Re-Entry

April  29 or  27 or 30, or that Monday morning after vacation when you are sitting in the radiology waiting room at 8:15 awaiting your 7:45 CAT scan. I might have been on time for my appointment had I remembered that I was driving to the medical center and not the dentist. I blew by the exit before realizing my mistake. The next exit, the one for my dentist, was only a mile up and with the u-turn right off the highway, I figured I’d still be on time. Of course, I was not counting the gridlock on 89 south for the return trip or the fact that the engineering-powers-that-be never thought to include another local Colchester exit forcing me to drive further south to the Burlington exit to u-turn back onto 89 north to reach to my desired exit.  You get the picture.

The fresh young faces at general registration hustled me through to radiology, but despite the near-empty waiting room the guard dog at the CAT scan door glowered at my tardy arrival. Well, they can’t start without me—I smiled to myself.

Re-entry after vacation is always tough, but I’m fighting to keep my holiday mojo going for as long as I can. After eight, okay six if you subtract the first morning’s panic attack and the last day’s airport hustle, glorious days plopped in a perfectly appointed beach palapa seaside in Punta Cana, I’m clinging to the memory of the Caribbean warmth, the palms shushing in the breeze and the luxurious lapping of the salty waves. Let it last at least forty-five days until my credit card payment is due.

“How was your weather?”  my northeast friends ask as we all live in disbelief that the sun can shine for consecutive days. “Minus the snowstorm, we drove through in Vermont on our way to Boston and the dismal gray rain we drove back in, 84 degrees and sunny every day.” They smile and nod as if trying to imagine a life without wool and fleece. Some people claim that when the weather lacks variety the months become long and predictable, but I’ve never met someone who’s suffered from seasonal affective disorder from a string of bluebird days. I’ve been hugging my Happy Light and popping Vitamin E since October but even with the recommended SAD treatment, I slid into my beach chair with all the desperation of a base runner coming home on a pop fly.

One might argue that our current weather pattern is indicative of the national political climate and my sullen mood is the proof. I can feel each loosened thread of my newly refreshed being pulled taut with the mere mention of his name. My gut twitches like I ate a bad clam, as I recoil from the radio knob and limit my social media time. I have to dip one toe at a time back into this cesspool.

On Saturday morning, I was still buried in the pages of Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings trying to finish my beach read and ignoring the dunes of laundry, when Frankie my two-year-old Plott Hound-Lab appeared whimpering at the back door.

Outside the smoky mist dampened the greening fields. “What’s up, Buddy?” I said walking to open the screen door for him. I looked at my seventy-pound pup his wide brown eyes melted into his dark brown brindle face. It wasn’t until Frank rushed past and peeked up at me from under the kitchen table that I noticed that his snout was covered in a whitish gray. The way Tony Montana’s nose looked when he raised his cocaine covered face up from the mirror; guilty and in shock. “What flowers have you been sniffing?” I asked before realizing that this was no pollen. Frank’s face was covered in sharp white whiskers, nature’s acupuncture—porcupine quills, forty or fifty thin sharp spines protruding out of his nose and mouth and jowls.

Frank shook his head attempting to knock out the quills and when that failed he tried licking himself free only to poke and bloody his tongue on the jagged barbs.

Frank didn’t bark or whine or growl, he knew he needed help and was willing to be a good boy to get some. He let me straddle his back and with my sharpest tweezers, I plucked a quick five from the tip of his nose. But with each pull, I could feel his whole body quiver beneath me and I knew this was a job for the vet.

Within twenty minutes, Frank was sedated and in two hours, back home where I watched his groggy body rise and fall like a heap of molasses with each relaxed breath.  Why does my dog know what he needs and I still can’t seem to figure it out?

According to Spirit-Animals.com, a porcupine’s appearance in your life means release. “Time to free yourself of guilt and reclaim childhood innocence. Bring fantasy and imagination back into a world where fear and greed are commonplace.”

Did Frank have to become my walking porcupine for me to realize that I had been living my life in a constant prickly state? Running frantic, trying to solve all the world’s problems as if they were my own? Going on holiday is like removing quills. Each day as one barbed spine was ejected from my brain, I felt the actual hum of a rush of energy wiggling it’s way in.

Re-entry is a blunt reminder of the onslaught awaiting you if you continually choose to trod the same path.

 From now on, I’m going to skip the exits on purpose and take a different route.

 

 

 

https://www.spirit-animals.com/porcupine/