Homecoming

Returning home this evening after attending a weekend wedding, I pulled up in the driveway, shut off the engine and listened to the last few minutes of a radio show. I was having a NPR driveway moment. Similar stories had captivated me in the past, but I accepted an unsatisfactory cliffhanger that could always be followed up online. Today was different because I unlocked the door to an empty home.

Instead of wagging tales and noses pressed up against the glass panels in the front door, I was greeted with a couple days of newspapers that had not been retrieved by Raleigh. I quietly brought in my luggage and laid it on the floor instead of the table. No curious noses were around to do a TSA check, so my bags sat undisturbed. Tired after driving most of the day, I laid on the couch without a dog on top of me or insisting that I provide scratches and ear rubs. Instead of excited barking the only sound in the house was the slow tick of the mantle clock.

This is the last 'vacation' the dogs (and Gregory) will take without me, and I'm anxious for their return. After two years of living in separate states, Gregory is finally moving to Portland. Gregory has been a professor of costume design and theatre at Western Washington University for 16 years and is starting a new career path in Oregon. For the last few years we've lived together on weekends and breaks, each time divvying up our four dogs into various combinations when Gregory returned to work. Sometimes I kept the girls and he took the boys.  In a few cases all dogs statyed with me, and in others Baxter and Raleigh stayed behind while Chloe and Duncan travelled 500 miles in a roundtrip adventure with Gregory. Only a few weeks have ever been completely dog free at our house, the Burrage Bungalow.

While the dogs are away in Bellingham they have access to acres of fields on the property where Gregory stays with friends. Our dogs run alongside Maggie and Bear, their canine buddies, until all six are exhausted and collapse in pools around the patio. The dogs love the extended car rides, especially when the windows are slightly cracked, and they greet each destination with a joy that humans are too reserved to demonstrate.

I sit here waiting, although it will be days, not hours until they're home. I can satisfy my longing with an understanding of calendars, clocks and schedules, but the clock still ticks in a monotonous rhythm that makes me wish it was otherwise.

When we adopt a dog into our lives, a decade or longer will be filled with their greetings each time we turn the key in our locks. It's an odd feeling to be on the other side of the door waiting for dogs to return home. We take vacations and business trips, where we are distracted by new adventures. Meanwhile, our dogs wait for us wondering when we'll be reunited and can go for a walk or play a game of fetch. And then there's the hundreds of days every year that we go to work; our dogs patiently anticipate the tick of a clock being broken by the click of a lock. How do they persevere through such long waits when we so often become anxious while standing in line at a check stand?

This odd circumstance I find myself in creates a vacuum, but it doesn't make me sad. I appreciate my family even more because of their absence and finally understand why our dogs are so excited to hear the car pull up in the driveway. I know this week when they come home I'll be the one rushing to the front door, sharing the same enthusiasm for their return as they do for mine.

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