The spark of life... now with pics and vids

When J was in college and getting her teaching credential, she would (on occasion) house and pet sit for some people she knew.  It was a cush gig.  She got to live in a nice house and get paid to do it.  Bring in the mail, make sure the landscapers paid attention to issues x,y, and z.  Beyond that, take care of the dog and don’t burn the place down.  

These same families also had a passing acquaintance with me, so it was known and expected that I would come from time to time and hang out with J.  I’d come over and we’d have dinner and hang out or we’d head out for a bit and do us - Coffee and the beach, a movie, maybe it was going out to dinner instead of my cooking.  

One of the families had a dog named Souska.  I say had because Sous was a chocolate lab that was about 9 or 10 years old at the time.  So, would it be possible for a chocolate lab to live that long… Yes.  I looked it up.  A small percentage of them live 18-20 years.  The average, however, is 13-14 years.  Considering that this was a decade ago, well…. 

Souska, however, was a great dog.  I’m not a dog person and (truth be told) not much of a pet guy.  I had a pet once.  A goldfish.  It froze.  Guess I should have left more lights on.  However, Souska was a smart dog and full of energy.  The first time J sat Sous and the house, the dog kept me between itself and J until it established that I wasn’t there to do harm.  Once that was done, the dog just took to me.  Probably because I would kick around the tennis ball in the backyard for a while.  J could sit and chill and we could chat and I’d spend an hour just kicking around the ball with the dog.  

The second time J was sitting the dog and house, I came over after work and J and I were going to go on a “supply run”.  Figure out what nights I would be there to cook and get proteins for that.  Get a 6er of good beer or a bottle of wine to go with the meal or meals (or one or two of each- LOL) and any other snackies, treats, etc that we might need.  She told me to come in the gate and in the back.  As I did, I heard a menacing growl, this had some real dog anger in it.  I called out to the dog and suddenly this goofy head popped through the door, but still with teeth bared and ready to pounce.  Souska saw me and all that dropped.  Can dogs smile?  Because I will swear to you Souska did.  And came right to heel.  Which is even more amazing to me, since I had only spent parts of about 3 days with the dog previously, but always made it go to heel since I’m allergic.  The little bugger remembered.  

The one down side of Souska was when it was the end of the night and I was getting ready to leave and I’d go to hug J.  Suddenly, there was Souska.  Trying to get in the middle of us, but with tail going about 10000000 wags per second.  Any time J and I would try to hug, a fluffy head would crotch one of us and the tail would be going off.  

Put a pin in that, I’m gonna get weirdly spiritual for a few minutes.

I’m not (generally speaking) spiritual or religious.  I have a weird mishmash of beliefs.  Agnostic, might be a good word for it.  Deist might be another.  Let me see if I can’t explain.

The world(s) are made up of an energy source.  An infinite.  A power.  The spark of life, consciousness, of the thing that make a soul is somewhere out there on some plane of existence.  I didn’t come out of that as A.  Not as I was in that source nor as I was in any other realm of existence.  My energy come to me (sparked me, if that does ya better) and, like static, it created bonds and sparks with other bits of that energy.  Somewhere in that realm of eternity and forever, I sparked with a being that was J and Schmittah, Doc J, Colz, Grub, JellyBeans, and all the rest of you.  It was inevitable that I would meet y’all.  However, it’s not predetermined either.  My spark with J, had both of our lives been different, might have lead us on different paths and she would have been a girlfriend or good friend or something else.  If I could know that much, I’d not be part of the power of life and the infinite, but instead controlling it.  

So, you wonder… It’s reincarnation that I believe in.

No.  Not necessarily.  More like we are connected and bonded in some ways.  And once we die, we return to that source.  Those energies are then influx and shifting, like the sun.  A swirling and barely controlled ball of energy.  Maybe it IS the sun.  Again, if I knew…

Anyways, once we are back, we might be sparked to life again.  It may take a day, a year, ten thousand years.  During that time, however, I can revisit scenes and days from my life.  The good days.  The happiness.  The day Kiddo was borne.  A ballgame that stands out to me.  A meal I ate or cooked.  A day in high school with friends.  Whatever those happy memories are, I can revisit and relive, in a sense.

That is, in a nutshell, a very broad overview of my spirituality.

With Kiddo, J and I have noticed one thing.  It’s that whenever we hug, be it in the morning before she goes, a weekend morning when I might hug her to say good morning before we pour a cup of coffee, or just random hugs during the day and if Kiddo is around, we suddenly have a little face between us, trying to get in the middle and not letting us hug without some recognition of the lil love trying to get in the middle of us.

I, honestly, believe that Souska is part of Kiddo.  Not that I’m saying she was a dog in a previous life, but I do believe that something of the spark of Souska was closely enough connected to me that when J and I got pregnant, part of the spark that jumped to Kiddo had some of the spark and spirit of Souska and that manifests itself in the hugs.

I know that seems odd, crazy, or just coincidental, but if YOU can have faith that a man walked on water, fed a crowd with a loaf of bread and two fish, or died and then come back 3 days later…. Well then, I can believe whatever “crazy” stuff I want to believe.  

And when I die, maybe part of my spark, be it my cooking, or my style and way I can just pull of the funkiness that is me, maybe it’s my ability to just do math, will be there for Kiddo.  Maybe she will have a Kiddo that will have a small part of my spark.  Maybe I’ll die tomorrow and a baby will be born in a month and I will be part of that spark which will find it’s way to Kiddo and be her friend or spouse or whatever.  Again, if I knew…..

We share a planet, where we breathe the same air and see the same sky.  We look at the same moon.  We share in the same wonder at the natural beauty of it all, and yet we focus on the differences instead of the commonalities.  I’ve been called a heathen, I’ve been told that I couldn’t marry an ex-gf because of those differences and those differences have caused the world suffering time and again, for millennia.  Instead of letting people have differences and celebrating them, we only look to the common and embrace that, instead of recognizing that we ALL are unique.  I believe that we are humans first, earthlings next, and instead of getting caught up on who among us is American, or Jewish, or Left Handed, or Gay, or baseball fans, or whatever, we can’t see that we are all Humans, from Earth, and our first job should be protecting that for ourselves and each other.

We’ve had some fun since my last post.  At the pool, sitting and eating a dragonfruit with a view, the way she sits to munch that dragonfruit, Dada messing with Kiddo and leaving a friend line up and note, or just out and adventuring together, we’ve had some fun.  Pic and vid dump below, but I hope today’s post gives some insight and might give you a second of pause… to maybe take a bit of what I wrote and have it affect you; even if it’s just 0.1%.

Let’s go, Kiddo… there’s more fun to have and more adventures to have.  I’m glad that that spark of life that is you found Mumma and me.  You are loved more than you can know and I hope that you never forget that.