An Excerpt From "Conversations With Katherine"

On Sunday morning Rudy awoke to the sound of rapidly flapping ears and the feel of warm dog breath on his arm. The ears would be Karl’s and the breath belonged to Gracie. They were mounting a full frontal attack on his peaceful slumber but he was not going to give up without a fight. He opened an eye just enough to get a look at the alarm clock; had they seen the whites of his eyes the dogs would have commenced their victory dance. It was 6:45, the middle of the day for the attackers but still too early to rise and shine for Rudy. He played possum, hoping Joan would relent and get up to let the dogs out. He did not yet realize that his snoring had driven her into the front bedroom and she’d already withstood the canine attack without surrendering to their persistent “bothering.”

Rudy was just falling back to sleep when he felt his warm slumber-nest being aggressively disassembled. Karl had a blanket firmly locked in his jaw and was tugging backwards in short bursts, a little grunt escaping his mouth with each pull. Gracie stood behind him, no doubt offering encouragement in dog language. Rudy had been surprised and amused by Karl’s antics many times since the German Shorthaired Pointer joined their family over 12 years ago. But this little trick went beyond amusement and made a half-awake Rudy burst into laughter. He conceded defeat and got out of bed to let the dogs outside.

It was still dark but the waning light of a full moon made the three inches of freshly fallen snow sparkle and shine like a disco ball. His mood buoyed by this display of natural beauty, Rudy decided to get dressed and go to the barn to feed the horses. Their primary caretaker, who was still asleep in the front bedroom, would be pleasantly surprised and grateful she did not have to brave the morning cold.

Rudy went to the front closet and pulled on his parka and gloves while Karl stood beside him whining in anticipation of the as-of-yet undetermined adventure they were about to share.
“Gracie, you’d better call the vet. It’s obvious that Karl is suffering,” Rudy teased. When they reached the barn Rudy went to the breaker box on the wall and threw the switch that turned on the lights. His heart jumped as he looked toward the stalls. The horses were standing head-to-head and to their obvious glee someone was scratching their noses.
“Hello, Mama.”
“Hi Rudy; how ya’ doin’?”

“What happened to that cute little elf hat you were wearing; Pinocchio want it back?”
“That’s pretty funny, Rudy. Perhaps that rewarding career you are so desperately seeking has to do with telling funny jokes in smoke-filled rooms.”
They both chuckled and Rudy appreciated the light-hearted mood, though he suspected more serious discussion was in the offing.

“Does this mean I’ve successfully completed my assignment,” he asked.
Kay had turned her attention away from the horses and was squatting in order to dole out some petting to the curious dogs. Rudy remembered when they met on the stream how she and Gunner had hit it off. As if on cue she asked, “What became of Gunner?”
“He died on a brutally cold winter morning,” he replied. “A week before I noticed that his belly was blowing up and I figured he was full of worms so I took him to the vet. Dr. Grass met us in the lobby and I gave her my worm diagnosis; she looked at me like I was from Mars and pulled me into an examination room. She drew some blood and scheduled a return visit for the next day.”

“Joan came with me and the doctor explained that his problem was a long way from worms; he had liver damage and she speculated that less than 10% was still alive. She told us we could take him to the vet school at Purdue and spend $1500 with no guarantees, she could try to treat him with no guarantees, yada, yada, yada. I thanked her for her diagnosis and guaranteed her that Gunner would live out his days surrounded by love, not lab coats.”

“Gunner deteriorated rapidly. A few days after our second visit to the vet I followed him outside to witness his morning constitutional. When he finished he took a few wobbly steps forward and then, apparently exhausted, he sat on his haunches. I let him sit for a few minutes in the snow, then called him to follow me. He tried to stand but couldn’t; he whined softly and gave me ‘the look’.”

“Joan called Dr. Jantzen, the vet who’d amputated his leg, and asked if he’d do the honors; he said he would have it no other way. I called a friend who is in the landscape business and asked if he could get his hands on a backhoe. He explained that while he could easily find one, the ground was frozen 22” deep and nothing short of a nuclear warhead could penetrate it. Without me telling him why I needed a hole in the ground he expressed his condolences before hanging up.”

“Joan and I built a roaring fire in the wood stove and piled up blankets for the three of us to lie on. We hugged and petted Gunner, telling him what a wonderful dog he’d been and what a privilege it had been to share time on earth with him. Dr. Jantzen arrived with an assistant and they joined us in the family room. He’d put down a couple of Joan’s horses and I’d learned that he would not administer the injection until told to; after a few minutes I looked at him and said ‘It’s time’. Gunner died peacefully and as I looked around the room I saw tears in both the doctor’s and his assistant’s eyes. I wondered if Dr. Jantzen cried every time he put a dog to sleep, but I knew how special Gunner was to him and guessed that he did not. It was a fitting tribute to a great dog.”

