April Walk with Dharma

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Ode to Dharma

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   “The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.” --Andy Rooney      We stood there looking down at her. She sat there gazing up at us. She had tried and tried to make it to a standing position, having wet herself in the process, and we tried to boost, support, and lift her. Until this morning, we had always managed to get her 90 lb. body moving. Today, with a finality that shook us to the core, she laid back down. It could not have been more clear. She wanted us to know she was done trying.    Earlier that morning, we were discussing what we thought was the slow demise of Dharma’s back legs. A trip to the vet the week before determined that our 13 ½ year old Lab-Doberman was suffering from gradual nerve deterioration in her spine. For the last couple of years, she had become slower and weaker, but she figured out how   to acclimate herself to her old-age problems. She could still pull herself up onto the couch, and still loved...
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Mexican Outdoor Kitchen

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I committed to writing about the outdoor kitchen in Reynosa, Tamaulipas; about the first time I tried to learn to make masa tortillas by hand from some sweet abuelitas. Today’s the day. The challenge for me, and the reason why I have been putting off this blog entry, is because I have a tricky memory—I mean that it plays tricks on me and messes with my realities…and consequently my self-confidence. Do I really know that things happened the way they happened? Can I trust my mind? I need to be truthful and so I’ll say that when I think back on my two weeks in Hidalgo/Reynosa, weird peripheral details stick in my mind like a crystal, but others are muddy, closer to emotional impressions than to the concrete buildings and the people I encountered. I don’t want to lie and make up what may never have actually happened just to fill in holes for the purpose of a blog entry. (There are a couple of people who know me really well who can attest to my need to make sure that my recounting...
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The Miracle of the Hand, Part 2

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“Hand me that wrench over there…”  “Sure thing! You mean the one with the blue handle or the hand-adjustable one?” Again with the hands! This is Part 2 of a column that Gary Bird and I co-wrote and posted back on March 19 of this year. In Part 1, we talked about our fathers and how their hands told the story of the lives they led and the values they lived by. Kelly Carswell added a poignant description of her grandfather’s farm-worn hands.  We also mentioned hand size, comparing NBA player Boban Marajanovic’s hands with those of tiny Kristin Chenoweth, the 4’11” actress from the Broadway musical “Wicked”. We mentioned Alan Alda’s unforgettable monologue from M.A.S.H. where he describes the miracle of the hand. I sent our family a text, asking to help me out today as I write. I requested that they think of the word “hand” and tell me what crosses their mind on the spot. What followed was a bombardment of phrases from the very silly to the profound.  “Han...
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