The other day I took our puppy for a walk at the park across the road in order to tire him before supper. Walking a puppy begins with the idea that the activity will be fun and will proceed well, but not five minutes in, you remember just how frustrating it is to walk a puppy. It has nothing to do with walking. It is interval training with fast and slow speeds, it is the twist and shout with leash tangles and leave-it commands. It is investigative discovery where smells hide far over to the side of the pathway. It is shadow tag with other people walking where you catch up, pass, and then fall humblingly behind because your puppy who was walking well 10 seconds ago has decided to become a puppy-mop braced so firmly that there are skid marks behind him as if to say "it's all too important to continue with this pedestrian exercise".

That day a crowd had formed and my determination was to walk the puppy discreetly. Instead, the puppy was a little center of attention, eliciting comments and pettings and ruining the efficiency and quiet I had imagined. We reversed course when it became obvious that the pup and I could not outpace the people. Alone we took a meandering path full of smells and looked at the river glide by. People stress me and I deal with that by hiding or by outrunning them. A puppy puts the kaibosh to such plans.

At the park entrance there was a table with two frames of a tiny baby in his parents' arms. He looked fragile like a bird in a nest before its eyes open. A pile of cutout stars had handwritten wishes on them. The crowd was a memorial one, a supporting one... The couple I passed with a teddy bear in her hands, was a grieving one. I felt guilty about according importance to my story when theirs was bigger.