Some Christmas Stories for You

Kate Flora: Every year I write a Christmas story for you. This year, the season is too busy and the story is going very slowly, so here are the links to the past four stories, and the beginning of this year’s, which I will finish and post the rest on Wednesday.

Enjoy!

Kiki Saves The Day: A Christmas Story

I should introduce myself properly. My name is Kiki. I have white curly hair and shiny dark eyes. I am middle aged and I weigh a trim eighteen pounds. I love exercise, primarily walking, have a fondness for treats, and can dance on my hind legs to entertain my human.

Ah, yes. My human. I have primary responsibility for a human named Andy. More properly Andrew, but no one calls him that. Andy is in what humans call old age, meaning he is more than fifteen in dog years. Andy isn’t exactly lazy but without me, he wouldn’t get much exercise. I do my best to take care of him, which is sometimes difficult. Andy likes to sit at his desk and work, so my challenge is to find ways to get him to leave his work and come outside.

Once he’s outside, he’s usually glad he’s there. Andy isn’t so much antisocial as he is shy. We have good neighbors, though, who understand about his shyness and find ways to engage with him anyway. There’s Alice, across the street, who worries about his nutrition and is always bringing him—us—food. We’re lucky that Alice is a good cook, because without her visits and the casseroles she brings, Andy would forget to eat. He’s what I’ve heard called “an absentminded professor.”

Alice had a dog that looks after her, too. A lumbering, joyous black Lab named Otto. People might scoff at this, since we’re animals, but I consider Otto to be my best friend. While Alice visits with Andy and catches him up on what’s happening in the neighborhood, Otto and I race around the yard. As a great example of why Otto is my friend, he is very considerate of the fact that he’s about three times my size, so he slows his pace to accommodate my short legs.

I guess I can say this: I really love Otto. He’s so kind and caring. He’s also smart, which his lumbering gait and exuberance don’t reveal. He can find things that people have lost. He’s good at comforting children who’ve fallen or who are shy and scared. He’s very protective of Alice and will get between her and anyone or anything he perceives as a threat. He can also catch a ball in midair and will carry his favorite stick for a mile if he and Alice are walking.

I watch the news with Andy every night, curled up on the sofa on my special blanket, and I often wish that humans could be as good as Otto instead of hurting each other.

We have other good neighbors, too. On one side of our house we have Mike and Sally and their twins, Leo and Cleo. The twins are just learning to walk and it is very funny to watch. Sometimes Otto will walk with them so they have something to grab onto if they think they might fall. I wouldn’t be good at that. I am good at dancing to make them laugh and believe me, a toddler’s laugh is a marvelous thing. Even Andy, who is shy around children, loves the twins. Leo, who talks more, called him “Dandy” which makes him laugh.

Lest you think our neighborhood is all sweetness and light, I must tell you about our neighbor on the other side, Bad Billy. I didn’t name him that, even though I like the alliteration. Andy did. He’s usually not very judgmental but it would be hard for anyone not to judge Bad Billy. He’s so disagreeable it’s almost as though he had a smelly green cloud around him, like a poison gas or something.

Right. You are thinking: How would a dog know about poison gas, right? Well, remember that we dogs have excellent senses of smell. Far better than humans. So of course I know that Bad Billy doesn’t bathe often and consequently stinks. The use of the term “poison gas” though, comes from Andy. He isn’t normally very critical. He lives so much in his head that he pretty much ignores the world around him unless forced into being observant by neighbors like Alice or Mike and Sally.

Anyway, about Billy. He’s the sort to complain about everything. He will call up to complain about a barking dog, even though I am a very well-behaved animal. He will kick over our trashcans if he thinks they’re on his property, even though Andy is very careful not to encroach. And while he complains about anyone else’s noise, he will play his loud music late into the night. And he has very bad taste in music. He calls Leo and Cleo snot rats.

You get the picture.

So mostly our lives are pleasant and we do our best to ignore Bad Billy.

I think I told you this story is about Christmas, didn’t I? Christmas is a big deal in our town. People try to outdo each other with their decorations. It’s fun, though. Not an over-the-top competition such as happens in some places. I know this because I’ve seen it on the news and Andy will say, “Aren’t we lucky that we live here, Kiki, where people are pleasant?” I will bark an affirmative and we will go back to watching TV.

Lately the news has been so unpleasant that even Andy, who has a very calm and curious nature, will change the channel. This year we are watching Hallmark Christmas movies. Andy says that when he was younger, he couldn’t stand them, but now that he’s older and slowed down and the world is in such a mess, he enjoys the romance, the small conflicts, the pretty small towns, and their message of love and happiness.

Once in a while he’ll sigh and say he wished he’d had a family. Andy did have a wife once. I never met her but he tells me about her sometimes. He says she was beautiful and fun and used to sing as she did her housework and cooked. He says her name was Norah, which I think is a very pretty name, and when he says it, that single word is infused with love and memory. Andy and Norah never had any children, which he regrets, but he signs and says that sometimes life doesn’t give you what you hope for, so you have to make the best of what you have,

Andy, in case you didn’t guess this because of his shy nature and the hours he spends at his desk, is a retired teacher. Sometimes when we’re out for one of our walks, he’ll meet a former student and they’re always happy to see him, so I guess he was not one of those mean teachers who made all his students feel inadequate. Quite the opposite. I think he was inspiring. I mean, I am only a dog but he inspires me. He makes me feel like I am special, and worthy, and a great companion.

