If you want to scare your husband, I recommend that you tell him that you and your daughter are driving three hours in the rain to a trailer park, where you intend to meet a strange man to look at a puppy that you saw on Craigslist.

Trust me. It works. I speak from experience, for that is the conversation that Chris and I had last month.

So with a perfectly reasonable explanation (“in case they find our bodies hacked into bits”), I handed Chris a small green post-it note with a street address, a lot number, and the man’s ubiquitous first name. With that, our daughter Squirrel and I loaded into the car, with a promise to return by dinner.

There is no force on earth that exerts the pull of a puppy in the heart of one who desperately wants a dog. Our daughter — after an indifferent time as a high school student — spent a few years clearing trails through the wilds of Montana and then Arizona, only to return home with a fire in her academic belly. While her grades have been great, her spirit has flagged during this extended period of isolation. Her biggest solace has been Emmet, who currently is edging out the dishwasher as the real MVP of the pandemic.

(Spoiler alert: We survived. And when we arrived, the seller had other family members in the home to monitor the transaction; apparently he, too, had his Craigslist-based concerns.)

The puppy — a 14-month old standard poodle now named Nora — was one of seven dogs in the home, a pack that included two of her puppies. She had been crated with an intact male, only to find herself pregnant at nine months old during her first heat. I think the owner thought that we wanted to breed her, for he touted her abilities as a mother and assured us that the reason she had only two puppies was because she was so young. When the Squirrel and I walked out of the house to discuss whether she wanted the dog, we had to carefully keep Nora inside: The dog clearly had made up her mind. Watching us from behind the storm door, Nora looked for all the world like a small-town girl in a Journey song, a dog willing to take the red sedan to anywhere. I don’t know how a dog managed to look like she had her bags packed, but she did.

When we paid our money, the seller told us that we had gotten a good dog. I mentioned that she was going home with a good person — the Squirrel — as a reward for good grades. The 17 year-old girl in the house, the one holding an infant, asked if she could get a puppy if she made good grades. Someone replied that she had already gotten that baby for high school graduation.

With that, we loaded our own young mother into the car and drove back to Savannah. Over the next few weeks, we discovered that Nora had worms; nails so long that she could not stand correctly; and the soft, smooth paw pads of a newborn puppy. She could not stand correctly or walk for any length of time on a leash without hurting her feet. She needed to be groomed and spayed and conditioned to walk outside and housebroken. (One bright side: Despite all the nicotine exposure in her former home, Nora did not need The Patch.)

Even as a dog who apparently had been kept inside and possibly crated almost all of that time, she has such a sweet disposition.

Emmet, Nora’s new uncle-brother, promptly showed her how to beg for food.

It was a relief to have one happy child.

But you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child, and I still had a son to contend with.

Chris and I had been unabashedly joyous empty nesters for a few years before COVID hit. Now, we have had at least one child at home since March, and the children seem to pass the happiness baton back and forth. I don’t think we are bad parents: We feed them, we love them, we support them. It’s just that they’ve had a taste of the good life by living on their own, secure in their situations with a parental credit card in their pockets just in case. (We have too, albeit without the parental credit card.)

So on one hand: The Squirrel went back to school with her own dog in a small house in Athens. On the other hand: Our son’s Peace Corps plans fell through due to the pandemic, and his apartment lease ended in late July — leaving him at home with his parents, looking for work under their steely gazes, and unhappily catching up on “Wheel of Fortune” re-runs. He lives on his own floor of the house, in the converted attic, and just to reinforce the feeling that he had descended into hell, the roof sprang a leak over his bed in late July, and his air conditioner gave out in late August.

The roof should have been easy. On a Sunday afternoon Chris opened a window, walked out a third floor dormer onto a flat roof, and then climbed carefully onto the sloped roof to reach the top of the house. While he was up there, he thought he saw something. And then he was sure he saw something, for Emmet nosed him. Once you realize that a 52-pound standard poodle is standing on a third-floor roof to assist in roof repairs, it is apparently impossible to complete those roof repairs. Being far cooler than I, Chris acted like it was no big deal to have the family pet 30 feet up, and he sauntered back down the roof, onto the flat roof, and through the open window, with Emmet happily beside him every step of the way.

But everything got fixed in our son’s room. And then everything got fixed on his employment horizon: He has been offered a job in Philadelphia. He starts in a few weeks, which in his estimation is not nearly soon enough.

For a brief moment, I had two happy children.

Then I decided to try a different dog groomer. Emmet’s old groomer made him feel like a million bucks. He would walk out looking like the opening sequence of “Saturday Night Fever,” pausing for passers-by to tell him how handsome he looked. But being an utter idiot, I decided to try someone new — a groomer uniformly recommended on Facebook.

I knew better, but I did.

I went into shock when I saw the dog. I cannot describe how he looked other than to say that he was shaved in places that a dog should not be shaved, including his tail. Emmet hid from me for three solid days, and for the first 24 hours, tears welled up every time I looked at him.

Even worse, I went into Full Southern Woman Overdrive when I picked him up. This is a principle that compels me to act like everything is fine — JUST FINE — when confronted by a situation where it most certainly is not. So barely able to speak, I paid, tipped, and scheduled the next appointment. Which I still need to cancel.

So there I was. Back again with an unhappy child.

My sister reminds me that we all get bad haircuts. She did: When she was 9, our mother read a magazine article saying that if you gathered your child’s hair into a ponytail and cut it off just above the elastic, it would fall into beautiful layers. This was a lie. A tremendous and vicious lie. My sister’s hair would have looked better if she cut it herself. And our mother — who knew it — cried.

I suspect that Full Southern Woman Overdrive describes my approach to this entire pandemic. Are things fine? Most certainly not. I had fallen completely out of practice in hands-on mothering, with tying my own moods to the ebb and flow of ever-present young (and now typically irritated) adults. I had forgotten how it felt to add their boulders to the own bag of rocks that I carry, and I had been blissfully ignorant of exactly how much it costs to keep a tall 22 year-old man well-fed. (Don’t even ask.) I miss occupying all the space I want in my own home, Chris’ undivided attention, and setting completely my own schedule. I have been trying awfully hard not to let on, but now you know.

I find that I miss other things, too. Like my daughter, who is now four hours away. And no doubt I will miss my son when he is a plane ride away. They are mine, and I am theirs, and rather than try to force ourselves into the old roles, we all need to make way for the new.

Like a second puppy! You know, a sister for Emmet to reward him for his help in weathering the storm!

Chris, alas, says no. He suggests that happy children moving on with their own lives and the return of small but tasty dinners for two will do the trick.

No doubt he is right.

But I still want a puppy.

ALC