It wasn’t circled on the calendar, though it is now. It wasn’t a premeditated moment of truth because it happened with too much spontaneity. It wasn’t on a wish list and it wasn’t any kind of short or long term bridge that we had been meaning to cross. No, no, no, and no, it wasn’t anything like that at all. It just happened one day. One very fine day I might add.
Chaminade Lane is a 1/2 mile long road that lets out at the entrance to The Chaminade, a luxury hotel and spa in Santa Cruz, CA. The twisty, single lane road is shrouded in Eucalyptus Trees and poison oak. It’s a two lane road without a yellow center divide. When one car is going down and one car is coming up, both cars need to pass each other with precision and care. One side is hillside terrain, the other side more gulch-like that streams water during the rainy season only. There are a couple speed bumps near the bottom. There is a stop sign at the top.
Maybe it was the flowing water, maybe it was the many downed trees, likely some of both, whichever, something about this painting lured me into a bit of a trance. Without question I completely lost myself between the bottom and the top. Next thing I knew I was rolling through the stop sign at the top of the hill like I always do.
I could tell the hotel was my kind of empty. Nobody was at the pool. Actually, there didn’t seem to be anybody outside at all. I take that back, up in the distance and off to our right, Maintenance Mike was loading the John Deere drivable lawn mower back onto its trailer. I also noted my boy Rolando tinkering with his edging tools.
I veered left, briefly popped into the front desk area of the spa and fitness area, and poured myself that mandatory afternoon half cup of black coffee. It was 2pm on a Tuesday in early March. All of Santa Cruz seemed peaceful and very still. The entire central coast was in between massive winter storms. Enormous white clouds billowed above. The sky was crystal blue. The air had an unseasonably dry warmth to it. It was just how one might want it to be.
I climbed back into the running van and slowly made my way to where my favorite secret parking spots are, near the outdoor tennis courts. I chose my favorite of the favorites, shut off the engine, and began sipping my afternoon coffee.
That trance had worn off, but it lasted pretty long and left me feeling very relaxed. The smell of fresh cut grass captured my attention. Quinn’s Lawn, as it is known by many a few, had been primed for the taking. This chunk of crab grass has been our semi-personal field of dreams for many years now. Today was proving that once again.
Dog & Me were on our fourth day back to work after a long and cold five month winter hiatus. It had been a lot of back and forth from Truckee all winter long, which obviously also included Quinn’s surgery. But now we were back in The Cruz, ready to forge our way through the 2019 work season.
The van was in total disarray. So much so, that as I was parking the van, I was keeping an eye on Dog just in case she felt the urge to jump out of shotgun and get that head start that never gets her ahead. She’s just a dog after all.
When the work van is in true disarray, I need to be extra cautious with Quinn. There are times when I wish she wasn’t so filled to her brim with mad courage, unwavering trust, and a passion to be right where she thinks she is best suited to be, but she is. Therefore, and especially pertaining to the work van, a real serious injury can be all around her at any given time. An injury that hasn’t happened yet. An injury that I don’t want to ever have happen.
I lightly pinched her upper lip, put on my hypothetical serious face, and I extra firmly told Quinn to keep her cattle ass seated and that I was going to open my door and then I was going to close my door, and that there are bad things in the way and so I need to do some rearranging for the next ten minutes or so. It would have sounded a lot like the word STAY.
Quinn knows exactly what to do and how to be when I am extra stern. It’s rare that I ever go that route, but there are those times when there are no do-overs or second chances. I try to always make the van Quinn-Safe, but sometimes it gets away from me. Most all commands these days aren’t even commands at all. They are more routine verbal guidelines, like talking commands to keep her close by my side and on track in the great, big world. Therefore, a hard, firm command has come to mean real business, and she takes it right to heart.
So I’m fiddling about the van, Quinn proofing the back area etc.. Tucked away under a tattered canvas tarp, I spotted two volleyballs that I knew all along were somewhere back there, I just didn’t know where. Both had been punctured as I had remembered them being. One was flatter than the other though neither was too flat to have lost its round shape or ability to roll.
It had been maybe eight months since one of those volleyballs were used last. I remember when I brought the larger-sized ball into our bag of games once she had become very near blind. In fact, we used the volleyball quite a bit until I could just tell that it wasn’t that much fun for her. I understood. Likely something to do with her eye pressures being so high and painful. There was a time, probably in the summer of 2018 sometime, when I remember saying to myself that we had seemingly played the volleyball game for the last time ever. Likely a sad day.
Once I made the van safe for Miss No-Eyed to jump down, turn left, and turn left again, that’s when I said that her coast was clear. She stood waiting, eager as always to make the jump down to the ground, and with the runway safe for landing, out she went.
She felt her way over the concrete parking block and under the shrubbery that surrounds the 5000 s/f fun zone. She stood there and curiously waited as I purposely decided on the flatter of the two volleyballs. I ducked under the shrubs and tossed the volleyball in her direction. Checking the temperature. Curious to see her initial take on the situation.
She easily heard the sound of the volleyball, and so far as I could tell, understood exactly what was happening before her. I admit to calmly building up the moment while I was organizing the van, and Dog seemed pretty locked in.
Here’s what I saw as I entered the playing field. I witnessed Quinn, without taking her eyes off of me,(if she had them) touch her nose to the ball, and then backed herself up and off to the side as if to say she has been waiting for this moment her entire life. It was hard to believe.
Calm and quiet were very much still the modus operandi. I hid my excitement so deep within me that there was no way whatsoever it was being detected. She stood absolutely statue like. Every so often, without taking what would be her eyes off of where she knew I was, she would take another small step back and off to the side. Like the old days.
Sloth-like, I inched my way towards the ball, establishing some directional energy or whichwaywardness. It got to the point where every half step I would take forward, she would take a half step back and to the side. I knew we were on the same page.
When I was but a moment or two from kicking the ball, I reinforced the energy, making sure she was leaning accordingly. Boink! I toe poked the flattened volleyball about 20 yards along the fresh-cut, obstacle-free grassy area, and she absolutely bee-lined directly to it with all her youthful velocity and radar precision. She whipped the thing around in her mouth for a second or two and then proceeded to roll on her back in utter bliss.
I was tripping. Shocked and Overjoyed. Quinn remembered that this particular game of fetch never required her to bring it back, so I slowly walked over to her, feeling as though I had to try this out again to prove that it wasn’t a fluke. So with that same momentous calm, as she again backed away from the object without taking what would be her eyes off of me, I again toe poked the ball in the direction she was sensing. And again, she darted directly to the ball, getting to it before it even had a chance to stop rolling.
Oh My Goodness, Girlfriend was SO back!