The Foam Pit in the Attic

It was one of those moments that happened so fast. In the blink of an eye. When your body jumps into action before the message even arrives at the brain. And when the brain does finally receive the event that has unfolded before your eyes laughter ensues just as quickly and out of control as the event itself. 

My daughter and I were carrying a large heavy cooler up the steep attic stairs. Before I could reach the top step to place the cooler on the crowded attic floor, I see gray fur streak by my feet. Our recently adopted elderly Shih Tzu, who has to make several graceless attempts before eventually jumping onto the couch, bounds up those precarious steps like a teenage gazelle and takes a nosedive into the pink insulation as if finally checking off a long-awaited bucket-list adventure. I immediately lunge and grab his long rat-like tail, the only thing left that hasn’t been swallowed up by the pink cloud. I know his eleven pounds aren’t enough to go straight through the ceiling. But I wasn’t going to take that chance. 

As I hold tight to his tail, trying to figure out how to retrieve the rest of him without the both of us creating an unwanted shortcut into my bedroom below, I have flashbacks to retrieving my four-year-old son from a trampoline park foam pit that had eaten him alive. A foam pit that I felt like I would never climb back out of. A place I felt sure I’d be celebrating my 90th birthday in because there was no way I was making it out of there anytime soon. You know the kind. Where the harder you try, the deeper you sink, while fatigue from simultaneous struggle and laughter take over as a growing audience gawks at the new zoo exhibit taking place in the foam pit.

Spoiler alert: I eventually make it out of that foam pit. And I’m not even close to 90 yet. But as I rescue a twelve-year-old Shih Tzu from an attic foam pit, as my daughter and I pull clumps of fiberglass puffballs from his fur, as I continue to find pink cotton candy of death sprinkled throughout the house, I have a goal-setting vision as well. 

When I’m ninety I hope I’m just like that little daredevil. I hope I’m adventurous, playful, and do the unexpected. Because I’ve learned age is just a number, an earthly countdown to our forever home. And we should never underestimate an old dog with a bucket list.

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