People often talk about the admiration a dog has of their owner as the purest example of unconditional love. It's something I think we all aspire to as lovers, spouses, and parents, but possibly never achieve to a level or success we all hope for. The instinct to protect ourselves kicks in too easily.
I've been a dog lover much of my life. For most of my adult years I had a best friend, Bronte, a part-chow, part-retreiver that was with me for fifteen years. He made it with me through three relationships and six moves before I lost him a couple of summers ago. I used to quip that I only lived with either of my parents eight years, had my longest girlfriend relationship for 7 years, and was married 11 years, making him the longest standing relationship of my life. That is either a testament to our enduring friendship or a sad statement of fact about my relationship skills. You pick.
I learned a great deal from that dog, but most of all I recognized what he taught me about love, believe it or not. It was a fluke that we ever met; the girl I was living with at the time--make that coasting with--brought him into the house from a torrential downpour. I put up a mild objection, then folded like a cheap tent as he nuzzled my leg. He and I became attached, and I took over his primary care. Not much later, she exited, he stayed, and I learned even more about caring for someone that totally depends on you. The return you get is only in the form of the intangible: affection, someone always glad when you get home, puts up with whatever mood you might be in and seems bent on changing it to the better. At some point I learned that was enough.
Thankfully, this lesson came before either one of my daughters were born. In fact, it may be the chief reason they were born. I was, at the time, a pretty hard case, twice burned in relationships and fairly dedicated to the idea that the only person looking out for you was you. But the damn dog kind of softened me up a bit and opened the door a crack to let in a genuine, human-type relationship. Funny that a dog would do that.
Fast forward a couple of years, past a wedding ceremony and about a year of marriage, to the point where Megan was born. Like Bronte, she was somewhat unexpected ("We were trying?" I think was my response to the news), but easy to love. When she arrived I experienced a mixed bag of feelings ranging from swelling pride to incredible fear. I couldn't believe I created this life--this insanely cute little being--and I was frightened to death by the realization that her health and well-being and psyche were completely my responsibility. For years.
The parallels between my dog and my daughter were not lost on me, and I began to practice what I learned from one in my relationship and care of the other. I was not disappointed in the returns from those applied lessons. Like every parent, I came to know the joy of a toddler's greeting at the door when I arrived home from a day at work; it melted away the worst of work-related tensions carried home. Then came their gratitude for having attended their Christmas programs, coached their soccer games, or when I drove them and a gaggle of friends to the mall for a day of shopping and movies. But this has all happened in too rapid a succession.
A couple of weeks ago I recognized a change took place right under my nose, where possibly the dependency lessened and roles reversed. For me, this was a sudden realization (see previous blog) brought on by a milestone event between Megan and me, but the definition of it didn't become evident to me until I examined the differences in my relationships with Megan and Kylee.
Kylee is nine and still dependent for everything. Her social world still revolves around me for the most part. She requests little, demands even less, always demonstrates love and respect, and loves to do things with me. She thinks it is cool that her dad can still do a handstand on a skateboard, plays chess with her, lets her read to him at night, and loves whatever I make for dinner. In her eyes, I still stand on the mountain top, cape flowing behind me in the breeze, warding off all things fearful and generally making the world both fun and safe.
Megan, on the other hand, has reached a point in her life where she is trying to determine where she needs me and where not. She wants to develop her own identity and self-reliance but still wants to know that I am the safety net that is there without fail. The ways in which she finds to demonstrate her independence are remarkable. She has become incredibly adept at the eye-roll response to any advice or direction I give her she has deemed irrelevant. The music that we both used to enjoy is now labeled "ancient" and she reaches to change the station on the car stereo the moment we jump in the car. I hear less and less about her life at school our outside of it. She knows me to be a neat freak, so I am sure it was by design that the floor of her bedroom disappeared under a pile of clothes of indistinguishable laundry status. I lost the battle to keep her out of PG-13 movies before she even turned twelve.
Megan and I have entered into a reversed-role phase of the unconditional, where I will have to patiently be that safety net, demonstrate to her that no matter what she does or says I will always love her, trust her, protect her, and adore her. And I'll have to do so with the characteristically canine level of expectations of anything in return.
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