Curly

You know how families have myths? Legends? Stories that get repeated so often, or are so compelling in some way that generations later people who never even knew the central figures are still passing them on? We have lots of these. Myths and legends aren't quite the right words, though, because in our family, at least, many of the stories that have stuck are small in scope, like miniatures, or dioramas: a single heightened scene. Or an emotional experience that resonates for generations.

For most of my life, I have had a dog. There have been periods of a few years here, a few there, where a dog has died and a new one not yet appeared on the scene, but for the most part there has been at least one dog by my side at every stage. This was not a conscious decision, although I can say now that I don't ever again want to live without a dog, or two, or three, but a natural outgrowth of the fact that I come from people who love--and have--dogs. On my mother's side, my grandfather, Papa, was a latter-day, full-blown Swedish version of the Dicken character from The Secret Garden. Seriously, the first time I read the book, at 6 or 7, when Dicken was introduced, I thought: Just like Papa. Not in that he was a pink-cheeked, working-class boy who worked with his hands (although he sort of was, come to think of it) but in the way he related to animals. Dicken would appear, and--like a scene in a Disney movie--animals of all kinds, from cats and dogs to their undomesticated cousins, would surround him, alighting on his shoulders, curling around his legs, "speaking" to him in squirrel, or chipmunk, or owl. My family would rent a vacation home in an unfamiliar place, and my grandfather would disappear from the dinner table, only to be discovered in the side yard surrounded by equally unfamiliar neighborhood dogs, gazing at him adoringly, turning up their noses at us.

He had a dog himself, pretty much always. When I was little, his dog was a shepherd mix, black and tan, named Vaughn. I think I was told once that his dogs were always named Vaughn, which seems oddly fitting. He was not of the school of modern pet owners who fetishize their pets and treat them as surrogate children. There was something much more raw and natural about his connection to animals. I know this sounds crazy, but it was as though he met them on equal footing. It was, I guess you might say, animalistic. He could, quite literally, communicate with animals.

My father, who started this train of thought for me, did not come from dog people, as far as I know. His mother was a neatnik housekeeper who covered her couches in plastic when I was a child, although it must be said that she didn't flinch when we made forts with the cushions or crayoned at the coffee table. I didn't know my paternal grandfather, and I guess I may be selling him short as a possible dog lover. But what I do know is that when my father was a boy, he wanted a dog. He really wanted a dog, in the way some children really, really want a dog, and at some point, for some reason, he got one.

This is where the mythologizing, if not the myth, comes in. The dog he got was Curly. I knew, even as a very small child, that the way my father talked about Curly was different than the way he talked about even his parents, his childhood friends. His eyes would get sort of misty, in the way they do now when certain of his later pets' names are mentioned, and soon, too soon, the story of Curly would reach its tragic end. Curly got--or maybe had all along--some incurable disease and died very young, before my father had been a real dog owner for long. Although this was never the subtext of the Curly story, and I only just thought of it now, Curly's premature departure from my father's life--the mythology of his childhood, in which he wanted to be a boy with a dog and was, for a brief shining moment--certainly informed his adult attachment to animals, the importance he places on being the kind of pet owner, animal lover, his hero, my mother's father, was all his life.

Families are strange, and complicated, and sometimes very beautiful. Bad things are passed on, but good things are too, and in my best moments I believe we can teach--be taught--how to love. My dad didn't tell the Curly story that often. Every once in a while my sister or I would ask him about it, and he would tell it, and we would listen, in the way Lily does now when I describe the night Alison and I went swimming under the stars in my grandparents' pool, the time we had a real restaurant and people actually came. That is to say, silently, fully absorbed, and with something like awe. But I have no doubt that Curly is, in some indefinable way, behind Grapes, and Midnight, and Max, and all of the pets I have loved over my lifetime, including the ones I live with now, the ones still to come.

I suspect my dad never thinks about Curly these days. There are no small children forcing him to reminisce. But there are two small dog lovers on the horizon, and I think it might be nice for them to know about--and be thankful for--the little dog who will change--has already changed--their lives, too.