The Midas Touch
by Courtney Wilson
I was King Midas, but instead of gold, everything I touched turned to shit. Home after a year-long combat tour in Afghanistan, it felt like a vise grip closed around my throat whenever I was around people. But a bottle of wine would relax me enough to breathe. This is how I first met the 8-pound, ruby-red King Cavalier Spaniel with a fatal attachment disorder. Though our time together was short, that dog set me on a path back to wholeness.
Drunk at a friend of a friend’s party a few weekends after I returned from deployment, I met her. She skittered around, between people’s feet. Her ears were so long that she stepped on them as she walked, and it pulled the skin of her face back making her eyes pop out of her head, giving her a perpetual look of surprise.
While people partied in the garage, I sat on the edge of the driveway for two hours, stroking her soft fur and letting her rest in my lap. My pain and anxiety disappeared, and for the first time in over a year, I was filled up with something good. Normally, I was apathetic about dogs, but one look at her squished, bug-eyed little face—flanked by two massively floppy ears—and it was over.
Monday, my friend came into my office and I gushed about that dog at that party. He told me that her owners were moving to Hawaii and couldn’t bring her because of the state’s quarantine laws. They were looking for people to take her. Was I interested? I said, yes without hesitation. Uncharacteristically, I didn’t analyze the situation, weigh the pros or cons and calculate the cost of ownership. All I knew is that I would do whatever it took to have that creature in my life.
Tuesday, I spoke to her owners.
Wednesday, I bought a cage, dog food and a leash.
Thursday, I drove back from Seattle with the dog in my passenger seat.
I named her Maggie after Maggie Gyllenhaal who played a sassy, free spirited woman in the movie Mona Lisa Smile which took place at my alma mater, Wellesley College. Over time, she acquired nicknames-MagPie, Maggie Mae, Munchkin.
Getting a dog was the first true grown up decision I had made and I wanted her name to mirror the freedom I felt. Every prior decision was bounced up against someone else: my parents, friends, boyfriends. I always told myself that I was simply doing my due diligence, but in reality, I wasn’t soliciting opinions, I was begging for permission. I didn’t have enough confidence in myself to make choices on my own.
With Maggie, I didn’t consult anybody. I followed what my intuition told me and coming off of a deployment in which I second-guessed all of my decisions, I found enormous freedom and confidence with Maggie by my side.
Her tail was supposed to be long and floppy, but her previous owners had cropped it so it stuck straight out from her butt like a hot dog. When she got excited, it would wiggle back and forth, too short to properly wag, but long enough that you knew when she was jazzed. She had been the runt of her litter, so scrawny that she used to squeeze through the railings of my patio and escape out into my apartment complex. What she lacked in size, she made up in spirit, excitedly carrying around items double her body weight like a furry, wide-eyed ant.
Maggie coming into my life was an act of grace and mercy, one that I neither earned nor deserved, but that transformed me spectacularly. For a long time, it was the only good decision I made after that deployment. I didn't know how to deal with a boyfriend who had slept with two of my friends while I was away, or the injured body I had brought back from war. So I drank. I drank every time I hung out with my new boyfriend. The day after my birthday, I woke up with two black Xs on my hands. I was kicked out of the local bar. But, that same week, I woke up the morning after drinking three bottles of wine and ran a 12:30 two-miler on my physical fitness test, and was the fastest woman in my battalion of 800 soldiers. I reasoned that if I could still perform at that level, things couldn't be that bad.
When I came home after all night at the bar and saw Maggie’s empty food bowl and pee on the kitchen floor, I felt more shame than any binge or blackout could induce. She jumped up and down, her hot dog tail wagging back and forth, completely unconcerned with anything other than the excitement of seeing me. That duality—being loved when I felt completely unlovable-—released something in me. I had no qualms about destroying myself, but I refused to bring an innocent down with me.
Maggie was obsessed with me, and when I realized that nothing I could do would change her love, I gladly reciprocated, bringing her everywhere. I stopped drinking and instead of spending my nights at bars, took her on walks around the neighborhood. When I sat crying on the sidewalk outside my apartment, she nudged her way into my lap and licked my tears. I responded to her devotion with devotion of my own by staying three hours extra at work because she fell asleep in my lap and I couldn't stand to disturb her.
I returned her adoration with adoration of my own. One weekend I spent doing a photoshoot with her at a local river. I dressed her up in ridiculous costumes, ranging from a shark to Princess Leia. Our relationship was ridiculous, but it healed me.
Then I had to travel. I left Maggie with some friends, and she couldn’t handle the separation. They said that she would constantly shake, anxiously peeing in the house. She had never had a problem before. She missed me terribly. Then one day, she just dropped dead. She was only four years old.
When my friends told me, grief ripped a hole through me, but soon the pain was replaced with overwhelming appreciation. All I could feel was an all consuming gratitude that I could experience a love so deep that it hurt this much. In the days and months after her death, I never mourned her, but always celebrated her, my little Maggie Mae.
