In the Same Way

McGowan 3

In the Same Way

Sneaking through her teeth, my dog's tiny pink tongue breaches the barrier of her closed mouth. She is napping, ears splayed inside out, eyes rolled surreptitiously back in her head. I can see only a hint of her hazy green irises and the blush-colored outline of her lids. They mist rheumy in the summer heat, allergies at play. Her nose twitches, Lilliputian size quivers as if something delicious has touched her teensy snout; the tongue stays stable though hovering just outside the environment of her mouth.

She may be dreaming. Shifting subconsciously into a world where she supersedes the boundaries of my home. Her paws stretch, cutting the air with two furry appendages that resemble the Grinch's hands, hair stretched over claws, soft downy white fur. I wonder what she's doing lost in the subliminal world of imagination.

My observation, I'm sure, exceeds the simplicity of her wandered world. I do consider what she might be doing under the anesthesia of sleep. Is she chasing chipmunks? We have two I feed peanuts every day named Fivel and Ferdie. They run circles around the porch in the morning and torment her desire to act out grand gestures of predatory conduct.

Is she torturing baby birds? This is her favorite pastime, and we watch her like a hawk to save the chicks. She waits under nests for these feathered friends to make their great escape and then catches them, tosses them like a tennis ball between her paws until we take them away, place them safely back in the recesses of sticks and debris. She never hurts them; just reminds them she is a wolf at heart.

She may be eating. She's a glutton and likes to steal the other dog's food. She munches on grass and plants, and much to my chagrin, feces when she's outside exploring the backyard, which to her must seem like a tundra. She's always told a sharp "No!" when, like a toddler, she puts everything in her mouth, but it does little to curb her enthusiasm. We often wrench from her jaws sticks and rocks and magnolia leaves lest she bring them in the house, digest them as the pint-sized goat she seems to be. Or do her dreams take her further? Do they take her on adventures like mine? In my dreams, I can fly. I can say exactly what I want to say when I want to say it. I can think and feel passionate and explosive moments that seem out of reach in the waking world. I can die. Come back to life. Can she do these things? Do dogs dream in the vivid array of color and life and illusion as we do?

My father told me once long ago that you play every part in your dream for how can someone else exist in your psyche? This is both exhilarating and terrifying, for I've done things in dreams, things I can't speak of aloud, but the words can be written here: I've murdered in my sleep, I've fallen down rabbit holes of lust, I've broken the surface of water losing all sense of human purpose. I've acted out stories of revenge and retribution that exist suppressed in the day-to-day chores of my life, my decision to always be "the bigger person," to forgive hurt again and again and again. I've laughed and cried with pure abandonment knowing no one here will judge me, for this is my world. I've cowered in fear when nightmares lurk into the dark taking my power away. Her tongue twitches. But it stays extended beyond where it should be. Is that what dreams are--an extension of where we could be instead of where we should be?

I twitch too when I dream. My husband reaches out and places a protective hand on my thigh rooting me back into the real world. Sometimes I scream, kick, and cuss, an onset of night terrors I don't remember, but he does. He tells me things I've said: "I wish you would," challenging someone, "Call 911!" -- I don't know what was wrong, "Bring it on, motherfucker." I'm apparently violent in my world where I can fly and die and live.

My dog is awake now. I've turned the page I'm writing on, and the noise has disrupted her slumber. It is of no consequence; she'll doze again in a moment, her tongue returning to where it always is when she sleeps. I reach over and adjust her ears back to the factory default setting, a lifelong job of a dachshund owner, and boop her on the nose. She kisses my hand with a love I cherish, shakes her ears, and hunkers back down into dreamland; the tongue is back out, a flagship of her unique self. I touch it. She doesn't move, she blindly trusts that it's me. It feels dry now, rubbery and different from the slick licks of seconds ago. How quickly it shifted from what it should be to what it is.

How quickly I shift in the same way.