The Dog in Acting Class

On Saturday, I taught my first Kahilu Youth Troupe acting class of the semester.

Twenty-five or so kids, mostly teens, who were willing and even eager to spend four hours of their Saturday learning a method acting technique and doing improv & theater games. We had a really good first day. 

Instead of posting the picture I took of the class, I'm posting a photo of this two-year-old dog who came to the class with a new student, one of the younger kids - I'll call her "J."
 
J has Type 1 diabetes, and the dog, who will stay down like this, stands up if J needs to check her blood sugar. She may stand up to stretch too, J's mom said, but I would know if she's standing because of a blood sugar issue.

Everything that could be learned about commitment, making choices, and being in the moment (so much of what you need for acting) could be learned by watching this dog during the four hours of that class. Even though she seems to be resting in this photo, the minute J moved anywhere in the room, this dog shifted focus. And when J left the room to use the restroom, she was on high alert. At one point she did stand up, and J walked out of the improv she was part of to check her blood sugar level. 

It's 9/11 today.

I lived back east in 2001, 5,000 miles away from where I live now, in Hawai'i, and I wrote a piece early this morning about watching the towers burning from my back yard. I've written the story before, in different forms, of how that life-altering day played out for each of us.
 
It was Sean's first day of kindergarten and I couldn't help my friend, the mother of one of Sean's classmates, who couldn't reach her husband in the World Trade Center, and the panic attached to that once she realized what was happening.

He lost his life in the first tower on a beautiful September morning, during his oldest child's first day of school. 

I spent some time writing that piece, but then it occurred to me that today, eighteen years later, the story I want to post is about how we hold each other up. In this case how a dog can hold up a girl just by standing, with such hope connected to that act. The care it took to train this dog, and the kind of devotion it takes to save a life all day, every day.
 
That kind of love. 

Heroes come in many forms, both human and animal.
 
A dog in an acting class with a young girl with the singular task of service. Of knowing her blood sugar level. That's what I'm thinking about on 9/11 - eighteen years after we were witnesses.

That's what's good in the world. And right now, with the state of things, we need some good. 

Here she is, my friends. In animal form. 
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And I was a witness to that too.