Show notes
Wit and Wisdomby Beth BroderickI have lived with Fairness the rescue pup for going on six months now. I will grant you that a lot of that time has been spent away. Even when one is filming in Los Angeles, the hours of work outside of the home are long and many. I started a production two days after he settled in as my guy. He was technically a foster, but I don’t play with that kind of thing. Once he arrived, he was mine. He could have chewed through my entire wardrobe and puked it up in my bed and I would still claim him. Once he set foot in my place, he was home. Fortunately, he is a gentle giant. Would not harm anyone or anything. He would have to be pushed to the limit to react with violence. In that regard I have won the “rescue dog” lottery. Still in spite of all the travel and time away, we have slept in the same bed, occupied the same routines, and lived closely enough for me to observe a disturbing fact.He is eerily similar to me in many ways. He has many of the same traits that I possess, the same oddities of persona. We both do battle regularly with the perceived unrealities that can, if we let them, overtake our more rational minds. This dog is in my hunt. First, in the physical sense, he is tall and lean like me. In the mental zone, has PTSD and sees ghosts, responds to errant noises with the same instant terror. Like me he also has an over-developed startle response. A weird crackle, a raised arm, a car backfiring—any number of things can set us off. We cringe, we leap back, we duck for. He is also, like me, deeply fond of a faux-fur blanket. He is so in love with the one on my bed that he has claimed it for his own. I have to plead for a small corner of it to tuck into at night. It is still too warm for either of us to need one, but we are both comforted by the feel of it--the glorious imposter material against our bodies. I once threw it onto the bed warm from the dryer and he rolled in it, talking to it for the better part of an hour. The piece is his now. I have made a note to order another one. There are times when we both need the comfort.I remember lying in bed next to him, and thinking hard about why my PTSD was acting up, robbing me of my sleep and filling my mind with unnerving thoughts. It is often really hard to know what has triggered me. Sometimes I discover the culprit later: “Oh, that’s right. That man on La Cienega screamed and threw punches in the air; that car almost collided with me; that woman was mean to her child.” That night, lying beside Fairness as his body twitched and pawed at the nightmares haunting his dreams. I figured it out. “Oh, wow,” I thought. “His PTSD is triggering my PTSD. Huh!”It is most often the case that, once I identify what has set me off, the PTSD begins to subside. Like a stubborn child seeking attention, once it’s been acknowledged with care, the condition will usually put itself to bed.“I think Fairness is my mirror animal,” I said to my friend Jeff one afternoon. “He is so much like me, it’s almost confronting.”“I think it’s supposed to be,” Jeff replied. “Sometimes we are given pets who force us to bring to light aspects of our shadow nature. As we confront issues with our dogs, we are encouraged to face the same issues in ourselves.” Jeff has a rescue dog named Ida. She has a good heart, but like my Fairness, she shows many signs of having been severely abused. Where my dog will retreat in fear, Ida will leap forward, barking and nipping preemptively. Jeff can relate to her feelings, if not her behavior. She is helping him to work through some of the residual anger and grief caused by a troubled relationship with his abusive father.CAUGHT OFF GUARD.We were recently attacked by a little mop of a thing—Fairness and I. It was off-leash and came barreling toward us on the promenade in Beverly Hills. I wasn’t sure what it was after until it leapt at my dog and began biting him. Fairness sat down; I suppose to try to get a bead on where the tiny thing was. He tried to talk to it, but he never growled back or attempted to fight. He and I both physically froze, afraid to hurt the rotten little creature. “Sorry, so sorry!” his owner exclaimed as she retrieved her snarling ward. I stared at her.