Go! Go! Go!

Tonight, the eve of a new year, ripe with beginning in a way that can't compete with spring, the time of true rebirth and growth, I opened eBay to pictures of weights, a stability ball, and a Polar heart rate watch with the words "Commit to a New You" headlining the page. What's wrong with the old me? I thought, instantly offended because eBay's marketing department assumed I was fat and unfit. The weights were even a light three and five pounds, as if some Internet profile had informed the advertisers that I was too old and weak to lift tens and fifteens. I clicked out of the site, unwilling to search for a new seller of Lindt's dark chocolate bars, the reason I'd logged on, and closed my laptop with the hope that a few eBay employees might experience a blast of disappointment in failed marketing strategy.

An hour later I sat at a takeout dinner of Thai food, and my son's girlfriend, having read my "Now! Now! Now!" post from yesterday, asked, "You don't really mean that, do you? About not making resolutions?" To convince me how I was missing out Katie listed her own resolves: 1) complete a marathon, 2) train for a triathlon, 3) run at least four days a week, 4) lift weights, and 5) get married. "Want to swim with me?" she ended, her young eyes bright, and her young body bursting with energy, not much unlike Bella, the fawn boxer of my recent photo shoot. Instead of feeling inspired to swim in a pool that groups of small children and seniors had peed, spat, and dripped mucous in, I felt like she, too, was saying I was fat.

"I don't have time," I answered quickly, remembering how Bella had encouraged fun activities in dog-speak, not soul-sucking drama like middle-aged naked women in the YWCA  locker room.

"That's the point," Katie said. "You make the time."

If I could actually "make" time, I'd be selling minutes like nobody's business. I didn't say this, though, not wanting to crush her youthful idealism, but time can't be stolen, taken, or made. It isn't even really possible to divide it. Time does what it wants just like a teenager, regardless of the power I try to wield.

So, back to the lessons dogs teach: Not Bella this time, but Heelside's Crankin Rankin Reel, Shona Michaud's Austrialian shepherd. As I photographed him, I marveled at how Rankin ignored basic laws of gravity and time. He leaped and raced in a life's-so-wonderful style. And as he returned everything I'd given him, dropping it gently at my knees where I knelt on the frozen ground, I did not feel that Rankin believed I should eat less chocolate and exercise more. When he looked into my face, his head tilted softly to the side, and his muscles ready for now, I felt this dog believed we should cut back on the planning, the bemoaning, and the wasting of time, and simply Go! Go! Go! before all time runs out.