walking | Life as a Side Project

Three weeks. That hasn’t happened before. Has it?

I’ve been out. Darling got sick. Then I caught it and it dragged on and on and on and here I am with barely the strength to type. We’ve been getting by , I make a little attempt at making meals and keeping a house and getting out of the house to buy groceries but mostly I stay in bed and read Roald Dahl. What a genius. I can almost see the twinkle in his eyes as he wrote down his cleverness. I am always grinning to myself and going oh Mr Dahl you genius.

There’s a picture in here of my mother and a big dog walking with her. That’s really what I want to write about.

I used to take my mother for walks in the evenings for a bit of exercise. She’s very slow at it and is unsure of herself but we walk slowly and that particular day in March, we walked farther than we intended to. There was this by-road I wanted her to see. Darling had taken me through it once just to show me the neighborhood and it had lovely old houses and big gardens. I wanted my mother to see them. So there we were walking down this little road when this massive dog, freshly brushed, walked lazily over to us. It didn’t seem too interested in us really. But it was big. And I figured if it made any sudden moves, my mother was not going to be able to move away fast enough. So we had to go back. As we were turning around to leave, my mother clutching my hand very tight, the dog came right up to us, and looked at me. It had big wet eyes , a bit sad and it looked a bit old. Then it started sniffing my mother. We stood very still only moving inches towards the road so as not to startle the dog. And the dog backed away. So we started walking away. Just too slow. The dog let us go a few feet and started following us. It wasn’t interested in me however. It only wanted to make friends with my mother.

We walk to the main road, and the dog is behind us what 10 feet? Then it quickly catches up with us, walks past another 10 feet and stops. Sniffs the ground , the bushes, the leaves, the flowers on the floor. Then it comes back. When the neighborhood dogs started barking at it , it quickly retreated behind my mother’s skirt only peering around her legs when it was safe to do so. It would bump her legs with it’s snout, look at my mother for a bit of affection, then circle us once more.

It would not leave her. It walked slowly with her, never falling back or walking past more than ten feet. And it paid no attention to me whatsoever. I walked away from them to take some pics and it made me smile, to see the two of them walking together as if they belonged.

It walked us up to our lane, and stood there watching us till we got home. There were nasty children down our lane making a huge racket about god knows what and it didn’t seem to want to walk past them anyhow.

I haven’t seen the dog since. But I hope I will.