Perfect

by Susan Cameron

Sheba loped along Dog Beach, focused on her mission: Find The Perfect Stick. She nosed through piles of seaweed and tangled fishing line, pulling out driftwood sticks roughly two feet long and two inches thick. When she'd assembled her collection, she picked up the first stick, checked it for balance, chewed it a little, then moved to the next. Sheba chose the winner and dropped it at my feet. Then my part of our ritual began.

I flung the driftwood over the rolling breakers and squinted into the afternoon sun. Millions of stars twinkled in the water. Sheba the Surf Dog waited for the splash, then hurled herself into the Pacific. She was doing what she loved most in the place she loved best.

I knew Sheba didn't have many days like this left. At fourteen years old, her eyes were clouded with cataracts, and her movements had slowed and stiffened. In the water, however, she had all the enthusiasm of a puppy. She turned toward the beach, looked over her right shoulder, caught a swell, and paddled in on her large paws. Shaking a gallon of seawater out of her black fur, she brought the conquered stick to me. Again I hurled it back into the sea. Again she retrieved it.

Eventually her legs tired and we retreated to our blanket. I poured a bottle of water into her blue plastic dish, grabbed another for myself, and we watched the ocean dance. I looked at Sheba. How many times over the years had we jumped in the Toyota and made the short drive to the ocean? Here we were surrounded by beauty, by the crayon colors of childhood: cerulean, azure, cobalt, aquamarine; clouds flecked with rose and lavender, Catalina Island backlit by a scarlet blaze in the distance. My happy dog even had rainbows caught in her wet black fur, glints of green and purple when the sunlight hit it just right.

Sheba leaned against me, sighed, and rested her head on my knee. I watched the tide roll in and stroked her back. I inhaled the scent of warm sand, salty breeze, and clean wet dog. My pulse slowed to the beat of the world's great blue metronome.

It occurred to me how time is different at the beach. It's not a solid thing. It can't be broken down into office-sized ten-minute increments. The ocean pulls time in, slows it down, liquefies it, and pushes it back out with the tides. Languid and leisurely it flows, and it feels like however much time you have, it's enough.

Sheba was almost dry. I stroked her gray muzzle. I massaged her arthritic legs while the incoming tide massaged the sand. Soft as a mother's kiss, it erased my footprints, her pawprints. Soon there wasn't a trace of us left, and it was time to go home.

Sheba's dead now, of course. All you can expect from a big dog is a life the length of a human childhood. The time flowed by so gently; I scarcely noticed it. Most importantly, Sheba and I didn't waste it. We spent many perfect days together, wisely, at the beach.

Susan Cameron, copyright 2002