For five minutes I pace up and down the living room while Queenie sits there watching me, but in the end the house feels too small and stuffy, and I can’t breathe.
I put on Queenie’s harness, clip on her leash, and head out, taking deep lungfuls of the evening like a diver coming up for air.
We walk down to the main road and follow the path alongside the beach. It’s been humid all day, and dark clouds are gathering on the horizon. Thunder rumbles in the air, and I look down at Queenie with concern, but she doesn’t seem bothered.
I try to think through what Kath’s told me, and what Beth said, but my brain is jumbled. It’s like rummaging through a bag of different sized screws and nails, and I can’t find the ones I want.
In the end, I just walk, all the way to the end of the beach, Queenie trotting beside me. When I get to the end, my feet take me up the hill, and before long I’m standing out the front of PAWS, looking up at the sign.
I open the gate, and we go in and start walking down the drive.
The sun is close to setting, and the rays have turned the building a beautiful coral color. I stand out the front while Queenie sniffs around the newly painted entrance. There’s another sign above the door, and I’ve bought a Welcome mat to go in front of it.
I walk up to the door, unlock it, and let Queenie off the leash as we go inside.
It’s surprisingly cool in here. It smells of sawdust, varnish, and paint—clean, new smells. It glows—bare, clean, and unapologetic.
I’ve dreamed about having my own therapy practice since I was twenty-two, fresh out of university. I didn’t know then that it would be animal-assisted, but I loved the idea of working for myself.
How much of that was due to Dad telling me that real men ran their own businesses? He loved to say that if you didn’t build your own dream, you’d end up building someone else’s. That must have influenced me.
In fact, how much of my life has been an attempt to make Dad proud of me?
Unbidden, tears spring into my eyes, and my throat tightens. I grope for one of the plastic chairs dotted around the place, sit heavily, and put my head in my hands.
I cried when my mother died, devastated at the thought that I’d never see her again. I also shed tears when my father died. I told myself it was because he was such a huge figure, both physically and metaphorically, and I knew he’d leave a massive hole in my life.
But now, being honest with myself, I wonder whether it was more due to exhaustion, following months of looking after him almost twenty-four-seven.
If I’m really honest, I think I was relieved when he died. The thought of no longer having to impress him felt as if I’d had an elephant sitting on my chest that had suddenly risen to its feet. I felt liberated, able to move, to breathe.
But actually, nothing has changed over the past few years, because I’ve been convinced he’s stayed with me rather than moving onto the next plane of existence. I’ve felt him watching me, judging every decision I’ve made. I’ve pictured him shaking his head at every little slip up, imagining him rolling his eyes and telling me with maddening calmness that, “It doesn’t matter, Archer, try and try again, you’ll get there in the end.”
But I’ve never believed in following the advice of someone who doesn’t follow their own rules. So now… I truly am free. I don’t have to perform anymore. I don’t have to tick anyone else’s boxes, or achieve anyone’s goals except my own. All that matters is what I want, and what I choose to do about it.
It doesn’t matter what my father would have thought about PAWS. That he looked down on my choice of profession because he didn’tview it as commendable as working with the law. I persisted with the career because I felt I was good at it, and I wanted to help people, and he did at least admit he was proud of me when I won a Dawn Short Prize for Excellence, rewarding the greatest aptitude and excellence in psychiatry throughout clinical training. But I know he would much rather I’d have been a police officer or gone into the army than become a psychologist. He liked to sneer that after a century of therapy, the world seemed worse than ever.
Now, though, I’m glad I stayed in the field. I’m proud of where I’ve gotten, and I’m thrilled to be opening my own clinic. I look around it, excited to think of the next few months, watching the center come together, holding the grand opening, and finally seeing clients coming in for help. It’s going to be amazing. And I’ve done it—not alone, because of course I’ve had lots of help—but without my father. This place is all me.
I feel a pressure against my leg and lift my head to see Queenie sitting next to me, leaning against me. A lump in my throat, I bend and lift her onto my lap, and she snuggles against me, resting her chin on my shoulder.
Dogs love unconditionally. They don’t care what you look like, or what conditions or disabilities you have. They don’t give a damn how smart you are, how popular you are, what job you do, or what other people think of you. They only judge you by how you treat them. I’m her favorite person in the whole world, and I know that if I treat her well, she’ll be devoted to me until the day she crosses the Rainbow Bridge.
What a wonderful way to live your life.
I think about Beth, and how much I adore and love her. Not like a puppy, but in a complete, wholehearted way that I’m convinced will last for the rest of my life. All I want is to be with her and make her happy.
And yet when she came to me for reassurance and comfort, when she told me the most amazing, magical news, all I could think of was how it would make me look to others. What a small person I am.
Tears run down my face, and Queenie quietly licks them away.
“I love her,” I say, and the Spoodle’s tail wags. “She’s everything to me.”
And she’s having my baby. The thought blooms in my chest like a huge, beautiful, exotic flower, a bird of paradise, glorious with oranges, yellows, and blues.
I’m going to be a daddy. How could that ever have been anything but the best thing in the world?
I stroke Queenie and tell her, “I can’t change the past. The only thing that matters is what I do now.” It’s one ofmyquotes, and I’ve said it a thousand times to patients. It’s about time I started taking my own advice.
