My Million-Dollar Donkey Read online

  —Henry David Thoreau

  DOGGONE

  After two years in a BFA theater program at the University of Central Florida, our daughter, Denver, decided college—more specifically, a career in theater—wasn’t for her. Her parents had left the dance world and couldn’t stop spouting off about how much happier they were without the superficial trappings and insatiable egos prevalent in the business, so naturally, she didn’t want to be left behind in the world of sequins and auditions.

  She didn’t know what she wanted to be or do, but she did know her siblings were wallowing in carefree family time while her years of childhood had been spent watching her parents run recitals. I had over 400 blog subscribers, mostly ex-students, reading the online diary I kept about our country adventures and my biggest fan, surprisingly enough, turned out to be my daughter.

  So she quit college and moved to Georgia, diving into the world of hay, pickin’ in the park, and gravel roads right alongside us. I had spent years struggling to pay into a prepaid college account with the idealistic dream that my child would hit the world running with a great education, so I won’t say I was thrilled with her decision, but since “a closer family” was our primary goal, I recognized the positive element of her choice. Selfishly, I had to admit I missed her. I came to Georgia to be a mom, and she was one of the three people I longed to care for, so I was thrilled she would now become another character in our surreal life experience. Her moving to Blue Ridge would be temporary, of course, because I knew she’d discover a new path in time. For now, a detour through the mountains would give her a broader view of the world, just as living in the country was doing for us.

  My husband’s sister, and next, his parents, decided to follow us to Georgia, too.

  “Family should stick together,” they said, though they also said, “So what do you like about this backward place again?”

  People are drawn to change for different reasons. We moved to the country to seek a totally different sort of life from what we had before. They moved to keep things as close to status quo as possible. Everyone’s motivation differed, but the fact was, with family members arriving each month, there seemed to be less and less to go back to Florida for.

  For example, for years we had a spunky little purebred Schnauzer named Sammy that joined me on daily runs, slept with my son, and sat in the front seat of the car as I ran errands. Just like us, Sammy was a conspicuous newcomer to the country with more enthusiasm than practical logic regarding about how to get along in the rugged, rural mountains. He adored the freedom and open spaces of Georgia, supplying us with hours of amusement as he darted through the underbrush of the woods, a highbred lap dog on safari.

  Formerly, tufts of fuzz covered his legs and head, giving him the wise, bearded appearance of a traditional Schnauzer, but his fur was now constantly filled with burrs and thorns, so we had to shave him. The grooming bills added up to more than I spent on my own hair in a month, but what could I do? Sammy took to the wilderness with gusto, almost as if he had to combat his own embarrassment over being another prissy city slicker, as out of place in the rustic landscape as a plastic flamingo on a farmhouse lawn.

  Our little dog loved the country, but try as he might, he couldn’t subdue his terrier instincts and behave like a hound. He barked incessantly at the wildlife, terrorizing chickens and rabbits, and one day, overexcited by a wild run outside, he even killed our new pet bunny despite my screams for him to let go.

  Canines and donkeys happen to be mortal enemies so our pint-sized schnauzer couldn’t resist diving under the fence to torment our jack, nipping at his heels, biting his legs, and barking, barking, barking. As expected, the donkey made every effort to stomp the dog into the dust. A country dog would have known to dart out of range, but Sammy just rolled over in his pampered, babyish way, expecting mercy the moment he assumed the subservient position. Unfortunately, the donkey didn’t understand the rules of this game, so he stomped the dog to within an inch of his life. This brush with death happened time and again, and more than once our hands shook as we wrote a check to the vet clinic, grumbling that a dog with half a mind would have learned his lesson the first time and stayed on his side of the fence rather than roll over and invite harm. Why was our dog having such a problem adjusting to the rigors of this new environment? The same could be asked of us, but we chose to ignore such questions.

