Mother Earth’s Garden

Mr Ponda isn’t there anymore

by Margaret on December 8th, 2006

Most mornings for the last three years I have taken the dog for a run in the park on my way to the veggie patch in the community gardens. Flash, my dog, runs very fast. She is a cross between a cattle dog and a Labrador, and although most of the time the dozy Lab is to the fore, when she starts chasing other dogs you can imagine her bounding across the paddocks in full pursuit of a herd of cows.

One of the dogs she likes to play with is Ponda, a fat and grumpy old Queensland blue cattle dog. Ponda is a sedate kind of dog, and each day she is walked by her owner, who rather confirms the idea that people look like their animals. I don’t know his name – I think of him as Mr Ponda -  but he walks slowly and steadily, hands behind his back, smiling and greeting all the other dog walkers and showing his love for Ponda in rough endearments. “Come on you lazy old boy.” That kind of thing.

Flash runs circles round Ponda, and eventually persuades Ponda that he is young again. He chases and chases Flash but never catches her, and Mr Ponda and I stand there and laugh.

We never talk beyond a few words about the weather and the dogs, but he is part of my routine, one of the little markers in my life that helps me to know who I am, and where I stand, and how things are going.

But this morning Mr Ponda wasn’t there. Instead Ponda was with a white haired old lady in a check jacket, who was sitting on the bench with a walking stick. Mrs Ponda, I thought.

The dogs didn’t give chase, for some reason. Instead they looked at each other, and lay down together, tongues lolling.

“Good morning,” I said to Mrs Ponda. “I usually see your husband here.”

“He died,” she said. She didn’t cry, but her brown eyes were deep like a mine shaft. I was shocked. I stood still. I was wearing my radical t-shirt – the one that reads “Make Chocolate, Not War.” I wonder what she thought of me. I felt as though I had no right to cry, there in front of her. It was her loss, not mine. I didn’t even know his name.

“I am so sorry,” I must have said a few dozen times, and she told me that Mr Ponda – I still don’t know his name – had often spoken of the people he met on his walks. His final illness and death had been sudden. On his deathbed she had promised him that she would walk the dog daily, but she has arthritis in her hip and it won’t be easy.

I looked over at the dogs, who were licking each other’s faces. Don’t ask me how Flash knew, but she clearly did.

I didn’t have my phone number on me to offer Mrs Ponda, nor a pen to write it down with, but I said I would walk Ponda for her if she needed that kind of help. I would give her my phone number next I saw her.

And then there didn’t seem to be anything else to say, and Flash and I walked on, heads lowered.

I still can’t believe the correct way to write about Mr Ponda today would have been in past tense.

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