I have a miniature dachshund who barks at the slightest noise. It’s not a predictable bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark, bark…bark that you can get used to, but a single bark ACTIVE LISTENING bark. With an occasional--rrrrrrbark.

He likes to do his listening under a bed with a solid board supporting the mattress. Each time he barks, his head jerks up and it hits a board.

Bark bang SILENCE Bark bang. It can’t feel good.

I like to do my writing in close proximity to the bed. It’s relaxing, knowing I can repose and compose without having to climb stairs. When the children are gone or, only a recent phenomenon, when the children are somehow occupied on their own, I vow to do this one thing that I have simultaneously come to loathe, yet find exhilarating, when it’s perfect.

I’m 10 now, climbing the gridiron ladder of the high dive at West Virginia Wesleyan College’s indoor swimming pool (with galley) in Buckhannon, W.Va. Slowly, and it’s not even the first time I’ve attempted this alone, I walk this gripping platform that is bouncing just enough to let me know I’m here for the time being and somehow in control of the next few moments. The weight of me transforms the beauty of this object otherwise perfectly balanced to do nothing but wait for the plunge from which I know there is no return. I imagine…

The drop, the depth, the echo of falling into this situation, the end of which I want to achieve. But not with this beginning, this hesitancy, this fear of thrilling myself. Not coupled with this desire to turn back, to climb down, to excuse myself from the others willed into the line-up. I know you so well.

Yes, you Mrs. Taylor, my 5^th grade teacher whose smile was as wide as, I suppose, as the mark your convincing paddle Mr. Persuader (really existed) might have left on our behinds, will never make it into a novel; Fred, you Swedish knight (teen-age fantasy), shall remain ever large in my mind; Mr. and Mrs. Mouse (make-believe creatures) who lived solely off of the leaves and water we carried on our way home from the 1st grade. We built their little tree-root condominium in a great oak at the corner of Meade and Latham. And, we took refuge there from the dangerous two-legged, lunch-box swinging villain who chased until he was within sight of his grandma’s house, also at the corner of Meade and Latham. Then all the real stuff: legends of love in an enclave of hillbillies.

Pardon me if I step aside, bump you on my way down, show you how being alone on the platform makes you shy of going belly-up, perhaps with no SPLASH? Who know what lies beneath? Even though, I can make out the lines gauging depth and distance. Here, an intransigent college boyfriend, my brilliant beau next, then me settling pace into married life with a deep-end flip and turn; and then journey back (up and to places where I can stand alone) still ripples along my spine.

I am not yet ready. I’ll climb down again and you’ll all encourage me, tell me I can’t really swim anyway, yet. Maybe never. But, I know its good exercise to imagine my poise and the shimmer that follows, especially. I’ve seen it on T.V.

Back to this effort: analyzing the dog makes much more sense.

I think he barks to make his presence known at times when he doesn’t feel he completely understands the world around him. Times like when the house is quiet, without the chatter of little girls and their playthings scooting along floorboards. Or when a car slows to turn at the end of our cul-de-sac and he can hear the tinny voices of its passenger’s project through the open window then fade.

His tension toward intrusions seems to heighten as my own opportunities to retreat into myself show themselves. I long for the few hours of self indulgence, tending to my own needs for peace and quiet—a certain precursor to wrapping myself in the luxury of imaginative thinking that I ache to feel warm my, otherwise, very matter of fact existence.

Bless this miniature menace. He stands sentry to bits and pieces of life that would otherwise unappreciated in my attempt to delve into a thought, a rhythm, a rhyme and feel its joyous life surge though my mind. His anxious waiting, even when his eyes are closed, as I know they must be under that dark sanctuary of slumber (he’s just pretending to rest). Waiting. Just passing now from thought to clacking keyboard—BARK (bang).

Thucka thuck a bmpd ttttt thicka thuckathuck pup, I tap on my keyboard.  

Bark (bang).