Otter

“Otter.”

A three year-old named Hanny Goldfinch with sproingy curls and sticky fingers pointed at an adorable puppy wriggling inside the cage at the pet adoption agency. It cuddled against her hand through the bars.

Hanny’s mother corrected her. “No, not an otter, Hanny, that’s a puppy.”

“I know dat. His name is Otter.”

Hanny’s family brought Otter home that day. He slept in her lap for the entire car ride.

They were the best of friends. It was something they didn’t have to become; they were simply best friends from moment one.

Otter grew much faster than Hanny. That summer, she toddled to keep up with him, but it wasn’t many years before they were running together. They drank deep of summer and investigated crickets and beetles, drank from lemonade pitchers and swimming holes, and basked in the warmth of long suns and roaring bonfires.

Puppies and little girls grow at different speeds, however. Between Hanny’s youth and the sickness that struck Otter late in his life, there were only three summers where they could run at full speed together.

Hanny asked her father why she had ever met Otter if he was to leave her so soon. She struggled to find meaning. She struggled to feel anything. She wondered if she'd ever love again. In fact, the day he passed was the day she decided she would keep her heart closed for business forever.

But the pain in her heart, which she believed would torment her forever, lessened with time. Eventually, she grew, and she met someone. The story of how they met is wonderful, and I wish there were more time to tell it. But how do you do an entire life justice? How do you represent the War-and-Peace-sized ideas a person has every single day then multiply them by a lifetime? The closer a person gets to eighty, the more their thoughts approach infinity. And we'd have to tell the stories of both Hanny and her husband--which is infinity times two--but this is the story of Hanny and how the relationship with Otter affected her. She would not like this mentioned, but after a lifetime with memories of children and grandchildren stuffing her mind, there wasn't much time or room to think about Otter. But every once in a while, she would remember him and realize it was a miracle she ever loved after being hurt that very first time.

And after living many years of many summers, when Hanny’s seventh granddaughter was three, and the girl begged her parents for a puppy, and they asked Grandma to get her one, Hanny reluctantly agreed.

The whole way there, Hanny told herself she was breaking the promise she made to herself when Otter died, but her resolve weakened when they arrived and the little girl scrunched up the face of the first puppy they saw with her chubby little hands. The puppy licked the girl's face, and she giggled.

And Hanny remembered. She remembered the golden moments from that friendship with her first and best friend, she remembered the long days of summer spent running and laughing without a care in the world, and she remembered the cool evenings cuddled up together with a wet nose in her lap and a warm coat laying against her.

The little girl looked at her grandmother and somehow new what to do. She brought Hanny's hand to the little dog's back and made her grandma pet it. Hanny smiled and cried together, but the little girl didn't notice. Hanny was old, but it was not too late to reverse the belief that had lied to her for years--Hanny finally decided it was better to love.

By now, the little girl was looking back at the mangy dog's clear eyes. Her precious little teeth and joyful eyes shone as she and pronounced the new pet’s name: “Gwamma, I'm gonna call him Puppers!”

As Hanny lifted the furball into her arms, she knew two things: the first was that maybe, someday, she would show her granddaughter that, even after pain, love keeps choosing to love. The second thing made Hanny smile as she realized it: she loved Puppers with all her heart, her heart that was fully open for business.

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