One of the nice things about having an elderly large breed dog is that it gives you plenty of time to really get to know your vet. Except for one notable exception, every veterinarian that I have ever met is all kinds of terrific: patient, kind, compassionate, and covered beguilingly in dog hair. I have known several local veterinarians, all thanks to my insistence on a fairly rigorous Quadrant System, a self-imposed four-sided region that constitutes my Savannah: bordered on the north by the river, on the east by Skidaway, on the south by Derenne, and on the west by Montgomery. The southern border gets breached weekly — curse you, Publix — but I mostly stay within my square of town. This explains my saying good-bye to a few vets I loved (and one I very much didn’t) and finding Dr. M, a new one within the Quadrant.

On Buddy’s first visit to Dr. M, I saw a sight that very much summed up what I think it means to be a vet. An imposing man was walking slowly out of the office, carrying a large bundle wrapped in a sheet and sobbing. I watched him kiss the bundle, place it gently in the back of his equally imposing truck, and sit behind the wheel, first crying, later collecting himself, and finally starting the ignition.

This is not exactly the best omen for one’s first visit. But God love the person who has the generosity of spirit and intestinal fortitude to end a beast’s suffering, offer comfort to a bereaved owner, and then perform a rectal examination on a not exactly thrilled 100 pound Saint Bernard/Golden Retriever mix and make a previously missed cancer diagnosis.

Buddy and I found ourselves sitting again in Dr. M’s office yesterday afternoon. For the first time ever, I was feeling pretty self-congratulatory after Buddy’s weigh-in, for he had lost 17 pounds. To be fair, this garnered a 17 pound loss from my psychic well-being: Buddy acts as if he practically reels from hunger, as if he would shank me over the smallest remnant of pork. It is tough love in action, and the fact that the new vet can now feel — not see, but feel — Buddy’s ribs is small consolation.

But I was also feeling a bit worried, thanks to a stubborn, recurring, and increasingly nasty infection in Buddy’s left eye. It began shortly after his episode in the neighbor’s koi pond, and all of those Nancy Drew books I read in my youth led me to believe that the two might be related. The short answer was “maybe.”

As in, maybe it’s an eye infection. Or maybe it’s a tumor behind Buddy’s eye. (I initially thought that the vet’s reference to a tumor was to a brain tumor — an eventuality as likely as my being diagnosed with testicular cancer. But no.) The answer, my friends, is in Buddy’s response to a course of antibiotics. So far, he has taken eight out of 56 pills. I cannot tell with any degree of certainty whether he has been getting better, which I am pretty sure means that he is not. There may soon be another new vet — an ophthalmologist — and a whole lot of uncertainty in our near future.

I have not cried about this latest development as much as you might think. It has struck me that perhaps we all teeter between minor irritation and major catastrophe, and that when faced with this wild swing, worry is such an ineffective response. Buddy certainly isn’t worried, a fact that my favorite non-Quadrant vet reminded me of after his cancer diagnosis. You just have to make the most of your time.

To the end, I have worked very hard lately to put down the &%$* phone and rot my brain with more constructive and engaging pursuits, like television. But even watching television often finds me looking into the cradle of my left hand, the phone exerting the force of a tractor beam. There is so much information to be had. What else has that actor appeared in? How many seasons has this series shown? What do the critics think? This always leads to a brisk trot to social media to see what my friends are eating for dinner, to my work email to ensure that there was been no crisis, and then to a few other sites just because they are there. The phone tends to be on a rest and repeat cycle, rest and repeat, so I try to turn it off and otherwise occupy myself.

It is too hot to knit in Savannah in June. My sister would laugh at this proposition, because there was one evening in late June, probably clocking in at a balmy 92 degrees, where Chris decided to serve piping hot homemade chicken soup. If my sister has ever been hotter, I don’t want to see it, and her eyes shot sweaty daggers in my direction during the meal and beyond. (I haven’t asked her, but I think it took the better part of three days for her body temperature to regulate.) I will occasionally get a text from her announcing that it is soup weather, and it delights me. While soup weather may be a fun time to inadvertently torment my sister, it is a terrible time to knit.

That leaves painting, and for the first few weeks, I set up an easel in the back of the living room. No one — least of all the most extroverted member of the family by far — liked that solution, so I now sit on the floor, back to the chair in which I used to sit, torso conveniently close to Chris’ foot for the occasional gentle nudge. There is a hazard: Buddy’s failing vision often brings him terrifying close to a palette of paints and the canvas itself, but so far we have avoided disaster. I sort of listen to TV while I retreat within, and lately I have been thinking of a conversation that I had with my mother.

My mother wondered recently what my life would have been like and what I would have done if I had begun painting as a child. Would I be an architect? A painter? A designer? Could I have maximized my potential? It is tempting to go down that road, and if anyone loves a Plan B, it is I. (I have noticed that my imaginary Plans B feature great wealth, fame, and fabulous clothes, which perhaps explain why I love them so much.) I have realized, though, that the discovery of painting came at exactly the right time: I am happy, I have looked at a lot of art over the past 49 years, I love color, and I am unafraid. It is a perfect storm, creatively speaking. My first painting is my favorite, because it felt like such a gift. (The amount of wonder and passion that it has inspired confirms that it is. For exactly how many times do I surprise myself these days? Very rarely.)

Last night, my daughter brought her own painting into the room and sat near me on the floor. She is the real deal. She has taken art lessons forever and now attends a high school with a strong visual arts program. She has a lovely graphic style that is both realistic and fanciful. And to prove that it’s not just her mother talking a big game, here is her Mother’s Day gift to me:

But sometimes with the deadlines and the requirements of school, it gets to be burden for her. She threatens to quit; she pushes aside projects. I was so happy last night to have her on the floor, painting something strictly for pleasure. She kept complaining that my right knee was in the way of her left leg, and I kept thinking how much I enjoyed being able to sit that close to my 18 year-old girl. I tried to be as still as I could to linger in the moment, and maybe it was no surprise that I began painting a picture of this bird’s nest that I found on the street outside my house:

I had an art teacher who thought it mortal sin to waste paint, so I began the underpainting with the oils I had on my palette:

Brush swirling, I had everything I needed: Chris close by, my daughter’s foot touching my knee, the dog snoring on my other side, a host of bright colors. The phone was out of reach so I could not (again) Google DOG EYE TUMOR. The movie on television was inane and funny, and the air conditioner hummed cheerfully along. Time passed quickly, and I kissed everyone good-night. Chris first. Then our daughter, a kiss on the top of her head where I could smell the familiar sweet sour tang of her hair. I kneeled down and kissed Buddy’s head, too, and while he did not smell nearly as good as the others, his musky scent flooded my nose. He was here. He was fine. He was not worried.

And neither was I.

ALC

P.S. — My daughter came in as I was writing. She rarely reads my blog and asks me to tell her the story instead. I did, and she believed that you needed to see what she was painting last night, too. I agree. Here it is, the beginning of a gecko rendered in acrylic: