Horse Journal Entry #7

Molly’s Journal Entry #6

Food for Thought. Wine for Wonder.

Horse.

Almost five years ago, we made one of the best decisions of our lives without having any idea just how much that decision would change mine.

We got a dog.

Not just any dog.

Horse.

The big gray pit bull with the enormous head, ridiculous name, soft heart and the saddest brown eyes you’ve ever seen.

Brad was hesitant at first. I was considerably less hesitant—which is fairly consistent with how things happen around here. But then we met him.

And that was it.

We both knew.

This giant boy was coming home with us.

And somewhere along the way, without me even realizing when it happened, he became so much more than our dog.

He became our kid.

But Horse has always been especially my boy.

Mama’s boy.

My gentle giant.

The dog some people see coming and instinctively move away from because he’s a pit bull. Because somewhere along the way those big blocky heads earned a reputation that follows them everywhere.

Meanwhile, I look at him and see the softest creature I have ever known.

I see those giant sad eyes staring at me because apparently I haven’t shared enough of whatever I’m eating.

I see the face watching me put my shoes on because he already knows.

She’s leaving.

I see him waiting for me to come home.

I see the dog who somehow knows when I’ve had enough of the world for one day.

And maybe that is part of why this particular love has landed so deeply in me.

There are parts of being a woman that I have struggled with for a very long time.

I couldn’t have children.

And for years I carried that as more than simply something my body couldn’t do.

I carried it as something I couldn’t do.

There’s a difference.

I couldn’t give my mom and dad a grandchild.

I couldn’t give my first husband a child.

And somewhere buried inside all of that was the feeling that maybe I couldn’t even do myself right as a woman.

That’s an ugly thing to admit.

But it’s true.

There were times I wondered what was wrong with me. Why something that seemed to happen so naturally for everyone else simply wasn’t going to happen for me.

You can tell yourself all the things you’re supposed to tell yourself.

That being a woman isn’t defined by motherhood.

That your worth isn’t determined by what your body can produce.

That there are a thousand different ways to make a family.

And I believe every single one of those things.

But grief doesn’t always listen to what we know.

Sometimes grief just sits quietly inside you.

And then came Horse.

No, a dog doesn’t replace a child.

That’s not what I mean at all.

He simply found a place inside me that needed somewhere for all that love to go.

And holy shit, did I have a lot of it.

I grew up with cats. I loved my cats. But I had absolutely no idea what it meant to be loved by a dog like this.

Horse is there for everything.

Every step.

Every room.

Every nap.

Every move.

Every bad morning.

Every exhausted night.

Every night when the house gets quiet and, for whatever reason, the quiet makes me feel even more alone.

On those nights, Horse becomes my own personal weighted blanket.

This giant, warm body pressed against mine like he somehow knows that sometimes I need to actually feel something beside me.

There is a comfort in the physical weight of him that I can’t really explain.

His breathing.

His warmth.

A paw thrown over me.

That enormous head taking up far more of the bed than his allotted share.

He doesn’t know what I’m thinking about at two in the morning.

He doesn’t know why some nights feel heavier than others.

He doesn’t know why I might be awake staring into the darkness while the rest of the world seems to be sleeping just fine.

He just knows to get closer.

And sometimes that’s all I need.

Not someone to fix it.

Not someone to tell me everything is fine.

Just my big boy, pressed against me, reminding my body before my brain catches up:

You’re not alone tonight.

Every box packed and unpacked.

Every version of home we’ve tried to make.

Every time I’ve walked through the door carrying something I didn’t want to carry anymore.

He doesn’t need an explanation.

He doesn’t need me to be cheerful.

He doesn’t need me to fix anything.

He doesn’t care how much money the restaurant made that day, whether someone was upset with me, whether I disappointed somebody, whether I disappointed myself, whether my marriage feels easy or hard, whether I’m scared about tomorrow or whether I simply don’t have another fucking thing left to give.

He just looks at me.

Those eyes.

And stays.

That’s the thing about Horse.

He stays.

