This morning I had one of those moments that could have gone either way: I almost got attacked by a Rottweiler. As the moment unspooled over a few seconds (which managed to feel like a few hours), my lizard brain kicked in, I went into an unfamiliar auto-pilot, and I made it out shaken but (mercifully) intact, well aware that things can turn on a dime.
There is — of all things — a chateau in a vineyard in north Georgia, just off Interstate 85. One moment, you’re driving 70 miles an hour, and the next moment, you’re pulling into the grounds of a manicured vineyard, the name of the chateau carved in boxwood in bubble letters out front. It has its own crest, and it flies its own flag. An unusual proportion of the staff is Dutch, and part of the main building is modeled after a French train station. It is clean. It is pleasant. It is spacious.
It is a little strange. I very much like to feel of a place, with a certain awareness of exactly where I am on the space-time continuum, and this place left me feeling discombobulated. Why, I could have been in a large chateau practically anywhere! (Which, as I write it, strikes me as a pretty hilarious thought.) It did not help that I was in a conference for two days, sitting still in a dimly lit ballroom, or that it rained almost the entire time. It also did not help that to have a dry place to walk around, Chris and I went to the Mall of Georgia a few miles away. I immediately got a bad case of (what I call) mallaise, that sinking depression that comes over me when I realize that I am trapped in a mall.
One of the great marvels of my marriage is our Great Mall Divide. You would think that I, with my love of clothes, would be the mall rat of the two of us, but that is not the case. It is Chris, my dear introverted Chris, who loves a mall. How can this be? I asked him late yesterday afternoon in the food court, his favorite spot in the mall. How can you love a mall? It is a question I ask him almost every time we go to a mall, and I know the answer: He likes the anonymity of being surrounded by people who are just there, who want to interact only in the name of commerce, who walk by without saying hi or making eye contact or having any desire to know his entire life story. These things are the province of the painfully extroverted (like me!), and yesterday, after walking among a legion of mall zombies, I practically wept when a J. Crew sales clerk engaged me in a discussion about what I was wearing. For a small, shining moment in a large, anonymous mall, order had been restored to my world. Chris, meanwhile, pretended to be utterly absorbed in a selection of belts, which may or may not been women’s belts.
This morning, I resolved to get out there. Make that chateau my own. See the sights. Soak in the grandeur. At sunrise! So I left my room in the Chopin wing, strolled past the L’Auberge Lounge, saluted the chateau’s flag, and followed a sign marked “Serenity Nature Trail.” I began walking through a wooded area, stopped to tie my shoe near a snake den, started walking a little faster, strolled by a bubbling stream, and as I began to relax, thought, “Ah. Now this is all right!”
A half-mile after I began my walk, the “Serenity Nature Trail” joined a paved golf cart path. While standing on concrete, with a golf course to my left, I took a picture of a sign that said “Nature Trail” with a manicured lawn and a McMansion in the immediate background.
It was an Audubon moment.
And like every great nature explorer before me, I walked on the golf course path, following yellow bands on pine trees, to where the “Serenity Nature Trail” took me practically into the back yards of other McMansions. All of which had (helpfully) posted large, yet tasteful, signs warning me not to trespass. And to stay off private property.
As I approached a hill just off the golf course, with a red clay trail scarring the manicured greens, I noticed an older man in a hat walking a large black dog. I love dogs, and dogs love me, and even on a small path with a desire not to trespass beat into me by tasteful signs, I simply would have continued to walk, greeted the human, and said “hey pup!” to the dog. Except for some reason this morning, I did not. I stayed at the bottom of the hill, several feet off the path.
The dog was a large Rottweiler on a blue leash with an impressive spike choke chain around his neck. His human had almost no control over him, and as the two came down the hill, the dog started barreling toward me, his human sledding behind him helplessly. It occurred to me both that I was about to get attacked and that I would not fare well in the encounter. And without thinking, with just doing, I avoided eye contact with the dog and turned to the side so that the dog would attack my left thigh and rump, not my face and chest. I somehow formed plans that when the dog hit me, I would curl into a fetal position, cover my face with my arms, and hope for the best. I am not sure I have ever been more scared. I am not sure I have ever been more calm.
Six inches from my left thigh, the man got control of the dog. As he and the Rottweiler walked off, the man said to me, Well, I guess I’m not taking him to the nursing home today. This apparently was meant as a joke, but a single word formed in my mind:
Asshole.
That word did not escape my lips because I did not want to chance round two, but in a perfect world, I would have let him have it. In this imperfect world, I kept moving. And started to shake violently.
The “Serenity Nature Trail” led me straight to the vineyard, and surrounded by grape vines and overwhelmed by the smell of muscadines, I watched the sun rise. It was beautiful and moving and as much as I have ever been, I was grateful to be walking on this earth. Nothing happened this morning. Something terrible could have. It did not. And when I told the front desk manager of the chateau, he could not have been any nicer. Here, please take this bottle of wine, he said. It will calm your nerves.
And then I went to the conference, the reason for my visit to the chateau. At exactly 8:46 a.m., the moderator interrupted the discussion and called for a moment of silence. For what happened 14 years ago today. It was over in a few seconds, but it managed to feel like a few hours. I had a hard time not bursting into tears, not wailing, not drawing the stranger next to me into a hug. It put my morning in perspective and flooded me with all sorts of feelings: love, sorrow, sadness. And even hope. For a world where people minding their own business do not get attacked. Where people are kind. Where the unthinkable does not happen. For peace. For serenity. Now.
ALC