I don’t think of the first fraught birth day, two-and-a half months early, the icy fear, the grim pronouncements. Now I remember sunny still-warm October days on our deck, my son surrounded by cousins and friends, laughter and cake, the marsh in hues of gold. I want to find the multiverse where this day exists and reside there forever.
Jesse at eight. You are 34 tomorrow somewhere in the multiverse.
I’m two years old and wailing, facing the camera in the black and white photo. Underneath the white curlicue edge, my Uncle Joe has written “I fall.” My fear of heights is deep-seated and so visceral it probably goes back to a life before this one, the result of a misstep on a cliff road or a sacrificial hurling into a fiery pit. In this life, it will be another’s fall from a tall building, the man that jumps from a window of the Hotel Warwick on Sixth Avenue that will cause me to go into labor after I walk through his scrambled brains. I deliver my son ten weeks early, like the fulfillment of an ancient, unfathomable decree.
“Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself / In dark woods, the right road lost” –Dante Alighieri
Can’t believe I got lost in the woods I have known since moving here in 1994…but I took a wrong turn with Titi and Sugar straining the leash, and “found myself” wandering in a wood that was unrecognizable since winter’s deadfall! Meanwhile, my husband planned to surprise me at the bay farm. Usually you can see the vast expanse of meadow pretty easily–but I was wandering in the woods nearby, clambering over deadfall, lost. After making three circles, my husband became alarmed and suspicious of a guy he saw emerging alone from a different wooded area. With lurid pictures of finding me dead in the woods in his now terror-filled brain, he took down the guy’s license plate! I finally found my way out and stopped at the home of some neighbors. Our dogs played and her husband even gave me some “special” cookies! I looked at my phone and saw that my husband had been calling (this is very unusual–he considers a cell phone an electronic jail bracelet and never uses his). I called back and we met up at the entrance to the woods. Still laughing over the license plate takedown!
Pandemic year. Also the year we said goodbye to our two rescues, Lucky and Frenchy. Lucky died in January, 2020, and Frenchy followed in September. Lucky and Frenchy were seventeen years old. We had had them for thirteen years.
Both Lucky and Frenchy will be featured in my new book about rescues and mutual healing. Not sure of the title yet, or when the pub date is, but it is now in the works.
Lucky and Frenchy
During the pandemic year, I finished the dog/healing book, and Chris and I shot a segment for a compilation film about quarantine. It was Frenchy’s last role; he played “Custody Dog.” The film is called With/In and should be out next year. Our segment is called “Nuts.” I wrote the scene, Chris directed, and the production sent us the equipment. We then shot the film ourselves in two terror and laughter-filled days (on one very late evening, I thought I had forgotten to turn on the sound–after five flailing moments of desperation, I realized I had just turned off the sound five minutes ago. The result of a fourteen hour day!).
I was dreading the coming dark, lonely winter. And we were both mourning Frenchy. But I thought about the other dogs, the ones who no one else was adopting. And I went to Petfinder, and found Titi, a six year old female from Louisiana who had spent her entire life in a cage, giving up litter after litter. When CENLA rescued her, they found her harness growing into her flesh. Titi was a fear biter as a result of her abuse.
No one was adopting Titi. Then, we were! And we asked Wonder Rescue Lady Sarah Kelly if there was another dog that could come as Titi’s companion. She told us about eight year old Sugar. We adopted them both, and their stories will bring a fitting end to the book about rescues and mutual healing in a year when the entire world was grieving.
Marianne Leone: Actor and Author of Ma Speaks Up and Jesse 