It was a difficult time of professional crisis in my life. I dragged myself week after week to my doctor for meds, my therapist for support. I didn't want to get up in the mornings, was feeling useless, most of all, feeling like what I wanted most out of life wasn't happening for me right now. I just wanted.....to matter. That's it. Sounds simple. I usually felt important in someone's life,knew I still was, but just couldn't see it, touch it, feel it in my soul. That intangible need to matter in ways meaningful to me right now, at this all encompassing and bruising time.

"Do you have a pet?" my therapist asked. An innocent question. "No, why?" "Have you ever had one?" I opened up. I launched into stories about the two Scottish terriers in my past, my first kitten oddly named Jupie. "Do you know that's the first time I saw your eyes sparkle in all the weeks we've been meeting, Barbara?" "Well, pets ARE all about bringing joy, in my opinion." "Why don't you get one?" "Oh, I'm an apartment dweller now, I'm not allowed." "In California you are if you're doctor says its a medical necessity. I'm a doctor. I say it's a medical necessity and I mean that in all seriousness."

And now he's here. Rusty. An eleven pound ball of puff of which seven pounds are surely fur. He needed to matter, too. He was deserted by his owner with a bag of food and a big bowl of water in an evicted apartment. Supposedly, through an agency, I rescued him. The reality is, he rescued me. At first we just held each other. He was quiet, shy, and sleepy, too.

I didn't feel like doing anything but melting into the sofa for long naps after work for quite a few weeks after we owned each other. Yet because he was there wagging his pompadore tail when I came home, I did keep going to work even though I felt betrayed and unwanted by certain younger staff members. He needed exercise and so did I so off we took. Ten minutes was all I had energy for, but we did it before work in early mornings, after naps and before bed. Within months we were taking two twenty minute walks and visiting dog parks (where he'd hide behind my legs, but I would be the would making acquaintances.

Rusty made me feel like I mattered again somehow. His presence helped me realize once again that I mattered, indeed, to the 30 students I made laugh in my lessons everyday trying to hold their focus enough to learn. He sparkling eyes and wagging tail at my arrival home each day brought forth memories of picking up my sons from preschool 20 years ago and hearing them scream "Mommyyyyyyyyy!" delightfully as they ran into our hug. Which in turn reminded me they respect me much today and tell me often they love me still though away at colleges. How could I have ever thought I didn't matter to them?

It's uncanny, how the human spirit is bent, twisted, and manipulated by the curve balls life throws us. Even more amazing is how the spirit affects the mind and carries it to places where it cannot FEEL what it knows. I matter. We each matter. YOU matter, too.

Thanks, Rusty.