Alstroemeria Anger
Acceptance comes before letting go.
I was angry. I felt inconvenienced, disrespected, and worst of all, insulted. My neighbor has a habit of calling Penelope “the other one,” and refers to Harper as “good,” which seems to imply that The Other One is not.
Over the span of three weeks, she took in two different dogs to sit. The first was a Frenchie, an adorable but alien-looking little girl who charged the fence, scaring both of my girls. Pen lost her mind, barking and lunging, snarling. We attempted to bring her back to her senses but failed. The damage of that moment was done.
I asked my neighbor if we could introduce Pen to the next dog - someplace neutral like the street. She didn’t say yes or no. I asked again. Still no answer. When the dog showed up, Harper tried to approach and my neighbor shepherded the dog into her house without acknowledgement. The first time Pen saw her through the fence, she was startled, just as before.
In a fury I strung sheets and giant pieces of cardboard along the fence between our yards, creating a blind, a technique recommended by trainers and often used in obedience and reactivity classes. It helped. Even though Pen could hear and smell the strange dog, not being able to see her helped her maintain a measure of composure.
I knew my neighbor hated the hastily made blind, its ugly, mismatched tarps, old sheet, cardboard, and paint-splattered drop cloth, but there was a nasty little part of me that took pleasure in the eyesore. It felt like reclaiming a little bit of territory, a sliver of autonomy in a situation I felt forced into, my boundaries ignored. My anger was made physical. I am fiercely protective of my dogs, and I felt as though their needs, their right to feel safe in their own backyard, were being violated. I felt justified.
The houses on my street are very close together. We’re all intimately aware of one another’s comings and goings, and often it’s nice because we know each other’s names. We chat across yards, on sidewalks, and in the street. We take in each other's garbage cans and recycling bins. We help one another with shrub trimming and lawn mowing. We literally lend cups of sugar and eggs. Of course the flip side is every time you wish you had more privacy, or could distance yourself from someone’s circumstances or choices, a task nearly impossible without locking yourself indoors.
The first few days were the hardest. Penelope flailed at the end of her leash. She snarled and yapped toward my neighbor’s house where she could smell the other dog. Taking her outside was not pleasant or easy. She refused to potty. If barking was all we had to endure, it would have been less of an ordeal, but Pen’s been known to redirect her frustrations on her sister, starting fights. We knew from experience that increased stimulation and unpredictable stress can render our household a war zone. We worried it would happen again.
As annoyed as I felt, I decided to make the best of the situation, to use it as an opportunity to train. My husband and I worked hard to keep the dogs calm, in particular to help Penelope practice impulse control and rest quietly in her crate or the guest bedroom multiple times a day. I started a new protocol for recall and place training, and I tried out a few head halters to see if that gave me more control over her when she could not control herself. (Just recently she’d jerked her leash out of my hand when approached by another dog, nearly flying into oncoming traffic.)
Overall we did ok. Pen was a rockstar much of the time. The few incidents we dealt with were not as bad as they might have been. But as the days passed I felt as though my neighbor was avoiding me, ignoring me, only saying hello if I spoke first and only with a clipped, tight voice. I knew I needed to break the tension, to do my part in preserving our friendship.
At the end of a long, exhausting work week preparing for a gala, I had a bucket of flowers leftover from testing table arrangements. Since my house was full of table toppers, I decided to share the remaining blooms with my neighbors. I found some unused jars and vases in my garage, washed them out, and arranged the pink alstroemeria, yellow daisies, and fuchsia carnations into bright bursts of color. I added grapevine and Rose of Sharon from my own yard, and when finished, I placed the arrangements on their doorsteps.
While I worked, I considered the feelings I’d been grappling with. Annoyance, anger, disrespect. How I felt ignored, and worst of all, as though somehow this was all a comment on my beloved dog, my sweet and beautiful Other One, in all her complicated, maddening, saucy little dog glory. I felt angrier and angrier as I arranged the stems. The prettier the flowers looked the nastier I felt. But I had to laugh at myself as I dropped off the flowers. Despite my festering anger at this person, I had spent my energy creating something lovely for them. It was either extremely healthy or highly toxic.
Not an hour later my phone pinged with a text from my neighbor. She thanked me for the beautiful flowers and shared that she was having a very hard, sad day because her good friends had just buried their 51-year-old son. The flowers were a lift. And I knew that unsaid, between the lines of her text, she was accepting my offer of peace, even if I had given it with a heart that still burned. As I read the text again, I felt that fire dwindle, slowly shrink into a thin snake of smoke, then blow away with a smile.
When I saw her outside that evening, both of us watering grass seed, she spoke to me with a relaxed voice. We bridged the gap, even as the dog lounged on her deck, even as we chatted over the eyesore blind I’d strung up as a physical representation of my rage. It sagged under the week of rain and sun, tired and spent, a little like how I felt as I let go of what was not serving me.
I feel incredibly grateful for this lesson from the universe. I’m not proud of my feelings, but I believe they were valid. It’s ok to feel ugly feelings. I am happy that I channeled that dark energy into something positive, that I managed to be kind outwardly while giving myself permission to be wholly honest inwardly.
We never know what someone else is going through. The human experience is complicated and messy. It’s also profoundly simple, because we all crave the same things. Acceptance. Kindness. Compassion. Belonging.
When I looked up alstroemeria, one of the flowers in the arrangement I’d gifted my neighbor, I discovered that it means friendship, support, the ability to help one another through trials and tribulations. And I had to laugh again, because it’s just too perfect of an ending.
From me, Harper Lee, and The Other One, happy end of summer.
