I was once an adopted child.
Oh, I grew up with my birth parents but when I was eleven a lady decided she could raise me better. Her name was Penny. She was a dog.
Penny was a fawn coloured spaniel with curly ears and pansy eyes. We had just moved hundreds of miles and I had thrown myself down into grass badly needing cutting, a spread-eagle mass of misery. Penny lived across the street and came to investigate whatever had mushroomed up on the lawn. She stood on my shoulder blades and nosed my neck. We were instantly friends and accompanied, I set out to explore the new neighbourhood.
We became inseparable. The summer was spent in the usual pursuits of childhood but wherever I went, the beach, the store, the local clubhouse, the playground, a friend’s house – a sturdy little dog came along.
In the autumn Penny tried to follow me to school and one day she succeeded. A sympathetic teacher let me take her home. She never tried it again. She knew where I went and was satisfied I would return.
In the winter the snow piles at the end of each driveway were monumental, especially to our southern Ontario eyes. Penny played a fair game of hide and seek. She’d wait behind a snow pile until I had run down the road and called “ready” and then scoot along to find me, nearly knocking me over in her enthusiasm.
When it was her turn to hide she would rush off in the approved manner and stand behind some other snow drift but she just couldn’t wait until I found her. She’d come slowly back, over-anxious to be found.
The next summer I was sick for awhile and Penny had to be fed on our back porch. She refused to go home. I got well slowly but surely and the enforced rest did not bother Penny. She was not young however much she tried to be.
We’d sit in the sun and share long talks or long silences. Penny didn’t vocalize much but she had sounds and sighs of contentment and reassurance and even disagreement so we managed to converse very well.
The next winter we played hide and seek again but I was becoming too big and too old to to romp unselfconsciously with a dog in the snow and Penny’s eyes and ears were beginning to fail her.
That spring we shared a much quieter existence. I would look at her and wonder how I could stand it if she left me.
But it was I who left her. We moved again.
The neighbours in their letters said Penny was well, missing me but managing fine.
It was a conspiracy . Penny had been hit by a car a few days after we left. She was crossing to our house.
My life has somehow been the better for once having been an adopted child.