deep enough

There is something poisonous in his smile as he announces, "I knocked the shed down last night."  He is so proud of himself and I am surprisingly torn by the news.  One half of me is smiling like him and the other half cannot imagine why erasing history is a good thing.  I throw on boots and a jacket and head out to see just what he has done... 

In the icy morning light I see this.  The Shed which goes by many names: to BC it is the Shed, to me the Garage to the family who built it was Home.  He has knocked down someones house.

Okay, they don't live here anymore.  And even before that they didn't live there.  The family built the Shed and then they build block by block, taking seven years, the house we live in today.

This is progress.  In its place a new building is going up.  A place to keep things, a wood shop, a real garage.    It makes way for the remodel of the our house too.  I should be jumping for joy but I'm not.  Old broken things strike wondrous melodies deep in my soul.   Their stories too often are the books we never get to read.  

As I made my way back inside in search of my abandoned cup of coffee these words drift through my head "The house on 10th west liked junk."  They are my words written a long time ago, another dog has died and been buried on the property, children have grown up and moved out, buildings toppled, and new foundations waiting to be poured...

"The house on tenth west liked junk.  We didn’t know that when we fell in love and bought it.  A realtor’s nightmare with dead animals mounted on the walls, over stuffed rooms.  The day we were shown the house we stepped around the piles of boxes, navigated rooms so full we were not allowed to open closet doors. 

We bought her anyway and moved across town.  Down 1700 South over the tracks and through the industrial warehouses, onto a wide residential street that seemed to stretch forever; we were in by Halloween.  Ripping up carpets, tearing down cabinets and curtains, striped her bare and we all started over. 

The house came with an acre of dirt, junk trees, and thistle.  We buried Zeke there four feet down through earth just awaking from winter’s long frozen sleep.  When the water began to seep in and the mud no longer released from the shovels but clung in clay weights that pulled at your side and made my shoulder ache we stopped pronounced it deep enough and buried the dog. 

I am stoic and Colby is melancholy.  I still regret not having learned to listen.  Had I, I might have deflected some of Colby’s pain by correctly interpreting the animal control officer’s phone call.  Instead I unknowingly dispatched Colby to the road side carcass of our dog.  Despite the earliness and dampness of the weather the least I could do was to not let him bury the dog alone.  The body of the Great Dane had lain over night in the truck of the car and yet the only smell at the grave side was the sourness of ground water."    ~ Taming Venus, mlb