It's So Easy - Duff Mckagan [138]
PART EIGHT
YOU CAN’T PUT YOUR ARMS AROUND A MEMORY
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
When my daughter Grace was in the third grade, she came up to me one day and said, “Dad, how come you don’t drink wine when all of the other grown-ups do?”
This was a really good question. She had realized that when guests came over or when we all went out to dinner, other people—including Susan, of course—had drinks. People had asked me how I was going to tell my kids about my past drug and alcohol use. Grace’s question gave me an opportunity to tell her a little bit.
“Well, honey, that is a very good question and I am glad you asked. You see, I have an allergic reaction to that stuff. If I were to have just one glass, I would then have to have another. Two glasses would turn into four, and my allergy would make me want to drink all of the stuff that we have in the house. I would then have to go to the grocery store to buy everything that they had there, and I would drink all of that. I would probably start to get really crazy, and I wouldn’t be like your dad for a while.”
“Oh,” she said. “You’d better not have a glass of wine, then!”
“That is what I am thinking, too, honey.”
Back home in late 2005, I found that two little girls put a rather pink hue on my world. Three exclamations dominated our household:
“Cute!”
“OMG!”
“Awwww!”
I had given up my hopes of them becoming die-hard Mariners fans or backcountry hiking enthusiasts. And so far they showed no interest in the guitar. But I loved that they always seemed to need something from me, even if it was just a simple cuddle. Looking around, I realized I was living the life I had always dreamed of—the life I had given up on as unattainable while in the throes of addiction. Here I was, white picket fence and all. Well, okay, it was actually black wrought iron. But still.
The girls had been asking for a new dog for several years, and up to now Susan and I had always shaken our heads no. We decided the time might finally be right that Christmas. Still, we traveled a ton as a family, and split time between L.A. and Seattle. I had crated Chloe on flights enough times to know that flying was no fun for a pet. If we were to get our kids a dog, we would have to get one that could fly with us in the cabin. Of course, this brought with it another dilemma—I am not the biggest fan of little yip-yap dogs.
We started to pore through dog breed books, feeling ourselves getting excited again about the prospect of a new little guy in the house. (We decided we would get a boy dog to even out the estrogen/testosterone ratio in Casa McKagan.) Every small breed we ran across, however, carried a warning about the way the breed interacted with small children. That is, until we found a picture of a breed that we fell instantly in love with: the Cavalier King Charles spaniel. They were reportedly great with kids—and they didn’t yip. Sold.
The next step was to go online and find some breeders up near where Santa lived. I quickly realized breeders of small dogs were a freaky lot. I received, for instance, a picture of a prospective puppy dressed in a pink dress that matched its owner’s. One breeder didn’t have a computer and didn’t know anybody who did, but said I was more than welcome to meet her at the Kmart just outside of some dinky eastern Washington town and follow her sixty miles back to her farm.
Listen, lady, I saw Deliverance.
Luckily for us, Santa came through on Christmas morning. The girls went wild with excitement. They quickly agreed on a name for the new dog. The day before, they had gone to NORAD’s Santa Tracker Web site and ended up trading emails with an “elf” named Buckley. So Buckley it was. (And yes, the site really exists.)
I still wanted to address the chronic sinus infections that had kept me under the weather for much of the last few years. I had a CT scan done at an ear, nose, and throat specialist in L.A. It turned out my sinuses were totally fucked up—completely closed in some areas, burned through elsewhere, and in no shape to rid themselves of infection. That would