When everything else in my life seems to need something from me, Horse mostly just needs me to be there.

Maybe a snack.

Definitely part of my dinner.

But mostly, me.

And I don’t know that I realized until these five years just how much I needed to be loved like that.

There have been some really hard years inside these five years.

I’ve lost people.

I’ve lost pieces of myself.

I’ve lost my dad.

I’ve built a restaurant that has demanded more of me than I ever knew I could give.

I’ve fallen down.

I’ve gotten back up.

I’ve questioned relationships, decisions, money, work, myself and probably every life choice I’ve made.

I’ve had days where I felt like I could conquer the fucking world.

And I’ve had days where getting home and closing the door behind me felt like the greatest accomplishment I could manage.

And there he was.

Horse.

He doesn’t know what a restaurant is.

He doesn’t know what a mortgage is.

He doesn’t know what grief is called.

He doesn’t know why sometimes his mama sits down next to him and holds onto that giant neck a little longer than usual.

He just knows me.

And somehow, he knows.

Maybe that’s why dogs have become such a part of Molly’s, too.

If you’ve ever brought your puppy to my restaurant, you probably don’t realize how much joy that brings me.

And my team.

We notice your dogs.

We learn their names.

We bring the water bowls.

We crouch down for the kisses.

We get ridiculously excited when you show up with a new puppy.

And yes, I will absolutely get distracted from the seventeen things I’m supposed to be doing because there is a dog on the patio that I haven’t met yet.

There is something about a dog walking onto the patio at Molly’s that changes the energy around it.

People smile.

Strangers start talking.

My staff lights up.

I light up.

And I think Horse taught me to understand why.

That isn’t just a dog sitting underneath your table.

That’s somebody’s family.

That dog may have sat beside you through things nobody else on that patio knows anything about.

Maybe that’s who slept next to you after somebody died.

Maybe that’s who stayed beside you through a divorce.

Maybe that’s who got you out of bed during a year when getting out of bed was hard.

Maybe that’s who was there when the kids grew up and left, when the house became quiet, when you got sick, when you got better, when you moved, when everything changed.

Maybe that’s simply the creature who waits at the door every single day because, to them, you coming home is still the greatest thing that has ever happened.

I get it now.

All those dog movies that completely destroy us?

They’re right.

A dog becomes your person.

Your safe place.

Your calm in the storm.

Your constant.

Your completely irrational source of positive reinforcement when somebody leaves you a shitty review and you start questioning every decision you’ve made in your entire life.

Horse has never read a review of Molly’s.

Thank God.

He remains firmly convinced I’m fucking fantastic.

And some days, I really need at least one member of this household holding that position.

Then there is coming home.

God, I love coming home to him.

Because nobody—and I mean nobody—has ever consistently been that excited to see me.

I can be gone ten hours or ten minutes and apparently my return is cause for celebration.

And there’s something incredibly healing about being somebody’s favorite person.

To open the door after spending an entire day being needed by everyone and immediately be met by this enormous creature who seems genuinely astonished that the greatest person he’s ever known has somehow returned again.

You came back.

Of course I came back, buddy.

I will always come back.

And maybe that is motherhood in its own strange little way.

Not the motherhood I once imagined.

Not the life I thought I was supposed to have.

Something different.

Something I never planned.

A giant gray pit bull following me into the bathroom because apparently privacy is no longer something I require.

A massive body trying to occupy whatever tiny space happens to be closest to mine.

Sad eyes when I leave.

Absolute joy when I return.

Sleeping near me.

Watching me.

Following me.

Trusting me completely.

Five years of him.

Five years of waking up and he’s there.

Five years of going to sleep and he’s there.

Five years of talking to him like he understands English and being fairly convinced that he actually does.

Five years of this giant, gentle creature quietly teaching me something I spent a lot of my life struggling to understand:

Family doesn’t always arrive the way you thought it would.

Love doesn’t either.

Sometimes you go looking for a dog.

And somehow you come home with this creature who fills a space in your life you didn’t even realize was empty.

