Jillian and her baby were sitting on the couch having dinner and Jillian felt hollow like she sometimes did. Just a body thing, really. They were watching America’s Funniest Home Videos, and Adam was very involved. Babies and dogs and dogs and cats and dogs and women at barbeques interacted with each other in hilarious combinations, and her son, who had no idea at all about Carla, laughed through his pasta at all the fun the people and animals were having. As she watched Adam watch, she was struck with a vague idea about the promise of life (as represented by the babies on screen) and about not giving up on passions. While she looked at Adam, she understood that he was a baby with passions.

Jillian reflected on some of her youthful passions, and she was taken by a feeling of total integration. Not just the integration of her body and mind, but also a synthesis of that integrated self with the room, the atmosphere, and with the general chronology and flow of time and events, universally speaking. This was a feeling she sometimes got from motivational phrases, and she knew it to be the feeling of God. Whatever thought was in her mind when she got this feeling, she knew she owed it to God to follow.

“I’m not going to give up on my dream,” she whispered. She had a flash as bright as reality—no, brighter—of walking the dog, and maybe the dog would be big enough for Adam to ride like a tiny pony, or maybe the dog would just be big enough to attach to the stroller and pull Adam, but either way the dog and boy were happy and her hands were empty and flapping at her sides.

“Yes, I’ll do it,” she whispered.

So what about Carla. Carla was in the past.

“Hey, Adam,” she said. “Which do you like better, doggies or kitties?”

“Doggies!” he said, but he said it like “d’ah-gaze,” and lifted his arms above his head and made fists of his hands, which resulted in the knocking over of his dinner onto the floor.

Mommy scooped it back into his bowl and set in on the coffee table, thinking one day she’d yell, “The dog, the dog!” when food got knocked on the floor.

Adam was put to bed. Jillian got into her own bed and rearranged the bras and other dirty clothes that were mixed in with the covers so there’d be room for her to sit and, later, sleep comfortably. She looked until she found a web page called “Pups of Love” which was a rescue center for dogs who had been sexually abused—dogs who had belonged to pet store breeders and had been pregnant their whole lives. Some of them were still puppies themselves. A one-year-old? Isn’t that still a puppy? Some of these one-year-olds had birthed dozens of babies. She watched half a video and started sobbing. This is definitely it, she thought. And the adoption fee was a fraction of what the Humane Society wanted, so she’d have extra money for other things.