"The Fresh Air Faded" by Bob Dahl

The Fresh Air Faded,  09/18/2011

The fresh air faded quickly as we entered the nursing home. I inhaled and reached for assurance -- my ever present inhaler in my left front pant’s pocket. 

A warm, dry Indian summer day and bright sunshine turned into sticky, stale air and fluorescent gray.

We walked the gauntlet of dozing, drooling, slumping people in wheelchairs. They lined both sides of the hall.  Nurses and aids dodged and scurried, bottles, needles and pans in rubbered hands.  

We ducked into the room.  She sat eagerly looking in our direction.  “Would you like to visit here or should we go somewhere else?” I asked.

“Oh, let’s go down the hall.”  On the way out she pointed back to her roommate and whispered, “We’ll have more privacy.”

“It is nice to see you two, but where is that beautiful Chocolate Lab?”

“He’s in the car. Shall I get him?”

“Get him? I’ve been waiting all day to see Boomer.”

My wife ushered Ruth the rest of the way and I went for the dog.

He jumped eagerly out of the car; I held his leash tightly.  He tugged this way and that. I let him take a pee.  We rode up on the elevator. He sat so quietly. He knew the routine.  The door opened and he pulled me into the hall.  

“Boomer,” she called.

He headed in her direction and I let the leash go. He wrapped it around the wheelchair.  Kisses, kisses, kisses.

Then he settled down and lay beside the wheels.  

Old men hobbled by and asked about the dog.  “Just keep on going,” Ruth instructed them.  They frowned; she looked at us and shook her head. “If they stop, they’ll talk forever.”

We sat in the quiet and then talked about her cancer.  

On the way back to her room with the dog along, the dozing, drooling people who lined the hall on both sides looked up and some of them smiled…at the dog.  

“This is my pastor and his wife and Boomer. They have come to visit me.”

"I Sit on the Porch" - by Bob Dahl

I Sit on the Porch, 0919/2011 - by Bob Dahl

I sit on the small, open air, cedar porch with glass slats for a roof, leaving the door into the great room open to hear the outcome of the golf tournament. 

My wife sits inside under a lamp sewing one of her fabric sculptures on a quiet Sunday 

afternoon.

I set down my wine glass on the wood floor away from where the dog will be and look up to see rain drops on the slats.

My Chocolate Lab wakes, slides off the couch, follows me out of the house and faces me, tail wagging fiercely.  

He barks his whiskey bark, a bone collapsing in his old throat. 

He gags and coughs, courteously turning his head down and away.  

He turns back, looks directly into my eyes as if challenging me, “Come on, buddy. Let’s rumble.”  

I wipe a sleeper from his eye left again by a busy sandman and pat him on his head. His tail swings rhythmically.  

He squints approval and lifts his bony, football player’s knees into the house looking

for his mistress.