Macadamia Nuts

“Can I call you?”

Those words typed on messenger carry the whole world. In them are nested a shining little girl with golden curls that were way too chaotic to be Shirley Temple curls, a slate gray teen in a petticoat and searching eyes, all the way up to a woman with electric bullion colored hair somewhere between Pikachu tails and a ninja jutsu that might snap out and fry a person if it’s deserved. So this woman in her bespoken clothes, in a tiny micro-apartment in downtown Seattle reaches out with the voice of all she’s ever been.

“Sure, call me.”

“Malik ate macadamia nuts,” she said, her voice and face now on the screen. It’s odd how the human mind can see today, so clear and present, but also see the smaller yesterday at the same time. “I’m trying to get him to vomit them up.”

Things happen sometimes. We don’t mean for them to happen. We’d give anything to make that thing not have happened. That’s the thing with life though. There’s no ctrl z. You can’t just make things go back to how they were a moment before. The past is visible, but not touchable.

A quick search for dogs and macadamia nuts confirms that there’s a problem. “How many did he eat?”

Grief and guilt are emotions that reach through the whole nesting doll of self. She’s at once a little child holding up a broken treasure to her dad and a grown woman who can handle anything. “I didn’t know. I was eating some, in a bowl. They were on my sewing table. There were 20 grams and I’d eaten a couple, there are four left.”

That’s the thing with life. Sometimes it’s just not possible to know, not exactly. Maybe that’s mostly true that one can only know sort of and the best guess is all a person can do. That little child will wait, hands held up, knowing that Dad will make things as good as it can be. The woman though makes her own pants. “I’m taking him to the vet.”

“I’m hoping for a good outcome. I’ll be here.”

Just because there’s an echo of yesterday and that echo is important, today is much more important. Happiness isn’t being able to hold one moment forever. It isn’t that things don’t go wrong, horribly wrong, sometimes. Time passes. It’s the one thing in human understanding that never fails to work as expected.

“Can I call?” Just audio, not video, this time.

“Yeah.”

“We’re at the vet.” The voice is the soul and sometimes it’s like brittle rice paper trying to be a wall against a hurricane.

“Okay.”

“They gave him something. They say,” and there’s an edge of indignation, anger, the healthy life cycle of emotion, “he’s too stubborn!”

“Well now we know he’s related to me.” That was said with a smile. Why do we smile when we’re afraid? Maybe it’s like deer jumping high before the race against a hungry predator. Maybe it’s like telling the world we got this, even if we’re mostly sure we don’t.

Malik is a great dog, small and smart. The nested doll for Malik would be a pure breed dog that wasn’t what his first owner wanted. He was problematic. He was reactive. The Malik today has a bespoken charm that comes from being loved and cared for while honest skill, gentle humility that speaks his language rather than making him speak human. Malik is a great dog because Jamie is a great human. Some great king might banish macadamia nuts forevermore.

“They gave him activated charcoal,” she said, closer to that slate gray teenager who flirted with giving up. That’s it. That’s what we can do. “We’re going home now.”

“How much did it cost?”

Value, money, status, they all connect to our identity. The nesting doll of me, the older me, who wanted to be the one who could fix curly girl’s broken treasures has to deal with a present-day me who can only give what I have.

“Layla paid for it.”

Gratitude, grace, connectedness are choices we can make about who we are. “I’m so glad. How is he now?”

Then there’s a picture of him, cute little mini Australian shepherd, looking up at the camera with half-closed eyes like he’s a character in a story with a hangover from the underworld, but still out doing the day. He’s going to live, that’s such a beautiful hangover. Hope is great, but the symptoms still whispered about what they could do to that innocent little soul - paralyzed back legs, depression, and unspoken, but the greatest fear death.

“Okay. See you when you get home.”

Some part of home has always been and will always be the connection between us. It doesn’t matter that there’s physical distance. It doesn’t matter that time has changed us. It doesn’t matter that the cycle of human life moves our roles and abilities around. Home is here.

“He’s asleep now.”

“Is he okay?”

“Yeah.” If one is going to write about someone, it’s proper to tell them. “I’m working on that essay today. You’re the happiest person I know.”

What a change that is, from the little child with broken treasure, the storm cloud teen, to this woman in bespoken clothes and a mini jungle of an apartment. Time’s changes are no less profound in me. A broken soul gluing the bits back together one happy daughter moment at a time to a, to whatever it is today is. Happiness saved this day though. Not the euphoric, full moon kind of joy, but the content self-acceptance that let’s a person see the world as it is, come to a conclusion, act with confidence to move the dice in one’s favor. There are so many flavors of not happiness that could have made macadamia nuts much worse. Despair, guilt, shame, hesitation, rage, self-harm, and the day could have gone very differently.

Instead, on video chat, she smiles, content, leaning closer to smile at me. “It’s the little moments in between - being able to recognize the little moments in life - like my dog.”

It’s the little moments in between - like my bespoken daughter and her nut nomming dog. Well-being makes the baseline for quick decisions, for recovering from mistakes. Connection gives resilience. Happiness is a bespoken life.