Lessons From Lucy Read online

  So now, at bedtime, Michelle arranges a variety of small electronic items—a guitar tuner, a remote control, etc.—on the sofa cushions. This has worked beautifully; each morning the sofa is as hairless as a frog’s belly. I suspect that during the night Lucy conducts regular surveillance missions into the living room to determine whether the sofa situation has changed, only to be forced to retreat when she sees that the devices are still vigilantly manning their posts. I like to think that if Lucy gets too close, the guitar tuner emits a low but distinct electronic “No!”

  So we have won the battle, but I’m not so naïve as to think the war is over. If, one night, Michelle forgets to position the devices, Lucy will be back on the sofa. Because she is also not a quitter, and I’m sure she hasn’t changed her mind about where she should sleep.

  But aside from that, Lucy has been—as most dogs are—the Best Dog Ever. Despite their differences on sleeping arrangements, she managed to convert Michelle from a person who thought dogs were unhygienic and yucky into a person who would willingly permit a dog—a dog that only minutes earlier could have been conducting a deep probe of its own butt, or chowing down on another dog’s poop—to lick her passionately on the face.

  Lucy also won over Michelle’s mom, a.k.a. Bubbe, who is no pushover, by being an attentive audience for Bubbe’s repertoire of traditional Spanish and Yiddish songs.3 When Bubbe sings to her, Lucy sits utterly still, staring at Celia soulfully, as if deeply moved by the music. In fact she’s probably thinking, This is the person who gives me cookies! Maybe she will give me a cookie! But whatever Lucy’s thinking, Bubbe loves her.

  So Lucy is family, the way dogs become family. She is around us all the time; she is the soul of our house. She follows us from room to room, waiting to see where we settle so she can settle nearby. When we say her name or reach down to pet her, her tail thumps the floor in a drumbeat of joy. When we leave the house, she follows us to the door and watches us go, sad but resigned. When we return home she’s waiting right there at the door, and she greets us joyfully whether we’ve been gone for five minutes or five hours. She is always happy to see us, always happy to be touched, always wildly enthusiastic about going for a walk. Always. She is—except when we leave, or it’s bath time—a happy soul.

  She’s also getting to be an old soul. Lucy turns ten this year. Her once jet-black face is now mostly white, and she has developed droopy jowls, which give her a perpetual expression of Deep Concern:

  We love Lucy’s face, but not everybody sees what we do. Recently Michelle and I were taking Lucy for her morning walk when we encountered a woman walking a well-groomed, obviously purebred dog with strikingly pointed ears. The woman and I had the following exchange:

  ME: What kind of dog is that?

  WOMAN: A Belgian Malinois.

  ME: It’s a beautiful dog.

  WOMAN: Thank you! (She looks at Lucy.) Have a good day!

  But we don’t care what anybody thinks. We think Lucy is beautiful, inside and out. Especially inside. I don’t want to sound all Californian here, but there’s something spiritual about dogs. If you’ve ever had a dog, you know what I mean; you can see it when you look into their eyes. Dogs aren’t people, but they’re not mollusks, either. Lucy is somebody. Lucy has feelings, moods, attitudes. She can be excited, sad, scared, lonely, interested, bored, angry, playful, willful.

  But mostly she’s happy. She sleeps more than she used to, and she moves a little slower, but her capacity for joy, her enthusiasm for life, does not seem to have diminished with age. Michelle and I often marvel at Lucy’s ability to be happy, especially compared with our own. We know, when we stop to look at the big picture, that we should be happy, too: we’re very fortunate people leading very good lives. But we hardly ever stop to look at the big picture. We’re almost always looking at the little picture, which is a random collage of pesky chores, obligations and annoyances—deadlines, bills, doctor appointments, grocery lists, the insanely complex carpool schedule, the leak in the roof, the car with a tire that’s losing air (not to be confused with the car that needs an oil change), the odor in the kitchen that we hope will go away on its own and not turn out to be a deceased rat in the wall like last time, and on and on. When we think about bigger things, they’re usually things that worry us—disease, aging, death, politics, the economy, terrorism, the decline of the once-great American newspaper industry into a big frantic Twitter account.

