I’ve decided to start sharing some of my favorite memories. I feel like droning on about my life and times is kind of narcissistic, but as I’ve been catapulted into the winter of my life prematurely, I think I’ve earned the right to it. And because people feel bad for me, they’ll force themselves to sit here and read it (teasing..but really :)).

There are some very early memories that are mostly mundane but somehow my mind clings to them, turning them over from time to time like well loved dog eared photographs. I have a specific one where I must have been about three and my mom carried me downstairs while I was sick and held me in the rocking chair and rocked me. Just this little snippet but it’s so drenched in feelings of warmth and safety.

But this post features me as a third grader in a little village outside of Prague called Hostivice, where we lived. Every day on my way home from school I scrounged up enough change to buy a croissant from the bakery. Back then these things cost what amounted to fractions of a cent.

And everyday I’d stop at a small gated property. Just through the gaps I could see a dog, and he was always there, all day, locked in the small cobbled front behind the tall gate. He was scruffy and scraggly and wary.

He growled at me at first. I got it in my head that he was mistreated, or perhaps simply neglected, and my heart ached for him. So I began sitting down on the other side of the gate, talking to him quietly while I ate my croissant and passing him small pieces. The gate was mostly solid, the metal gone green with age. But there were a few round and slanting decorative gaps through which I could see him and pass him some croissant.

Over time he began to trust me. He would wait for me at the gate expectantly, and a few times he even jumped up so I could briefly feel the swipe of his tongue through the gaps. I fell in love with him.

Worried over his skinniness, I began saving my change more carefully so I could buy two croissants, and give him one of them to eat all himself. (I should add that my child self would have been horrified to learn that chocolate is harmful for dogs.)

One day I arrived at the gate and he wasn’t there like he should have been. Dread churned in my gut but I told myself he’d be there the next day. But he wasn’t. For weeks he wasn’t. Then one morning I came to the gate and a fluffy little black puppy was there, yipping at me manically.

I understood then that my dog wasn’t coming back and it hurt.

I never paused at the gate again.

Looking back as an adult I don’t think the dog was neglected or starved, I think he was just old, and one day he died. Peacefully I hope, dreaming of chocolate croissants.

He was a companion and confidant. Even though I never got to pet him or even get a full unobstructed look at him. I loved him in that way a child can love a dog and I still think of him.