“Maybe that’s why we write.” — Jonas

Awesome article! I loved it.

I’ve had many incredible teachers over the course of my life but perhaps the two greatest teachers were my daughter and my dog.

I consider myself one of the luckiest males on the planet because, many years ago, I had the very distinct privilege of being a full-time stay-at-home mom for around four years. I wasn’t just a guy who stayed at home and watched the kid while the wife worked. No! Except for the fact that the kid didn’t come out of my body, I was a mother in every single aspect of the word.

I changed almost every diaper and since, for the sake of the environment, I used cloth diapers I also hand-washed and scrubbed every one of those diapers. I fed her, I clothed her, I bathed her, I brushed her silky golden hair, I played with her, read to her, took her for a walk in nature every day, took her to the library, strapped her in the car seat and took her everywhere I went, I told her stories, I bandaged her boo-boos, I potty-trained her, I colored with crayons with her, I played with dolls with her, I watched Pee-Wee’s Playhouse with her, I read her a bedtime story every night….

I also did all the housecleaning, all the cooking, all the shopping, all the laundry, and all the organizing of recreational activity. I wanted the entire experience of motherhood and thanks to my daughter I was able to have that experience.

My daughter was very cerebral and very intelligent. Verbal communication came very natural to her. At the ages of 4 and 5 she would have very serious and intelligent conversations with adults that left the adults scratching their head and asking each other, “Who is this girl?”

But my daughter and I also had another form of communication that, for lack of a better term, I can only call, ‘psychic.’ She could have been playing with some toys and, from the other side of the room, I would mentally say something to her and she would turn around and answer me as though I had spoken to her. Or I would be involved with some chore and suddenly hear her speaking to me in my head. I would turn to the side and see her standing there just staring at me. And I would answer her and she would smile.

It freaked me out.

As my daughter grew up and socially became fully indoctrinated into verbal and written communication this psychic communication that we had slowly faded into the background. We mostly stopped using it despite the fact that it was still there when we really needed to use it. Now that she’s an adult she won’t even acknowledge it anymore. It’s socially unacceptable. We are taught to rely solely on verbal and written communication.

The day I walked my daughter to her first day of kindergarten and her little hand slipped out of mine as she went to enter the kindergarten building I felt like I died. It was a sad, profound and life-shattering day for me.

I was suddenly no longer a full-time stay-at-home mom and my life changed drastically. I went from being a full-time mommy to being a full-time businessman. (Talk about going from one extreme to another.)

Despite having a penis, one of my strongest desires in life was to experience being a mother. I live with profound gratitude for having that desire fulfilled. With the kid now in the school system it was time for me to fulfill another of my deepest desires; that of owning and operating my very own bookstore.

I had been a book freak since I was a little kid and I worked in book retail for several years before giving it up to be a full-time mommy. With the kid in school an emptiness, a vacuum, opened up and that I eventually filled by opening up a bookstore.

It was soon after I opened the bookstore that my next great teacher entered my life. I am, of course, talking about the dog.

She wasn’t an ordinary dog, though. She was actually 16% Gray Wolf and 84% Siberian Husky. She was a wolf-dog. More specifically, she was a beta female wolf-dog.

“Love at first sight,” is considered a romantic human ideal. Edgar Cayce said that “love at first sight” was the recognition of a lover from a past-life. Whatever it truly is, I experienced it with this loving wolf-dog. We fell in love immediately. We were immediately joined at the hip.

Marriage is the only way I can truly describe my relationship with this wolf-dog. It was based on unconditional love and unconditional loyalty. For the next 16 years we were never, ever, ever apart (except for that one day when I was out of town). I was already married to a female human at the time, so I guess I entered into polygamy when I married this wolf-dog. Unlike my marriage to the female human, though, my marriage to the wolf-dog actually turned out to be ’til death us do part.’

She came to work with me every single day and she was the best employee imaginable. She took her job very seriously and greeted every customer and followed them around the bookstore to make sure they were happy. She watched over all the kids of the customers. She followed me around as I did my daily chores. She never once called in sick and every single day at 9:45 am she was standing at the door ready to go to work. When, 9 years later, I sold the bookstore she continued to stand at the door at 9:45 am every single day ready to go to work. Selling the bookstore utterly broke her heart. That’s how devoted an employee she was.

She was a beta female and I was her alpha male. She was devoted to me (as I was to her) and that also meant that she was devoted to my family; my wife and daughter. She actually helped me to raise my daughter. She would have given her life to protect my daughter, my wife or me. (or the family cat) It was her job as an beta female.

But doggies can’t talk. Being a wolf-dog, my doggie couldn’t even bark. Well, technically, she could bark but she never barked more than 2 or 3 times a year. Wolves can’t bark and Siberian Huskies were taught by their Eskimo caretakers not to ever bark so that they wouldn’t spoil the hunt. I could tell that it was very difficult for her to bark. It wasn’t natural. She only did it on the rare occasions when she was really pissed off at the cat.

But almost from the very start my doggie mate and I experienced a different kind of communication that was not verbal — and certainly not written. For lack of a better term, I can only call it ‘psychic.’ There were so many times when she would be lying on the floor half snoozing when I would “talk to her in my mind” and she would turn her head to look at me and then get up to come over to me. Likewise, there would be times when my attention would be solely on the computer keyboard as I typed away and suddenly I would sense her. I would look to the side and see her sitting there on the floor intently staring at me. And weirdly, I always knew what she wanted.

It freaked me out.

It is my opinion that both humans and animals (and probably plants) come into this seemingly physical dimension with innate abilities to communicate. Humans are the ones diverted from this natural ability by a propensity developed over time to use verbal and written language instead of that natural communicative “psychic” propensity.

At least that is what two of my greatest teachers have shown me. Sure, language, both spoken and written, have opened up new doorways, new possibilities, for communication that can perhaps speed up an evolutionary imperative. But have these “new” forms of communication blocked out those natural forms of communication we were born with? Have we inadvertently closed ourselves off to communication that connects us to the one-ness of all of life’s evolution?

My beloved daughter is now 29 years old and she now has two daughters of her own. Her oldest daughter just turned 6 years old and she is very cerebral and intelligent just like her mother. My youngest granddaughter is about to turn 3 years old and she hasn’t even started talking yet. She makes guttural sounds but hasn’t begun mastering language. My daughter is very concerned about this.

I tell her to stop worrying about it. Everyone develops at their own pace. I remind her that Albert Einstein didn’t start talking until he was almost six years old. His parents actually wondered if perhaps he was mentally retarded because of his lack of speech proficiency. But Einstein turned out to be one of the greatest thinkers of our time.

When I go over to my daughter’s house my granddaughters get all excited. My oldest granddaughter starts talking endlessly. All I have to do is look at my youngest granddaughter and the second our eyes connect we start communicating and not a word is spoken. This may not be possible if my own daughter and my dog had not shown me the power of communication that is neither spoken nor written.

Maybe we write to tap into magic. Maybe we speak and write to cross an abyss. Maybe that abyss is a language we have forgotten, a connection we have lost.