  One day, Sammy ran off to explore the woods and never returned. We looked for him for hours. Then days. Then weeks. We drove the streets calling his name. We talked to neighbors, put up posters, placed an ad in the paper, and left word at the local animal shelter. Months passed. He was never found.

  For months afterwards, our eyes floated towards the woods as we speculated what became of him. He might have been shot by a farmer who lacked tolerance for some fancy city dog going after his chickens. He might have been killed by a coyote. Perhaps someone else’s donkey did him in. He could have been stolen, or simply gotten lost and is now living with a new family. Whatever happened, the dog, a symbol of our suburban past, had disappeared leaving us with the Australian shepherd puppy Kent had randomly picked up while purchasing our horse.

  Teddy, the new dog, grew to a rambunctious ninety pounds within a few short months. Just as Kent promised, he had trained the dog well. Teddy was an outside dog, the kind that slept on the porch with one eye open, ready to spring up and bark menacingly at anyone who dared intrude on his land. He was a herder, ready and willing to help me put the horses in the barn with a hearty bark and a few nips at their heels, but also keenly observant, darting out of the way whenever the donkey was cranky.

  Teddy understood chasing possums and hawks was dandy, but he had to respect and protect the chickens and rabbits. One day, when our replacement pet bunny got loose, he chased it down and held the pet to the ground with his mouth. I panicked and rushed to rescue the poor thing, but unlike Sammy’s killer Schnauzer instinct, Teddy hadn’t broken the tender bunny’s skin. He waited for me to get a firm grip on the rabbit, then let go, wagging his tail as if to say, “There you go. I wasn’t about to let him get away, silly rabbit.”

  Teddy could run for hours alongside a horse, sit with unfaltering diligence on the porch, and he wouldn’t dream of leaving the back of the pickup when we went to town. He was a low-maintenance, devoted country dog with a noble heart and I could no more imagine him in the stuffy environment of suburbia than we could imagine Sammy on a coon hunt. Fate had mercifully swapped out our dogs so we would never have to make such choices ourselves.

  Several months after Sammy’s disappearance, we picked up an abandoned puppy from a box in front of the local apple orchard. This floppy bundle of fur was designated as “Neva’s dog” and Mark, who for some reason felt entitled to name every animal we adopted, called it Maxine. She quickly grew into a huge, inelegant plot hound with a thunderous, hillbilly bray. Without Kent’s diligent training, she turned out to be a bit of a sneak, but we loved her regardless and she took to sitting on the opposite side of the porch from Teddy, the two of them like oversized, canine bookends, greeting visitors with the same noble attitude as the lions at the foot of the New York Public Library steps. With dogs like this, how could we live anywhere except on 50 sprawling acres?

  Our dogs, like all the other random choices we were making each day, were creating tiny lifestyle adjustments that added up to a huge paradigm shift in our universe. We said we were just going to try this country living thing out to see if it made us happy, yet we continued to plant roots, as if, unconsciously, we wanted to narrow our options until there was no choice but to make this whole country experiment work.

  “The language of friendship is not words but meanings.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  IMPORTANT LESSONS

  After a few months of twice-weekly lessons, Kathy was finally starting to read, at least a little. Her finger traced short, simple words letter by letter as she
sounded out cat, dog, or run. When the words were spelled exactly like they sounded, she could figure them out, but when a word was not spelled phonetically, there was little hope of her grasping definition. We were making progress, but reading comprehension was still a long way off.

  I expected Kathy to associate these basic reading skills to writing as well, but alas, the first time I asked her to write a word she easily read, she couldn’t think of the letters that matched the sounds she was voicing out loud. Apparently, teaching someone to read and teaching them to write are two separate things. I started putting more emphasis on Kathy’s writing and gave her homework to write sentences using the few words she knew.

  Her first attempt at writing cohesive sentences resulted in this:

  There is a big fat man.

  I see a big fat cat.

  It is not fun to be big and fat.

  The big fat boy ran.

