Today is Rory’s and my official birthday. Nobody knew the actual date, so Dad chose the day after his own birthday.
I would have chosen the day he and Grandma picked us up at the shelter. But today is as good a day as any.
We’re celebrating with a trip to the beach, cheese, and rotisserie chicken.
Cheese is our favorite snack, although Grandma also uses it as a bribe. “Cheese! Cheese! Cheese!” she calls whenever we head off on an adventure she hasn’t approved.
Dad is a helicopter parent. He worries about everything.
He even worries that he never let us choose our names. How would that have worked? Both Rory and I like the names he gave us. They’re about things he likes.
He wonders whether we wanted to live with him and Grandma at all. Perhaps, he thinks, we would rather be sophisticated city dogs than country bumpkins.
We like the ranch. There is plenty to sniff, and nobody expects us to be sophisticated.
Dad still remembers how bad he felt when I whimpered as he put me in the car to take us home from the shelter. He thought I was worried.
He didn’t know me yet. I whimper when something exciting is about to happen and I can’t wait for it to begin.
He also worries about our first home. The shelter couldn’t tell him anything because we had been picked up off the street.
Rory and I don’t remember either. I think Freud called that repression. Rory thinks there are more important things to remember.
Like where Grandma keeps the cheese.
Photo Whisper: Photograph the little things that make a celebration yours.
Profit has spoken.
VIEW NEXT: