Barrington is romping around this morning like the puppy I still think of him as being, despite his eight and one-half years. He brings me his ball, sprinting after every throw -- unless blocking it in mid-stream. His short, stocky Welsh Corgi legs make him a quite effective short-stop. Throwing, retrieving, time and time again, intervened each time with his really favorite part -- the tug-of-war that matches his usually superior jaw-strength against my typically wimpy hand-strength. Throw, sprint, romp, tug; repeat. Now he has flopped, exhausted, on the cushioned arm of the love seat, watching lazily for birds in the tree outside the window. Life is good, indeed.
"Dogs are our link to paradise," once wrote Czech poet and novelist Milan Kundera. "To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring, it was peace."
On a love seat, on a blue-sky Saturday morning, with a chewed up tennis ball between us isn't bad either.
It isn't just any Saturday morning. "Holy Saturday," it is traditionally called -- the day between "Good Friday" and Easter morning. I suppose the day should be more properly and seriously drenched in deep and spiritual reflection, but with special Holy Week services all completed and Sunday's sermon ready to print out, this Holy Saturday feels quite "holy" indeed in its luxuriant capacity for the simplest leisure. Lingering in pajamas. A patient pace through two newspapers. Coffee cup repeatedly refilled. Pleasure errands planned. And, of course, ball thrown and thrown and thrown.
Whatever happens tomorrow, life is already resurrecting.
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