How to Wait

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This is the beginning to a fiction-nonfiction hybrid thing tentatively called "How to Live Life: By Gator T.D. McBride, translated by David Guisinger".

When you come home, I am very happy. I am so happy my tail wags so hard that I can't stand still, but I know I can't run down the driveway. Because I won't be able to stop.

Sometimes I do it anyway, I'm so glad you're home.

When I see your car pull up, I wait, because sometimes it isn't your car. Once I thought you were home and I ran to the street but when I got there it was someone else so I had to go back up to the back steps and wait some more. And when I wait I do it for a long time on those steps. I wait in the day even though the sun makes me really hot, and I wait at night even though I can't see very well in the dark. And even I get cold sometimes.

When it is you I'm almost as happy as when Mom comes home. Don't be offended; Mom gives me hugs and bones. But when you come home I'm really really happy, because I like having you around, even though you leave too often. When you leave I go outside and wait, though sometimes I go in for a nap or a bone.

When you come up the driveway I need to find a bone or a toy, because I know you don't like it so much when I bite your arm. But I love you! I keep bones around outside so I can usually find one before you get close enough, and when you get here I wish you would stay outside and run around with me in the yard like when I was a puppy and I chased you around the yard trying to get the toy.

I know when you're coming home. Maybe it's the way Mom and Dad talk, saying your name a lot and then not at all. Maybe it's just that we know things about when we're getting close to each other, like how the sky seems a different shade of blue (I can see colors, you know) or when I feel really lonesome so much that I just want to be by myself because it's a special kind of lonesome.

So when I know you're coming home I sit outside and wait. Once it was raining. I like the rain. I like getting wet, I like how the drops feel on my head, like when you sit next to me and tap the top of my nose with your fingers. Gently. I like going inside and having Mom or Dad dry me off with the towel. I disappear in it and feel it rub all along my body and it reminds me that I'm loved.

One time you surprised me. Remember? I was off with Dad and you came home when I was away. I was so excited to be home and see Mom that I didn't even notice your car was in the street, and when I walked into the kitchen you came from around the corner and said "boo". I jumped and didn't know what to do. So I bit your arm and wagged my tail because there was nothing else for me to do.

When you come home I am very happy, because I love you.