Do you know your totem?

My husband is recovering from ankle surgery, and, as both a competitive athlete and a business owner, it’s excruciating for him to sit still. Meanwhile, our dog, who accompanies him on his 10 mile daily training excursions, is bored to death. My 3-mile jogs just aren’t doing it for him.

Early in his recovery, we are standing at the back door, and I am trying to say something that will make him go and elevate his leg and not go to work or do any of the other things he wants to do.

While we are talking, our Labrador keeps scratching on the back door. It’s not a full-scale plea; it’s just a rhythmic reminder of his restlessness: scratch, pause, scratch, scratch, pause.

So my husband says something that makes me think: he says that sometimes he feels like the dog is a reflection of his true nature; a part of his soul that has broken out and come through so that we can see it and better understand it. This was the part that feels freedom and delight in the simple things, but which now feels restless, cooped up, trapped.

This immediately strikes me as so profoundly true that I have to put my hand on the dog to make sure he is warm and living and breathing and not something I had merely conjured from thin air.

We should all have these totems for our true nature. I try to imagine what mine would look like. Not a 94-pound black lab, certainly. I do believe mine would be canine, but I’m a little more high strung and complex, so – a jack Russell terrier, maybe, or, better yet, a Pomeranian, something that just needs the occasional walk around the block to be happy.

Some people are definite cats: my middle child, for instance. She likes nothing more than to lie, stretched out, in the sun while the rest of us are frantic to fetch balls.

Other people are snakes.

Some are birds – those are pretty easy to spot.

It’s an interesting question. What are you?

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