Reyi

A Many Voices Guest Post by Carmen Victoria

Reyi came into my life two months after my parents died 48 hours apart (that’s a story for another day). How I found him is also a story for some later day! Our first few days together were beyond frustrating and exhausting. He spent day and night howling, crying incessantly, scratching at the door, peeing and pooping in my brand new condo and taking every opportunity when I walked him to try to escape and run back to his foster Mom Krystin. At first, I felt a lot of compassion for him given that I had just experienced a big loss myself, but his constant running away from me started to feel like a personal rejection. There I was thinking I had done him such a favor by adopting him and the little ingrate wanted nothing to do with me and was making my life miserable. I realized I was taking it way too personally when I started referring to Krystin as “the other woman.” Pretty ironic. I thought I had managed to dodge any further heartbreak by closing the door to men and love and the Universe sent me a toothless seven pound rescue to revisit the lesson! But I was in no shape to take in the joke. By then, I was pretty discombobulated from lack of sleep and a sense of failure with Reyi. It was getting so bad that my cousin strongly suggested I just return him. I was seriously considering it but also torn because he had already been sent back by five families. What if I was his last hope! 

So I decided to give it one more day and went to bed praying for peace and quiet. No such luck. By two am, it wasn’t happening so I got dressed and took him outside to try to calm him with a walk. He became even more distressed and managed to escape. After a wild and frightful chase, I was able to catch him, but not my anger. I yelled at him wildly, venting all my fear, despair and frustration. The look of terror on his face filled me with shame and regret and drained my last bit of energy. I collapsed on the curb, still holding him, and started to cry “a moco tendido.” As my sobs subsided and I was able to speak, I started talking to Reyi in a soothing voice. I told him how sorry I was that he had been born into a puppy mill, something I could relate to being one of eight children. I apologized for having taken my fear and frustration out on him when all I wanted was to calm him and to help him feel better. As I said these words, an image of my Mother sitting by my bedside when I was a deeply depressed and distressed young woman struck me. Her slumped posture spoke of her anguish for not being able to reach me and console me. Our similar situations filled me with a deep sadness for all the misunderstandings throughout our lives. In that moment with Reyi, I finally felt how much she had loved me and how her incapacity to be of comfort and to be present with my pain only stemmed from her inability to acknowledge her own. I started to cry for her and then for the first and last time, I cried not for what I had lost, but for what I had never had. It was a good, long watershed after which I felt empty and at peace. I looked at Reyi, who had also calmed down, and holding him tenderly and with new resolve, walked back home. I was ready to become his Mother and he had finally found his forever Home.

That was a year and a half ago. Reyi now happily and quietly lies by my side as I write, do yoga, read or engage in “nothing.” He is the perfect companion. I consider it one of my greatest accomplishments that I finally earned his trust, but it was “pelo a pelo.”  He still has abandonment issues so I bought a doggy backpack and take him everywhere.

My friends comment on how much more confident and happy he seems. He is not the only one who has made progress. Learning to love him opened my heart again and I am currently writing my dating profile. The opening line is: “If you don’t fall in love with my rescue Reyi, you will most likely not grow in love with me. He is ten years old and has no teeth, I’m 63 and only missing one! My cousin strongly suggests I eliminate that line. But given she was the one who suggested I return Reyi, I’m keeping it!!!

Carmen Victoria, originally from Puerto Rico, now happily lives in Minneapolis, MN with her rescue dog Reyi. She does not consider herself a writer but loves the solitude, deep reflection and insights that writing offers. Same applies to her long walks with Reyi.

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Many Voices will appear on the last Sunday of each month and will feature contributions from the community of paid subscribers. In January, seventysomething is delighted to offer artwork, prose, and poetry by Rosemary Starace. All subscribers are now welcome to read Many Voices posts. Please consider upgrading to a paid subscription to support seventysomething, have access to the archives, and become a contributor to Many Voices. Your ideas are always welcome.

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Copies of my 2019 essay collection, Twilight Time: Aging in Amazement, are available directly from me (signed) or from Amazon or your local bookseller.

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