REX AND THE CITY, Part XXII - "Family Matters"

in which my dog-hating family members meet my dog

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Hello Dear Readers -

Apologies for the long pause between posts. I broke a finger in March and am only now starting to recover some of the function of my left hand. I’ve never broken a bone before, so I was quite surprised to experience first-hand (no pun intended) just how long it can take the body to recover. Fingers crossed (again, no pun intended) that I eventually gain full use of that finger again.

So, to pick up where we left off, I am posting yet another installment (shared as PDFs below) of my “Rex in the City'' series from the late, great BARKmagazine. For those of you who are new subscribers: BARKwas primarily a print magazine, so a lot of these pieces never appeared online. That’s why I am sharing this series. You can also find most of these pieces—in revised form—within chapters of my memoir REX AND THE CITY, published by Random House in 2006 with a 10th anniversary paperback edition published by Diversion Books in 2016. 

In this particular installment, I write about the time my late, great stepmother Jane came to visit me in NYC and witnessed first-hand (again, no pun intended) just how pampered our city-dog was. Jane was not an animal lover. She liked fashion, culture, books, art, films, tennis, wine, and wit. Anything messy or disorderly or chaotic just wasn’t her thing. Especially if any of the above included dogs and muddy dog paws. So why I decided to take her to our local doggy day care for one of our tourist “outings” is no longer clear to me. Nor is it cleaar to me why, in this piece, I refer to Jane as “Lucinda” and to her sister Sweet as “Maude.” (In an earlier post, I did delve in to all the strange reasons I decided to change peoples’ names for this Bark series, but in hindsight it just doesn’t make any sense. So do not look for logic. Except to say that Jane and here sister bore strong resemblances—in looks and personality—to Bea Arthur’s legendary Maude.)

Anyway, one might think that this essay is about family members bridging differences, but it’s more than that. It’s about transcending differences; it’s about realizing that differences have no bearing at all if love is at its core.

Jane died of lung cancer in 2009 and I still miss her to this day. Wallace died in 2002 and I still miss him to this day. But they still walk at my side, as guardian angels, and there, in the heavenly realm, in their true forms, I’m sure they get along just fine.

I hope you enjoy reading the piece. And please comment!

This 22nd installment of the REX AND THE CITY/REX IN THE CITY series—“Family Matters” —originally appeared in Bark magazine, Volume 37, July/August 2006, Copyright © Lee Harrington (writing as Lee Forgotson and E. M. Harrington). Illustrations copyright Bark and the credited artists.I have no affiliation or agreement with any advertisers shown—those are all old ads from the original print edition.