“What’s that?” I eyed the poisonous potion my father was holding onto with trepidation. He sat on the weedy fieldstone terrace with a drink of something orange in front of him. The old wrought iron table wobbled, accentuating his unsteady hand every time he picked the glass up. His tall drink tipped precariously when he set it down again. He let out a deep sigh. Finally taking a long, slow swallow of whatever it was, he let out another sigh, but this time it was encouraged by appreciation.
“This,” he said, eyeing the elixir with a frond of celery sporting a bush of light green leaves at its top, “this is the hair of the dog.” He smiled and took another long swallow, followed by another deep sigh of contentment. Being particularly uncomfortable with dogs at that time, especially those with big teeth and long black hair, I was even more unhappy about the contents of his glass.
“Hair of the dog…?” I was obviously unsettled by his announcement.
“…that bit me!” He grinned with both the pleasure of his drink’s medicinal properties and my discomfort. He liked challenging children to think outside their experience. It was a quality of his that often caused trouble with our teachers in school. They didn’t share his support of bizarre curricular material for childhood education. I was sure ‘the hair of the dog’ would be another of my father’s teaching tools I should keep to myself.
“Why would anyone want to drink a dog’s hair, especially if they’d been bitten by the dog?” I could feel we were working toward a more conventional definition for the viscous drink with the celery frond sticking out of it, so I leveled the same teasing expression back at him, just to inform him I knew two could play at his game.
“An expression, Baby Dear,” he answered with a grin. “In this case, I had too much to drink at the dock party last night so I could hardly get up to the sunshine this morning. Instead of swearing off drinking forever, which would probably have been appropriate to the way I felt, I knew from experience if I treat myself with another drink of equal power, my fragile condition will actually be strengthened.
“And why a biting dog?” I asked. This didn’t seem to me like any of the adages my grandmother had introduced me to.
“It’s just the idea that instead of stiffening against something that hurts, you embrace it, and in so doing find it hurts less than when you push it away.”
“Like the bamboo that bends to stand tall again instead of breaking like brittle things; is that what the celery stalk is meant to represent?”
“Lord no! Celery’s a nice way to complement the flavors in my Bloody Mary. The hair of this dog is camouflaged with all kinds of spices and pungent seasonings, so I assume the looks of the drink are also part of the distraction.”
I smiled and nodded in agreement, although at the age of eight I had a lot more thinking to do about the hair of that dog. It’s never been a concept I could accept easily, which I always assumed had something to do with a difference in the way my generation viewed hard alcohol; but I must admit I’ve also been suspicious that we were simply a lot less adventurous and much weaker than our daredevil parents who embraced life so fully.
Many years later, I often thought about the acceptance of unpleasant things by riding along with them instead of running in the other direction. It always seemed counter-intuitive. Whether it was a frightening sport, an unpleasant job or an adjustment to personal loss of some kind, I did indeed move through it much faster if I went at the heart of it instead of pushing it away. But I still cringed before forcing myself down that path. Watching the horrific thoughtlessness and lack of skill of today’s automobile drivers, I was reminded of advice from a professional racing driver who taught me to drive. Visions came into my head of our discussions about accelerating into instead of out of a curve, steering toward a skid instead of away from it, and driving right for the heart of a collision between two fast moving vehicles instead of trying to avoid it. That latter had to be demonstrated with two match boxes bouncing off each other to leave an opening through which I could presumably pass. I saw the proof right before me, yet still struggled with the hair of the dog, recognizing that perhaps it’s acceptance wasn’t generational after all since my driving instructor was more mine than my father’s. Maybe I was just too weak to do what was best for me.
It reminds me of a friend trying to take me to an art gallery to distract from some sadness that threatened to engulf me. I resisted by stopping dead on the steps and refusing to go inside. It hurts too much. I can’t see or hear beautiful things when I’m in so much pain. Yet doing research for a novel recently I learned that the beautiful ‘German Requiem’ written by Brahms was composed as a cry for all humanity, and inspired by his empathy for the pain of the Civil War in America. That chorale opens with a great wave of beauty that is also agonizing, but if you ride the swell and let the tears go, you find you feel such relief as you ride through the heart of it. The more you acknowledge the pain, the less you feel it. I have to admit I much prefer Brahms’ human requiem to the hair of the dog, but I assume that’s more personal than generational. Pain is pain. Whether you alleviate it with vodka you don’t really want, or music you’re afraid to hear, going toward it instead of steering away makes all the difference.