Liberal> Connie Schultz> Amazing Grac Ie

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Amazing Grac(ie)

For the 12th year in a row, I have hung Gracie's Christmas stocking on the mantel.

How many more times, I wonder, will she be here to lean against my leg when I do that?

I hate when I think about that, but I guess I'm trying to brace myself for a hard truth. No matter how much you love some someone, you can't keep them from leaving. I look at her graying face and watch how slowly she works into a trot, and the evidence is irrefutable: The old girl's getting on.

Pets are wrapped up in their humans' memories, which start the first time they meet. I never have known a pet owner who doesn't have a story about that first hello. Our life with Gracie began on Valentine's Day in 1998, only days after my father had called with great cheer to announce he'd bought a pug for my 9-year-old daughter.

I repeat: I could hear the cheer in my father's voice. Now, that was something. As a rule, Dad didn't do cheer. He was one of those speak-softly-and-drive-a-big-truck kinds of guys. But that day, he was downright giddy.

The back story: For months, Cait had been clipping every photo she could find of the squished-face dogs. Every time she showed me another picture, I'd smile and say, "Not yet, honey." We were a one-parent, one-income family, and pugs aren't cheap.

My father had other ideas, and he quickly dispelled me of the notion that this decision had anything to do with me.

"My granddaughter wants a pug," he said. "Her grandfather's going to get her one."

Gracie arrived at our home swaddled in a receiving blanket and cradled in the arms of my mother, who cooed as if she was holding her newest grandchild. This apparently triggered an eerie childhood memory of my own. I pulled back the blanket, took one peek at that face and noted the striking resemblance to my baby brother. I immediately was reprimanded in much the same fashion as I was when I scowled at his arrival in 1963.

Cait had no idea what my parents were up to, so when I told her to sit in the big green chair and close her eyes, she did so with the polite boredom of a child expecting another cardboard heart of candy.

Instead, a squirming sausage of a pup was plopped into her lap. Cait giggled until she cried.

That Christmas, I stitched stockings for Gracie and our two cats to create a bigger family for a little girl who missed her grown-up brother and longed for more siblings. Gracie's caricature is that of a bug-eyed puppy who used to ricochet around the house like a cartoon bullet every time we walked through the door.

So much has changed in 12 years, and Gracie has been with me through it all. Mom and Dad are gone. Cait grew up and took the big green chair with her. I remarried in 2004, and the row of stockings for our growing family stretches the length of the mantel.

Gracie is now a cancer survivor. She is virtually blind, has lost nine of her teeth and has the selective hearing of a teenager. Yell at her to leave one of the cats alone and she acts as if you're talking to the neighbors. Whisper "hamburger" and she attaches herself to your ankle like Velcro to boiled wool.

She's still thrilled when I come home. She may be deaf and blind and usually sleeping, but she still can smell. I pull off my coat and lean in close. One whiff of me and her tail wags, even before she opens her eyes.

Christmas is coming, and we have our rituals. Each night, I start a fire, slide another holiday movie into the DVD player and scoop up Gracie onto the couch.

She burrows into my lap like a nesting wolf. After a few spins, she collapses and then sighs as if she's just climbed Mount Vesuvius.

That's my cue. Right hand hits "play" on the remote. Left hand rests on the gentle pug named Gracie, who reminds me every day it's a wonderful life.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House, "Life Happens" and "... and His Lovely Wife." She is a featured contributor in a recently released book by Bloomsbury, "The Speech: Race and Barack Obama's 'A More Perfect Union.'" To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.