John Dickerson's Navel Gazing: Remembering George and Defending the Morning

This episode explores the personal impact of the host's dog, George, particularly in the context of morning routines and memories associated with him.

1. The quiet of the morning offers a unique space for reflection and connection, away from the chaos of daily life.
2. The loss of a pet can profoundly affect daily routines and emotional landscapes, highlighting the deep bonds formed with non-human companions.
3. Simple daily activities, like morning walks, can carry significant emotional weight and offer lessons about living and coping with loss.
4. Mornings should be defended as a time for gentle beginnings, rather than rushed activities.
5. The episode emphasizes the importance of remembering and cherishing the small, quiet moments with loved ones, including pets.

1: Morning Reflections

John discusses his morning routines and the impact of his dog's presence and absence on these moments. He reflects on the quiet and less hurried part of his day, which he cherished as a time for thought and memory. John Dickerson: "In the morning, I write as clearly as I know how."

2: Remembering George

The narrative shifts to memories of George, exploring how these memories continue to shape John's daily experiences and perceptions. John Dickerson: "George was my companion in the dark, before anyone else in our apartment stirred."

3: Defending the Morning

John advocates for appreciating mornings as a sacred time for easing into the day's demands, contrasting 'morning people' with those who cherish the gradual start to their day. John Dickerson: "A morning is a time to ease into the day. This is the difference between morning people and those who defend the morning."

1. Cherish quiet mornings: Use the early hours to enjoy peace before the day's chaos.
2. Remember lost loved ones: Keep memories alive through simple rituals or reflections.
3. Take slow starts: Resist the rush of mornings to maintain a calm start to the day.
4. Reflect on personal losses: Use writing or speaking about lost loved ones as a therapeutic tool.
5. Appreciate the small moments: Recognize the value of seemingly insignificant daily routines.

People

John Dickerson

Companies

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Content Warnings:

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John Dickerson

Welcome to Navel Gazing season one, episode three. Im John Dickerson. Were two episodes in and Im grateful for all of the feedback from those of you out there in the Naval Gazing Corps. We will rummage in the mailbag at the end of this episode, but for now lets follow what the notebook has to tell us for this period of time that weve got under the microscope. Notebook 75, page 5 September 5, 2021 I go to the morning alone this is a note about our dog, George.

After he died, I noted the posthumous nudges that would hit me during the day, just as I took note of the changes I felt after our son left for college. Fielding little scraps of observation in an attempt to tie down the day when it started flapping, I wrote, I go to the morning alone because George was my companion in the dark, before anyone else in our apartment stirred or before the elevator jerked awake for the first time in the day.

I love the day before. The world is alert, before the bustle and importance. The email inbox is still I don't have to reply to anything, so I don't interrupt myself to see if there's anything I need to reply to. I have not yet handed myself over to the algorithms of social media. The lesser cataclysms of my job have yet to pile up, squatting like a dragon on times horde before the day's begun.

That's how Robert Lowell put it in the poem I mentioned in our first episode in the morning. You are the author of your day as much as you are ever going to be the author of a day. You control even the aromas of the world, which you perfume with the smell of ground coffee beans and the magic they produce. The hungarian mathematician Alfred Regni understood coffee perfectly. He said, a mathematician is a device for turning coffee into theorems.

In the morning, I write as clearly as I know how. Let's hope I wrote this essay in the morning when George was alive, only he shared this golden time with me. Anne and the kids were still asleep. Our interactions were of the perfect morning kind, a nod to each other, an acknowledgement that there would be more activity later. But for now lets not have a lot of immediate seizing on pressing engagements.

A morning is a time to ease into the day. This is the difference between morning people and those who defend the morning. Morning people are pushy. We dont like them. They hit the ground running.

They seek the worm for the early bird. This misunderstands the morning and the human experience. The worm will be there, the running will be there. You must walk before you can run. Walk in the morning, defend the morning.

