About 10 years ago I bought an ornament on sale. A Dog with a halo. In truth such a halo would annoy a dog; he'd want to give it to you so you could throw it. He'd hate the halo like he hated the cute fake reindeer horns I clipped on his head — irritating at best and shameful at worst. Why do you do this? Do you want me to be a reindeer instead of a dog? It's like Hemingway's mother dressing him up as a girl.
Halo Dog went up every year, and eventually it became the baleful Ornament of Christmas Future. Jasper Dog was old: 14. This might be the last. You never knew. I hung the tiny stocking we got when he was a pup: "#1 Dog!" in cross-stitching. Santa brought a Milk-Bone. Payment for keeping quiet when he clambered out of the fireplace.
The dog made it five more years, but last year we knew there would not be another, and hanging the Halo Dog on the tree gave everyone a pang. But that's what the ornaments do: They tell stories. There's one for "Baby's First Christmas," and in a few years when I hang it on a bough she'll be at college, and the intervening time will seem to have been a blink, a sneeze.
We have a new dog now. Scout. A stray hound from the South. When I brought out the boxes of Christmas decorations, he poked his nose in deep to smell a molecule of cookie dough from 2003. I found the Halo Dog and put it up high, right below the angel on top. When I returned to the bin to get another bauble, I saw Scout on the floor, looking up with the expression dogs have when they've done Something: I did this thing and OK so I've done this thing so we're good? Right? Tail: thump thump.
He had fished out the tiny sock from the bin. #1 Dog!
I'd be a fool if I didn't chalk it up to the scent of Milk-Bones. I'd be lying if I didn't wish for a second that Jasper Dog had guided his nose. If there's any time of the year, this is when such a TV-movie-miracle-of-Christmas thing would happen. Maybe this was a message. A kind word from beyond the pale. Perhaps I think of you too.
More likely: Don't make Scout wear the reindeer horns.
jlileks@startribune.com • 612-673-7858
