“Please.  I would like to play catch-peanut.”  Kit, our border collie-blue healer cross, stares intently at Ula as she flops down on the couch on the screen porch.  Her pointed ears radar themselves at my daughter, as though she can summon special powers through them.  “It’s a very excellent game, Ula.  I really enjoy playing it.”  Kit’s voice is gravelly.  She enjoys articulating herself using complete thoughts.  Ula flicks a peanut at her. 

“Catch-peanut is a stupid game,” Dusky, our Yorkie-Poo, pushes her paw into Ula’s lap.    “The better game is put-peanut.  You take the peanut, and you put it in my mouth.”  Dusky’s voice is softer and a bit higher in pitch, but she has no problems making sure she’s understood.  She also has an unbelievable potty mouth, but I won’t indulge her nasty streak here.  Ula places a peanut in front of her mouth, and she gently takes it. 

“Thay, I love a game of catchie-peanut,” Says Nikki, our English Collie.  “It’th justh the bestht game!”  He stands back a few feet and waits patiently until Ula tosses a peanut for him to catch.  She giggles.  She thinks it’s funny that I make all the dog voices so frequently, I don’t even notice that I’m doing it.  I’ve been known to lie in bed at night, all three dogs on top of me, deeply engrossed in conversation, each of them at turns arguing and discussing the events of the day with me, each in their distinct voice.  

I’m glad to see her giggling.  She’s generally a happy kid, but the gravity of a remark she made earlier today weighs heavily on me. 

“I’m worried I’m getting too old to play with dragons,” she said that morning as she pulled her feet onto a chair at the kitchen table and nestled into my side.  

“That’s not possible,” I assured her.  “You may find other things that you enjoy, but if you love dragons, you’ll always have dragons in your life.  Did you see that lady in shorts at the counter last Saturday?  She was older than me and she had a dragon tattoo crawling up her leg……Not that I’m encouraging you to get a tattoo, mind you,” I nudge her.  “But she still plays with dragons.  And what about the people who made your dragon puppet?  They still play with dragons.”

Ula gave me a wan smile.  My answer wasn’t cutting it.  “It’s just boring and sad people who give up playing,” I tried a different tactic.  “You just develop different ways of having fun as you get older.  But you’re still playing.”

She cocked her head and looked at me, waiting for more.  “I play in the kitchen,” I offer.  “I also like playing with numbers.  That’s pretty fun for me.  And let’s not forget about all the talking dogs in this house.  But when I was a kid, my favorite way to play was to sit by the stream and make up stories in my head.”

“You still do that.”

“Yup.  Not only that, but play, for me, helps to pay the bills.**”  She sighs, still unsure.  “Growing up is way better than being a kid,” I assured her.  “You get to play even more, because you don’t have an annoying mother breathing down your neck telling you to clean your room.”  She guffaws at that, then scrambles away.

But her words stay behind.  I’m thinking a lot about her these days.  She’s twelve.  In some ways, she’s an extremely mature twelve-year-old.  She helps at the farm, gives farm tours, works her tail off at the cafe, and engages in deep, emotionally sensitive and insightful conversations with family and strangers alike.  But that doesn’t stop her from relishing childish pleasures.   When John Nesel comes to the cafe at closing time, she abandons her responsibilities to sit beside him and play hangman, stealing paper from my printer.  I find sticks carved into swords around my house, wood chips and shavings ground into the carpet.  Pat, who comes to the cafe in the early morning, loans her books, and she spends hours drawing her favorite scenes from her reading.  Right now her artistic inspiration is  Julie of the Wolves.  And I love these things.  

But her friends have moved on to other interests.  Sexual identity conversations prevail, along with link-swapping for angry teen-produced Youtube videos.  On top of that, Saoirse started dating this summer.  One minute she floats on cloud nine, and the next she’s fed up and disgusted with our tedious family.  She has her learners’ permit, too, and jumps behind the wheel at every opportunity, changing the balance of the family car.  Meanwhile, Grammie passed out twice this summer, and has chosen to forego driving until she has the problem better in hand, so she doesn’t show up at the house to bring Ula places like she used to.  And then there are our customers.  Too many of her favorite customers suffered age-related health problems this summer, leaving both her and Saoirse flopped sideways on my bed at the end of the last few weekends, weeping with worry for them.  And then there’s me.  One minute I’m exhilarated about all the exciting changes on the farm, and the next she’ll find me dabbing at my own eyes, worried about my mom, worried about my dad.  A few minutes after that she’ll hear me lament that my eyesight has become so poor, I can no longer read the jumbo numbers on our landline telephone.  

Saoirse’s getting older.  Grammie and Pop Pop are getting older.  Her friends are getting older.  Her parents are getting older.

I want to put the breaks on all of it, to stop all this change, to hold the world still for my little girl.  If I can’t do that, then I want to push it all out of my mind and life, to deny it, so that she can continue her daily existence unchallenged by the passage of time.  

I remember going through this myself.  In my childhood, summer vacations home on the farm and with my elderly neighbors were a time when I couldn’t escape the realities of mortality.  When I was first old enough to walk up the road to help at Ruth and Sanford’s farm, Sanford’s brother Orin slept in the downstairs bedroom.  Clarence, an octogenarian border, had a tiny bedroom at the top of the stairs.  Laura, one of Ruth’s best friends from her early days, would come and stay for weeks at a time in the back bedroom.  One by one, they died off, and the house got quieter and quieter.  But Ruth and Sanford kept going.  August days for Sanford and me would be spent out in the hedgerows, gathering blackberries, the whistle of his hearing aid singing out over the chorus of crickets, the smell of his favorite home remedy (turpentine, for arthritis) layering over the scent of warm blackberries and the sun-drenched creeping thyme beneath our feet. And I remember how all the changes in my life, and all this mortality, frightened me.  Part of me wanted to avoid old people, to pretend that aging and death were not part of life. 

But Sanford wouldn’t allow it.  He dragged me up hills and through forests and down along the creek beds.  He found rocks that looked like shoes to him, or rocks that had faces in them, and carried them home for his collection, to be shared with visitors.  He had a pig-shaped cookie jar that, every time you opened it, would oink.  He giggled non-stop whenever he took a cookie (even though I don’t think he could hear the oink), and insisted on showing anyone who came to the house.  He kept going well into his nineties, and he kept taking me out to play with him.

Sanford helped me to understand that with age and sadness come breathtaking beauty and the exhilaration of wisdom.  He also taught me that we can age, but we don’t have to behave like grown-ups.  We don’t have to stop being playful.  

And the weight of it all bears down on me as we sit on the porch and munch peanuts.  I’m recognizing that Ula’s ability to transition to a happy adult has a lot to do with me and her dad.  We’re the grown-ups most present in her life, and our joy and playfulness are the assurance she most needs right now.  It isn’t about sitting down to play dragons with her.  It’s about letting her witness the genuine pleasures we experience:  rough housing with dogs, laughing around the table, exploring forests and waterfalls, joking with customers, making dog voices.  These are the assurances that the best parts of childhood never leave us. 

“I think we should keep playing catch-peanut for a little while longer,” Kit now turns her attention to me.  But I’m no longer making her voice.  “I think you should try throwing another peanut right now, in fact.”  Ula is now speaking for her, causing me to laugh with pleasure.  I toss the peanut.  The dog misses it, then launches to the floor to snarf it up.  “That wasn’t the best throw, but I didn’t mind.  I ate it anyhow. Try again.”

And so the summer evening continues.  One peanut, and then the next.  Followed by giggles and laughter.  Come what may, whether or not there are dragons, there will always be talking dogs. 

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