on companionship

We have reached the point of fall in which toques and mitts are highly recommended, but it’s not yet so cold as to make you miserable. Every day we strike out after school drop off. Three dogs and the two of us. The shadows stretch long, the sun low. It’s a gentle time of year, if the winds aren’t blowing. 

Our distinguished gentleman is now at least 11, based on his paperwork. He’s been with us since he was three. You make a lot of memories and routines in eight years of co-habitating. His powdered sugar face reminds me all too well that time continues steadily onward, even though it feels sometimes fast and sometimes slow. 

I remember very well being a new parent and  how cruelly fast newborns and infants grow and change. I perceived it to move at nearly a daily pace, never long enough to really lock the stages into my mind. During all those years, Odie remained steady. Just a few white hairs in his face. But over the last few years, powdered sugar face has been accumulating steadily at a time when I feel like my child has levelled out the speed at which he changes. I’ve traded one for the other. Time-related whiplash in slow motion. 

Donna Haraway writes about companion species. She had a whole manifesto about it in the 2000s and has written at least two more books on the topic since. While all theory is problematic in one way or another, what I love is the way she uses the term companion. Her emphasis here isn’t on an animal being an accessory or something owned, but a sense of companionship, an intertwining of lives that is deeper.

Companionship can be a deeply meaningful term, if you think about those that you choose to keep company with. Friends, family, dogs, cat, horses, ferrets, etc. To be a true companion of any of these people or animals, you must care about their lives and their deaths. Her argument is that ALL of these relationships matter, not just the human-to-human ones.

Our oldest, Odie, with our youngest, Clover. Companionship, not just human-to-human.

In September I read a really beautiful piece by Leila Ainge, A Landslide of Memories. She writes about the deep love her family holds for their 14 year old dog, Sam and it’s so beautiful.

Our grief has descended in sudden silence, the memory of hearing the clickety-clack of his claws against the floor or the sound of his grizzly snoring as he lay sprawled on the sofa, and the unique jingle of his collar that I hadn’t realised was the soundtrack to our daily life.

And this is what I think Donna Haraway is talking about when she talks about human-and-animal companionship. And it’s wonderful and heartbreaking and it’s worth it.

N xx