True love, lost

On Wednesday, I fly off  for Quito, Ecuador, to study Spanish, practice living at 9,000+ feet of altitude, and deliver 10 One World Futbols. For two weeks I will be living with a host family and studying 20 hours per week in a two-student class at $6 per hour. What a gig.

My fellow student will be Melanie Wood, a pert, retired Air Force Physician’s Assistant I met online a couple years ago. Like I always say, when you’re going to a foreign country, where you’re going to be doing a lot of heavy breathing due to the thin air, it’s always good to have a health care worker as your side kick.

Mel & Shrek

That’s Melanie in the photo above, with Shrek, an Airedale Terrier. After so many years in the Air Force, a primarily male bastion, and being in the medical field, Melanie comes with two wonderful traits – at least I think they are wonderful. She has a mature appreciation of earthy humor, and she has a very tender hearted concern for living things. Well, OK, animals.

Mammals, anyway.

It’s that tender heart that explains why she’s in Ecuador even as I write this, where she is volunteering her expertise with representatives of the Mayo clinic. And while she’s down there, she will be delivering a couple One World Futbols to an orphanage that can use them. It was Melanie who asked me whether I wanted to come along and volunteer in the orphanage, and if it wasn’t so expensive, I might have said yes. But I think I’ll save that for next time. If things work out right, Mel might be doing a little guest column in this blog; I hope that happens.

By the way, it’s that tender heart that led me to a case of true, abiding love. Oh, not for Melanie. She’s all right I suppose. But my love was for Shrek, the big old galumphy wooly-faced dawg that she was taking care of for a colleague who was having severe health problems.

Shrek had this way of cantering slightly diagonally down the trail when the three of us went on walks. It was Shrek who made me realize that a big dog can live in a small space. He would dutifully go lay down in his sleeping quarters, calm as any adult, not bounding around the house like a toddler.

When I went to visit him in Tacoma (so as not to appear too weird, I told Melanie I was visiting her), Shrek would lay that brick of a head on my thigh while I was sitting at the kitchen table, and roll his eyes up at me in a loving way that seemed to ask, “you and me is buds, right, Robert?” Those dark orbs waited patiently for a reply.

But the greatest joy I found with Shrek was the sensuous delight of scratching his back at the hindquarters. One time when I did this his back legs just went into this little dancing convulsion that seemed to say, “yes, oh, yes, oh, right here, yes, oh Gawd, keep doing that, yes, oh gawd…”  You get the picture.

Shrek died. Mel moved to Portland. But we stay in touch (I and Melanie, that is), and we’ll have one hoot of a time in Quito. It’s a friendship that has stood the test of time.

And while we’re down there, we’ll probably have to drink a toast of coca-tea to Shrek. If you donors don’t mind, I just might have the calligraphers put his name on one of the futbols I take there.

Love,
Robert, and
Wilson