When I say my job is to look after him, I mean that Andy is getting older and slowing down and he sometimes forgets things. If he leaves the keys in the door, for example, I will gently nudge him back to get them. If we’re going to leave the house and he doesn’t put them in his pocket, I will nose his pocket to remind him. He always laughs and says, “What would I do without you, Kiki,” which makes me feel very good.

When Alice stops in with one of her casseroles, she will pet me and say, “Now you keep an eye on Andy, Kiki. He depends on you.”

It’s a lot of responsibility for an eighteen pound creature, but I do my best.

Anyway, it’s the holiday season and our street is aglow with colored lights and silly inflatable Santas and reindeer and snowmen. It’s lovely to see and people are smiling. We aren’t big on decorations because Andy is old and alone, but he tries. We have lights around the porch and a big wreath on the door and a funny metal tree with lots of lights that’s also on the porch. Andy says he doesn’t care that much about Christmas but he doesn’t want to let the neighborhood down.

Alice goes all out with strings of lights on her trees and along her porch and some crazy blue waterfall lights people stop to watch. Of course, Alice has her husband and children to help. Otto says the whole family gets excited about doing it. Last year, one of the kids even got an illuminated leash for him, so he can be part of the fun. I admit I’m a bit envious and have to remind myself how good I have it. After all, I began my life in shelter, surrounded by dogs nobody wanted.

When I think of that, it makes me sad until I remember the day that Andy came looking for a dog. He was sort of shambling down the row where we were all in cages like we were prisoners. He looked like seeing us just made him more unhappy, so I went over to the bars and stuck out my paw, like I wanted to shake hands. Really it was because I wanted to comfort him. He stopped and crouched down and shook my paw. Our eyes met and that was that. Kind of like in those movies we watch, except that he’s a man and I’m a dog. Anyway, I came home with him and we’ve been best friends ever since. Our own happily ever after.

Our lives were going along as usual, Andy puttering at his desk and I watching dust motes in a streak of sunlight, when something most unusual happened. The doorbell rang.

Uh. I should clarify: it wasn’t the ringing of the doorbell that was unusual. It was the person on the other side of the door.

Andy shuffled toward it, his slippers making those scuffing, old man sounds that made me want to chew them up so he couldn’t wear them anymore, and opened it. He was probably expecting Alice, since it was around her usual time to bring us food. Instead, he opened the door, saw the woman standing there, and stepped back in shock, his hands to his chest.

I’ve watched TV so I know, when someone puts their hand on their chest, they’re either having a heart attack or they’ve been shot. There had been no noise, so Andy wasn’t shot. I rushed to his side, hovering there in case he needed me.

The woman said, “Aren’t you going to invite me in?” not in an angry way but in a sweet and puzzled way, and Andy stepped back and gestured for her to enter. Without a word, he led the way into the living room and collapsed onto the couch. She took a seat in a chair facing him and waited.

I decided I’d better give him time to recover, so I followed them into the room, did my little Kiki dance for her, and then planted my head on her knee. We would soon know whether this was a dog-friendly person or the kind who says, in a cranky voice, “Sorry. I am not a dog person.”

She was a dog person. Definitely, the way she stroked around my ears and along my back and said, in an apologetic voice, “I’m sorry I don’t have any treats for you.”

A dog just knows, right?

By then, two things had happened. First, Andy had recovered enough to speak, and I realized the woman looked like the photos of Norah that were around the house. So who was this person?

“As you’ve guessed,” our visitor said, “I am Norah’s sister Maeve.”

“Twin,” Andy said. “You’re her twin.” He sounded like he was choking on the words. He could barely get them out.

“She never told you, did she, that she had a twin?” the woman said.

Andy nodded.

“She probably never knew.”

Andy and I were both puzzled. How does a person not know they have a twin?

“I know.” The woman’s voice was soft and pleasant. A very nice voice. I imagined her sayinh, “Here, Kiki” and giving me a treat. It was that kind of voice.

“I know that it sounds impossible. I didn’t know about it myself until recently, and frankly, it made me very angry. I was adopted, as was Norah, and a few years ago, I decided to look for my birth parents. You know . . . I imagine . . . that many adopted children feel a sense of not belonging, if not a great curiosity to know why they were given up and whether there are people other there in the world who are like them. Parents, aunts or uncles, siblings or cousins.”

She stopped talking and put a hand to her lips. “Excuse me. I’m so sorry to barge in like this and then start babbling at you like an idiot. This must be a great shock.”

By now, Andy had recovered somewhat and was staring at he with what humans probably call wonder.

“Babble all you want,” he said. “My Norah . . . your sister . . . your twin . . . she did the same. I always found it charming. It was fun to see where her conversation would go.” He waved a hand, more animated than I’d seen him in a long time. “Go on.”

“They aren’t very cooperative, these agencies, even though the laws are more liberal now. It took a lot of work, so much I sometimes felt more like a detective than like a woman who wanted to know her story. And then, when I finally discovered the fascinating truth that I had been one of a pair of identical twins and we’d been given to different families and never told . . . Well,” she spread her hands in one of those human gestures that can mean many things, “I was amazed and furious. Then, just when I was excited that I not only had family but a sister just like me, I learned that Norah was dead.”

She slapped her hands down on her knees, and I gave a startled yip and moved away. She looked at me. “Sorry. I can get carried away.”