Kim Harmeling: Cool Redux

I love cars, old cars, new cars, trucks, SUVs, anything, as long as it’s got some personality and a bit of style. My husband just views them as transportation, a way to get from one place to another faster than walking or taking the bus. If it was up to me, I’d buy them like shoes, coordinating them with my outfits and that day’s mood, storing them in a big garage where I could go and ponder which of my collection to drive today, what do I feel like today… let’s see the Caddy or maybe the SUV? In a bad mood? Let’s take the black Dodge Charger. Whenever we buy a car the husband has to steer me away from the great cars on the lot toward the practical cars with admonishments about bad gas mileage and impracticality. I go along with him even though the car lover in me doesn’t really care about those things.

I’m particularly fond of old cars and muscle cars; big, old, American made gas guzzlers with steering wheels as big around as a large pizza, fins you could hang a laundry line from and that require a parking space large enough for semi; loud fast, muscle cars, the beefy originals of the re-imagined versions now put out by Ford, Dodge, and Chevy. Those cars are just cool – they look cool, they sound cool, I felt cool when driving one.

The very first car I ever owned, the one that was mine, paid for with my own money earned at my first real job, was a 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 302. It was white with black racing stripes and chrome wheels. I had trouble getting insurance for it since I was still using my parents insurance company and the place wouldn’t touch it because it was a “race car”. I didn’t really mind the hassles about insurance after that, I was driving a cool car so the cost of insurance wasn’t important. A car like that, it gives a girl confidence, particularly when she – I – was out in the world for the first time and not really sure I knew what I was doing. I could go out, get in the car, tool around for awhile listening to music, eyeing the guys eyeing my car, and get an instant attitude adjustment. I loved that car, drove it for years during college and after, did all the work on it myself, even changed the radiator and heater core out which was a bitch to do, even following the Chilton’s instructions.

Eventually it started to leak and squeak, water would leak into the interior causing it smell like a swamp and the windows to fog up on the inside when the heater and A/C couldn’t keep up with it any more; the suspension squeaked so badly that going over rough road sounded like a great Saturday night on a cheap bed. Practicality and lack of funds to fix the major problems led to the agonizing decision to sell it in order to buy something more dependable. More boring. More adult. Less Cool.

I miss the time when just driving a car was all it took to make things better. All I had to do was put the Mustang on like a suit of armor and be a bit more invincible, more desirable, more confident than I was without it. The Honda just doesn’t do it that for me. It gets me from place to place, dependably, quietly, boringly but with no particular style or panache, no aura of cool confidence that I got from my first car. Maybe I don’t need that any more, practical considerations being more important, but I still miss it.

When I see an old, well cared for classic car on the street I have to walk over and take a look. It’s all I can do not to caress a fender or put nose prints on the windows looking at the upholstery inside. If I’m lucky the owner, usually a guy older than I am, will come out and I can openly admire his ride, envious that I don’t have one of my own. He’ll stand a little straighter, get a gleam in his eyes talking about it and you can see the Cool Guy he was when he drove that model for the first time. Maybe that’s why old guys have all the cool old cars, they remember how great it was to drive one and want to catch just little chill before it’s too late. Someday I’m going to be old enough to toss practicality out the window, maybe leave it open, get me another cool car and catch a little chill.

Kim Harmeling - It's Just a Dog

People make a thousand decisions every day, mostly about small things – what time to get up, what to have for breakfast, what to wear, whether to take route A or route B to work, none of them momentous. In general most folks aren't called upon to make determinations about life and death, and wouldn’t be able to do so if asked. How do you determine whether someone or something lives or dies? What set of criteria would be thorough enough to ensure that you made the best possible decision, because you can believe me when I tell you that there is no “right” decision. You can only hope to make the decision leading to the least of the bad outcomes.

My friends and I run a dog rescue group and make life decisions every day, decisions that literally mean life or death for another living creature. That it’s dogs rather than people doesn’t make the decision making any easier. We get at least one phone call or email a day from a shelter, another rescue group, or an owner about a dog needing a home. The reasons these dogs need new homes are myriad but it all boils down to one thing: a human got a dog they don’t know how to handle, no longer want or are able to care for, and want to get rid of, usually immediately.

There are six of us running the rescue so the work is spread around, but we always try to reach a consensus about whether we are taking a dog or not, knowing full well that if we don’t the dog will more than likely be taken to a shelter, turned loose to fend for itself, shot (which happens a lot in the rural areas), or euthanized. “Euthanized” and “put to sleep” are terms that are supposed to sound kinder or more clinical and maybe provide some intellectual distance from the act of killing an animal just because no one wants it. They don’t. Every time we have to make the decision about whether or not we can take a dog in, we know it could mean the difference between whether that dog lives or dies. If we take it, then it’s got a chance at a better life and there is more room in the shelter for another dog to use, thereby giving two dogs a chance at a new life.

