My First Love

Do you remember your first love? I do. We are talking about love here on my blog and I thought we could start with our stories about loving our four legged friends. And here is my contribution for you...my dear readers.

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Most people, if you ask them, will remember their first love. I remember mine very clearly. In order to show you these images which are now decades old, we will have to go back in time.

We are going in my time machine to the mid 1970’s to my childhood. My mother and I are living on "Success Street" in a row house among all the other row houses. We are poor like all the other poor folk who live on Success Street. I am ten years old and sitting by the stereo we had, an RCA stereo with record player and 8 track player. My mother is playing a record. She had quite a collection including Dean Martin, Patsy Kline, and The Carpenters. She also liked trumpet players because my deceased father had played the trumpet. My mother had records like Herb Allpert and the Tijuana Brass Band with the infamous Baby Elephant Walk. My mother liked to do a trumpet impression with just her hands and mouth. We spent a lot of time listening to music, dancing, singing, and making trumpets out of our hands. We did have a grand time of it. We couldn't afford to go to restaurants or movies so we take it upon ourselves to amuse and entertain ourselves the best way we knew how.

I was starting to develop my own tastes in music. I remember watching the show, Sonny and Cher, back then. I wanted to be just like Cher. I didn't want my blonde hair anymore. I wanted long shiny black hair like Cher. The very first record album I bought with my own money was by Sonny and Cher. My favorite song was the song they sang during the opening of their show, “I Got You Babe.” I would play that record over and over, sitting there in front of my stereo, shaping my hands like a microphone. I would try to swing my hair around like Cher did for stage presence. And whenever I would play my music and sing, my first love was there with me.

My first love was of the four footed furry species. My father had gotten Princie for me shortly before my fourth birthday, after which my father passed away.

Princie was a mutt, a blend of German Shepard and Collie. He looked every bit the part of a scrawny mongrel but I didn’t care. He was mine and I loved him.
Princie would lie there on the floor next to me and seemed to more than tolerate my Cher impersonations. I would pet his coarse sandy hair and he would heave out sighs that sounded like he was talking to me. He was always there for me and was an integral part of my childhood.

I adored Princie. He was my friend, sometimes my only friend back then.

Of course there comes a day when all things come to an end. And it always takes you by surprise, knocking the wind right out of you. One day Princie wasn't able to get off the floor. All he could do was lie there. I felt sick to my stomach knowing that something was hurting him. He would lift his head up to look at me imploringly. I asked my mother what was going on and she did look worried. When he wouldn't get up all day and wasn't eating or drinking then we decided to get him to the vet.

The only problem was that we didn't have much money and also no real way to get him to the vet. We had no car. We were living in the inner city so my mother called a cab. As we sat waiting for the cab, I knelt down with Princie and looked him in the eyes, held his head and sang him a lullaby as any good mother would do.
The only real one I knew was that Irish one:
"Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, hush now don't you cry! too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, too-ra-loo-ra-li, too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ral, that's an Irish lullaby."
I just kept singing it over and over as I stroked Princie's head. I *knew* that something was very wrong as I held back tears.

When we finally got to the vet it was already pretty much too late for him. There were things that could have been done to stall death but it was inevitable that it was his time to die. I asked to sing the lullaby one more time to him. While alone with my dog, I cradled his head and sang. I told him I was sorry for leaving him. Lastly I told him I loved him and then I released my hold. I would walk away with his eyes forever imprinted in my memory. Princie was the one living link I had to my father. Now both were gone.

My mother and I took a bus back home. I remember it being very bright and sunny that day. I was so angry that it was a beautiful day. I wanted it to be grey. I wanted everyone to feel as I did. I didn't cry though, not on the bus, and not outside my house. Some of the neighborhood kids gathered around to ask about my dog. In kid fashion, some of them were unknowingly cruel. "Is your dog dead?" one of them asked.

We went into the house. I touched the spot where Princie had last laid down and I sang the lullaby to myself while petting the carpet.

It was not until then that I did cry.

I had lost my best friend and my first love.