Stahlke Adoption

My Teacher

"Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy,
Whose trust, ever child-like, no cares could destroy:
Be there at our waking, and give us, we pray,
Your bliss in our hearts, Lord, at the break of the day."

Lutheran Service Book, Hymn No. 738, st. 1

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August 1994

A tiny puppy plays with children in a yard, racing from one to another and nipping at their heels. She has a twinkle in her eye, and the cutest brown eyebrows I had ever seen. Jonathan and I continue our walk, coming back to the same house fifteen minutes later. The children are gone, and the puppy is sitting in the street--a very busy street--at the curb. I try to shoo her away back into the yard, but she walks straight to us, wagging her tail and looking up at us with those beautiful eyes. We scoop her up and try to return her to the backyard, through a hole in the broken fence. The owner of the home drives up and tells us that she is not his dog. We take Alabama home with us, for the rest of her life.
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Jonathan and I had just returned from living overseas for three years. That journey was ending, but our journey through infertility was still in its early stages. We had not yet started treatments, with all their medical, emotional, and financial implications. But by 1994, I had gone through one major and two minor surgeries to keep my "plumbing" free from the effects of endometriosis. Within two years, I would have three more surgeries, one of them requiring a month at home to recover. Between these medical challenges, a dissertation to write, and a job to help pay the bills, starting a family seemed very, very far away. And for other reasons, too involved to describe now, August 1994 was the lowest point in my walk to motherhood. It was no accident that God gave us Alabama when I most needed her.
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She was tiny--only four pounds and about six inches long. When we first fed her, she ate so quickly we thought she would get sick. I picked up the dish, and she grabbed the edges with her paws, rising in the air with the dish. Before I could disengage her, she had stuffed her cheeks chipmunk-style with as much food as she could hold. At her first visit to the vet, he told us that her teeth gave her age as three months, despite her diminutive size. The vet gave her deworming medicine, and later that day she passed a tapeworm more than three feet long. Now she could actually receive the food she ate, and grow and flourish.
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Puppies, like children, have endless energy. When they aren't sleeping, they're running. One time she escaped through the door into the yard and barreled full speed around the entire house--twice--with Jonathan in hot pursuit. Once I overcame my fear that she'd veer off into the street, I revelled in her joie de vivre.
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Discipline seldom worked with Alabama the first time. She was proud and defiant, and refused to budge. I learned the Spanish word for "naughty" from Jonathan because of her. But she was so embarassed at being scolded that she did all she could not to repeat the humiliation. For most behavior issues, therefore, it only took one very difficult encounter to teach her to mind.
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When her puppyhood was past, she became more suspicious, especially of men she didn't know. We lived for a while near the entrance to a college campus, where scores of people walked to their classes. If some poor man on crutches came by, she vented the full force of her displeasure through the fence. He MUST be the man who, when she was little, beat her with a stick and left scars that still marked her legs. We would chuckle sometimes about our politically incorrect dog, but there was a great lesson in this for us. Jonathan and I learned not to fear her difficult behaviors resulting from the abuse she had received. She was still our beloved Alabama, and we could love her, and work with her, to overcome the scars she carried both inside and out.
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Thank you, Alabama, for teaching me how to parent.

posted by Stahlkes @ 11:20 AM