It’s particularly hard when one of us has had to go see the dog in person to determine if we can take it. If we can, great and everyone is happy. If not, we then have a face and a name to put with the memory of the shelter staff leading the dog away to the back room. It’s why I don’t go to shelters any more and why I have four dogs. I couldn’t stand to leave a dog there knowing that it will die. Everyone I know who does rescue work for any kind of animal has a houseful of critters for the very same reason. If we don’t take it the odds of the dog being adopted out to a good home are small because no matter what you hear on the news, shelters still euthanize more animals than they place.

It’s easy to reach the point of burn-out doing rescue work. In fact there’s a clinical term for it: “compassion fatigue.” Rescue workers of every stripe get it whether they work for the Red Cross saving humans or for the local hamster rescue. It’s another one of those kinder-gentler terms, one that still means your brain and emotions are totally fried from dealing with the constant influx of dogs, juggling foster homes and kennel spaces, transport arrangements, and the stress of making decisions we know could result in the death of another living, breathing creature. Decisions that have to be made quickly and sometimes with little information. That we do it all the time makes it no easier. I’ve had people tell me “It’s just a dog.” That doesn’t make it any easier either.

Yet, we continue to do rescue work because we believe that it’s the right thing to do and, when everything falls in to place properly, there IS a happy ending. It’s those days we all strive to reach. Gandhi said “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”. We’re all waiting and working for the day when people here reach that point and the decisions we make on a daily basis are no longer necessary. I think we may be waiting a long time.

Kim Harmeling lives in the Cascade foothills with her husband and as many dogs as he’ll let her adopt. Sometimes she writes something worthwhile, hopeful someone will be interested enough to read it.

Kim Harmeling: Thankful

Life is funny sometimes
When least expected lessons of
Appreciation come out of nowhere
To hit us in the head

One day gasping for air
Finds me a hospital stay for days
Waiting to see what the end
Result will be

All plans reset to start
To be recast through the lens
Of newly realized priorities
And shorter deadlines

How then to cope
With lesser abilities and
More restrictions but
The same expectations?

Appreciation of small things
Savored at a slower pace
I am just breathing
Thankful


Kim Harmeling lives in the Cascade foothills with her husband and as many dogs as he’ll let her adopt. Sometimes she writes something worthwhile, hopeful someone will be interested enough to read it.

Kim Harmeling: Home

My husband and I ended up in Texas a number of years ago after my job went away and the company offered me another opportunity in Houston. We could see new places, meet new people, learn new stuff -- it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Houston is a place as different economically, socially, and politically from Seattle as it’s possible to be and still be in the same country (though if you ask anyone there Texas IS a different country and never doubt that they are serious).

The biggest change, however, turned out to be something we never suspected. We never thought that moving away from our families would be so hard. We thought that with phone and email we’d have no problem keeping in touch, and we’d see them at holidays, so no big deal right? Wrong. It’s just not the same as having them local. The phone bill to our parents was astronomical and the emotional toll difficult on both ends of the line. My new job went badly, my husband couldn’t find a job at all and got tired of being a house husband, and the house we bought was drafty, hot, and bug-infested. The dogs even got sick from the heat and developed allergies to the lawn grass and the fire ants.

We felt disconnected – adrift in a place with unfamiliar societal rules and full of people with no inclination to teach us. A place where it’s legal to carry a weapon without a permit as long as it’s out in the open where everyone can see it and where having an open container of liquor in the car is okay as long as it’s in a bag where no one can see it. The combination of the two doesn’t even bear thinking about but the results made the news every single day. A place where it was every person for themselves, more overtly than anywhere we’d ever been. It felt wrong on every level but we couldn’t figure out why, in this new city where we were supposed to be having a great experience, we were so very unhappy.

Family for us is ballast, providing the stability we need to navigate the uncertainties of life. Houston was full that – uncertainties. Jobs, house, health, friends, all of it unknowable. We felt stuck there, having made the commitment to move and seeing no way out of the situation. Stuck without the stability we were used to and, to our surprise, discovered was essential to both happiness and sanity.

We lasted one year, almost to the day, before we got out and came back home as fast as we could. It took us two of the longest days I can ever remember, just to get out of the damn state of Texas. Five days later when we drove across the Washington state line, I thought my husband was going to pull the car over, get out and kiss the ground.

This particular moving experience gave me a deep appreciation for the people and places where I grew up. It’s amazing how many people move away to a different city, different state, or even a different country for college, a job, to serve their country, or just for the adventure of it, only to move back home later in their lives. It might be two years or twenty years, but they do come back. Not necessarily to their parent’s house, mind you, though economics force many to do so, but at least back to the city or even the neighborhood where they grew up. Back to home territory, gone to ground so to speak, in an area where the rules, faces and social norms are familiar. A place where you can settle in and breathe deep. Back to family, in whatever form that may take.

We return with the things we learned while moving around, pieces of culture picked up along the way, friendships made in distant cities or lands, new ideas and perspectives that we share with our family and friends and which make our shared lives richer and more appreciated for the experiences had elsewhere. So, move away to that school, job, lover, or locale you have to discover, but don’t be surprised to find yourself moving back for reasons you might not be able to define. Write while you’re gone, email, or call but come on back home when you’re ready and share with us what you’ve learned.

We can hardly wait.