Kay pulled an embroidered handkerchief from her sleeve and dabbed at the end of her nose before wiping tears from both eyes.
“You were indeed fortunate to share time with such a wonderful creation, Rudy,” she said. “And I believe I can confidently say that about Karl and Gracie, too.”
“There can be no doubt about that, Mama,” Rudy agreed, noting that he had never told her their names. “Uh, Mama; about my assignment?”

Kay stood and brushed copious amounts of dog hair from her jeans as Rudy took a seat on a hay bale.
“I told you I’d see you again when you had, and here I am!” she said cheerily.
“I wasn’t sure,” said Rudy. “I finished the letter and I didn’t hear from you. I thought maybe I’d…”
“Saying goodbye was the assignment, but writing your letter had no inherent value. The value was in the lesson you learned.”
“I’m lost; what lesson did I learn?” Rudy asked.
“Think, Honey. What decision did you make as a result of your tirade against Grace?”
“I decided to run my life,” he answered. ‘I am accepting responsibility for my life, both past and future, and any results that I get from now on are due solely to the decisions I make and the actions I take.’ That’s what I told Joan; so that’s the point of this exercise!”

Rudy had a ‘eureka’ moment and Kay’s expression acknowledged her pleasure that he’d ‘gotten it’.
“Did you see my letter,” he asked timidly.
“Yes Rudy, I saw it,” she answered without comment.
“Pretty vile, eh?”
“It was pretty much what I expected.”
Rudy continued, “So what did you think of it?”
“I think you have a good grasp of sentence structure and grammar; in particular, profanity. And it was certainly honest; I didn’t detect a hint of a lie.”
Rudy was grateful that she did not pass judgment on him; or if she did, she kept her feelings to herself. He decided to file the letter in the recycle bin of his mind. Kay walked across the barn and sat on the hay bale next to him.

“So Rudy, how does it feel being in charge? Do you miss your helper?” Kate teased.
Rudy ignored her question and asked one of his own.
“Mama, I bet you’ve asked me that two hundred times; ‘how does it feel.’ Why is that so important to you?”
“I’m taking your emotional temperature,” she replied. “Your feelings are the thermometer of your emotional state. In fact, Honey, if you look closely at why you do what you do you’ll find that the reason is always ‘feelings’.”
They were facing each other and when Kay finished Rudy stared silently into her eyes, hoping to find an interpretation of the Chinese she was speaking to him. “What!?”

“Rudy, what was the first thing you did when you got home from work last night?”
“I said hello to Joan and the dogs.”
“After that?”
“I fixed a big, fat Scotch.”
“Why Scotch; I mean, if you wanted something to quench your thirst why not fix a big, fat glass of water?”
“Trust me, Mama; it had nothing to do with thirst-quenching. It had to do with chilling out after a day at work.”
“’Chilling out’; what does that mean?” Kay asked.
Rudy knew she’d haltered him once again. But like the horses who quietly chewed the hay he’d thrown them Rudy knew that once the apparatus was attached there was no use trying to resist the pull of the person on the other end. He followed her lead and replied obediently,
“Chilling out means relaxing; and you already knew that, Mama.” She ignored his barb and continued her instruction.
“And relaxation is…?”
While a second ‘eureka’ moment sent snaps, crackles and pops through his brain Rudy replied, “A feeling!”

Rudy had taken the bait and Kay prepared to set the hook.
“Why do you lug all that heavy equipment around so you can play music with your friends?”
Rudy was smiling and looking through the barn door toward the breaking dawn. A globe of orange light was just beginning to peek over the eastern horizon.
“Because playing music makes me happy.”
“And happiness is…?”
“A feeling. I’m beginning to see your point,” said Rudy.

“Okay Rudy, let me ask you another question.” Rudy was enjoying the Q and A session and eagerly agreed.
“Remember the story you told me about Grace bloodying your nose at the dinner table?”
Rudy grimaced and answered, “Yeah; but I’d rather not!”
“Why not?”
“Because it upsets me; it makes me angry.”
“And anger is…?”
“Wait a minute!” he said. “You told me that we do what we do because we enjoy the feelings we get. I don’t enjoy being angry and I thought we, that is I, had said goodbye to Grace; why you bringin’ her back up?”
“I didn’t say we do what we do because we enjoy the feelings. I said that we do what we do because of feelings; there’s a difference.”
She’d dodged the ‘Grace’ part of his question but clarification of her premise was more important at the moment.
“And I suspect you’re about to clarify that difference?”