I believe this lesson is important to teach in the earliest years. So my rule is that in the morning you don't talk to your kids when they immediately pilot themselves into your orbit. You should wait 1 minute for every year they've been alive. If you follow this rule, if you don't immediately engage them in some planning question, or ask them how their night was, or dear God, don't ask them about the test that's coming up. If you wait, they will come home later during the holidays.

If you don't wait, you'll never see them again. The exception to this rule, of course, is if they communicate with you in the morning. In that case, though, it will be difficult for you to respond as you will be reeling, gape mouthed, from the surprise that they are talking to you at all, especially in the morning. George understood all of this. The planets great gift of dogs is that they are bursting with joy when they see you.

But a true artist of emotional intelligence can read the room. George was not pushy. He understood the mornings there would be time for jumping. This rhythmic understanding of the mornings was a comfort. It echoed my eye movements and thats why when it was gone, I took note of going to the morning alone in the notebook.

What do people do when they don't have a place where they can park these little attacks from the brain when they don't have a notebook to store them in. When George was gone, I felt the silence. When I got up, there was a presence, which was also an absence, the way you can feel a hat still on your head after you've taken it off.

Notebook 75 page 6 September 6, 2021 phantom nails on the stairs this notes another of those absences, but it came not as a notice of something I wasnt hearing or wasnt feeling. Instead, I swore I heard them Georges nails on the stairs even when I knew George was not there to make them. Like a phantom vibration of my phone as the nudges kept coming, I recognized the accumulation of this interior babble as the start of what usually becomes an essay I was circling a Runway. Notes of this kind indicate that I'm going to press myself on readers out there because I've got something eating at me that can only be dispelled by writing. These entries are, I've discovered in this podcast, conversational bids to myself, but I was wary of my instinct.

If there were a competition to rank tiresome tropes of the middle aged writer, the essay about his dog would be a stout entry. When George died, people sent me lots of pieces about dogs written by writers. Many were writers sending me pieces they'd written. It appears that for a certain kind of writer, the death of a dog and affection for Bob Dylan initiate compulsory routines. You must write about them, and that's all there is to it.

Whether you have anything original to say or not, you must write. And let's just be honest here, the Bob Dylan essay is coming in the future, good and hard. It is the dog version of the essayists dilemma. Or maybe its the narcissist dilemma. But if youre a narcissist you dont notice because youre a narcissist.

So maybe its not a dilemma at all for a narcissist. Score one for narcissism. The challenge does this feeling im having mean anything to anyone else? Eb White put it this the essayist is a self liberated man, sustained by the childish belief that everything he thinks about everything that happens to him is of general interest. Dogs encourage us to give in to our pride.

Just like everyone thinks their babies are cute, everyone thinks their dog is fabulous. Except unlike babies, all dogs dont look like Winston Churchill. I was in deep thraldom to George when he was alive. I posted pictures of him on Instagram with some regularity. This drew the attention of comedian John Oliver, who said it was foolish for people in the news with a platform to clog up another platform with pictures of their animals, people he categorized who already have outlets to express themselves.

I didn't quite follow that particular line of reasoning, but I get how my pictures might have been irritating. They might just be an act of ego gratification, and that's annoying. Look at me. Look at me. Everyone look at me.

John Oliver

But if you do choose to follow news anchors on Instagram, a whole world of sad wonder awaits you. And much of it is pretty conventional. Anderson Cooper and Brooke Baldwin post pictures of their dogs, which is a lot like posting pictures of your kids, except other people enjoy it too. And CBS's John Dickerson also posts photos with his dog in which he somehow always winds up looking like a serial killer. So while I might have thought I was simply taking a picture of myself with my dog in a few moments while Ann went to go get coffee to other people, the image may have been a source of irritation of a person who is asking everyone to to digest a meal they didn't order.

