Who are our children’s heroes? Professional athletes are lacking, just ask Nike disc jockey Marion Jones. Politicians and movie stars aren’t exactly reliable sources of inspiration either. I am fortunate enough to have a live-in hero right here at home: Carter’s Dad.
There are lots of heroic things about Kevin — he holds Reality Sports together. He holds me together sometimes. He can last for days without sleep and only get mildly psychotic. He can leap over cat vomit in a single bound, build an entire city with his own two hands (and a keyboard) and take the city back down too. But last Sunday night I saw pure, nothing but net, hero.
On our way out to visit Grand-dad Gary and Grandma Carol’s house we spotted a tragedy in the making. One beagle down on the side of the road, and another mournfully standing guard. We pulled over and Kevin got out to check on the dogs.
“She’s breathing,” he called back to the car. I dropped Carter and Momargie off at my dad’s. Dad thought the beagles belonged to the house across the street from where she’s been hit. I called but no one answered. Armed with a cell phone and phone book, I headed back to Kevin.
While Kevin sat in the road with the injured canine, I ran from house to house, trying to find the dog’s family or friends. While waiting furtively for someone to answer my knocks, I looked over at Kevin. There he was, tenderly stroking the dog’s head and talking to her. When a car came speeding over the hill, Kevin stepped to the middle of the road and held out his hand, traffic-cop style. Grudgingly, the car slowed down and avoided hitting my husband and the beagle.
I was filled with love for my hero, the patron saint of beagles. Kevin is not a particularly extroverted man. He does not volunteer for socializing with strangers. He has a tendency to avoid confrontation at most costs, but here he was, standing in the middle of a country road, standing up to speeding pick-up trucks, directing traffic, for a Beagle.
It’s not just dominating 4 x 4’s that makes Kevin the hero of our story. We are not strangers to animal emergencies. Our dog Snooks has eaten rat poison and an electrical cord. We lost our cat Was to liver failure, and our cat Maurice to a phantom stroke or heart attack. Cleo, our beagle, has eaten countless things he shouldn’t, not to mention the time he forgot to stop before crashing into the stereo. Honey, our briefest pet, went to get spayed and never returned.
All of these incidents were difficult to bear, and required some recovery time. But here was Kevin, volunteering for deathbed duty with a dog he’d never met before. While I raced from house to house, needing somehow to keep moving to feel that I could, if I ran hard enough, save the dog, Kevin bravely accompanied this small creature through a journey that terrifies me. He stroked her head and cradled her until she died. Then, he carried her across the street and set her in her owner’s yard so the other beagle would stop running into the road to check on his friend.
“He’ll need to say good-bye,” he said, nodding at the healthy beagle who followed in his steps.
I wrote a note to the dog’s owners so they would know what happened when they returned home. I mentioned that my husband sat with the dog while we tried to contact a vet, but we were too late. What I didn’t write, but what I felt, was that my husband braved one of the most frightening human situations. He endured not being able to fix a bad situation. He held still, and was present, in the midst of speeding SUV’s, a racing wife and a dying dog, Kevin remained a calm, soothing force of peace.
Not everyone would have stopped upon seeing an injured animal on the road. Fewer people would spend time tracking down the owner and contacting a vet. But only a true hero would stop the world for a few moments for the purpose of loving a beagle.
