A Daffodil Blooms Outside the French Door

It must be the season of renewal. It must be Passover and Easter time. It's Sugar's first springtime. And in a way, that makes it mine. For truly, when a young thing under one's tutelage experiences a first spring, it must also be one's own rebirth.

Now Sugar, of course, doesn't know it's springtime. She really doesn't know much at all. She knows when she's hungry, she knows when she's tired. She knows when there's a treat in the offing. She likes a belly rub. She's a pup, an ignorant animal. She can't read poetry about the seasons. She can't say, "Halleluyah, it's raining sunshine today!" Yet, there's something different about her now.

We spend more time out of doors. She gets lost in the green shoots of new pachysandra, sniffing for low life forms, such as ants (tasty, squirmy, crunchy). When we sit on the front steps and the little girl in a pink sweater from up the block trips past, Sugar barks ferociously. When two fat men in track suits and hoods scurry along the sidewalk, she's mute. Some watch dog.

But for me, there's springtime in all of Sugar's antics because it's our first green season together, as a couple, Canine and Human. I teach her, she resists. (O children o' mine, weren't you the same?) I open her mouth and inspect her teeth and gums (all young, pink, white, healthy) and she lets me, because she knows that despite her brattiness, I will always look after her. So sometimes, just to make a point, I pry open her black lips and inspect inside. She rolls her eyes backward, as if to say, "This is the price I must pay for being taken care of by the one Human who on occasion feeds me pate de foie gras and thinks I'm really the cat's pyjamas. Small price to pay."

A lucky Canine. A happy Human. A lovely season. The season of our redemption. God bless such a beautiful world as ours.