John Dickerson

And that's where the critic has a point that goes well beyond dogs. If you're in the business of appealing to an audience through writing or television, if you have a platform, you should know how to be a steward of that platform. You should think through how the audience receives your work, no matter the platform, because you're stealing their attention, and that is precious. Only dogs can steal our attention and have it always be worth it. Not every think that comes into your head is worthy of being thought out into the world.

Writing about a loss or transition might help you make sense of it, but be wary of attaching undue importance to yourself. The world might not need to sit in your lap while you go through self therapy. You owe your audience your discernment on. Death, sex, and money. We feature interviews with you, our community of listeners, getting honest about uncomfortable things.

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John Dickerson

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On the other hand, it is the small, personal detail the idiosyncrasy conveyed in a work that lures people into that work so that it might spark joy of their own revelation, whether they own a dog or not. It might be a revelation about a cat. There are people, I gather, who love cats. I was ping ponging through this conversation with myself about whether to write about George in the early days after he died, and at that time, my friend the artist happy Minocau sent us a watercolor of George. It was a representation of a picture I had posted on Instagram.

Since George had died, that same picture had filled with warm notes from people who had come to know him through my occasional posts. Not everyone, it turns out, was John Oliver. So under the steam of corroboration from the Instagram commenters, I tried to answer whatever it was I was writing in these notebook entries. I piled them together what I'd written in my field notes notebook about George, and relied on the writing process to tell me in the audience what to make of this experience. I came up with this essay for the Atlantic, illustrated with Happy's painting every dog is a rescue dog.

There are two ways to walk the dog. In one, our dog, George, picks the path. In the other, we do. This is an illusion he allows us. In truth, he controls both routes.

Our morning walk in the park is unfocused. George guides us by his nose. What he smells on the asphalt, the tree box, the grass. He doubles back. We double back with him.

Weve already checked in with the morning paper. This is the way he catches up with the local news. During these walks, my wife and I brief each other on the coming day. We solve each others puzzles. We update each other on the revelations we had in the night about the kids, the apartment hunt, what to tell her mother about Christmas in the afternoon, and just before bed.

We walk shorter distances. Left turn, two blocks, return. These utilitarian sprints give us owners a sense of control and the satisfaction that comes from completing a task. Humans must be walked. The basic text for dogs managing their owners advises at least two of these during the day.

In a life of busyness and ambushes on our attention, dog walks err out the brain. Sometimes they might seem like an inconvenience, but only in the way GK Chesterton defined inconvenience, an adventure wrongly considered. Considered correctly. The daily dog walks are a regimen of escape and pause. They enlarge our sympathies and sweeten our disposition.

They pry open the day when it balls up into a little fist. The walk is the basic unit of the human and dog commerce of unconditional love. We take care of George and George takes care of us. No matter how awful the day or how awful I am behaving at any given moment, George doesnt care. He finds me smoldering in my chair and dashes to my lap.

Every dog is a rescue dog. This isnt mere sentiment. Scientists have studied the matter and found that when humans and dogs interact, stress levels in both parties decrease. Dogs have been domesticated for thousands of years, but if they were a new discovery, imagine the commercial opportunities. Their cortisol lowering properties would put a dog petting station between every yoga studio and CBD store.

The power of the dog is so keen that it can even pierce teenage Kevlar. Dinner at our house is all mumbles until someone puts down their fork and George jumps up on the table. The kids respond. They discourage him from licking the plate or push their plate to him. He responds, and that invites more comment.

Communications start to be restored to the mainland. George is the safe topic we can all address. The kids engage in light dog punditry about his antics. We revisit old stories. Soon enough were creased over with laughter when someone recalls how the mood altering properties of chocolate made him go loopy to the tonsils.

We would like to take George everywhere, but sometimes we cant. This is painful. We put him into a van that takes him to a farm. Each curbside handoff feels like a betrayal. As a puppy, George lived in a hoarder house with countless other dogs.

