Kim Ellis
9-18-10
The Dog Crate
We went to Israel in 1962 because my father was depressed. That’s what my old aunt says, and she’s the only one still alive who would know. My sister was away at college in West Los Angeles, and I was eleven years old. In those days, adult problems like mid-life crises weren’t shared with kids. My aunt thinks that my father was dissatisfied with his work and my mother decided he needed a change. So our house and surrounding acreage were sold to a private school. The furniture was stored somewhere, and the dogs were given away to friends. All I knew was that my home had been disassembled like a jigsaw puzzle and a long journey lay ahead.
My mother planned the trip: first, a leisurely tour through Europe, full of new sights and fascinating places to pull my father out of his blue funk; then on to Israel, where my father could find work in his field of child psychology. He was, after all, a pioneer in the treatment of autism.
The trip didn’t go according to plan. Traveling with me, a homesick and sullen preteen was a trial for my parents. I was not interested in museums or historic locales; I missed my friends and my dog. I succumbed to the stress by acquiring frequent respiratory illnesses, thereby being allowed to stay in bed in the hotel where I read books and wrote nasty things about my mother in my journal.
It was in Amsterdam that my parents decided to get me a dog. Surely my father must have had serious reservations about traveling with a dog. No doubt my mother convinced him, perhaps because I was so despondent and lonely. Of course, the only kind of dog I wanted was an Italian greyhound like the one left behind in California. Scampi was a lively, spunky little dog that held his own with our other dog, a standard poodle. My mother found a kennel that bred miniature whippets as there were no Italian greyhounds available around Amsterdam. I remember going to the kennel and choosing the shyest dog in the litter. While all the other pups squiggled, yipped, and tumbled at my feet, the tan and white one watched from a corner. I wanted her and no other, even though my father cautioned me that it would be better to choose one of the more friendly pups. He knew about dogs and he was right, but I wouldn’t heed his warning. I identified with the shy, frightened small one, and her I would have.
We named her “Cane” which means “dog” in Italian. Within twenty-four hours, her basic needs became my father’s responsibility. It was he who took her for her last walk before my parents went to bed and her first walk in the early morning while my mother and I slept in. He called her “the miserable mouse.” She was just that, cringing and shivering, a cowering bundle of fear. On the street, in a variety of languages, people accused my father of abusing her. When he was asked her name, his reply only brought irritation. “Yes, we know she is a dog, but what is her name?”
In late December, we arrived in Israel and found a house in Ramat Gan, a new suburb of Tel Aviv. My father did not find the work he sought. I remember he visited several clinics and hospitals. My old aunt says that perhaps he lacked the necessary qualifications; he did not have a PhD in psychology. Whatever the reason, we left Israel five months later.
As I remember it, the story goes like this: my father went to the airline terminal to find out about bringing the dog home to California. The lines for the air freight office were long and it was hot. The native Israelis, known as “sabras,” are nothing like the British, who wait politely and quietly in their queues. Israelis are loud and pushy and they eat a lot of onions and garlic. Surrounded by noisy, sweaty, impatient sabras, my father waited in line for a long time and finally got the dimensions of the crate required by the transport regulations.
He came home and built a crate of wood and wire to those exact measurements. My father was a perfectionist--today we’d call him OCD--and it is certain that the crate he built was precisely the size it was supposed to be. He then returned to the air freight office with the crate and waited in the hot, long line again. Finally, he got to the reception window and showed the crate to the official. The man told my father it was the wrong size. That is what precipitated my father’s first heart attack, although we didn’t know about it until we were back in the States.
We flew home to Los Angeles the next day, without Cane. She was given to a neighbor boy, Ofer Catz. I don’t remember being terribly sad to leave Cane behind. I think I was mad about it, and blamed my father, but I didn’t miss her. It was probably such a relief to be going home at last. Of course, when I got home to L.A., my father was hospitalized. My mother was occupied caring for her invalid husband, and I had to adjust to a new school again. But that is another story.