“This dog is a rescue. He doesn’t need this kind of stressor. He’s been through a lot. Your dog needs to be on a leash.” “It was just for a minute. So sorry.”Yeah, well, a minute is all it took. I was really upset with myself for not defending my dog. For not getting out my pepper spray and warding off the attacker. It ate at me for days. You gotta give Jeff’s Ida some credit. She would have chomped the b*****d toot-sweet and asked questions later. It is moments like those where I understand her point of view. Still, most of the time my dog and I are reacting to normal things in an abnormal way. When I say to Fairness. “There is nothing there, it’s just a scooter, that was just a loud noise, those men are only raising their arms because they are wielding work tools. There is no need to react,” I could very well be speaking to myself. He is forcing me to confront a lot of aspects of my psyche in new ways. We can both be easily unmoored, and often there is no immediate reason for our behavior. We can and should be capable of more discernment. We are both in training, a couple of works in progress.No matter our age, I think we are, none of us, ever fully grown. We must keep at it. Many people believe that death itself is an invitation to a new level of understanding about what it means to be alive. As for actual mirrors, I was looking into mine in the bathroom the other day, which, right there, is a big mistake. The answer to a recent question on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!” the famous NPR quiz show, made it clear why this is so. I can’t remember the question or the answer exactly, but it went something like this:“Older people are found to be much happier if they avoid doing what?” “Looking in the mirror?” Ding, ding, ding, ding!Score one point for the contestant! Yes, studies have concluded that older adults are happier overall when they avoid looking in a mirror. Well, it seems like we could be commissioning studies on topics a bit more enlightening to the human condition. I am all for folks being happy, but most of us over 55 already got the memo about the mirror. Perhaps the study of wars and how to prevent them? How about a study on why people litter and how to get them to stop? Boy, howdy, could Los Angeles benefit from that one. There are exceptions, notably Beverly Hills, where park attendants are paid to polish the posts and dust the benches, but in the main, this city is dirty and swamped with debris. There is trash on the streets, lining the highways, and tucked under the bushes in our parks, and it frequently explodes out of overloaded city bins. There are all manner of abandoned items strewn about: here a stray sock, there a backpack with one strap. Someone has tossed chicken bones on one corner of the sidewalk, while a bag of half-eaten Doritos lays scattered under a nearby tree. It’s everywhere, and it is just plain nasty, and figuring out how to get folks to stop littering would improve the quality of life for all of us who live here. Now there is a “happiness” study that I could get behind.At any rate, I was looking in the mirror and became aghast at the state of my arms. I mean, they are fit and all. I work out hard and walk a gazillion steps a day, but the skin has changed. It does not cling as tightly as it used to my muscles. In certain lights, my elbows have deep wrinkles like the face of a Shar Pei pooch. Cute on a pup, perhaps, but on a person.… not so much. “Face seems 60’s, maybe early 70’s, but the arms say 80’s to me,” my friend Russel once said about a woman we had recently met. She was well-carved, shaped by sets upon sets of lifted weights and more than one round of scalpels and sutures, but she was beautiful in her way. “The arms say 80’s!” That thought rang out in my mind as I gazed at this new development. “Oh, dang it. What if my arms say 80?”Confessing my worry, I showed them to my friend Stephanie who is just a few years older than me.“We all have that; don’t be ridiculous. It’s part of getting older. I could spread my wings and take flight if the wind hits the skin under my arms just right. Relax, you look fine.”The world is a particularly stressful place right now. War continues on the march in Ukraine, and now Lebanon as well as the Palestinian territories. The upcoming election in America is making everyone nervous. My dog and I are both frequently lost in our thoughts. So absorbed by them that we run into things, furniture, tree trunks and occasionally each other. I am trying to help him live inside each day as it is. To take things as they come.“What a beautiful street. Oh, look at those flowers!” I will say on our walks and find myself ever more alive when I do. Holding him in my arms as we spend our final moments on the sofa before bed, I will whisper, “Everything is all right now. You are home now. The past is behind you. You are safe. I will take care of you.”I am no longer sure which one of us I am talking to, but I repeat these affirmations daily. These are the words that we both need to hear, and I hope that someday, with help from one another, we’ll come to believe.On we go …We extend our heartfelt gratitude to our valued subscribers whose support makes the publication of Wit and Wisdom possible. Thank you! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bethbroderick.substack.com/subscribe