere. 
    
He traveled with her to a friend’s cabin one summer. When the hostess served up heavy, wet pancakes fried in bacon grease and floating in syrup, Mom managed to sneak hers off the plate and hold it under the table for the dog. “Brownie” rushed up, took a whiff and ran away yelping just as the woman returned, leaving Mom holding the dripping flapjack.

Years later, after she moved to the farm with my father, Mom loved to hang laundry on the line, enjoying the fresh scent and the pennies she could save by not running the dryer. Always a well-endowed woman, I remember watching, transfixed, as her Jane Russell-esque undergarments floated in the breeze. 

Our neighbor dog “Spot” must have been mesmerized by the sight, also. He rounded the corner of our house one summer day, waited until Mom had moved down the yard to hang up some sheets, then tore up to the line, grabbed a strap and took off down our country road, flinging clothespins, Double D cups flapping behind him. 

I rolled onto the ground, clutching my sides in hysterics while my mother gave chase, shrieking at the dog until he eventually dropped her bra into the mud. I’m pretty sure I never saw Mom that angry again.

I would have, though, had she been alive to hear about Michael Vick, of the Philadelphia Eagles, getting a new family dog. Because, despite their sometimes unruly behavior -- their pancake sniffing -- and their lingerie theft, my mother adored dogs.  

She would have been absolutely incensed by Vick. We should all be incensed by Vick.

Nobody needs me to tell them what he did and nobody wants to relive that heartbreaking story. He ultimately served jail time for his deviancy and was banned from owning a dog for a few measly years. But now, his children have apparently begged for a pet, and being such a responsible, upstanding dad, he simply wants to fulfill their wish. 

I’m sure his kids would also have liked to have a father who isn’t a narcissist capable of murdering helpless animals. "You can’t always get what you want," is apparently a lesson he doesn’t care about teaching them.

It’s hard to feel anything but helpless about things like this. We can rant. We can rave. We can write blogs and post on Facebook. 

But, our best hope is to teach our own children the difference between right and wrong, to tell them “be gentle” when they pick up a puppy or kitten and to reinforce basic rules of human behavior.

I know forgiveness is supposed to be one of those basic rules. It's one I have not mastered. I’m working on it, but I’ve apparently got a way to go because I still fantasize about the day when someone props a sign up against Vick which reads: “I abused the power I have over helpless creatures. I am repugnant.”

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The Life and (Sometimes Strange) Times of a Veterinarian's Wife

What is in the freezer, stays in the freezer

It’s still there, just where it has been for five years, in the back of my friend Jackie’s garage freezer -- a small, red “American Girl” accessory box once belonging to her daughter, Lauren.

Jackie sees the box every time she goes outside to search for a ham or a container of blueberries and feels a little guilty, considering the pretty little container holds a ziplock baggie which, in turn, holds the chilly remains of Lauren’s hamster “Snickers.”

There was a time when “Snickers” lived the high life, housed in a glass condo in Lauren’s room, spinning around on her squeaky wheel. But she passed away one wintry day and the family couldn’t bear to put her in the frozen ground. 

Now a sophomore at Purdue University, Lauren makes trips back to Michigan, of course, but they still never quite get around to moving “Snickers” to a final resting place.

“We’ll probably do it next time she comes home,” Jackie says.

She’s deluding herself.

I know this because we once kept a huge, dead trout for a decade, even taking it with us when we moved and putting it in our new freezer. A family member eventually staged an intervention and tossed it out. 

“I had a hummingbird for a while,” my friend, Cathy, mused. “I was going to take it to a taxidermist, but then I found out it’s illegal to have a hummingbird. I mean, I didn’t kill it myself or anything, but . . . "

Another friend of a friend kept the leg of a polar bear for over a year. 

Freezers are sometimes simply a better option than burial. My neighbor, Sally, once owned a mixed breed dog named “Buddy” who died when her husband, Pat, was out of town. Heartsick and alone with three grieving little girls, Sally gave “Buddy” the best burial and service she could muster. Still, when Pat returned, their middle daughter, Michelle, ran up to him screeching: 

“‘Buddy’ died while you were gone and Mom dug a hole in the ground and just threw him in!”

My husband, Jim, and his staff deal with the death of animals every day and are unfailingly kind as they offer hugs and boxes of tissues and shed tears with the grieving owners. 

While some people want to be with their pets during the euthanasia, others say a tender farewell and flee, undoubtedly sobbing their hearts out on the way home. 

Unfortunately, those who leave quickly sometimes have second thoughts and ask to return later to say one more goodbye. This creates a tricky situation for the staff, who know the owners probably aren’t really emotionally prepared to take a look at a beloved friend who has been cooling at 0 degrees Fahrenheit for a few days. 