  I said, “Um, Kathy, not every sentence you make up has to be about big, fat stuff. Can you think of a sentence that isn’t about a big, fat man?”

  “How about I write, that man is not big and fat?”

  “Never mind. Big and fat is good. You deserve a big, fat A+ for these sentences.”

  She took a sip of her Mountain Dew and continued practicing. “I like using the words I know. It’s nice not to feel like a total dope.”

  “I can relate.”

  One of the reasons she had trouble sounding out words was because her accent was so countrified, and her missing teeth made proper pronunciation impossible. When she said the word “with” it sounded like “wit,” so naturally she’d spell the word that way. The word “going” was pronounced “gun” for her. She’d say, “I’m gun ta the store ta git a sandwich,” rather than, “I’m going to the store to get a sandwich,” which made sounding out these words to spell them nearly impossible. When I corrected her pronunciation she’d look at me as if I were making things up, and say, “I believe you when you say that’s the way them words are supposed to be said, but I always done said ‘em differnt.”

  One day, I brought in a basket of cooking ingredients and supplies complete with utensils, a cookie sheet, and a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. That day’s lesson involved teaching her how to use a measuring spoon and measuring cup, a fraction lesson as well as a cooking lesson. Two days later she brought me her “homework,” three homemade cookies carefully wrapped in cellophane.

  “These are from my second batch,” she said. “My husband and son ate the first batch in one night. I tole them not to eat my homework, but they couldn’t resist.” Her smile was endearing. “I made more cookies the next day for my husband to take to work, and to show you I did it right. Now, I’m making cookies for everyone I know.”

  I munched happily, the pride in her voice making me deeply grateful that I had found such a worthy volunteer project.

  The next day, I bought her a subscription to a cooking magazine, and as I filled out the subscription form, I thought how good the practice would be if I asked her to fill out the form herself. I scoured the town seeking forms for Kathy to fill out, gathering job applications, credit card applications, memo pads, magazine subscription cards, and change of address forms. I never before noticed just how many forms surround us in an average day. Kathy filled out each form, carefully sounding out her name, address and phone number over and over.

  “See, you might even win a trip to Tahiti,” I said, as she filled in a post card for a travel contest. “Ever left Georgia?”

  “Been to Kentucky to visit my cousin and been to Florida to see the beach once. That was far enough for me,” she said.

  “I’d like to see the entire world...if I can ever afford it,” I said. “I’ve always wanted to witness firsthand how different people live.”

  “A person don’t have to go half the way ‘round the world to see new things.”

  Truer words had never been spoken. After all, I only needed to travel to Georgia to discover a world that was the polar opposite of everything that was familiar.

  She handed me a contest card filled with neat, childish print. “If I win, I’ll give you this trip to Italy,” she said reaching out to pat my arm in a friendly way.

  “Wouldn’t you want to go yourself, considering it would be a free vacation?”

  “I never thought about my going to such far off places before. I don’t know if I’d like new places.”

  “Sometimes the only way to know what you do and don’t like is to try something.”

  “That’s how I got into meth,” she said, laughing wryly.

  “I guess some adventures do prove a mistake,” I said, not liking the potential truths posed by such a statement.

  Kathy addressed an envelope to herself and I told her to expect an assignment in the mail. Her task was to read the instructions and figure out what to do without me there to explain things. I also had her address an envelope to me, and told her to write and send me a letter about her big fat life. I spread a stack of junk mail on the table and together we went through the envelopes.

  “I get this sort of stuff in my mailbox too, but I just toss it out.” “How do you know a piece of mail isn’t a bill or something important?”

  She waved a glossy flyer at me. “Nothing important is ever this colorful. Real stuff don’t need bells and whistles.”

  Her comment was laced with the wisdom of a prophet.

  I bought her an address book and showed her how the letters that stick out on the sides are like files, and inside, names are organized by the first letter of a person’s last name.

