chrissie brodigan

The Four-Dog Life: Aslan

Aslan, Zorro, Paisley, and Lucy—that’s exactly the order in which they came into my life.

Aslan, 6 year-old pug

Aslan was/is my first dog. Prone to leaping in and out of relationships, on the mend from a failed engagement and cancelled wedding, I decided to glue myself back together by adopting a pug.

He was on his way from Winchester and I was waiting in the parking lot of the Manassas Cracker Barrel. Anyone who knows anything about good breeding and how to find the right and best dog knows that you do not begin and end your search at a Cracker Barrel. Unless you’re me.

I had chosen the name Aslan many years before, having re-read C.S. Lewis with greater appreciation for his complicated narrative. I needed a lion to keep me in line, and sure enough Aslan was my little lion, minus the mane, roar, and proud presence. As I consider it, I believe that I was his lion instead.

He’s 22lbs, soft and snuggley and snores loudly. He’s happiest sleeping in the windowsill like a cat or in the nook of my stomach or behind my knees. I have trouble sleeping when he’s not around, he creates a comforting ambient noise that reminds me that I’m far from being alone in the world, even the small world of my apartment.

He’s the most mischevious of my bunch. When it’s time to walk, he races under the bed, ducks behind the red velvet chair, prances about begging me to chase him. He rarely moves otherwise.

Among his many endearing qualities is his underbite and extra-long tongue that perpetually lounges out of his mouth on his comfortable wrinkly jowels.

I’m convinced to this day that he has opposable thumbs, having ascended the to kitchen table and devoured an entire ribbon-sealed box of Jaque Torres chocolates. (Just Google “chocolate+dog” and you’ll see why my heart stopped on that particular afternoon).

Holden Caulfield & Me: Stopping the Fall

“This fall I think you’re riding for - it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started.”

…………..

I’ve been re-reading The Catcher in the Rye, because I think that in packing up my life and giving friends and family less than a 3-week’s notice a year ago before moving to New York, I was trying to stop my own fall and save my life in the process.

The thing is - that this past year has been one of the most challenging, humiliating, at times self-defeating year of all.

And maybe, just maybe, all the experiences …

… the bad apartment, hateful landlord, limited outlet to make friends, and weight gain and loss …

and the people …

… my marriage & separation, series of incomplete friendships, the subsequent sex with inappropriate people (really just the one), and recent issues with the “almost-friend” I didn’t have …

and the random gigs at a few different companies

… the inability to innovate and execute that revealed my greatest gifts under circumstances far beyond my control …

—Maybe together these experiences and people are all a part of a post-college, post-grad school “welcome-to-your-30s” course that I signed up for in haste and without fully knowing what I was getting into.

Perhaps, my social awkwardness, my raw soulfulness, my unnerving authenticity is finally making itself known with clarity and purpose—to me.

And, perhaps, because I didn’t and haven’t given up looking, in spite of seriously wanting to throw in the towel and shut my eyes and wish myself back to Virginia suburb-living, I should hang on a bit longer, because it’s clear to me now that I stopped the “special kind of fall” I was headed for a year ago.