I have loved dogs my entire life. There was Quinnie, and Bones, Whiskey, Wendy, and Katie. I grew up with them, always aware of how having them in my life made me somehow one of the lucky ones, missing their presence once it was gone.

But Alice is another story altogether. My shaggy Scottie. My stubborn Scottie. My Scottish Terrier Warrior Princess. She is the first dog to whom I felt an incredible attachment, a connection of souls. We invited her home in 2010. A 12-week-old, gangly puppy whose head was the same size as her body, whose tongue would drag on the sidewalk because she hadn’t grown into it yet. Stubborn and funny and smart. I loved her quirky personality, her fierce independence. I was smitten.

There’s no real way to explain the way I feel about her. Just like there is no real way to explain how deeply I feel about my children, or my parents, or my husband. Love just is, sometimes, and when you feel it that’s all that really matters.

My girl has had a hell of a year. Starting somewhere around end of August 2018 she started limping, acting like her rear leg was painful. We took her to her doc and he diagnosed a CCL injury (just like an ACL tear in a human’s knee). We consulted with amazing specialists and opted for a surgical repair. She came through surgery like a boss. We got her a playpen to sleep in, and for confining her when we worked. She wore her cone, and took her meds, and handled physical therapy, and allowed us to carry her everywhere for 12 weeks. She was the perfect patient. She healed, and her spirit was fierce as always.

I was leaving on a research trip May 21st and would be gone a week. The night before I left, a freak storm rolled in that dumped 8 inches of heavy, wet snow. I was running errands with my husband until 6 or 7 that evening, and I was pissed that the storm had to hit then. I worried about driving the hour north to the airport in the morning. We got home and the dogs (Alice has a brother: Buck) went out as usual. My son noticed something odd about Alice’s urine: it looked bloody. I thought it might be a shadow on the snow, but went out with a flashlight. Sure enough it was pure blood.

I asked my husband to please take her in to the vet the next day. I was worried she had a UTI and wanted her to get looked at immediately. He called his work and arranged to make it happen and updated me by text as I sat in the airport waiting to board my flight. She got antibiotics, and a recheck appointment for when I got home if she didn’t improve.

She didn’t improve. The day after I got back my husband and I sat watching Alice’s amazing doc as he showed us on ultrasound a mass in her bladder. Without any preamble he scheduled her for surgery the next morning. I thanked god for that snowstorm.

My sweet girl had surgery. Her doc is incredible. A truly skilled surgeon, and a compassionate doctor, who did an amazing job removing her tumor. We sent it off. Then we waited. Alice again slept in her playpen at night, did not have to have the cone as she couldn’t reach her surgery site to lick, allowed us to carry her to go outside. She is a super patient, with super patience.

A week into her healing, doc called with the results of the histopathology. My sweet girl’s mass was cancer.

I was gut punched. I went into clinical mode (I was an emergency veterinary technician in the past) asking questions, making notes, but all the while I was numb.

I had the doc on speakerphone so my husband could hear. He was pale.

Today my girl had her sutures out. We have a script for a drug that can help with tumor suppression, and cancer management. We are still considering all our options of treatment. I’m still gut punched, I’m still numb, and at times I find myself overwhelmed with grief. Then I look at her beautiful, graying face, with her bright and shining eyes and my heart leaps at the time we’ve had and the time we’ll have.

One thing is for certain: Alice will live her best life for the rest of whatever time she has left.

I can’t think of the future yet. I can only think of today. Tomorrow I will think of today.

If you see more pictures of Alice, or more stories of Alice coming from me, this is why. I’ve taken pictures of her and written funny things about her antics her entire life. But now, I am marking that existence, her mark on me to celebrate our days together.

This is my love letter to Alice.

I can’t really pin down a single memory that is a favorite from my lifetime shared with my Uncle Johnny because they’re all my favorite. UJ had a way of making the mundane fun, of creating play from chore, and laughing all the while. Sweeping his shop, or getting water from the well at the cabin, or doing dishes, these were never boring when doing them for him. He teased us lovingly. He gave advice unflinchingly. He loved us unconditionally. UJ was beloved, not because he was a saintly person, but because he was intensely human. UJ lived every day fully. He died yesterday just nineteen days shy of his 91st birthday.