  Kathy flipped through the pages of that little address book as if it were made of gold. “I’ve seen one of these books before. My mother-in-law has one,” she said. “But what do you expect me to do with it?”

  “Fill the book with every friend, family member, and acquaintance you know, to practice writing addresses, and later we will send Christmas cards to everyone in the book. I’ll supply the cards and stamps. You’re in charge of writing the names.”

  “What about my friends who can’t read?”

  “Do you have a lot of friends who can’t read?”

  “Sure,” she said. “I tole them they should come here like I’m doin’, but they’re not interested.”

  “We’ll send them a card, too. Maybe receiving mail from you will inspire them to want to read,” I said.

  The next week I bought her a small, purse-size planner. Kathy had dozens of appointments to fit into her busy week. She typically had two AA meetings, a doctor’s appointment, two reading lessons, a mandatory drug test, periodic court dates, and the usual school meetings and parenting responsibilities all parents juggle. When I asked her how she kept her schedule straight, she explained that learning to get by without knowing how to read had helped her develop a good memory.

  “Nevertheless, fill out every obligation you have in this book. Flip forward to future months and list birthdays and anything else you can think of. Even if you know you will remember something, like our lessons every Tuesday and Thursday, write the appointments down just to get used to the process of taking notes. I want writing to be a part of your everyday life.”

  Kathy slowly wrote our reading lessons in for the next two months, then tucked the weekly planner into her purse. “This isn’t really work for me, ya know. I enjoy getting organized. All I needed was to learn how these things are done.”

  Our lessons had indeed made me aware of just how word-intensive daily life is in America. Street signs, warning labels, and instructions on how to open a childproof lid help the average person get through the day with grace and proficiency. Illiteracy was not just inconvenient, but mandatory at the most significant level. Everywhere I looked, I saw words that, had they been nothing but random symbols, would turn the world into a confusing, frustrating, and dangerous place.

  Practical application assignmen
ts were far more meaningful than reading Moby Dick together ever could have been. Nevertheless, watching Kathy’s handbag fill up with the trappings of a busy life made me wonder about the old adage, “For everything gained, something is lost.” Was I guilty of making her formerly simple life more complex? “Sorry if I’m giving you more to handle than you are accustomed to doing.”

  “The more I discover what I’ve been missing, the more sorry I am that it took me forty years to tackle reading so I could be like everybody else,” Kathy said.

  I nodded, feeling the same, but for exactly opposite reasons. My life was filled with gripping new challenges, too, as I struggled to understand a lifestyle more intimately earth-friendly and connected to things rather than being distracted by gadgets and modern conveniences. The only reason I didn’t throw up my hands in disgust over the painful learning curve was because Kathy continually reminded me that ignorance has nothing to do with intelligence. Just as she was discovering how much she had missed in life as a non-reader, I was discovering all I had missed after living for so long with my heart and mind numb from too much work, effort, and focus on keeping up with the Joneses.

  Kathy had her limitations, true, but she was also the first authentic example I’d ever met of a person free of consumer brainwashing. The endless bombardment of slogans and sales images that the average American mentally processes day in and day out bounced off her, because she didn’t read magazines or newspapers and didn’t recognize sales copy, billboards, glossy ads, influential packaging, or junk mail solicitations even when they faced her head-on. Kathy didn’t use the Internet, or text message her friends, and she watched minimal TV. She lived in a world where family, church, home, and quiet pleasures were more important than stuff, and because of this, she was happy despite her lack of material wealth.

  I was fascinated by her contentment; even envious. Teaching Kathy to read would change her life for the better in countless ways, but would her education lead to the very influences from which I myself was striving to break free? Her loss of innocence seemed slightly tragic, considering I was struggling so hard to break free of my own mindset and habits heavily influenced by a lifetime of consumption-driven behavior. I wanted to be content with less, but shedding a sense of entitlement and insatiable wants is more easily said than done.