The summer of 1968. On the most idyllic two hundred acre farm in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, whose main house had been an inn during the Revolutionary War, I worked as a nanny to four children, four horses, and a wacky pregnant Gordon Setter named Sita.
Sita and I danced to the same tune in ways.
The oriental rugs in this home were so spectacularly, intricately designed, that their patterns could make one dizzy, if one didn’t simply treat them as floor coverings and take no notice.
Sita and I could not do this. Where I was bedazzled by the beauty and artistry, Sita’s eyes seemed to take the patterns down her spinal cord and out to her long lopey limbs and one would find her staring at a spot on a rug while her entire body danced. One could not break this spell with words or food or any other ‘normal’ lure…Sita was captured until she wasn’t, and gyrating uncontrollably.
My days were busy with the children, singing and hiking and blueberry picking and pond dipping, as well as exercising the horses and brushing them and cleaning stalls, BUT there were moments, in between all of this, where I would squeeze out some time just for myself.
During these sacred respites, my plan would be to sneak away, through the woods, to the beaver pond, and sit. Just sit. And watch the quiet. BUT somehow Sita, court jester of High Meadow, would pick up on a waft of my thoughts, and just as I settled on a rock in serenity, a black rush of wavy feathery fur would leap off of a log and land in a pile of leaves and then jump straight up into the air, feet of fthe ground, chasing invisible wisps of something that no one else could see, land and take off at an intoxicating speed.
Meanwhile, while all of this was going on, she happened to be pregnant, which we all knew but sort of forgot, in the flurry of her gymnastics and our own agendas.
On the particular day that Sita’s pupply delivery time arrived, she seemed to be ‘plugged’ somehow. The masters of the house were not home and the only availble car was a huge Landrover with a stick shift. With the voices of four wildIly excited children screaming, “You can do it, Francie, we know you can! You just have to pull that thing that way! You have to put your foot over there and pump down! Wait! Wait! You can’t go THROUGH the river! NO! It’s the other way, we have to turn around!” All of this driving through the woods while Sita is careening off the seat onto the floor and happily straining but seemingly oblivious to pain or mayhem.
I learned to drive a stick shift that day and Sita delivered eleven puppies!
I have wondered through the years if any of the puppies inherited their mother’s touched, adorable, none such, joyous spirit.
And every time I see a Gordon Setter my insides cannot stop chuckling.