Do you believe in magic?

I do. It’s out there, but we often overlook it.

Tonight, I ate beets because of a little black dog from Texas. There’s magic in this.

In the late spring of 2017, Samwise and I set out on a cross-country road trip. We left after a Saturday afternoon book event for Will’s Red Coat at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We spent that first night outside of Philadelphia. Over the next few days, we worked our way down the coast until we arrived in Savannah. We stayed for two nights because I wanted to visit Bonaventure Cemetery. Most tourists stop there because it was in the book and movie Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

I had a different reason. One hundred and fifty years earlier, John Muir walked from Indiana to the Gulf of Mexico. It was in the wake of the Civil War. It was the first of his grand adventures. By the time he reached Savannah, he was out of money. He wrote to his family but had to wait for its arrival. Being broke, he could not afford food or a place to stay. So he slept in Bonaventure Cemetery atop of one of the raised graves.

I did not have a plan for my first road trip; I merely wanted to see America and touch the Pacific. But the idea of stopping where Muir stopped, intrigued me. I feel an affinity for the writer and naturalist, and we share a birthday.

From Savannah, we drove west to Atlanta, had dinner with friends. The following day we drove through Alabama. We stopped in Selma and walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I was a year removed from the hospital but weak, and I nearly fainted.

The next day, we began a long drive across Texas. At one point, I don’t even remember the location, but we were on a congested four-lane highway that seemed like a racetrack. We were speeding along, and I noticed a small black dog sitting beside the freeway.

A dog? That was a dog?

It was sitting calmly, hopefully, as if waiting for a ride.

My first thought was that someone had abandoned it. I tried to stop, but it was impossible, and we were four lanes away. I took the next exit, doubled back, and drove in the right lane. When we came to where the dog had been sitting, we pulled over.

We spent an hour in the trees to no avail, and I realized that there was no neighborhood or businesses close. It was clear someone had indeed ditched the dog.

My heart broke, and repeatedly broke, throughout the remaining seven weeks of our trip whenever I thought back to whatever could have become of the dog.

We returned home in July, and my dreams often took me back there, seeing him or her waiting for a ride that would never return.

My health continued to be iffy, and my hands were full with young Samwise. It became clear that while I might not last a long time—a doctor told me five to ten years was reasonable—Sam needed more than just me.

In October, when a hurricane threatened Houston, the shelters needed room for the homeless animals sure to be delivered to them. Our local humane society received several of these dogs. Every one was snatched up quickly. Every one, save a little black dog from Texas.

For some reason, no one was interested in her.

I contacted Virginia Moore, the director of the humane society, and suggested that we help six-month-old Millie find a home. Samwise and I would pose with her, and post the photos on the Following Atticus Facebook page. It was something Atticus and I had done together in the past, and it was effective.

When we met Millie, she was out of control, with boundless energy. No wonder no one had adopted her, I thought.

But looking in her eyes, I thought back to that little black dog we could not help.

Fuck.

The last thing I wanted with my unstable health was a handful I could not keep up with. And yet for reasons beyond my understanding, I asked Virginia if we could take her for a drive to Thorne Pond. Millie was leashed, but once we began walking, she was responsive to me, and I decided to trust her. I unhooked the leash, and she stayed with us for the entire hour.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity fuck.

I knew.

But what was I doing? I understood that Samwise was the first dog I’d lived with who would outlive me.

Now I had two dogs I would not outlive. Arrangements were made for the inevitable.

After adopting Emily Binx Hawthorne, ten minutes into our ride home, she wrapped one of her paws around my wrist and fell asleep with her head on my arm. That reaffirmed everything.

Over the next nine months, my health did not improve; it worsened. My weight was up to 320 pounds, sixty-five pounds heavier than when I left the hospital. I was on medication for blood clots, high blood pressure, a beta-blocker, and a diuretic for my heart and kidneys.

Samwise, a former street dog, though close to me, belongs to himself. He is independent and will continue to thrive if something happens to me. But Ms. Emily is a different story. When I die, she will be lost, for I am her world.

I carry immense guilt for not being there for Atticus in the five weeks I was in the hospital before he died. It’s the one regret I have from those years.

When he needed me, I was helpless and in Maine Med for five weeks fighting for my life, trying to get back to him.

He waited, and, as you know, died in my arms twelve days after I returned.

That guilt will forever haunt me. Trying to untie it is why I changed my life. If I could not be there for Atticus, I can be here for Samwise and Emily.

I revolutionized the way I was living, trying to live for Emily. First, I read Dr. Michael Greger’s How Not to Die. By the time we returned from our second cross-country trip a year ago, I had lost a hundred pounds. I stopped taking the beta-blocker and the blood pressure medication.

I then began Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn’s Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease program. It’s a whole-food, plant-based approach to eating with no oils, minimal fats (even healthy ones like avocado and nuts are skipped), and six servings of greens a day.

I’ve now lost 140 pounds. My resting heart rate is in the fifties. My blood pressure is 96/68.

There is no guarantee I will be here to the end for Samwise and Emily, but I now have a fighting chance. And our quality of life has improved beyond measure.

Tonight, I ate beets, because they are a nitric oxide rich food that helps people like me who have danced with death. Beets and cauliflower, broccoli, kale, spinach, asparagus, and other leafy greens. I used to hate them. Every single one of them. But beets especially.

My life has changed so much; I now crave them.

So you see, magic happens. It can appear in many forms. It calls to us and our job is to pay attention, invite it in, and grab hold with all we have.

I’m grateful for a little black dog in Texas who may or may not have survived. For I chose to live after that briefest of encounters set a series of possibilities in motion.

Here’s to magic.

Subscribe now

Feel free to share this with this on With family and friends By email, text, and social media. Your support makes this journal possible. Thank you for reading.

Give a gift subscription