Cynical old psych nurse, sense of life and humor foundering. After midlife and menopause felt like ceaseless assault, after years of personal erosions, the unthinkable had occurred. Like a leaky old boat through whose battered hull too much ocean had seeped; like a vessel soundlessly sinking into the abyss. So I had slipped into a thousand-fathom depression. Fetal-curled under my covers: It seemed the only way to hang on through such dark and timeless days.

“Just get up and do something,” I’d implored all those patients through all those years. I now understood what I never knew I didn’t know. Back then I was asking the impossible. Until the brain is rebalanced, the spirit is numb and the body all but paralyzed. Unnamed agony, this thick dark despair had come to weigh so heavily upon me. Nevertheless, I repeated and repeated that self-exasperating demand: “Get up... do.”

In those endless midnights, one small candle’s light broke through, then as evermore the light of my life. Literally. From beneath the comforter where she loves to burrow, mini-mutt Penny continues the wake-up routine that once saved a hapless, hopeless old broad. Out pokes her odd little face, Edward G. Robinson with Marty Feldman eyes. Mighty of spirit, oblivious to mood in those first few minutes of our day, she insistently carries out the theater she’s devised, for her own amusement as much as for mine.

The eyes roll. The body rolls. Out from the covers and stretch, stretch. Belly up, expectantly: “Pet me, Mom. Pet me!” How can even a troubled heart miss the message or resist the inspiration of a smile? Response is assumed, and therefore immediate, automatic. Tiny paws at my face, she snuggles like a small adoring child, drawing near to my warmth, to the affection of which she’s always been certain despite my own dysphoric uncertainties.

A bittersweet Madonna and Child? Penny has other ideas, a hidden agenda of comic innuendo. Still near my face, a sniff and suddenly she paws her own nose. “Pee-yoo, Mommy! Morning breath! PEE-YOO!!” Then she pounces for my covered foot, her quarry, the lurking giant bedbug.

Subduing the threat, she dashes off to catch her reflection in a glass frame. “A playmate, Mom? Or is it me? Oh, look how cute I am!” She cocks her head, then seems to bubble and giggle as she starts back in my direction. “C’mon, Mom! Gotta get up now. I gotta go poop! You gotta take me ...“

In those daily moments, in her self-assured prance and in my enchanted spontaneity, a miracle has been taking shape. Even before Zoloft could nudge my brain back in gear, that lively little wagger was nudging my sickened spirit up ‘n’ at ‘em. Body language as unmistakable as speech itself: “C’mon, Mom. Let’s play! Gotta play.”

Other breath-catching moments lend meaning, like the sweet times she simply curls up next to me, a reassuring furball expecting nothing. Such comfort soothes a shredded psyche immeasurably. But it’s those silly-girl antics that moved me when nothing else could, that continue to plug up the holes in me and gas up my sputtery old engine with laughter.

Some personal advice to the world-weary: Pound pups I wholeheartedly recommend; clinical depression I don’t. Having had both nonetheless, I’ve come to know two things. Never judge the wounded human soul. And never underestimate the healing power of a shiny little Penny.

© Hansie Haier July, 2003

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