He was so mistreated, his fear became hardwired. He flinched when you reached down to pet him. This summer, it went horribly wrong. Shortly after arriving at the farm, George ran away for several days. There were sightings, but when strangers approached him, George ran.

He didnt know he was scared. Our emotion spiked with each report until we received the call. A driver had hit him. George was making his way back to the farm. The road on which he was killed was the last big one he had to cross to safety.

During our morning walks, my wife and I make plans. I'd always assumed when we made these plans that George would see them through with us. He'd sprint through the gap we'd create by taking down that tree he'd scratch at the door of the writer's shed we'd build. Someday, when the kids went to college and returned home, George would consecrate the reentry ritual, walking us with the benediction of unconditional love that I hoped would settle over those visits. The sorrow is pungent.

Georges love may have been unconditional, but he loved my wife the most. Nurturers can sense one another. He did not come down in the morning when I made my coffee and started my work. But when Ann put her first foot out of bed, I knew it from the collar rattle. Two floors above, the soft landing from the jump off the couch, the toenails descending the wood stairs.

The three part harmony was my signal to come out of the office and make her tea. Now the stairs are quiet. At daybreak, when there is a dog in the house, you are never alone. Now, even when we are all home, it can feel lonesome. We all know that dogs and their owners look alike.

It turns out, over time, dogs also learn to mimic the walking patterns of the ones holding their leash. One study found that about 80% of the time, dogs walked when their owners walked, and fell still when their owners stopped. The study offers no information about what happens to the owners when the dog falls still and the owners must keep walking. We do continue our walks, but our path is straighter now. We audit our accounts, but the routine feels insecure and teetering.

The puzzles we solve are about who should get the bag of dog treats, whether to keep George's bed, the phantom sounds of George's footsteps. Our walks will shorten one day and come to their own end. This is just the kind of thought that George would have known to distract me from. He would have been the solution to the melancholy of his absence. And if I work at it, I realize he still is.

To set my face for too long seems like a betrayal of all that joy and unconditional love. All dogs go to heaven, I was told in the days after Georges death. It seems more likely that they are emissaries from there. That means George's memory is his final gift. It orients me back to the question we faced before our best morning outings.

What will we do with the rest of our walk before we must finally walk home?

I'm glad I wrote that. I started out to write about a dog and wound up writing about a marriage. I didn't conceive of it that way, even after I'd finished. But a friend said that's what the essay meant to her. And of course, she was right.

This is one of the reasons I put such faith in you, the listener, out there, to see what I can't see, even when I wrote the words. It's been three years since George died, but he still shapes our lives. The ripples still roll on. Our new apartment, which he did not live long enough to see, was chosen because of George, so we could live near a park in which we could walk him. Were it not for George, we'd live in the Tribeca neighborhood.

When he was alive and we were apartment hunting, we'd put an offer down on an apartment in Tribeca we loved. But then, in retrospect, would have been awful for us. We were saved from getting what we wanted because the woman who owned the apartment picked a renter who didn't have a dog. Had we not had George and scored that apartment, our life would have been entirely different. It would have been a less joyful life.

No offense to those who live in Tribeca, because Tribeca has no parks. Angular models, men talking about doing cold plunges, gallery space with opportunities to free yourself of ready cash. Yes, all of it in abundance in Tribeca, but open spaces with clean wind, groves of trees, water in the reservoir, and stretches of green, green grass. This it does not have. And these are things that we need.

Though we don't have George to walk now, Ann and I take ourselves on a regular morning walk. We are out in the park when dogs are allowed in the park off leash. We don't have a dog, so it's our opinions of other dogs and their owners we try to keep on the leash. We should probably get a dog just to stop being so damn judgmental. But you can't really expect us to be noticers in the world and not take notice of the dog owners when with reactive dogs who seem ill equipped to handle their off leash.

