Joy Unleashed

by Jean Baur

  I got a strange note back from her. A cryptic “See the principal.”

  I told myself not to panic and sent him an email. He wrote back and said, “We have to talk.” I made an appointment with his assistant and arrived at the school a few days later.

  There was no small talk. He told me to sit down and said, “Don’t think this is going to work.”

  “What? I worked this all out with Aimée and she’s excited about having Bella here.”

  “There could be an allergy problem.”

  “A what?” My heart was racing and I tried not to scream.

  “I met with the school nurse and she thinks it’s a bad idea to have a dog in school. So many of our students have allergies.”

  I was stunned. Speechless.

  “Thank you for trying,” he added.

  “Wait a minute. Bella goes into the hospital every week as well as a rehab facility. This doesn’t make sense. If they let her in, if she gets in bed with cancer patients, she’ll be fine in a school. And we won’t go near children who have allergies. I keep her very clean and can wipe her down with an allergy wipe before we come to school.”

  “I don’t know,” he says. “The nurse—”

  “The nurse shouldn’t be making this decision. Of course the children must be kept safe, but Bella isn’t going to make anyone sick. Do the special needs children have allergies? Do their parents not want them to see a dog in school?”

  Now it was his turn to be stunned. He didn’t have an answer.

  “But she’s against it,” he repeated.

  “Why would you lose the opportunity to have a therapy dog in your school? Can’t we at least try it?”

  I saw the tug of war going on in his head. The nurse had been there forever, but he wanted to make his new special ed teacher happy.

  He took a deep breath. He saw that I wasn’t giving up, that I believed this was an important chance to make a difference in these students’ lives.

  “Let’s just do it,” he said. “The nurse will get over it.”

  I exhaled. I got my breathing back under control. This was way too close. I felt like Jell-O inside.

  We agreed on a date for Bella to start her visits, shook hands, and I left the school. In my car where no one could hear me, I said some terrible things about the nurse. A nurse I’d never met. A nurse who didn’t know Bella. A nurse who almost stopped this program before it got started.

  I wrote to Aimée and let her know we were still on. She asked me to come in after school to meet one of the students and his mother. She wrote that she thought it would help him to meet Bella with his family before working with her in school. I agreed and drove back to the school with Bella on a beautiful September day. As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw a mother with two children, and another woman who I assumed was Aimée.

  The older child, a girl of about nine, started shouting the second Bella was out of the car: “Oh, look. A dog! A dog!” The boy, who turned out to be Liam, age six, got behind his mother.

  I stopped about halfway to where they stood.

  “Jean?” asked Aimée.

  “Yes, I’m Jean and this is Bella.”

  The girl jumped off the sidewalk and ran toward Bella.

  “I’m sorry but you’re going to scare her. She’s shy. Why don’t you walk beside us?”

  Aimée introduced me to Liam and his mother and told him that Bella and I would be coming to school every week to visit him. He looked more afraid than Bella. He looked as though this was a terrible idea.

  “Would you like to help me hold the leash?” I asked him.

  He shook his head.

  Aimée suggested we go inside to the special ed classroom. I followed her, watching Liam to see if he was interested in Bella. His face was open and calm. Maybe on the edge of curious.

  “This is our room,” Liam told me. It was bright and cheerful with posters, books, thick mats on the floor, a swing on a tripod, and bright rubber balls of all sizes.

  I liked the way he talked. His voice had a softness to it. Something sweet.

  Bella saw the balls and looks interested. I slipped her a treat and told her she was a good girl. Liam kept his distance but was clearly intrigued that a dog was in school. Aimée explained to his mother that Liam would read to Bella and then they’d have a little play time.

  “Has she done this before?” his mother asked me.

  “Just last year, up in Gales Ferry. We worked with second graders and Bella was good with them.”

  “Liam is really afraid of dogs. I’m not sure how this will help him.”

  I turned to Aimée; she was the expert, not me.

  “We’ll go slowly and respect how close Liam wants to be to Bella. There are many studies that show dogs help children learn because they make them feel safe and relaxed. We’re very excited to have Bella here.”

  Her ears perked up when she heard her name. If I could move mine, they’d be somewhere between up and back, flat against my head, as I was surprised by the questions. Surprised by the resistance.

  I didn’t volunteer that we’d never worked with children with special needs and that this was all new to us. By the time I got home, I was wondering why I worked so hard to get into this school. It wasn’t like Gales Ferry, where we were added to an already existing program. We were the pioneers here, the first ones to bring pet therapy into the school. So of course it was going to be more difficult. But when I thought about Liam’s face, his sandy brown hair, and the way he looked at Bella, the doubts faded and I was excited to find out what my dog could do.

  When it was finally time for our first real visit, we met Aimée in the school office where I had to sign in and get a visitor sticker. The office was busy, and I liked seeing the double-take that the teachers and parents did when they saw a dog sitting by my side. Aimée told me that my first child would be Annelise, age six, legally blind. I was not prepared for a child who was still in diapers, who couldn’t eat solid food, and who basically didn’t talk. I sat down on the floor next to her and introduced myself. I met her paraprofessional educator, commonly called the para, named Kara, a wonderful young woman who seemed to have endless patience. Kara told me that Annelise loved music. I asked her if I could put a treat in her hand to give Bella. She couldn’t answer so Kara opened her palm and I dropped a treat into it and Bella licked her hand.

