anniversorry.

it was the two year anniversary of when r. first asked to dogwalk with me. i think for some reason anniversaries make me nervous. sure enough we had a argument and it was over nothing really. i was telling about meeting tree and family and how sweet the pointers were and she said it's great how gentle and patient they are. but one time i said hilde got impatient and grabbed her ball back and grazed a kid's finger and the kid was stunned a second but the mom was calm and the kid went right on playing and no harm done realizing really it was nothing big. then i was telling about the last mom who when the pointers went up to greet her and her son turned away like they were marauders and looked withering at me over her shoulder and scuttled her son away behind the gate of the toddler playground and the kid was saying, dog! dog! and i said how i was upset that she didn't trust and open to the dogs and me and the kid missed out too. r. said you don't know though what her experience or her story was or what may have happened in her life. she said you need to show compassion and i said the mom didn't show compassion, she shut us out and her kid in. then we had a argument and both of us got stuck and angry apart and she said i don't care how she sees things, only my own p.o.v. i felt she was telling me my hurt feeling and anger about the mom who closed the gate was not o.k. and i felt judged, but really she was seeing my p.o.v. and trying to appeal to me to see another's, and i was cornering and overreacting. i realized how she felt, that i always say my p.o.v. self-righteously and don't hear hers. but, i asserted, there are many things i've got from you i've internalized and made part of my day to day, like buddhism and theosophy, and being with cats, and gradually opening to human love again, these two years. and yet i'm very quick to feel slighted or misunderstood or disrespected or dismissed. then i thought and said you are right that i would be better and happier if i was compassionate before reacting, like, you don't have to get compassion from another to feel it, and to carry it going into the community. i could just say compassion with my eyes and then if this mom was closed or afraid i could just smile and say with my eyes, that's o.k. this was our anniversary and i'm sorry r.
later, when i climbed back in bed, i thought also it's because i still have the little wincing stigmatas on my hands and feet, my affliction is still with me, not that that is an excuse, but it is suffering, and i haven't quite learned suffering with non-attachment, though i know it can be, as well as suffering brings compassion, if we let it in.