My lessons from Wolfie: I prefer walking Loca in the mornings, she has the same cadence as me and I can spend my mornings organizing my waking thoughts before getting to my desk. Wolfie is another story – Wolfie is a sniff-aholic, she moves right to left and left to right with no rhyme or reason, and she doesn’t move fast if she moves at all.
In the park, I was trying to teach Wolfie to walk on my left and she kept dropping on her belly and sniffing intensely blades of grass. And when I tugged on her leash she would just look at me with her big brown eyes as if to say, “Huh?”
A fellow walker came by and he said, “Looks like you have two this morning.”
And I said, yes, I want to get Wolfie to get with the program but I’m frustrated because she’s not as fun to walk as Loca and yet, I don’t want to yield to her because then she won’t get her exercise.
He said, “Hmmm. You can tell she didn’t sign up for this tour.”
I said, “Yeah, whatyagonnado?”
He said, “Well, you’ve got two now, so what you want needs to give way to what they want.”
Sigh, I said and thought.
In the larger scope of things, Joseph Campbell said you have to be prepared to put aside the life you had planned for the one that presents itself. The mother I want is replaced with the mother I have – and I just ask grace to grant me appreciation and acceptance of her. And to give me strength to be a witness to these days with her and not a judge.
Wolfie and Loca on the other hand, they have two different needs and I have yet my own. But if we are going to find harmony, if everyone is going to get something, then there has to be compromise and that means accommodating everyone’s style and not being frustrated when one of us is headed in a completely different direction.