A Big Little Life

minutes after we parted, I realized she hadn’t answered my question. I still didn’t know her name.
    I am quite sure that at home that evening, she said something to her husband like: “I asked Trixie’s dad when he has a new book coming out, and he said next month.”
    In Harbor Ridge, in addition to people walking their dogs, Gerda and I frequently encountered the grandfather of an Indian family who lived on the next block. He required the assistance of a walker, one of those models with wheels, and he proceeded at a slow but steady pace across the flat streets on top of the ridge, venturing out twice a day for what must have been a one-mile constitutional each time. I was impressed by his commitment to remaining active.
    He had a round, merry face and a warm smile, and his slight musical accent was charming. And he always wantedto reach down and stroke Trixie’s head while we exchanged pleasantries about the weather or about something in the news.
    One day, as Trixie and I approached him, he said, “May I tell you a wonderful truth about your dog?” I said that nothing would please me more, and he said, “Perhaps you know what she is. Do you know what she is?”
    Assuming he wanted to know her breed, I said, “She’s a golden retriever.”
    “Yes, she is,” he replied, “but that’s not what I mean. In our religion, we believe in reincarnation. We live many times, you see, always seeking to be wiser than in our previous life, wiser and more virtuous. If we eventually lead a blameless life, a perfect life, we leave this world and need not endure it again. Between our human lives, we may be reincarnated as other creatures. Sometimes, when someone has led a nearly perfect life but is not yet worthy of nirvana, that person is reincarnated as a very beautiful dog. When the life as the dog comes to an end, the person is reincarnated one last time as a human being, and lives a perfect life. Your dog is a person who has almost arrived at complete enlightenment and will in the next life be perfect and blameless, a very great person. You have been given stewardship of what you in your faith might call a holy soul.”
    The grandfather’s voice and manner were enthralling, and his comments about Trixie were so kind and sweet that I thanked him and said we’d always thought she wasspecial. He said, “Tell your wife what I have told you,” and I assured him that I couldn’t wait to tell her and would do so as soon as I got home.
    This might seem strange, but I walked a block before it occurred to me to connect his words to the incident in which I told Trixie that I knew she was an angel masquerading as a dog, and to the night that she seemed to take a tour of the upstairs with a presence invisible to me. A not unpleasant chill traveled my spine.
    As a Christian, I do not believe in reincarnation, but I believe there was something unique and significant about Trixie. Many people recognized that uniqueness and expressed their perception of it in different ways. Frequently, when we were on a restaurant patio with Trix, other customers, having watched her during dinner, stopped by our table to say a word about her, and more often than referring to her beauty or to her good behavior, they said, “She’s really special, isn’t she?” We always said, “Thank you. We think she’s very special.” But after the grandfather told me what he believed her to be, I was more than previously aware of how often the word special was used to describe her.
    Our friends Andy and Anne Wickstrom, whom we had known since my college years and who grow more interesting—or maybe just more strange—year by year, came to stay with us for a week in our new house. They were taken with Trixie, and she with them, and the five of us had a grand time. A month or so after they had returned home to the East Coast, we were chatting on the phone, andAnne said that they had tried to tell friends about Trix, to convey how special she was, but eventually realized that words and anecdotes simply were inadequate to make anyone fully understand Short Stuff’s magical personality and appeal.
    Writing this memoir, I have come up against that wall many times. I have had to accept that although I have done my best to paint this portrait of her, I am incapable of doing her justice. The ineffable cannot be described. A mystery is a mystery precisely because it has not been solved, and some mysteries are insoluble.
    In that second novel written