Sunrise, Sunset

By Carrie Jacobson

Sometimes at this time of year, I find myself confused – about what time of year it is. Is it autumn? Is it early spring? The earth looks so much the same. The trees are bare, the ground is hard, the only color is in the sky.

Last night, I watched a TV show about the migration of monarch butterflies. On wings 4 inches wide, they fly from Canada to Mexico, a journey they’ve never made before, never been taught, never learned –  they just know.

There are so many miracles.

Waiting

By Carrie Jacobson

Niobe was a good cat. No, she was a great cat.

I was about to start college at Northeastern University in Boston, and I was living in a city for the first time, and living alone for the first time. I was lonely and I was scared, and I went to the local animal shelter to get a cat, but came away with a dog.

Her name was October, and she was a beautiful cross of a German shepherd and maybe an Australian shepherd. That first day, we walked around the city for the whole day. Eight or nine hours, we walked, and at the end of it, she wanted to walk more. We walked the entire day the next day, and still, I hadn’t dented her energy level.

What had started as a well-founded doubt now became a clear and unavoidable problem: I would not be able to take my day-school courses, and my night-school courses (I was going to cooking school at night), and have this dog.

So in tears, I brought her back to the shelter.

I left, and walked home. I made it as far as the lawn of the Museum of Fine Arts, which was next to my apartment building, and I sat down and I wept. I wept for October, I wept for myself, I wept for all the dogs in shelters, and all the dogs abandoned and unloved, and then I heard someone say my name.

It was one of my neighbors in the apartment building. He wanted to know where the dog was. I told him my story, crying the whole time.

“You brought her back to the shelter?” he asked.

“Yes,” I wailed, feeling like the worst person on the face of the earth.

“Angell Memorial?” he asked.

I nodded.

“I’m going to get her,” he said. “Right now. I’m moving to the country tomorrow, to a farm, with, like, 20 acres. I love that dog. I’m going to go get her.”

And off he went.

The next day, he and October moved, and I went back to the shelter. There was another wrinkle in this story, for another time, but in the end, I came home with Niobe, a pure white cat, who was probably a year old.

She was an amazing cat, and a funny one, too. Her fur was so thick, and her body so round, she always looked a little like a stuffed cat. Throughout her life, she spent good amounts of time staring at nothing. Staring into corners, staring into space, just watching the air. Also, she was a klutz. She misjudged distances,  and would fall off things she was clearly hoping to jump onto.

She was a food hound, and for years, I fought with her over my food. If I had muffins, she would find them and eat them, including jumping up onto the refrigerator, one day, and tearing open a bag and eating nearly an entire corn muffin.

I’d end up using cereal boxes to make walls around my breakfast, because I couldn’t keep her off the table or away from my bowl. When I moved in with Peter, he set out to keep Niobe on the floor. He’d find her on the dining room table, and she’d stick her head under a newspaper or magazine, figuring that if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her.

If I went away for any length of time, I’d leave Niobe with Mom. Always, when I retrieved her, she’d be mad, and sit with her back to me for days.

But she slept on top of the covers, between my knees, nearly every night for all those years. She greeted me at the dog, dog-like, every day. She put up with other cats, other dogs, boyfriends and eventually a husband, though the first time she met Peter, she bit him.

I had her for 21 years, longer than half my life. She died while we were living in Maryland, and I buried her beneath a forsythia bush on a sunny hillside in our backyard.

This painting is from a picture of Niobe, staring off into nothingness at my mother’s house. It is oil on canvas, 36×42. For price and delivery options, email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Sam

By Carrie Jacobson

Some creatures are made for this weather, and Sam is one of them. He’s a Samoyed (don’t blame us… he came with the name!). He’s a huge dog, made even huger by his blanket-thick coat. He has hair on his ears, hair on his paws, thick hair on his face. On these frigid mornings, he is in his element, romping and stomping along in the snow, a huge smile on his face. This winter’s glee has made up for all those hot summer afternoons.

For price and delivery options, contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

Auld Lang Syne

By Carrie Jacobson

And here is the new year, fresh and untrodden as the new snow –

Until, that is, I couldn’t manage to stay awake, and kept falling back to sleep.

