Etta as an Eddy

The movement of currents flowing against tides. Dispatches from beyond.

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I wanted to send you an essay, but it didn’t happen. I only let myself down, because nobody said, “where the hell is my wry musing about movement?!” If you did, thank you. You’re my friend forever. 

Truth is, rough couple of weeks, eh? And, our dog Etta died. 

Big news outlets have obits ready when important figures drop dead. Vera Monstera is not big. Nor is it a media outlet (movement outlet?), so we—I mean I—was caught off guard. The fight in my brain was an old-timey newsroom. Lots of smoke and, “yeah, yeah, see?” (How am I even an old-timey female reporter? I shattered the glass ceiling of my mind!) Anyway, I don’t have a bossy, hard-nosed editor who says, “It’s Wednesday, Parrott! Whaddya got?”

We talk movement here. Sometimes joyful, other times sorrowful. And, as you know, those two are so close on a razor’s edge that we don’t know which end is up. 

My heart goes out to all of you who are grieving. It’s a grieve-y time of year. A bottom drop-y, dissociative, lie down on the sidewalk time. So, like drowning, we pause in the murk to reorient before we swim back up. When we’re swept up, we look for wild-hearted souls that show us the way.

Today, that wild soul is Etta Loretta. The Little Fox Dog Bird. Later, I’ll share more of the children’s book that she inspired, but for now, let’s remember with love.

Dispatch.
A flicker. 
A send-off, a launch.
A gold record in space.

An official report. 
The killing of something. 
Someone.
Oof.

What do I need to tell you?
That I will find you when I’m dead.

I don’t want to write about this. My little writing partner. My bird, Etta Loretta. I call her The Bird. It’s a long story. A book, actually.

She’s not a bird, she’s a fox, not a fox, but a dog. Like I said, she’s a dog, but she looks like a fox. We call her The Bird. We don’t know why. It just sticks.

We are side by side on Sunday afternoon. On Friday, I scheduled her to be put down on Monday, as in tomorrow. I can’t wave magic wands, but I’m trying my damnedest. I know I’m missing things. Like all of us, we are imperfect caregivers. It’s beautiful and horrible. Last night, I slept on the couch with her since she can’t make it upstairs. I’ve cried my eyes out for days. 

We were always thick as thieves, but now we’re closer than ever. When she’s not out-cold, she clings close, hobbling after me. A shadow of our old routines. When I’m in the kitchen, she circles with effort and lowers herself like an injured fawn on stilts. I hand feed her, but she’s not eating. 

As I flit all over the place, keeping too busy with meaningless tasks, she says everything with her eyes. Just stop, she says. Sit with me. I can’t control things I want to control or…anything, really. All I can do is be here. It’s happening right now. 

I lift her up on the couch so we can sit together. I’m her emotional support animal. And she’s mine. I realize how much I lean on her—the constant comfort, the comedy, the crumb cleaning. The beginning and end of every day. She taught me to take walks. To pick up a pen and write. Both are about seeing and sensing the unseen. When I’m writing and lost (which is always) I look up and Etta is there.

She is my doula through all things. Laboring through the good and the impossible. And, in these last days, she is a kind of death doula. Still here, showing me the way. When a dog sidles up to you in an intuitive way, we say, “dogs know.” And they do.

It’s a witchy time of year. The wind feels important. We go outside for our new interpretation of a walk. It’s more of a leaning wobble and then I carry her. We only go a few steps. But we are way out in the world. We feel the breeze and lean into it.

While in limbo, someone—a wonderful someone—rounds the corner and sees Etta (maybe they don’t see her age or trembling or closeness to death…or maybe they do) and exclaims with joy,

“She looks just like a fox!”

Yes she does. That’s what people have always said. They shouted it with happy surprise across streets in 3 different states for almost 14 years. I want to weep, but I smile. This will be the last time someone says that.

My little fox. What a bird.

Dispatch. 
Flames. Jokes. Cryptic symbols. 
A boat. An agent. An operative. 

A light from a lighthouse.  
A message in a bottle.  
A ship at the bottom of the sea.   

What do I need to tell you? 
That I will find you when I’m dead. 

An owl calls. Tell me what to do! Who who? When? When? Leaves sway in the wind. Birds are out, like any other day. The light rises. What am I doing? The right thing. We’ve had our time. So many mornings.

Etta wants me to stop staring at her because she knows I need something from her. I need to slide my left hand under her head so her face rests in my elbow, thumb over third eye. An everlasting snuggle.

She sighs. My constant cue to stop it already. I’ve timed the workings of my heart to her sighs. Her breath steadies me.