  So we spend a lot of time thinking about things that make us stressed and/or unhappy. Whereas Lucy never thinks about any of these things. Sometimes when I’m working I’ll pause from tapping on my keyboard and look at her, sprawled on the floor at my feet, emitting extravagant dog snores and the occasional dog fart, not concerned in the least about her career, or the future, or who the president is, as long as he doesn’t try to give her a bath.

  I envy Lucy’s ability to not worry about things. I once got a letter from the Internal Revenue Service stating that I was going to be audited and would be required to produce basically all my financial documents dating back to middle school. I totally freaked out. This letter was all I thought about for weeks. Whereas Lucy, if she got exactly the same letter, would react by sniffing it to determine whether it had been peed on by another dog, in which case she would also pee on it. That would be the extent of her concern. If the IRS sent armed agents to arrest her for noncompliance, she would be thrilled to have company. She would greet the agents joyfully at the door and sniff them and lick them and go get her squeaky toy so she could play the game where she runs around squeaking her toy as you try without success to take it from her. If the agents took her to prison, she would go happily. She would enjoy the car ride; she would enthusiastically greet and lick the prison guards; she would vigorously inhale the exciting new pee aromas of her fellow inmates.

  She would not dwell on the fact that she was in prison. She would accept her new situation, whether it lasted a day or the rest of her life. She would find a way to make the best of it.

  That’s what Lucy does: she makes the best of things. She’s way better at this than I am. I know much more than she does, but she knows something I don’t: how to be happy.

  And that’s the idea behind Lessons from Lucy. This book represents my attempt to understand how Lucy manages to be so happy, and to figure out whether I can use any of her methods to make my own life happier. Because—not to get too dramatic—I don’t have that much time left. I turned seventy, which means I’m the same age as Lucy is in dog years. She and I are definitely getting up there. If our lives were football games, we’d be at the two-minute warning in the fourth quarter. If our lives were movie credits, we’d be way down at the bottom, past the assistant gerbil wrangler. If our lives were Cheez-It bags, we’d be at the stage where you hold the bag up and tilt it into your mouth to get the last crumbs.

  In other words: The End Is in Sight. Whatever time I have left, I want it to be as happy as possible. And I’m hoping Lucy, who is aging so joyfully, can teach me how. Obviously I’m not saying I should behave exactly like her. For example, it would probably be a mistake for me to lick an IRS agent. (Although for the record I definitely would, if it would help.)

  But I really do want to learn what Lucy can teach me.

  However much time I have left, I want to make the best of it.

  I want to age joyfully, too.

  * * *

  1 Although usually not together.

  2 For example, Timmy was eventually replaced by an entirely new boy named Jeff, and they didn’t even notice that.

  3 Michelle’s family is Cuban-Jewish, or as they call themselves, “Jewbans.” They didn’t travel from Cuba to the US on rafts; they parted the Caribbean.

  THE FIRST LESSON FROM LUCY

  People often ask what kind of dog Lucy is. For years we didn’t know. We assumed there was some Labrador retriever in her, because Labs are super-friendly dogs that will mate with anything. There’s probably Lab DNA in the British royal family.

/>   Lucy does look vaguely Lab-ish, but not like a purebred Lab. She’s a big, muscular, short-haired, long-tailed, floppy-eared dog. Before her face started turning white, she was jet-black except for white patches on her throat and feet.

  After years of speculating, I finally decided to find out exactly what Lucy is, so I ordered a genetic testing kit from a company called Wisdom Panel. Their motto is “Dogs can’t talk, but their DNA can.” For the record, this is a lie: Lucy can talk. If we ever attempt to sleep past approximately 7:14 a.m., even on a weekend, Lucy barges into our bedroom, paws the bed and says, “Wake up! It’s time to feed me and then take me outside to make an absurd number of separate weewees!” The way she pronounces this, it sounds like “Arrrooooowwwwrrr!” But there is no question what she means.

