We woke up yesterday morning looking like a pile of puppies.  With two standard poodles cuddled up around us, it was evident we’d just slept through still another of our local weatherman’s famous “two dog night” forecasts.   But no matter the temperature, it felt good to have Max home.  We missed him something fierce while he was off getting well at the animal hospital.  But for Maddie, it was more like fierce unadulterated grief.  Without her faithful sidekick in high jinks, our home grew quiet as a tomb, as the sight of our sad dog gave me fresh insight into that oft used phrase….‘doggone’ lonesome.

So it wasn’t surprising to find Maddie holding vigil at our backdoor when we returned home with Max.  Can I tell you that it was an absolute honor to bear witness to their family reunion?  I just felt glad to be alive when I saw her leap for joy and as she performed her full bag of flying circus tricks to welcome home her prodigal ‘son’.  But how in the world had we come to this place?  Even now we’re not sure.  One moment Max was his bouncy self and in the next he had transformed into this big bear rug covering our floor.  Somehow, our three-time immunized puppy had contracted parvo, something the vet had never seen or heard of in his twenty years of practice.  But it was something else the vet said that really grabbed my attention.   

“But that’s why I’ve got a veterinary practice.

I’ll always be in practice.  I’ll never be perfect.”

Though we’ll never know the ‘how’s’ and the ‘whys’ of it, we are grateful to have two silver linings from our sad puppy dog tale.  The first is the assurance that Max will be as good as new.  And the second was this guy providing the assurance—because after months of searching, we had luckily stumbled upon this humble OSU-trained vet—who was perfect to us mostly because he knew he wasn’t.

So it’s another happy ending where the good puppy wins.  Maddie is happy.  She no longer has to play the part of the grieving ‘lone ranger’.  Max is not.  He’s sweating bullets as he’s figured out he’s in recovery–not from parvo—but from his strong addiction to eating rocks.  And for the medical record, he’s none too happy about the doc’s recommended treatment, as already he’s wearing a new black muzzle for his backyard escapades.  Following the trail blazed by his poodle sister, it looks like Max will become the newest masked rider of the west, as he begins to play the– “who was that masked man?”— hero of yesteryear.  Hi Ho Silver…Away!  Max is back in the saddle…. and with grateful hearts we watch for the unfolding adventures…. of Mesta Park’s newest Lone Ranger who rides again.    

Being the mother of adult children involves more listening than telling.  I know this.  Except this week… when my golden rule of adult parenting was forgotten in favor of my old telling ways.  So where does a mother go from here?  Well….as a first step, being fresh out of the school of hard knocks, I’ll wipe the slate clean to write some new rules—100 times on the blackboard–in hopes that I can somehow commit these to feeble memory.       

Rule #1:  I must never use the royal ‘we’ when addressing one of my adult children.  I learned this while caring for the ‘grands’ when Kate was up to her eyeballs in nursing school stress.  Needing a well-deserved break, Kate casually mentioned she’d be going on a date Saturday night.  She wasn’t asking my permission.  She was telling me and I was supposed to be listening.  But instead, I reverted to telling.  “Kate, we don’t have time for a guy in our lives right now.”  My Jiminy Cricket of a husband was quick to bring me to my senses:  “Now, tell me honey.  Who is this we?”  It was time for this ‘live-in-infamy’ motherly faux pas to end with one big apology. 

Rule#2:   I must never use the word “why” at the beginning of any question to a child over the age of eighteen.  The use of ‘why’ implies that the questioning mother possesses some innate perfect knowledge that makes her more equipped to save her child from some dreadful mistake.  Considering who I am, and who my children are, there is no way this could possibly be.  Enough said here.  And enough said last night, once Kara got my apology.        

Rule#3:  I must never offer a stream of consciousness list of ‘ought-to-dos’ to a responsible adult child who so rarely asks for assistance of any sort–like yesterday, when my eldest son asked me to help him draft a letter and I proceeded to offer him many other tidbits of motherly wisdom that he had not been in the market to hear.  What can I say?  Except for…. I’m sorry Bryan.    

Rule#4:   I must never imply that one of my adult children is not a good driver.  To be half-way successful at this, I must keep my mind from drifting back to past driving malfeasances, such as the time Kyle backed his truck into a sheriff’s cruiser in the Dairy Bar parking lot.  That was then and this is now.  We both have many more miles on us now.  And we both know better.  So Kyle, please forgive me.   

A good old fashioned, equal opportunity apology is always a strong second step.  Because love doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry.   And it’s so telling that the author who thought it did never mothered adult children.  Or played the part of “Mother” in a high stakes real life one-sided game of Mother May I?