The Dog of a Million Names
Kids weren’t particularly nice in school, a tale as old as time really. I grew thick and prickly skin, the kind that protects from a really soft center.
When I was a kid, my parents would go on a week-long work trip once a year, and my grandparents baby sat my sister and me. I looked forward to this trip because every year Biba and I managed to convince my grandfather to get us a “pet.” We started with a hamster, Phoebe, I’m sure there was a turtle in there, and other hamsters, Napoleon and Homer, even a guinea pig called Maurice. My mother dreaded coming home because she knew there would be a new family member she didn’t particularly approve of, but her love of all creatures would mean “if its already home, it stays.” Having groomed them in years prior, we convinced my grandparents to go to the local pet store on Saturday to visit the cat and dog adoption fair, we were upping our game.
It was on that fateful Saturday afternoon in August 2001, I was only 13, that I met the furry creature who would become my better half for nearly 2 decades. There are hundreds of stories I can tell you, like the ridiculous one about how she was named using a Tupi-Guarani dictionary that had hyphenated the word for her name at the bottom of one page and the top of the other, and Marion and I mistakenly only read the latter half — confident for years on what her name meant until a fateful adulthood revisit to that very same dictionary. Or the story about how a few days after she was named [Caa]Tinga, my Mexican friend came over and could not believe what we had done.
We moved to the US when I was 16, kids weren’t very kind then either, but I arrived with calloused skin. When I heard things like “go back to Afghanistan” on my first day on the school bus, I wasn’t fully prepared, but I wasn’t surprised either. I know I was a ‘strange’ kid, with odd habits like being able to recite the entire DMX Grand Champ album or itching my throat loudly because I had bad allergies. I played sports and I had a few good friends, but it was never easy. It’s not remembered with those ‘I wish I could go back’ memories. It’s remembered with awe at my strength and resilience, how such a small child could navigate with such relentless determination.
The day we went to the pet fair with my grandparents we weren’t allowed to come home with my best friend. “Dogs aren’t hamsters, Sophia.” It was painful leaving her — so small and alone in that tiny cage, but we did. I got the dog adoption person’s phone number and called as often as I could to make sure my dog hadn’t been chosen. My goal was to introduce her to the parents the following week and plead a convincing case. When my mother arrived from her trip, I made her call every day while I was at school. The male voice on the other end assuring her no one had taken ‘my’ dog. He told tall tales of circus elephants needing rescue and how they were going to bust the giant pachyderms out of their imprisonment. I like to imagine my mother enjoyed these conversations, but probably it was just love for me. The following Saturday finally came, we left home early that morning, the full family in tow.
Yesterday, after 18 incredible years, we had to let Tinga go. I had taken her to every single vet appointment she’d ever had (later in life, only when I was in country), but this one I could not stomach. At nearly 31 years old I let my parents do one more beautiful act of service for me. I knew this day would come, but one is never prepared — one only has calloused skin. At our last goodbye she looked just as young as she had 18 years ago, both ears bent forward, quizzical, “why aren’t you coming with me this time?” All I could muster was dragging my tired body into the shower. It was under that cold waterfall that it finally hit me, a bag of bricks.
Tinga was one of the more ugly dogs you’ve ever seen, when we moved to the US people wouldn’t ask what type of dog she was, rather what she was (as in, what animal). The kind of creature that is so ugly they are cute. The first time I saw her she was alone in a tiny metal cage lying on wet newspaper, all human attention diverted to the furrier, fluffier, cuter puppies. It was in that moment that I chose her, I never really knew why, not till now anyway. When I chose her, at the tender age of 13, I decided to do for her what I so desperately wanted others to do for me. Let me out and then let me in.
She wasn’t doing too well around Christmas, we called her our phoenix. 1–2 days a bit wonky and ill, and then she’d rise on the third day all energy and excitement. The last several weeks have been some of the most difficult I’ve faced, she must have known. They always do. She’d visit my room early in the morning, I’d hear her nails slowly tick the hardwood floor until I felt her beside my bed, she’d sit with me and let me hold her.
Tinga wasn’t perfect, none of us are, she taught me that lesson every day. Even in her imperfection she was do deeply worthy of love — and so, I must finally ask, aren’t we all?
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To the queen who never left my side, who taught me to love myself and helped me shed all the decades of prickly skin. A lifetime of gratitude for my best friend and teacher, the dog of a million names, Minu Tingalilla.