  Anyway, the DNA testing kit was basically two swabs, which, following instructions, I rubbed against the insides of Lucy’s cheeks, then mailed back to Wisdom Panel, which conducts laboratory analyses of dog DNA. As you know, “DNA” stands for “Deoxyribobananafanafofafeefimoramalamadingdong acid,” which is a kind of molecule that is found inside every single cell of every single living criminal, which is why they are always leaving samples of it behind at crime scenes. It is also found in all living plants and animals except Madonna, who had all hers surgically removed in an effort to maintain a more youthful appearance.

  About a month later, I received the Wisdom Panel report on Lucy’s DNA. It begins:

  Congratulations!

  Lucy is a Boxer, Dalmatian, Chow Chow, Golden Retriever Cross.

  According to the DNA analysis, one of Lucy’s parents was a boxer; the other was half dalmatian and one-quarter each chow chow and golden retriever. So Lucy is half boxer, a quarter dalmatian, one-eighth chow chow and one-eighth golden retriever. Or, to put it in technical dog-breeder terms, she’s a BoxMatianChowTriever.

  I decided that since I was having Lucy’s DNA tested, I’d also do my own. I used a company called 23andMe, which gets its name from the fact that, as a standard human, you have twenty-three pairs of chromosomes, which are tiny invisible biology things that determine various characteristics of yours, such as your hair color, eye color, shoe color, zodiac sign, aisle or window preference, number of drinks before you are willing to participate in the Chicken Dance, etc.

  The way you send your DNA to 23andMe is frankly disgusting: you drool into a test tube. Really. The tube has a line on the side, and you’re supposed to drool into it until your saliva reaches that level. I was not aware that drool contains DNA, but apparently it does. Either that, or this is an elaborate ruse by the people at 23andMe, who actually obtain your DNA from your fingerprints on the test tube, and for some sick reason are collecting a vast supply of human saliva. Maybe they use it to fill a decorative fountain at the 23andMe headquarters. Or maybe they have some kind of bizarre ritual wherein they immerse their naked bodies in vats of drool. I don’t know, and I frankly refuse to engage in unfounded speculation about the perverts running 23andMe.

  What I do know is that several weeks after they received my drool, they sent me a report on my DNA. Its main finding—this came as quite a surprise—is that my biological father is Warren Buffett.

  No, I’m kidding. Although since I mentioned Warren in this book, I think it would be a nice gesture on his part if he were to mention me in his will.

  What my 23andMe report actually said is that my ancestors were 99.9 percent European—68.4 percent British and Irish, 8.5 percent French and German, 4.7 percent Scandinavian, 16.9 percent “Broadly Northwestern European” and 1.4 percent from elsewhere in Europe. The remaining tenth of a percent is West African and Oceanian. So I am basically a generic white guy. In the rich, spicy, infinitely varied and fantastically flavorful gumbo that is humanity, I am a teaspoon of vanilla.

  I pretty much expected this, because both of my parents were WASPs from the Midwest. Still, I was hoping that the report would reveal that I had some more exotic strains in my DNA—Cherokee, Zulu, chow chow, Scientologist, something. But it was not to be. Probably the most interesting statement about me in the 23andMe report was the following, which I am not making up: “David, you are likely to be able to smell the asparagus metabolite in your pee.”

  The report puts the probability of my having this trait at 78 percent; as it happens I can, in fact, smell this particular odor. Apparently this is a genetic thing, and the folks at 23andMe seem to find it fascinating. They state: “Studies report that in some parts of the world, the majority of people can smell it, while elsewhere the majority of people cannot.”

  I don’t know if I want to go on living in a world with places where the majority of people can’t smell the asparagus metabolite in their pee.

  Anyway, my ancestors almost all came from a relatively small area of the planet. Lucy’s ancestors were more widespread: golden retrievers originated in Scotland; boxers in Germany; dalmatians in Dalmatia, which is in Croatia, which, as an American, I could not in a million years locate on a map, but it sounds exotic; and chow chows in China. I don’t know if Lucy’s genetic makeup has anything to do with the fact that she’s so friendly and outgoing. But something caused her to turn out that way. Even though, as a puppy, she was abandoned to the streets, where she probably had some unpleasant experiences, she shows no fear of strangers, human or canine. She is determined to shower love upon everybody she gets anywhere near. And she is always making new friends.

