Beau’s Creed

Long ago, growing up in Kansas City, we adopted a little black dog with wavy fur,  a little white badge on his chest.  As we sat and played with this little puppy at the breakfast room table, thinking up names,  it was Dolly who came up with Boo Boo.  Fitting,  because it was certainly a mistake for our family to have a dog. If you lived on our block, you would have seen early morning dashes as one or two of us ran through your yard racing to catch Boo Boo, who had gotten loose from his chain.   Finally cornering, luring or improbably wearing him out we would fling our bodies on his and finally be able to head to school.  Coincidentally, my husband Gary had the same kind of experience, his dog was a sleek Afghan capable of leaping tall fences, and attaining speeds of 30 mph or more.  Upon Sparrow’s capture, school was probably out of Gary’s plan for the day.  What a strange rite of passage we shared. Surely there must have been some  gain from these early morning runs, if only to burn some teenage angst from our spirits.  Later in Boo Boo’s life , when tragedy struck our family, his life became the pattern our own lives seemed to be following. Mama had died, and we were set free upon the world. Jimmy, our older brother who had interviewed Jean Paul Sartre shared the basics of existentialism with us.  I thought I totally got it – the pointlessness of Life.    We made up the philosophy of the Boo Boo cycle as we sorted through the mountains of clothes, belongings, and the  accumulation  from years of Mama’s aching  need to find comfort in things and  thrill  in  rummage sale treasure hunting. As we packed bag after large garbage bag to be given away, totalling by the end of the summer to over a thousand, we considered the highs and lows of life, the mundane and the profound. That summer we were challenged to find meaning,  when life seemed to offer both nothing and everything.  For soon we would all at once scatter in 4 directions from the home we had grown up in.  Ruth Louise to college at Northwestern, Jimmy to law school at Yale, Johnny to Oklahoma with Daddy, and Dolly back to school at the UW Madison. I went with Dolly to live in a small apartment and attend West High School. Only  Nanny, our  maternal elderly grandmother who lived 2 blocks away would be left behind.   – to be continued.