  “That was Bella,” I said. Annelise stood and whirled in circles, around and around, her hands rubbing against each other. It made me dizzy to watch her.

  We kept the visits short that first day, and after Annelise and Liam, we saw Austin. He had long, dark brown hair that flopped over his eyes, much of it matted. But he was clearly bright and loved to read. We sat down together on a pile of thick cushions.

  “Can Bella sit with us?” I asked him.

  He nodded but moved away so that she wasn’t touching him. He then read us a book about pirates. He showed Bella the pictures.

  “You’re a great reader,” I told him.

  He nodded.

  “Bella liked that book,” I said, “although I think if she met a real pirate, she’d be afraid.”

  Austin jumped up off the cushions. “Don’t be afraid, Bella. I’ll get that pirate!”

  I laughed and he threw himself back down on the cushions. Bella was startled but looked interested. Here was a strange creature indeed. Not at all like the sedate adults she lived with.

  I gave Bella’s tennis ball to Austin and suggested that he hide it. “Let’s see how long it takes her to find it. Dogs have awesome noses and can smell where things are.”

  “Don’t look, Bella,” said Austin, turning his back on her and putting the ball on top of Aimée’s desk.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  “Yup.”

  I let go of Bella’s leash and she sniffed around the room, poking the cushions with her nose, trying to find the scent.

  “She won’t find it!” crowed Austin.

  “Give her time. There are a lot of
new smells for her in this room.”

  Just at that moment, Bella put her front paws up on the desk and very gently turned her head sideways to grab the ball with her mouth.

  Austin clapped and I gave her a treat. “Well done, Bella,” I added.

  We talked for a few minutes and I told Austin that I would see him next week, then gathered my things and got ready to leave.

  He gave me a high five and went into a separate room with his para to have his snack.

  Aimée thanked me for coming and said that she was going to add a fourth child to our list in the next few weeks.

  “That’s fine,” I said, knowing that she understood Bella couldn’t do much more than an hour. As exciting as it was to finally be here, my first responsibility was always to make sure Bella was comfortable and safe.

  Out in the hallway, I received startled looks from teachers and the kids were unable to stop themselves from saying, “Oh, look. A dog.” Bella was pretty proud of herself and clearly loved the attention. This was not an easy assignment. Not at all. And for our first day, she did a really good job.

  A few weeks later, as we learned how best to interact with these children, the local newspaper sent a reporter and a photographer to do a special article on Bella. Liam and I sat on the floor, and I tried get him a tiny bit closer to her. As the photographer snapped away, he reached out his hand, not touching her, but not shaking in fear either. A hello, a bridge. As this was going on, the reporter wanted to know Bella’s story—where she came from, how she became a therapy dog, where else we worked. I used to think (like everyone else) that I was good at multitasking, but I realized then that I was terrible at it. I liked to do one thing at a time, so I felt tense trying to work with Liam and also answer her questions.

  The reporter asked me to sit with Annelise so she could see how Bella did with her. Annelise whirled, Bella watched, and that was about it. But I tried—I always tried. And if Annelise laid down on her bean chair, which she often did, Bella was on her, licking her face, wagging her tail like crazy. She liked the smell of her diaper, too.

  The paper could only photograph the two children whose parents signed releases, but the end result was wonderful—a front page article: “Dog with a ‘great heart’ is put to work at school.” There were three photos—Bella with Liam, Bella with one of the huge yellow balls, a tennis ball in her mouth, and Bella with Annelise standing at her side. Aimée laminated the article and posted it in her room. The school had another copy put up in the entryway. Suddenly, Bella had gone from outsider to rock star status. So now, every time we walked down the hall, all we heard was “Hello, Bella,” or “Hi, Bella,” or “Look, it’s Bella!” She couldn’t tell me what this meant to her, but if I wasn’t mistaken, she began to walk down the long school hallways with a bit of a swagger.

  And for me, all the ups and downs, all the uncertainties of getting this project launched, evaporated. We were here where we wanted to be.

  Chapter 28

  SLOWNESS IS THE NEW KINDNESS

  Winter 2013–2014

  Stonington, Connecticut

  I have a vivid memory of a summer day on Cape Cod where I used to vacation. My daughter, Emily, was four years old and I was divorced—a single parent. I had met Bob and we had been dating for several months, but he was away, singing at a summer opera program. I left Emily off at her half-day summer camp and was turning my bike around to go home, a list of the ten things I hoped to accomplish swirling in my head, when I saw a man walking past a nearby house. He stopped, leaned down, and patted a fluffy black and white cat sunning himself in the driveway.

  I was transfixed. He said something to the cat but I couldn’t hear it. The cat rolled over on its back. The man scratched it behind the ears. What amazed me was that he stopped. He wasn’t in a rush. He took time to visit with this cat. By being present, he was rewarded with this gift, this simple joy of greeting the cat.

