I promised, after having nearly died in a hospital the summer before last, to write the things I wanted never to write.
I’ve almost kept my promise. But there are a few stories left unspoken; that catch in my throat. This is one of them.
You, dear reader, remember our beloved little dog, the late Mushroom.
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He joined our family when I had recently become a single mom with two small children — that most vulnerable, most raw, most wary of identities; that state most in need of a friend and protector. Mushroom stayed with us for eighteen years; companion, guardian; cranky black-and-white angel; fluffball, comforter; peevish, silent commentator on events.
Loki, our new pup, is a freshly-minted baby spirit. He wriggles, barely able to contain himself, and is agog with the wonder of everything on Earth.
Mushroom, on the contrary, was like an elderly Edwardian uncle who reads the paper in a dressing gown and slippers, and gazes upon the scene with a jaded eye.
You can barely escape Loki’s puppy-hugs and kisses; but one had to patiently seek out a cuddle from Mushroom. It would be a fulfilling moment when he condescended to lay his wiry head upon your knee, or, his preferred move, to curl up, lying half on your lap and half on the keyboard of the laptop, blocking the screen on which the family was trying to watch a movie.
Mushroom always had a bit of a metaphysical role, I felt, in our family’s life. He always seemed like an irascible, chunky, treats-seeking gift from God — a small warm scruffy being, whose job from the start seemed to be to make sure that no one in our household would ever be too lonely, too sad, or too overwhelmed.
You already know that when Mushroom died at last, here in the woods, something happened that we could not, still cannot, possibly explain. I described it in my essay “What is A Miracle?” A perfect, long-stemmed red rose appeared, floating in the river by our house, in the depths of winter, as Mushroom lay dying. That rose stayed, perfect, unmoving, hovering an inch or two under the surface of the ice-clear, rushing waters, for days; it remained suspended through the day that Mushroom died, and it lingered under the waters, held aloft by nothing, for days thereafter.
When the rose released its petals at last, what remained behind were two slender tree-trunks, that had caught themselves on a raised bed of sand within the torrents of the river. These had resolved into the shape of a man-sized cross; and though winter was all around us, a tangle of greenery lay at its cross-section.
Looking back, I see that I’d under-narrated the wonder of this. At the time I wrote that essay, a couple of years ago, I did not want to tackle the miraculous head-on, because — well, all of the reasons.
People who have advanced degrees, I was raised to believe, are not supposed to experience miracles, let alone to narrate them.
The miraculous, I was taught, is in poor taste.
But — but — I’ve changed since then.
And that miraculous rose was not the only impossible event that we experienced in relation to Mushroom.
In about 2018, my husband Brian was working as a private investigator for a client who was the leader of a Native American tribe. His work took him to the tribe’s vast, pristine reservation, which extended for hundreds of acres over the fruit-bearing lowlands, and over the regal mountain highlands, of Yakima County, Washington State.
I visited Brian sometimes while he was working; I’d stay in chain hotels on the outer edge of the reservation, and read and write, and explore the slightly depressed, but still charming, downtown of Yakima. I would admire its 1890s train-depot-turned-cafe; the 1940s lettering describing apples and cherries that was still visible on whitewashed brick fruit-warehouse walls; the neighborhoods of run-down but still beautiful Craftsman bungalows; the town’s echoing brick saloons, left over from the boom times of the early 20th century.
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Low black sand hills rise up at the far ends of long flat avenues; the jail, still in use, stands right in the center of town, almost directly across from the train tracks. Feathery cottonwoods fan a little creek that runs, beyond the Target and the Planet Fitness and the parking lots, across the flat, tawny-dirt, high-desert outskirts of the little city. Birds of prey — raptors — cougars, coyotes, and snakes, inhabit those flatlands.
The fruit in that valley was so abundant that in the summertime, gas stations sold, for pennies a pound, cherries, plums, apricots, peaches, and strawberries, all so cheap because they were on the very edge of overripeness, so un-transportable.
In July, Brian and I would buy parcels of golden, and then golden-red, and then later still, nearly black cherries, wrapped up in newspapers, enclosed in turn in plastic. We’d make a picnic table from the spread-out wrappings on the bed of our hotel room, as we had no table. We’d unveil and pile up the fruit, and admire its glowing colors; and eat it as a red sun sank slowly between the low black mountains.
On one trip, we decided to drive, rather than fly, across the country. One reason was so we could bring Mushroom with us. He was very elderly by then, and could not see well, but he was still a good traveller. Brian liked to take Mushroom out of the car at various truck stops along the way, so that our little, elderly dog could lift his head, and smell the air and dirt and grass in different states.
