Lynch is dead.
Trump is going to be president.
The world is changing.
My father died when I was five.
One day, in front of a shop window, he asked me to choose a stuffed animal.
I wanted the big gray dog.
"Don’t you prefer the monkey?" – he’d had a monkey when he was young.
I said no, the dog.
So, the dog.
It’s always stayed with me, almost by accident.
I never took special care of it.
It wasn’t the first thing I packed when moving. I almost forgot about it.
But somehow, it followed me.
Like a dog.
And recently, I rearranged my room, and it’s still there, sitting on a bench.
My room is almost empty, you see:
The bed, a few books, a wardrobe with not much in it.
And the dog.
When my son sleeps over, often in the morning, he comes into my room and shouts, "Big Dog!"
He picks it up in his arms.
He takes it to his room to play with his other stuffed animals.
After a while, I tell him, "Big Dog is tired; he needs to go back to bed."
He says okay and puts him back on the bench.
He puts a bandage on him "because his leg hurts."
He turns him the right way "so he can see."
It makes me smile every time.
But tonight, thinking about it all, I’m in tears.