  Pretty much everybody loves Lucy. It’s hard not to: she greets all visitors, whether or not she’s ever met them before, by running up to them, tail wagging, and expressing her love for them with every inch of her quivering-with-happiness body. She is ecstatic when, for example, the bug man comes. Every South Florida household has a bug man who comes once a month to spray deadly carcinogens around as part of the ongoing battle between humans and what we call “Palmetto bugs,” which are cockroaches the size of mature squirrels. Without the ceaseless efforts of the bug men, South Florida would be overrun in a matter of hours.

  The bug man is Lucy’s best friend. She follows him from room to room, ready and eager to assist in the event that he needs to be licked. She’s like this with all visitors to our house; every one of them is her best friend. So is everybody she meets when we’re out walking around looking for places to make weewee. She has many, many best friends. She loves everybody, and she assumes everybody will love her back. And she’s almost always right.

  Not all dogs are like this, of course. Some dogs don’t seem to like anybody. These are usually your very small dogs, the kind that have to be transported in special dog-holding purses, because if they were ever to be set down on the ground they would be carried off by spiders. They need constant attention from their owners, and they can be very annoying. I refer here to the owners. The dogs are even worse, always yapping and growling, as if they’re some kind of badass carnivore of the animal kingdom, instead of basically a paramecium with fur.

  But larger dogs tend to be friendly, and Lucy is a larger dog. She emits poops the size of Yorkshire terriers. She is seventy-five pounds of pure, unstoppable affection, a powerful groin-seeking missile of love.

  I am way, way less social than Lucy, despite having been raised in a supportive and loving family (except for the brussels sprouts). Maybe I inherited whatever gene causes the famous British reserve. Whatever the reason, my operating assumption, when confronted with people I don’t know, is that I’m probably not going to like them. And the older I get, the more reluctant I am to meet new people, especially when I’m alone and don’t have Michelle or somebody else I know to act as a go-between. When I’m alone in a social setting—say, a crowded hotel bar—I never strike up conversations. I’m the guy staring at his phone even though there’s nothing to see on it, or pretending to be riveted by competitive lumberjacking on ESPN. In other words, I’m shy.

  This is not my public image, of course. My public image is Mr. Wild and Crazy Humor Personality—always cracking jokes and kidding around, the kind of guy w
ho does wacky things like picking up his son at middle school in the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, or setting fire to a pair of underpants with a Barbie doll on national television. I have, in fact, done both of those wacky things, and many more like them. And when I do public events such as book signings and speeches, I am in fact Mr. Humor Personality—on the outside. But inside, believe me, I am shy. Like a lot of people who are funny for a living, I use humor for two reasons:

  1. To get people to like me, because deep down inside I am still the geeky, deeply insecure glasses-wearing kid I was in fourth grade.

  2. To wrap myself in a protective barrier of humor, sarcasm and wiseassery that will prevent people from actually getting to know me, because I fear that if they did know me they wouldn’t like me, because deep down inside I am still the geeky, deeply insecure glasses-wearing kid I was in fourth grade.

  Over time, some people penetrated my humor barrier, and we became close friends. But this was mostly back during my college/rock band years, and my early years in the newspaper business, when everybody was having new experiences4 together and every night was party night. I had a LOT of fun times, and the people I had them with became my close friends.

  When I grew up and got married and became a dad, I became more focused on family. I spent less time having fun with my friends, and less time in settings where I might make new ones. I think this is the pattern for a lot of people, as they head into middle age. In my case it was intensified by the fact that, as I became successful in my writing career, many of the people I met expected me to be—even demanded that I be—Mr. Wild and Crazy Humor Personality. And I usually was, because it was easier than actually engaging with them, which meant they never really got anywhere near me, nor I them.