Life Lessons When A Random Car Parks in Your Driveway and a Beagle Runs Into Traffic

Living Happy Round Up

This weekend began with a car parked in our driveway that wasn’t ours.

I didn’t notice.

I heard the dog bark, but our Ring doorbell didn’t go off. And Pogie the puppy like to bark a bit when other dogs walk by the house. When Shaun, my husband, came home he yelled up, “Baby, is someone here?”

No hello. Just a door open and a question. I yelled from downstairs, “What? No?”

“Did you tell someone they can park here? Because I have things to unload and we have to get going.”

This weekend is our first weekend in a very long time that we had no child for two nights in a row. We were going away to someone’s camp on the other side of the island. This may not sound like a great adventure to anyone else. But for us? It was a big deal. We got to leave our house and be together with the dogs on the water.

It turned out that the car was none of our friends. I posted on Facebook with what little information I could glean, an address on an envelope, some sort of supplies. Shaun called the police. They said they couldn’t do anything, but we could tow it.

Neither Shaun or I wanted to tow it. On my Facebook post on my personal page everyone said to tow it. Because I couldn’t track the person down that way (none of my friends who potentially knew this person saw the post), and because the police couldn’t call them for us, and because I couldn’t find contact information on the internet, I posted on a local public site. Someone said they’d email her (the car’s owner). Someone else said they were her dad. Someone else yelled at me for posting on the site and embarrassing the car owner (we eventually became friends and sent emoji hearts to each other). The car owner contacted me, horrified, that she’d parked in the wrong person’s driveway. I talked them down hopefully via Messenger. And all was good.

Thank you for not having me towed, she said.

We all make mistakes, I told her. You should have seen how many times I’ve got into the wrong Subaru at the Hannaford’s parking lot.

I was really more worried that something nefarious had happened to her. That’s the thing. It’s easy to jump onto the worst case scenario, easy to think someone is using you or your property, easy to be outraged.

When we got back home Sunday night, we took a walk and as we were getting close to home a beagle came belting down the street, full speed, like it was trailing a rabbit. Shaun and I both lunged, but the beagle veered zipping past us, its little paws moving so fast that it was a blur. It was heading straight for Main Street. Main Street on Memorial Day Weekend is full of tourists’ cars. We’d just been on the sidewalk there. We knew how busy it was. And that beagle was heading right for the intersection as if it were sprinting for the finishing line in a high school cross-country race.

Everything inside of me screamed no.

Shaun murmured a swear word.

And the dog stopped, lifted his leg, peed on a telephone pole and sprinted in our direction.

Shaun muttered another swear word. And we both went for the dog who then careened across the roadway in front of a big truck, which fortunately was going slow. The window was rolled down and a guy leaned out. “There’s somebody yelling bloody murder for that dog back there.”

“We’ll get him,” Shaun said. “I think that’s one of our neighbors’ dog.”

The dog bolted through the parking lot between Everyday Joe’s and the laundry mat.

“We’ll coral him,” Shaun said.

And I headed behind the laundry mat toward the seating behind Pat’s Pizza. People were outside in picnic tables. One group saw me and happily yelled, “She’s here! Your dog is right over there.”

“Oh, that’s not my dog,” I said. “I think it’s my neighbors.”

The dog was begging for french fries and pizza crust at a table closer to the door. A couple sat there. Shaun caught up to me. “Is he friendly?”

“So friendly. Quite the little beggar.”

He had no collar. Shaun scooped him up. “I’ll carry him back.”

“The whole way?” I asked. “What if he wiggles?”

“I’ll hold on.”

We made our way back through the seating area. The people at the picnic table shouted happy things. I said, “I just hope it actually is my neighbor’s dog.”

They laughed.

And we got back and it was. Scout did not wiggle the entire way. He kept his paw in the pocket of Shaun’s shorts. His front paws wrapped around Shaun’s forearm.

“You’re amazing,” I told both of them.

The dog (Scout) smiled. Shaun said, “Hardly.”

We returned Scout, talked to our neighbors (a couple houses down). I pet Scout and Shaun gave them one of the old harnesses of Pogie (our dog). All good.

But it made me think. We spend so much time thinking that things aren’t ours (not our car, not our dog, not our worry about politics or community) that we sometimes forget how connected we all actually are and that sometimes there is so much goodness in worrying about the person in the car, the dog running down the street, the political push-and-pulls that happen in global, national, state or small-town politics and that there are people behind every interaction, every car parked mistakenly in a driveway, ever social media post, every dog running down the road.

The best way to get through troubles, I think, is to remember that caring for each other isn’t a weakness, but a strength. Caring for each other builds community, strengthens it, but it also strengthens our own insides, too.

Seneca said, “Associate with people who are likely to improve you. Welcome those who you are capable of improving. The process is a mutual one: men learn as they teach.”

And I get that. I do. But it isn’t just about that. It’s also about associating with people just for the sake of associating with them. I have no clue if that car owner, dog owner, people at the restaurant would improve me or not. I associated with them and cared about them because they were people who might need help, people who were there, people who existed.

Life is about taking chances. Sure, don’t hang out with people who bring you down or are toxic, but also give people who might be toxic a chance sometimes, too. I made a new potential friend because of the woman who protected the car owner on Facebook because I understood that she was being a really good friend and was worried about her friend being embarrassed. If I had treated her with anger? That wouldn’t have happened. If I had thought, “hm, will this interaction improve me?” That wouldn’t have happened.

And I am not perfect at this, obviously, but the thing is we can’t go around thinking “not my dog, not my problem” or “not my car, let’s immediately get it towed.” Life is about taking chances. One of those chances is compassion and caring. I’m going to try to keep taking more of those.  

Here’s the thing: We aren’t our social media presences. We aren’t our jobs. We aren’t our roles.

We are the light that shines through all those things. We are the light that happens as we make choices in our normal everyday life.

And to be that light? We have to be real. We have to care when we care. We can’t be afraid to run after the dog, to search for a car owner, to talk to random people in a restaurant or to write a blog post like this one that people might think is schmaltzy. Be you. Okay? Allow people to see your light.

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LINKS FROM THIS WEEK:

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SHOUT OUT TO THE EMSTER

This is my daughter. And this is what I posted on Wednesday.

Today, she should be getting her Master's in Public Administration from the Kennedy School at Harvard, a year after she got her Master's in Business Administration at Dartmouth, after four years in the military as an officer, and getting her undergraduate degree at Harvard.

She's a kid who came from a rural Maine school, focused hard, worked hard, and got into those schools because she's brilliant and also kind and also funny and also a stellar communicator.

She's a kid who knows what hard work is like, who saw her parent struggle, who embraced her own future, lifting others along the way.

She's not at graduation today.

Instead, she's at a month-long course for the Army Reserves (she's a lieutenant––soon to be captain––in a civil affairs unit) where she's continuing her tradition of responsibility and putting others before her self. She had to make the choice between graduation or her team, which needs her to take this course so she can lead them.

So no parties for Em. No hanging out with her friends as they celebrate all that work it took for them to get those degrees.

She is a young adult who exemplifies service above self. And someone who sacrifices all the time for others. And I am so damn proud of her.

That kind of character? It's not the stuff that you see in a resume or a Facebook post. It's something lived. I'm not sure how I got so lucky or the world got so lucky, but Em, I am so proud of you. Every day. All day. Congratulations, honey, on not just your degree, but your integrity and strength and kindness. You are a super star.

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