More than once, Jim has come into a treatment room to find staff members frantically using blow dryers to defrost a dog or cat for a final visitation.

We hear countless, end-of-life, freaky stories. Jim’s associate veterinarian, Dr. Griffin, once euthanized a cat, then had a sobbing owner hand her a pair of unwashed woman’s panties. The cat had always slept between the owner’s legs at night and she wanted it to be in familiar surroundings on the trip to the great beyond.

Which is strange, no doubt, but perhaps no stranger than Jim wanting to bury our sweet dog, “Kelly,” 10-feet deep so she wouldn’t “get cold.” 

Because, black humor aside, what we are really saying when we do things like this is: 
“You have been a true friend. I have loved you. I will miss you so much. I wish you 
could stay.”

Except for the trout, of course. The trout was just weird.

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The Life and (Sometimes Strange) Times of a Veterinarian's Wife

My dirty little secret

Yes, that was me you saw hovering around the entrance of the market last week near the gum ball machine and the shopping carts.

And, you are correct, I was looking around surreptitiously, praying I wouldn’t see anyone I knew. 

I’m sure what I was doing isn’t illegal. But it is possibly immoral and certainly humiliating.

I was stealing newsprint. 

Auto trade sheets, “Home for Sale” sheets, supermarket supplements advertising: “Jif! Assorted Varieties! 2 for $5!” . . . when no one was looking I reached out and snatched a few of each. Then I slipped quickly through the automatic doors, my heart racing a bit as I tried to keep my face placid and hide the elation I felt simply knowing that, for a few more days, I was safe.

Of course, like many of the most embarrassing moments in my life -- I offer the example of the writing group member a few years back who pulled out a chair at my dining room table and sat in a warm, squishy, pile of vomit -- it is my animals which have driven me to this.

I steal newsprint because my cat, “Boz,” known as “the Fat Bastard” to our sometimes pet sitter, Michelle, eschews cat litter, preferring to urinate on The Daily Times.

We got “Boz,” as we get all of our animals, because of someone’s cruelness or neglect. He was flattened in the street by a driver who just kept driving. We scooped him up, gave him a home, a warm meal and a stupid name and he, in return, began urinating on the newspaper I always placed under the litter box.

“Maybe you should try tearing up newspaper for him to pee on,” one of our associate vets mused.

“I did,” I replied. “He keeps peeing on the flat paper under the box.”

“Well,” she said. “Maybe you should put the flat paper in the box.”

Which works pretty beautifully, but necessitates a steady supply; at least three sections a day. It’s a habit I can’t keep up with by simply using the newspapers we actually buy. 

I’ve tried to use the glossy magazines and catalogs that come in the mail, but the outcome was much like when my parents let me play with the mercury that rolled around our sidewalk after my dad dropped an outdoor thermometer one summer day. 

Except, based on odor alone, Boz’s urine is potentially more carcinogenic.

The irony isn’t lost on me. For 30 years I made a meager living as a journalist, first full time, then as a freelance writer after I tossed away a much more lucrative PR career. 

“Stop spewing the pablum you spew,” a righteous and irate, if mentally disturbed, caller once screamed at me years ago after I wrote a story about an innocuous city council meeting. “It’s garbage and it’s just going under the bird cage anyway.”

I thought about that guy the other day and laughed.

“Yeah Mr.? Well, nowadays it would just be going under my cat’s ass!”

Except, it’s not. Because I don’t write for newspapers anymore.

I was among that endless crowd of bright-eyed youngsters who watched as Watergate unfolded and decided a career in the Fourth Estate was about as good as it could get. 

And it was good -- very, very good -- for a long while. 

“Who could have imagined?” former journalists say, when we talk. “Who would have thought?”

We were enthusiastic watch dogs, chatting up our sources and remind them “nothing is off-the-record.” We referred incessantly to our bible: a tattered Strunk and White. We drank the the occasional Scotch. 

And then, in the blink of an eye, it was over. Journalists of my age are becoming as extinct as telephone operators. Or milkmen.

“I’m sorry,” one of my favorite editors, Megan, said to me one day when I answered her call happily, simply assuming she was ready to offer me another cream assignment for her gorgeous magazine.

“I’m sorry,” a lovely editor named Melody said to me, when she told me the newspaper I had been proud to work for, on and off for more than 20 years, needed me no more.

 I was astounded, recently, to learn that a young relative, as well as a high school classmate of my daughter’s, are still planning to pursue degrees in journalism. Astounded and elated.

I have read their efforts and they are talented. They show promise. They are promise.

And I hope when they’re out there, in their first apartments, reading their Strunk and Whites and setting the journalistic world afire, neither one of them decides to get a cat.

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