He was many things to many people. To me he was always my cheerleader. He was proud of me, and I know that because he told me it was so. UJ loved so many. And so many loved him back. I’m a better person for his love, and I will miss him.

God speed UJ.

The text conversation ended quickly.  With the final bubble resting on my screen, taunting and ominous, I felt more of my hopes and security dripping away.

“Three classes maybe, but never four.  Probably not three either. I’m not optimistic.”

It seems ridiculous that such small sentences could reduce me to a condition of self-reflection (nay self-doubt) about my value, but it happened.  I felt commodified. De-coupled from the world that brings me such professional satisfaction.  Reduced to a set of bubbles on a screen.

I am positive that the colleague and friend on the other side of that conversation had no intention of hurting me.  In truth, I trust this person implicitly to be kind and generous.  Yet, the life of contingent faculty is filled with such moments:  pride one minute in one’s good fortune to be teaching in their field; despair the next upon realizing an administration can decide the limits of that joy.  I am contingent faculty for a university I love.  I love the departments I teach in.  I love the students that honor me with their presence in my classroom.  I even love the stressors of finals weeks.  What I don’t love is the scrabbling I must engage in to have gainful employment each and every semester.  The pin-pricks that turn into slashes; great sanguinous wounds only staunched by my stubborn refusal to leave behind the discipline that defines me.

I choose to live in this world of mist and hope.  I could easily find another job to fill my existence with satisfactions.  And this is where the tug-of-war plays out in my heart.  I could leave behind the constant nagging fear of contingency and have stability.  But what would I lose? I can answer that question easily enough.  I would lose the parts of me that I won for myself.

The path to my Master’s degree wasn’t just bumpy, it was downright boulder-strewn.  I almost finished my undergraduate degree when I had my first child.  I took time off from school to raise him and the younger brother that came into our lives three years later.  I was married at that time to a man who graciously allowed me to stay home, but then became attached to my entrenched position.  I went back to school a class here, another there.  But it would take a divorce, getting a full-time job, and a second marriage before I would be encouraged to finish what I started.  My new husband clearly understood the driving need I had to complete my degree.  With his encouragement, and two wonderful young sons cheering me on, I went back to school.

I finished by bachelor’s degree, and my master’s.  I fulfilled a promise to myself, I never thought I could.  My degrees stand for so much more than just the ability to get a job.  They define my deep-seated goals, held since childhood, to contribute to the larger conversation of what it means, and has meant, to be human.  Ten-year-old me fantasized about being a professor, and teaching a roomful of eager students in the hallowed halls of a university.  When I got that chance, my head nearly imploded.  I understood the tenuous position being offered:  contract only, no benefits, this semester only.  But I was going to teach in a university.

Each semester I know my position is not guaranteed.  I hold no one responsible for this, and constantly use my time to refine my research, gain pedagogical knowledge, I write, and find uses for my skills.  My husband’s full-time job affords me the small flexibility to sustain this lifestyle.  We are hanging on, our needs are met, but we live modestly as a result.  These are the choices we make.  But…moments like the conversation above that started all this, make me catch my breath.  I have to redefine myself after such exchanges.  Remember I am still valuable.  Disconnect myself from the bureaucracy of the academic world and reconnect to the reasons I chose to be an independent scholar.  Remind myself of the folly of pursuing a Ph.D when there are no guarantees that such a path will provide anything different for me.

My post today is cathartic.  Writing the demons away in a very public setting seemed the right choice, if only to feel as if I am not langouring in my despairing mood solo.

Contingency plans are always present for me.  Writing this statement makes me laugh even when I’m feeling low:  the unexpected perfection of phraseology inherent in it.  I chooose this life, and for someone who is a planner by nature, I shake my head at this choice all the time.