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Sometimes
It Pours Only Dogs
By
Saana Tykkä
It
is raining, like it has been raining since yesterday.
It
is raining; it has rained since yesterday, the day before
yesterday, and day before that. I wish it wouldn't rain so hard,
not so much. I have a dog to take care of, you know. It messes my
home otherwise, the wet dog and its filthy paws. It messes my
clean, polished windows, the rain. I just washed them so that they
sparkled in the morning light. They sparkle not anymore.
It
rains, and I sit in the office and stare at the grey sky.
I
wish it wouldn't rain.
I
returned home on Sunday, and in the middle of the journey it
started to rain. In the middle of the road, I suddenly found
myself in the midst of the withering storm. And the rain was
hitting so hard against the car's front window, I didn't see a
thing. The dog was sitting next to my driver's seat on its
carrying case; it was sitting next to me; and it dreamt. I saw its
eyelids softly quaver as we drove through the wet landscape and
out of the town.
From
time to time, she raised her head and stared at me with her dark
and pleading eyes, and I noticed my hand involuntary moving to
caress her soft brown fur. It was my grandmother's dog, the one
that stays in my home and now waits for me to take her out into
the summer's rain.
My
grandmother died two weeks ago, and I was in her funeral just a
few days ago. I cried there, and now the tears I shed won't come
to an end.
No
other was willing to take care of our now dead grandmother's dog,
and as I watched her dark and sad eyes, I suddenly spoke out loud:
"I can take her." Which kind of surprises me, for I hate
dirt, and dogs are dirty, and she could dirty my home. But now I
have a dog in my home, waiting for me to return. Last night she
slept between my legs, and I didn't sleep at all.
I
think about the funeral, and my family. I watched them as they sat
on a bench before me. I remember my grandmother, who died, and
whose funeral I was at. I cried as the cellist was playing behind
the chapel a song we had sung in my uncle's funeral two years ago,
and I remembered him. Then I remembered my other uncle, who had
died in the same summer along with him. I miss them.
I
watched as my father stood up, and I followed him next to the
coffin. He lowered the bucket down, and spoke his farewell to his
mother he had never loved. Then it was my turn, and as I placed
the single white rose next to the bucket of my father. I didn't
find a word, I just cried. I left the memorial, tears falling down
from my eyes.
It
started to rain immediately afterwards, and it is raining still.
Now
I sit in an empty office, and I stare out the window for the
droplets that wash away the other droplets that had landed on the
ground before them. I watch as the clean water from the sky makes
the world look so dull, and I think about the dog that is waiting
for me in my clean home so that I would take her out and let her
mess my floor.
She
slept last night between my legs, quivering from fright as the
lightning flashed through the night sky, and kept me awake. Now my
eyes won't stay awake, and I numbly follow the world that's slowly
turning into one giant grey and messy mud hole. I wish I could go
out and let the rain wash me clean. I wish I would melt away along
with the rain like the clammy soil of the ground.
I
think about my grandmother's funeral, and the tears that I let
loose there. I remember my grandmother the way she was, and that I
never loved her. I miss my uncles, but I don't miss her. I
remember my father never liked her either, and I remember how she
hated him, her own son. I think of how I hated her, and how she
hated me. We never got along, and she didn't leave anything to me.
And yet I took her dog.
But
now I'm crying. Not because I love her, but because I have no one
to hate anymore, and because she was my grandmother, and the
mother of my father. I grieve over the fact that I have lost her,
because losing her means my father could be next. I watched him in
the memorial; my father, and my mother by his side, and I felt so
old as I saw them standing there in the funeral. When did they
become old? When did I become old? I'm not young anymore, and my
parents won't live forever.
I
hate funerals. They mean death, and death means inheritance, and
inheritance means money, and money means fighting. I hate fights,
and I hate funerals because they always mean fights. I don't like
funerals, nor do I like weddings, for they remind me how old I
have become. I am over forty by now, and still single. My mother
always sighs after the fact that I'm not married. She never
approved of my choice over the matter, but she can't see that I'm
just waiting for the right one. In the meantime I keep my home
clean, and my sheets unblemished.
Some
might say I'm picky, but I'm only waiting.
It's
just that no one beside myself has slept on those sheets I kept so
clean for such a long time.
So
now I sit in the office and stare out the window, and I think.
My
world is untarnished, but now it is raining and my father is old.
As
I leave the office, the rain falls down on me. The dog is waiting
for me, and I must take her out. I walk toward my home, and the
rain keeps on pouring down. I stop and raise my eyes, and aim them
toward the towering stormy sky above me. My grandmother's dog is
waiting for me, and she will mess my floor. My sheets aren't
unblemished anymore, and they are full of the soft brown hair of
that dog.
It
is raining still, but in the horizon I see a break in the clouds.
I
smile.
I
know tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day.
SAANA TYKKÄ studies social science history at the University of Helsinki. She knows Pablo Neruda's poems by heart and loves the old
Star Wars movies. Her life consists mostly of cycling through the Finnish countryside, listening to music, writing, reading, and spending time with her friends and family.
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