Until I spilled the first cup of coffee all over my clean turtleneck.

Until one of the dogs escaped and we had to race all over the neighborhood, hunting for her.

Until I got paint all over my sleeve, while moving a piece to photograph it, and then smeared my sleeve all over the computer, and the counter and the icebox and the edge of the sink, and even later in the day, my hat…

This morning, the new year, like the new snow, lay fresh and untrammeled and unmarred – until the day began.

And that’s really how it should be, I think. Dogs should track up the snow, and roll in it and decorate it. Humans should shovel it and toss it at each other and slip in it and knock it off branches and stomp it in through the house. We should live this life, make it messy, kick it up, spill things in it, get it all over us – and relish it, in the living.

So, happy new year! I wish you all fine mornings, hearty lunches, messy afternoons, and health, prosperity and good luck.

And if you’re out an about on Saturday, stop by the Wallkill River School Gallery and see my work, Shawn Dell Joyce’s work, and the work of the other artists represented by the gallery. The show will be up for the month; the opening reception is Saturday from 5-7 p.m. Artists will be painting during the reception, and there will be food and drink and plenty of good cheer. The school is on Route 17K in Montgomery. Check the website (to the right) for information and directions.

Bullie

By Carrie Jacobson

Here, at the end of the year, I look back and count my blessings, look ahead and count my hopes, and look at this present moment and feel thankful. This holiday season, my pet-painting business has truly taken off, leaving me a little exhausted and very fulfilled. The coming year will be filled with painting, with the beauty of the world in which we live, and the joy of painting dogs and cats who are loved by the families whose lives they share.

This is a Christmas commission of a dog who loved his family and is still loved by them, long after his death.

For information on having your pet painted, email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com.

Please accept my gratitude for the attention you have paid to Zest over the year and for the kind words so many of you have shared with me – and please accept my best wishes for a joyous and safe new year!

Dusting

By Carrie Jacobson

Snow dusted the ground and laced the trees on this recent morning in Orange County. The days are short, the weather uncertain, the crush of the season is upon us, but buried in all of this, under this dusting of hurry and bustle, are sweet memories and joyful reunions. Best wishes of the season to you all!

This painting is oil on canvas, 11×14. Contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com for information on price and delivery options.

First Snow, Mohonk Mountain Road

By Carrie Jacobson

As Saturday afternoon waxed into Saturday evening, the first snow of the year spun down from the sky and fell, flakes huge and sticky in the 33-degree dusk, and then, overnight, piled on limbs and lawns and the soft branches of fir trees.

In the morning, clouds and sky and snow and fields laced together in a swirl of white, and I painted wildly, working quickly in the cold and the wind, to capture what the sunlight would destroy.

I know that, soon enough, I will be tired of snow and winter and the broad reaches of white – but now, I am hungry for them, for the way they uncomplicate everything, and tie it all together.

This farm stands near the Mohonk Mountain House, just past a tremendous curve in the road. Horses grazed in the fields, finding grass beneath the morning’s snow. Only a few cars passed. The morning sparkled.

For information on price, size and delivery options, email carrieBjacobson@gmail.com.

By Carrie Jacobson

And so, December starts, and in this month of long, dark nights, we feel our age in the early sunsets, and our losses in the lateness of the dawns. We fight back, celebrating and decorating with light. We cook and clean and shop, we plan and order and wrap to fend off the fears, keep the sadness at bay. And if we are lucky, we tuck our faith – in God, in nature, in family, in art, in laughter, in humanity – close around us, and feel thankful for its warmth.

You can find some warmth and friendship and art at the Wallkill River School in Montgomery this weekend. My work and Shawn Dell Joyce’s will be included in the members’ show, which opens with a reception on Saturday, from 5-8 p.m. You’re invited; please come!

All weekend, as well, the Starving Artists sale will offer framed and unframed pieces of our work, along with the work of many other local artists, at discount prices. The school in on Route 17K in Montgomery. Check the website to the right of this column for directions and more information.

For more information on this painting, including size, price and delivery options, contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

By Carrie Jacobson

Chapter 24

Zoe and Kaja run up the road, away from the yellow house where Zoe used to live.

They run around a curve, and stop, panting, behind a bush.

