My Summer Find, “Bemers!”

At fifty-four, I had fallen for a puppy—it was my first time ever. I found companionship with him in a new kind of love that hadn’t been a part of my life, and I raised him to the age of six. When it was my year to move to India, I found a good home where he would continue his life with a companion dog (who also needed a new friend, his owner said) and on land as broad and varied as he had known. I told him that I would always love him but that I would not return. I wanted his love to grow for a new mother.

Fourteen years later, during my summer visit in America, I arrived at my daughter’s home, and upon entering the room where I would sleep I saw a watercolor—“Bemers.” It was on the wall. Bemers’ devotion in his gaze, set amid watermelon fur around a pale golden nose shaped like a dog bone, drew me to him immediately. Each day I would take a few moments to look at him, feeling a growing friendship as with the first Bemers who had grabbed my heart. I loved his washed-blue eyes (the left one slightly crossed), the petal-pink mouth, and his freckled, pink nose between wiry whiskers. (They looked as if they were escaping.) The greeny-blue, water-like impression behind him lent calm to the scene. I imagine now that Bemers’ eyes had a message, “I’m watching you”—attentively conveyed in good humor to the boy in front of him, a paintbrush poised in his right hand.

I took a photo of Bemers before I left, so he will have his place among the new family photos that I will soon hang.

My realization is, “When your heart speaks to you, trust yourself and follow.”