My mother had a dog named Paddy
She had him from when she was in 4th grade until she was in her junior year of college
He was a mutt they had taken in from the street
And my mother, reluctant to reveal her tenderness to the world now, would sleep with him each night when she was a girl
Every evening, like clockwork, she would beg her mother for more quilts to put on the bed.
“I get cold at night, please!”
And again, like clockwork, her mother would always find him buried under the quilts instead of her
My mother’s family had always owned dogs; my mother had always loved them
When she was little she would try eating from their dog bowls on her hands and knees,
Her silken curls dangling in their water
Completely one with the four-legged creatures as if they were all but the same
But when Paddy came around, it was quite different.
Throughout my mother’s years of schooling, the bus that would drop her home from school would switch what side of the street it would drop her off on depending on the day.
Paddy would be let out of the house through the front door to pick her up from the bus stop and walk her home
Eventually, he memorized where she would get dropped off every day of the week, and what time,
And they would walk home together, in step.
Sometimes he would be let out early, and his little warm body would sit by the bus stop as if that was exactly where he was supposed to be.
When I moved far, far away from my homeland,
I thought of my mother and her beloved dog.
I thought of how she must’ve parted with him, and I tried to part with a piece of my heart the same way.
I wore a kurta to my first day of 4th grade,
A matching ribbon in my hair, my little fists clutching my side.
With every sneer and question about why my words were so thick, so different,
They clutched the cloth tighter,
The way I imagined she clutched his warm little body as her comfort,
As her solace when she visited home from college after her first day and didn’t feel quite right,
When she cried into his fur when she did not know how to navigate her new world,
I thought of this, I felt brave, and I marched forward.
I remember a year ago now,
I was at their house and I had brought them incense, and their parents were just getting home.
“What are you guys doing, smoking weed? It smells like a hippy house in here. It smells like you’re both stoners. Open a window, please. Ugh, I can’t stand that disgusting smell.”
I brought them this incense from India, from New Delhi,
From my home,
From the sacred mornings in the sun and from the peaceful prayer.
I had brought that incense from my grandmother’s love,
From her rotating it around me anti-clockwise
To ward off the demons that seemed to have caught up with me now
I sat there and I did not run out the door and tell their parents that I spent an hour finding the perfect store, the perfect kind
I did not tell them that it was made out of crushed rose petals and sandalwood and that I thought the deep pink shade would complement the house
Instead, I watched them
And when they did not get up and tell their parents to stop
I was brought back yet again to my mother and her beloved dog
Her flailing body, her hands digging in the dirt
“You didn’t bury him properly, I know you didn’t.”
When they did not understand why I cried, I saw her hands digging quicker
Trembling, and young
When their parents said, “We didn’t know! We can buy her new incense if that’s what she wants,”
I saw my mother and imagined her body burning up, set aflame and fervent
When I saw the spices being picked out of the food at my Diwali party
I saw her spit flying wild and her hair just wisps now in the air, just smoke in her haste
Her tears hot, and heavy, like mine
When I was told to go back to where I came from,
I pictured her fingernails coated with mud and her disregard for those watching her, knee-deep in their garden
My mother did not care for the dirt on every inch of her skin, she did not care for the ache in her arms from digging 6 feet under
I thought of this, and I marched forward, yet again.
When my mother saw Paddy, his little body, cold now,
she wanted to return to the earth with him
Her companion for life
She wanted to tell him that she lived for him the way he lived for her
I thought of the language my soul spoke and the death of those who understood it
I thought of my mother’s silence for the months after, for her hatred of the now empty spaces in her house
There was a vegetable garden grown on top of that patch of mud where Paddy was buried
And my mother did not eat from it and she did not relish it
I did not want to relish in the modicum of acceptance this death of culture brought me, either
Because that meant I was just like all the people in this new country.
This brought me a fruitful acceptance, but it also meant I was alone, just like the rest of them
But my mother remembered Paddy
She has some of his fur in a Ziploc bag that she keeps locked in a safe
A memory of her treasured Paddy
Her companion for 11 years
To the nights and days that she spent with him
To the life that she shared with him
And I realized that this life where I felt unaccepted was just one life of mine
That there are many lives within me
I will carry the little girl ripping her kurta to shreds
And the teenager watching the spices being picked out of the food she spent hours on at her Diwali party
And the girl who looked high and low for the beautiful pink incense
I will carry these lives of mine in a Ziploc bag
And I will not relish in their pain but I will rejoice in their learnings and I will take their suffering and their jubilation and I will pack it within myself
All the different lives of mine
I will carry them with me the way my mother carries along her dear Paddy
I will learn from them and I will treasure them and I will mourn for them
I am large, I contain multitudes
Paddy knew my mother the way the earth knows the weight of my step
The way my grandmother would travel miles to salt my food the way I like it
The way my grandfather has my preference of milk to water in my chai etched into his soul
The way my sister knows how I feel with every breath I take
And the way my father knows my boundless mind
The way my mother knew the patterns of his fur
I will cradle these lives of mine the way my mother cradled his warm little body,
I will take with me this warmth and march bravely into the future; the way my mother and Paddy would, in step, home from the bus; the way I have in every life of mine.