  I was thirty-three then and it took another thirty years before I could begin to let this lesson change me. It took losing my job, moving to Connecticut, trying and failing to replace the work I had been doing, and getting really tired. I called this driven energy being on a bulldozer. Scorch and burn—get things done no matter what the price.

  Then one day, many years after seeing the cat, my tennis coach called me a “visionary” because I had the bad habit of looking where I thought the ball would go, rather than at the ball itself. It was a really bad way to play tennis. So now, I mostly looked at the ball. I subtracted “must-do’s” from my day, I gave myself quiet time, I wrote in my journal, took long walks, got seaweed off the beach for my garden. And yes, I worked, too. I was still a type A or AAA, as Bob says. But I tempered my pace. I said no to commitments that weren’t what I wanted to do. Mostly I learned from Bella, who, like me, was so fast she was a white blur, that I wouldn’t die if I slowed down. I would be okay if I stopped. I didn’t have to prove anything. No matter what she was doing, she was present, and time stood still. She was really good at changing gears, too. She could flop down on the floor and be fast asleep a minute after chasing Henry around the house.

  I finally figured out that this was where kindness was born. You really couldn’t be kind if you were in a hurry, if you were thinking about the next thing. Slow was the new kindness. It was a discipline. A way of being. And linked to that, similar in many ways, was what I was learning from the people Bella and I visited, especially the rehab residents. As Anne LaMotte said in her wonderful book on life and writing, Bird by Bird, “Dying people teach you to pay attention and forgive and not to sweat the small things.” Dying people and dogs.

  In the crazy season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I caught a cold and had to cancel my work with Bella. At first it was nice staying in bed, Bella and Henry curled up next to me. And Bob took good care of me, making me healthy lunches and bringing me endless cups of tea. But after two days of this, I was bored. I needed to do something but didn’t have the energy and couldn’t risk getting other people sick. Without getting things done, without interacting with other people (yes, I was a classic extrovert), my life felt flat. Bella adjusted to this new schedule without any problem and took advantage of being able to get away with things she couldn’t ordinarily do, like pull the stuffing out of all her toys. I laid in bed and watched her rip each toy open and then extract the stuffing. One piece stuck to the side of her jaw and made me laugh: “Look at you, Bella. You’re foaming at the mouth.” She was in heaven, destruction being one of the highest forms of joy. The rug looked like a cotton field. I was careful to make sure she didn’t eat the squeakers.

  When there was nothing else to rip apart, she came back to bed and fell fast asleep. She must have been dreaming of running as her feet twitched and she made little yipping sounds. Henry was on the other side of me purring. It was a symphony, and I took a little nap sandwiched between my two buddies.

  As soon as I felt better, I got back to my regular schedule, happy to be working with Bella and teaching my class on top of getting ready for Christmas. I told myself to remember slowness, to not let my energy drive me past noticing. I took mini-breaks. I looked out the window at the cove, watched the ice coating the rocks along the shore, and understood that the stillness that came out of the whirlwind was the most profound, and the most difficult, to achieve.

  Along with slowness, I learned about devotion. About the kind of love that showed up no matter how difficult it was. The spouses and sometimes the grown children of the rehab residents were teaching me this. They were here week after week. They brought in holiday decorations and took them out again. They brought in food and hand-knitted shawls. Sometimes photo albums. Special blankets. Treats.

  Nancy did her mother’s nails. She made sure she was well dressed. She brought in a radio so Alice could listen to music. She got her hair done. And one day when I told her what a wonderful daughter she was, she made a face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I do what I can.”

 
; “Which is a whole lot,” I told her.

  She didn’t tell me the details but shared that her mother was “difficult.” Not an easy person to have as a Mom. In many ways, Nancy had to raise herself.

  “But how can you do so much for her if she was like that?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Nancy. “She’s my mother. I took care of my father, too, before he died.”

  Now I thought she was a saint. Did she have any time for herself?

  “Wow,” I said.

  “You get into it—you learn. But the bad days are hard.”

  And I thought, Yes, when you make an effort and it’s misunderstood or not appreciated, that’s a huge test. That pushes you to the wall.

  As if reading my mind, she said, “The dogs are a big help. They really are. I always look forward to Wednesdays.”

  Deb and I hugged Nancy, I blew a kiss to Alice who blew one back, and we said good-bye and went back out into the hall.

  “My parents died suddenly,” I told Deb, “so I have no experience in this. Have no way to know how to do it day in and day out.”

  I’d seen other people doing it. When my father-in-law, who had Alzheimer’s, had to be institutionalized, Bob’s mother went several times a week to visit him: she held his hand, brought him food, did whatever she could to comfort him. And when my own son was hospitalized at age two with Lyme disease, I met a woman whose infant son was dying of a serious heart condition. She was there around the clock, holding him, singing to him, making his short life as whole as she could. The baby’s name was Henrico.

  I had the feeling that this is where real love is born. Not in the easy stuff, not in the romance found in movies and books, but here, where life was stripped down to its essentials. Where it was hard to show up week after week, where it felt as if love was a one-way street, as these families at the rehab facility knew all too well.