Clyde was from Colorado.
I wonder how many of you actually know that?
Just days after Gatsby died in a snowbank in my arms (I really thought I'd have Gatsby forever, until I got Clyde), like maybe three days I think, Than showed up on my sister's doorstep in Provo, Utah with a weeks old black lab mix puppy he had adopted for me. It probably surprises no one else but me that when my very best dog (up until that moment Gatsby really was) died in my arms I sought refuge in Utah, but that is exactly what I did. I bolted from Steamboat Springs where I had been living with a gaggle of boys on the side of a snowy ski mountain and wailed into a pillow under the covers in my sister's guest bedroom in the dark.
Until Than showed up to retrieve my heart and carry me back to me, back to Colorado, ever so gently on the four paws of a tiny black lab puppy.
At another time in my life, another time when I felt that perhaps the Universe just wasn't actually conspiring in my favor, or I wasn't conspiring with the Universe is probably more the truth of the matter, I was on the precipice of abandoning my very loving community in Santa Cruz, literally stepping into what may have been my last road trip on this planet (for all I know, honestly) to move myself to Boulder. Things just were that unhappy and crazy sad and not good for me and I was certain that a geographical fix was going to be the perfect answer. That Clydesdale and I should call Boulder home.
A phone call, a last minute dream about furniture placement, all those farewells turned into hellos and instead of Boulder, we both ended up in a small cabin in the woods in Bonny Doon.
It is impossible to know what might have been instead. There are always sliding doors in our lives. Opening and shutting. Do we slip through just before they close or do we miss them completely and remain on a platform while the faces of another life we might have had smile at us from some distant other shore? Do we always just say yes?
I did live in Boulder, once. Another time when I did say yes. In a hobbit house. I also lived in Colorado Springs, quite by accident, for all the wrong reasons with all the wrong boys doing all the very wrong things. All of those adventures were shared with Gatsby. Before Clyde. Long before I was certain about who I might even be.
Certain who I might even be? Is that even possible? Might the living just end when the certainty arrives? I still haven't sorted it out, I'm still busy living.
Clyde was my gift from Colorado. A gift I gladly received and who gave me wisdom and generosity and kindness in ways that only a dog can ever bestow. He was love literally vibrating on four paws. Now, like the incredible dogs before him, he's just always part of me.
***
I'm vibrating love, teetering on glitter platform boots.
Headed back to Colorado. Where love once hit me right over my head and left me nearly for dead.
To fiercely hug imaginary friends right into reality.
To sing loudly, to love with abandon and to give good glitter where ever it needs to go.
This is how I do it.
This is how I give love all ways.