“Rudy, human behavior is complex; you’re beginning to learn that. But the reason we do the things we do is really pretty simple. The reward of every action is a feeling. If you believe that taking that action will bring you pleasure you will step up to the plate and take your best swing. But!...” Rudy listened carefully as she was about to make an important counterpoint.
“…if you believe that taking that action will cause you physical or emotional pain, they’ll have to drag you kicking and screaming from the dugout. You want to avoid pain and experience pleasure.”
Rudy stood and walked toward Jack the horse while digesting what she’d just said. He scratched a grateful snout and said, “Seems kind of hedonistic to me.”
“I suppose it is,” she agreed, “but be that as it may it’s the way your brain works. And understanding that principle can bring real power to your quest for your ‘self’.”

Rudy found her use of ‘self’ interesting. It implied that he was not currently himself, which begged the question ’Who am I?’ His head was beginning to swim and he made a mental note to return for an answer. But he now knew that Katherine’s visit involved more than checking to see how taking responsibility for his life was going.
He turned from Jack, faced her and folded his arms over his chest in preparation of receiving more pearls of heavenly wisdom.
“Please continue.”

“How do you feel about dieting?”
Rudy sometimes found the simplistic nature of her questioning annoying and whished she’d just get to the point. But he knew she was in charge and played along anyway.
“No good.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“It means giving up stuff I like to eat, like ice cream and bratwursts and Snickers bars.”
“And I find that painful,” he added playfully.
“And since you find it painful, what are your chances of succeeding at dieting?”
His annoyance of a minute ago faded as the implications of what she was teaching him began to reveal themselves. He smiled and answered, “Not good.”
“Okay. Now, what could you do so that your dieting regimen became pleasurable and your chances of success increased?”
“I could change the way I think about dieting. I could think about the health benefits or how buff I’d look to the babes. I could start looking at brats and Snickers as poison—naw, that ain’t gonna happen!”
“Very good, I think you’re getting the hang of it!” Kay said.

“Rudy, any time you’re having trouble doing something you know you should it’s because you are associating pain with taking that action. Pain avoidance is a primal survival mechanism that’s part of your DNA, and your brain will do anything it can to avoid it. If giving up a bad habit means sacrifice to you, you will interpret doing it as painful, sabotage your efforts and fail; your brain just will not allow you to continue doing something that hurts.”

“On the other hand, if you can associate pleasurable feeling with breaking the habit your likelihood of success increases considerably. Does this make sense to you?”
“Yes,” he replied, “absolutely.”
Confident that Rudy had grasped the pain/pleasure concept Kay set out to put it to practical use.

“Honey, tell me something you do on a regular basis that you find painful.” He did not have to contemplate an answer for more than a couple of seconds and said,
“My job. I hate my job.”
“Tell me what you hate about it,” she continued.
“Waiting on people is what I hate the most. Every time I approach a customer I think of the rejection that I’m likely to get; rejection is painful.”
“And why would they reject you?”
“Because I’m a frigging car salesman; they don’t trust me and they think I’m going to rip them off.”
“Are you?”
“No; I’m honest to a fault, if anything.”
“What else do you hate about it?”

“It’s beneath me. I should be doing something important, not selling cars.” Rudy bowed his head in embarrassment as he spoke. He was telling the truth but ashamed of his arrogance. He expected Kay to challenge him but she did not; she’d found the pain she was looking for and forged ahead with the lesson.
“Why don’t you quit your job and do something important, then?” she asked
“I can’t quit my job, I’m married to the money. And I don’t know what important thing I’m supposed to be doing, at least not yet.”
The second part of his answer could be addressed later; Kay needed to drive home her point and spoke to the first.

“If you can’t quit your job it might help if we could find a way to reframe what you do so that it would be more fun, do you agree?”
“What do you mean by ‘reframe’,” he asked.
“Look at it in a new way, a new light or a different perspective,” she answered. “How does it make you feel when you do something, anything well?”
“It makes me feel good, of course.”
“Then how about this; what if, rather than waiting on customers with the intention of selling them a car, your intention was to do the best you could at giving the information they needed to make an intelligent car-buying decision. And what if your reward was, rather than money, the satisfaction of having put forth your best effort.”
“That’s brilliant, Mama! Instead of being a car salesman I become a teacher or a counselor; I like it! I’ll give it a try!”

When he and the dogs returned to the house Joan was up and waiting for them in the kitchen.
“Did you guys feed the horses for me?” She asked with exaggerated enthusiasm which brought Karl and Gracie running to her, tongues flailing and tails wagging. Rudy answered on behalf of all of them,
“Yes, in fact we did!” Joan produced two dog biscuits and handed them to two grateful dogs.
“Thank you all!” she crooned.
Rudy reveled in the early-morning joy and camaraderie of his family and told Joan,
“It was our pleasure!”