Kaja peers around the edge of the bush. She can’t see the yellow house any more, but she can smell it, and the scent of the man who yelled at them and chased them away.

She turns back to Zoe, and rubs her nose along the small dog’s face. She licks the little dog’s ear, and Zoe pulls in close to the big red dog, and Kaja feels the little dog trembling.

Zoe doesn’t know what to do. She’s come so far to this little road, to this neighborhood she knew so well and loved so much. She and Kaja have followed roads, crossed fields, forged rivers. They’ve faced danger, outsmarted people, and been tempted time and again to stay, to rest, to settle, but they kept moving. They kept walking and traveling and fighting, to get here, to this place that was supposed to be home.

And now it’s not home. It’s just a yellow house on a little road, a yellow house with strangers who yell and kick and hate.

The dogs don’t know what to do. And so they do what dogs do. They curl up beneath the bush and sleep.

They sleep, and they dream dog dreams. Kaja runs with deer. She races, fleet and swift and silent through the woods, leaping like flight, running so fast that winter never catches her, hunger never catches her, death never catches her. Zoe dreams, and in her dream, she’s in the yellow house, curled up in front of the fire. James is sitting in a chair, reading, and the woman is in the kitchen, cooking something that smells delicious. In her dream, Zoe is happy and warm and full, and everything is as it is supposed to be.

She hears the neighbor’s voice through the window then, and in her dream, she listens hard, and she hears the sound of James’s car in the driveway. And then she hears him talking to the neighbor, and in her dream she imagines she can smell his scent – and it is so real, so close, that it wakes her up – and she listens, and sniffs the air –

And she jumps up. She jumps up so quickly that she wakes Kaja, and the big dog raises herself up, and stares at Zoe, and Zoe barks, once, twice – and cocks her head and listens.

She barks again.

And again.

And then she hears it.

“Zoe?” the voice calls.  “Zoe?”

And Zoe barks again, and begins running down the road, barking, running as fast as her tiny legs will carry her, and as she and Kaja round the corner, the big dog sees a man running toward them, a man with dark hair and a beard and a huge smile on his face, and he sees the little dog and calls her name again, but  this time, tears have choked his voice, and he reaches Zoe, and bends down and picks her up in both hands, and holds her close to his face and says her name, again and again and again.

Zoe is wagging and wriggling so hard that James has to hold her tight, and he presses his face against her, saying her name again and again, and the little blind dog licks his tears away, and snuggles tight as she can against the man she loves.
The End

Epilogue

James Dunning took Zoe and Kaja back to the house he and his wife were sharing with her mother.  If we’re going to stay here, he told her, these dogs are staying with us. Susan’s mother finally agreed. It turned out that she wasn’t as allergic as she’d led them to believe.

Soon enough, Susan’s hours picked back up, and James started a new job at Orange Regional Medical Center. By the start of 2010, he and Susan were able to give their renters notice, and move back into the little yellow house.
Now, they were four: James and Susan and their two dogs, Kaja and Zoe.

A note to readers:

The animals in this story are based on our own animals. Zoe actually is a blind lhasa apso. Our daughter got Zoe from the Connecticut Humane Society, and we ended up taking her a few years later. Zoe is about 12, we think. She is a fierce and loving little dog, happy and sweet but serious about her role as a guardian, blind or not.

Kaja is based on our big red German shepherd-chow. We got her as a puppy, from the shelter in Westminster, Maryland. Kaja is about the smartest, most noble dog ever. She’s 13, and arthritis is taking a toll on her, but she’s still happy to greet every day.

Loosey was a wonderful cat of ours, who was killed by a coyote. She was a smart and sweet and funny cat who loved the woods and the sun and the big, broad outdoors. I wrote this story in her memory.

Thank you for reading.

Carrie can be reached at carrie@zestoforange.com

Zoe, asleep on the couch; Loosey, beneath the couch

The real me, with the real Kaja and a painting I made of Kaja

The real Zoe

By Carrie Jacobson

The harvest is in, the days are shorter and winter has grasped us with a light, firm grip. The color has drained away and the fields look burnished and rich in the early hours of day.

For information on the size and price of this painting, and delivery options, contact carrieBjacobson@gmail.com