When we arrive at the vet, I start futzing in the car for the blanket. The one I’ve covered her with for weeks. The one I tucked her in with last night. But she looks back at me, “You with me? Okay good.”

It’s a variation on what she did on walks where she looks up with what can only be called a smile. “You with me? Okay good. Are we lucky or what?”

I couldn’t find the blanket anyway. Her last lesson. Stay present. This is it. Don’t let overthinking keep you from what’s right in front of you. “Your one wild and precious life” as Mary Oliver said.

I see you, Wild Animal. Fierce fighter. Bad dog. Good dog. Great dancer. Comedic genius. Interrupter of hugs. Nervous Nelly. Steady Eddie. 

Ooh. An eddy. In a river. Listen. It’s not the swirl I thought it was. It’s a current—air or water—running opposite the main flow. How good is that? That’s Etta. Going her own way.

An Etta Eddy.

Dispatch.
Sunlight from long ago.
Snapshots. 
Clicking on, off.

A kettle of hawks.
A wake of vultures.
A skulk of foxes.

What do I need to tell you?
That I will find you when I’m dead.

The temperature shifts. The invisible work of wind and water and ghosts. I want to tell you everything. But first, I have to tell you about the hawks. They might be turkey vultures, but I hope they’re hawks.

Either way, huge gliding birds were circling the house two days before Etta died. I remember grimly thinking they were reapers, waiting. Ugh, probably turkey vultures, right? Vultures suck the spiritual fantasy out of my lungs. 

I’m looking for hawks. I’m looking for signs. I’ve lost the thread on meaning. It’s sand through fingers. Dropped in the dark and gone.

On Monday afternoon, my family sees a huge bird with a giant wingspan swoop low to the ground, banking as it passes the window in front of the dogwood (whoa). We look up and the bird has joined a gathering (a kettle? a wake?) circling the sky just for us.  

The next day, I pass the dogwood, full of grief and snot. I look up to see one breathtaking bird (my heart says hawk) slowly glide in effortless circles. Peaceful powerful. A bird set free. Then a robin lands in front of me. Hello, old friend.

I have been un-numbed, and I don’t want to miss a thing. It’s all wide open. That’s the thing. A wound absorbs all the air around it. 

In a dream, a hawk appears like an artist’s rendering in a pale, blue-white sky. She flaps enormous wings, animated by unseen forces, a Bread and Puppet Theater creation. Surrender envelopes me. I could reach out and touch her.

With every motion mid-air, this hawk folds her wings protectively around a baby bird. What am I seeing? It’s an overwhelming message, “it’s going to be okay.” Radiant rebirth. Nothing really dies.

It could have been the cold medicine. Maybe not. What matters is it held meaning, held me together. The Etta Eddy swivels with mystery, a weathervane following rhythms of play and rest. Be wild. Get curious. Slow down. Look closely. Sleep. Dream.

Dispatch. 
Divination.
A rock, a stone.
A north star.

Signs, sighs.
Leaves from faraway trees.
Five mourning doves in a row.

What do I need to tell you?
That I will find you when I’m dead.
 

In the middle of my walk, I sit on a bench by a garden. It’s too scary to close my eyes and open the door to goblins. I usually fight meditation like a cat in a bucket of water. But today I tried with eyes open. I sit, feet dangling, watching the tumble of leaves churning.

I breathe a message to Etta, tears streaming. I plant a thought. How fitting it would be—how surprising—to catch a leaf. And one lands on the arm of the bench next to me. Small, gold, beautiful. Just like Etta.

I notice it didn’t drop from the trees above. It must have traveled from the forest behind me. Across a street and through the recesses of my mind. I carry it hope. Oh, apt typo. Home.

When Etta first raced into my life at top speed, she showed me rhythms I didn’t know I could access. A pulse that speaks in play, the present, pure love.

She taught me how to see, to sense, to smell everything. To wonder. To look up. We didn’t need words. Even though I rambled ad nauseam in chirpy bursts and repetitive songs (poor Etta!), our most meaningful exchanges were wordless.

Words aren’t enough here either. Nothing gets at the heart of Etta. I’ll stop trying to pin this on hawks. Or foxes. I’ll stop insulting vultures. Etta is everywhere, everything—every eddy in the wind, spiraling in the opposite direction.  

An exasperated bird calls from above. “Do I have to do everything? Here I am, silly.” It’s a call I’ve never heard. A raven. The trickster. Off she circles, gliding slowly, show-off-y, playfully.

Hi, Little Fox who is The Bird. An Etta Eddy. An idea that lives forever. Off you go. I’ll see you around.