Day 17 – Your favorite memory, in great detail

This is kind of a weird prompt, don't you think?  Do we really have "favorite" memories?  I have some moments where I am so happy (or maybe just so contented) that I tell myself, "Remember everything about this moment.  You will want to remember this later."  One of those moments was the one I described a few posts ago.  Another was when I was fourteen or fifteen.

I had just started high school (I was a freshman or sophomore).  I shared a room with my cousin Shannon.  We had one of those bunk beds that could be changed around: a regular bunk bed, two twin beds, or one high bed and one low bed.  We had all configurations at one time or another.  The night of my memory, we had two twin beds.  Mine was in one corner, and hers in another.  My bed was pushed horizontally against the wall with the windows so that I could see outside.  The room was dark and quiet; Shannon was already asleep, or maybe we had just turned out the lights.  I think this is more likely, actually.  I was lying on my side, looking at the windows.  My dog, Merissa, slept in my bed.  She was also lying on her side, facing the windows.  I had my right arm and leg draped over her.  I remember feeling warm and happy.  I tried to match my breathing to hers.  I had actually read this in a short story, where a boy breathed in while the dog breathed out, and I tried to do it periodically, but her breath came too fast and I always ended up feeling lightheaded. 

The moonlight came in the window a little bit.  By this time, Merissa was "old" for a dog.  She was eight or nine, and my brother the Rooster had started talking about how "When she dies, I'll be able to get a beagle."  I was so content, snuggled up with my dog, that I thought to myself, "You need to remember every single little thing about this moment, right now."  Merissa was a terrier mix.  She looked like an Irish wolfhound, but smaller, or like a Norfolk terrier, but bigger.  Her hair was longish and wiry.  It didn't mat, and so we brushed her rarely, although she adored the feeling of a wire brush scratching her back.  In that moment, I stroked her side.  I put my nose in the hair on her head, near her ears (which had a different hair, soft and velvety), and inhaled her warm doggy scent. 

Merissa was an easygoing mutt.  I knew she didn't love my evening cuddles, but she would lie there for ten or fifteen minutes until she finally heaved herself up and out of the bed to curl up on the floor.  Sometimes I would hold her back, and she would subside back onto the bed, resigned to being loved.  On this night, I let her get up when she wanted to.  I rolled myself into the spot where she had lain, enjoying the lingering warmth.

She was a very good dog.