Reactive pets when your doberman thrashes the chihuahua like he's shaking out a dust mop, some action, more than a gentle admonishment with the low tone you use for your personal assistant is indicated. The iPhone makes sure we're never too far from George. Almost every day Ann or I are fed a picture of him. Many of the pictures of George include one or both of us with him, so George is still a part of our marriage. When I look at a picture of George with Anne, I'm not just reminded of him, but of the walks, the planning.

He's been on other people's minds, too. My friend Ed Forgetson, the producer of much of my work at Sunday morning, sent me a picture recently of a sign on the street in Washington. It was placed in fresh mulch by one of those neighborhood improvement associations, brightening things up for spring. A golden haiku is what was printed on the sign. It reads animal shelter, where I went to be rescued.

Jennifer Gurney wrote it. That takes me back to the Sunday that started this season and the idea of being seen and seeing the other. At the most basic level, a dog provides an external validation of our existence, another life that responds to our life, our presence that acknowledges we are here. Dogs see us. If its true that our sense of self worth is tied to how we see ourselves reflected in the love of others, then the back arching leap, the snuffle, the motorized tail, they let us know on blast that we are worthy of being loved.

Just to update you on where things stand, Anne watches videos of rescues with regularity. Her face softens when thats what shes watching on her phone. Before going to bed, she will lean over to show me a dog that I must see. She is often correct. The planning on the morning walk now includes occasional bouts of playing footsie with the idea of getting a new dog.

When we see George on the phone, we still get a pang. He still leaves a socket in the world. But some share of our imagination has shifted grain by grain, from memories of the past or imagining George in our present to imagining the future. So I think we can all see what's coming. We're going to get another dog someday.

I look forward to the new morning.

As promised at the beginning of the show, we have a listener email. We've gotten so many wonderful emails. Please keep them coming. Navelgazingpodcastmail.com Dot Today's is from Alexander Morehouse rehum.

Alexander Morehouse

Hi there. I just listened to the first naval gazing episode and absolutely loved it. I'm 31 years old and live in Windsor, Ontario, a canadian city across the river from Detroit, Michigan with my mom and stepdad. I was having a really bad day recently and decided to take our family dog, Ella, on a walk through our local park. I was being really negative and cynical that day about the state of the world and all sorts of other things.

I saw another guy walking his dog coming towards us, but his dog was unleashed. I thought to myself, oh, here we go, another inconsiderate asshole. His dog is going to be a problem and we're going to have an issue. But the exact opposite happened. This guy and his dog veered off into a field and the guy sat down in the grass and his dog laid down a few feet away from him.

The owner pulled out a trumpet and he began to play. It was so nice and so beautiful. The dog just sat there listening to his human play music. I sat down too, on a nearby park bench to listen and watch. Know the park bench wasn't comfortable, but the scene and really did make up for it.

I actually cried, but I don't know why. Maybe because it was beautiful music. Maybe because I had been having a really, really bad day and was being a really, really cynical person who didn't have much hope. Either way, this guy and his dog changed my entire day for the better. And I left the park with a renewed sense that life can can be beautiful.

And even when your first thought about a situation is negative, you might be very, very wrong about it. Perhaps this is my first journal entry, and so sorry you had to be the first person to listen to it, but your podcast inspired me. I'm off to buy an actual journal of my own now, so I can remember these small moments of life. Thanks John and best, Alexander. That concludes this episode three, season one of naval gazing, or as the Germans don't call it, nabalgesing.

John Dickerson

Up next, how the most obscure piece of information can be stuffed full with the sweet filling of life like a cannoli navel gazing is produced by Shayna Roth Alicia Montgomery is the vice president of audio at Slate. Our theme music is by the band Plastic Mary. Remember, send us a note@navelgazingpodcastmail.com. And let us know your thoughts about your dog, about the dog you're gonna get if you're a rabid cat lover, if you're a wild noticer out in the world, a mopey parent, a note taker or the kin of a note taker, I'd love to hear from you. That's navelgazingpodcastmail.com dot, I'm John Dickerson.

Talk to you next week.