We thought we were rescuing Horse.

But over these five years, there have been more days than I could ever count when that dog rescued me.

From loneliness.

From grief.

From taking myself too seriously.

From believing a terrible day was anything more than a terrible day.

From feeling like I wasn’t enough.

And maybe even, in some small way, from believing that because I couldn’t become a mother the way I once imagined, all of that mothering love inside of me had nowhere to go.

It did.

It does.

A whole lot of it went straight into a big gray dog named Horse.

But there is another part of loving him that is harder for me to explain.

Sometimes when I look into Horse’s eyes, I see more than my dog.

I see my grandma.

I see my dad.

I see the people I have loved and lost.

Not literally.

It’s a feeling.

Something familiar.

Something safe.

I see pieces of everyone I have loved, protected and cherished in this very scary world and desperately wished I could have kept safe forever.

Sometimes I look into those enormous, sad brown eyes and there is a calmness there that feels bigger than him.

Almost like everyone I have ever loved is staring back at me for just a second and saying:

It’s going to be okay.

Maybe that sounds crazy.

I’m okay with that.

Because life has taught me that sometimes it isn’t okay.

People leave.

People die.

Relationships change.

Bodies fail us.

Plans disappear.

Homes change.

Families change.

Life can break your heart without asking permission first.

Horse can’t protect me from any of that.

But somehow he makes me less afraid of it.

Because sometimes I look into those eyes and feel something else, too.

It’s going to be okay.

And if it isn’t?

Maybe another world opens.

I don’t know exactly what comes after this life.

I don’t know where the people we love go.

But I have loved too many people too deeply to believe that all of that love simply becomes nothing.

Maybe that’s faith.

Maybe it’s grief.

Maybe it’s just hope.

I don’t really care what it’s called.

I just know there are moments when I look at Horse and somehow the people I miss don’t feel quite so far away.

And maybe that’s one more gift this dog has given me.

Not replacing anybody.

Not filling their place.

Just reminding me that love keeps showing up in completely different forms.

That what we loved before can somehow live beside what we love now.

That perhaps none of it is ever completely lost.

And then there is the part I really don’t like thinking about.

Five years.

Five years means my boy is getting older, too.

And that is the cruel little bargain buried inside loving a dog this much.

We get this extraordinary creature who loves us without conditions, follows us everywhere, waits for us every day and somehow becomes stitched into the ordinary fabric of our lives.

And we know we don’t get enough time.

I hate that.

So I try not to live there.

Instead, I want to notice him now.

The giant head.

The ridiculous sad eyes.

The snoring.

The begging.

The way he follows me from one room to another for absolutely no reason other than apparently we are relocating together.

The way his entire body changes when I walk through the door.

The weight of him beside me.

The warmth of him.

My personal weighted blanket on the nights the world feels especially lonely.

The fact that right now, today, my boy is here.

And I am here.

And we found each other.

I would choose him again.

Every single time.

The scared moments. The vet bills. The dog hair. The giant head in my way. The sad eyes. The begging. The snoring. The complete lack of understanding of personal space.

All of it.

Because for five years, through every version of me, he’s loved me exactly the same.

And maybe that’s the greatest thing Horse has taught me.

Love doesn’t always fix the storm.

Sometimes love just sits beside you while it passes.

Sometimes it follows you into the bathroom.

Sometimes it waits by the door.

Sometimes it lays its entire giant body against you in the middle of the night and makes absolutely certain you don’t weather it alone.

Sometimes it rests a giant gray head against you when you’ve finally run out of words.

And sometimes, when the world feels particularly big and scary, it looks at you through two enormous brown eyes and somehow says:

I’m here.

Keep going.

You’re going to be okay.

And if you’re not?

I’m still here.

Horse.

My boy.

Mama’s gentle giant.

Our kid.

My safe place.

The completely unexpected love of my life.

And one of the greatest gifts I never knew I needed.

I thought we were bringing you home.

Turns out, in a thousand different ways, you became mine.

And in just as many ways,

I became yours.

— Molly

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