The Boy and His Dog
A Mother’s Day Essay
The Kingfisher Study | Sunday Series Objects That Tell a Story
On Sunday’s I’m writing the stories behind the objects, photo’s, books, and artifacts in my Kingfisher Study - telling the backstories that surround me everyday and which remind me of the overlapping commitments that give my life a thicker identity, belonging, and purpose.
There is a small figurine on my shelf that has been with me since the day I left for college.
It is not valuable in any conventional sense. It will not fetch a price at auction. It is not rare, or signed, or particularly well-crafted. What it is, is this: a little boy in a baseball cap, holding a dog that looks remarkably like the dog I grew up with — a black, and white, and gold mutt we named Louie, after my grandfather. Beside them, a baseball glove, a ball, a bat. The whole thing is cast from ash. Mount St. Helens ash, to be specific. Which means it was made from a mountain that blew its top in Washington State in 1980 — my native home — and was somehow reconstituted into something quiet and enduring and small enough to sit in the corner of a man’s study and do its quiet, daily work.
My mother gave it to me. Which tells you everything about the figurine, and honestly, quite a bit about her.
My mom’s name is Arlene. I call her Mother Arlene, or Little Arlene, which is either a term of deep affection or a mild form of theater, depending on the day. She will tell you she is five-foot-five. She is five-foot-three. This is not a typo. This is a defining feature of the woman — an absolute refusal to be diminished, even by the tape measure. My family, it should be said, is not one that expresses love primarily through encouragement of words of affirmation. We express it through precise, targeted, affectionate ridicule. My mother’s approximate height, her tendency toward creative word invention, her ADHD-adjacent mind that consistently outruns her speech — these have all been fair game at the family table for decades. We have been merciless in the most loving way I know how to describe. My therapist has had thoughts about this. We are working through them together.
But here is what I want to say about Mother Arlene, and I want to say it plainly:
She endured a lot. She held together something that, at various points, was genuinely fragile — whether in the life of her kids or in the life she built alongside my father. She was there. Every time, she was there. Not because it was easy. Not because it was always returned in kind. But because that is the kind of woman she is — faithful, present, and constitutionally incapable of giving less than everything she has.
My mom taught me that love is not primarily a feeling you fall into and out of like some seasonal weather pattern. Love, as she lived it, is like the climate - steady - persistent - and reflects endurance. It is sacrifice. It is showing up on the days when showing up costs you something real. She gave her life — genuinely, freely, without the kind of scorekeeping that would have been entirely understandable given what she was working with. She gave it all.
And I have never once doubted that I was loved.
That is what the figurine holds for me.
When I look at that little boy — smiling, cap slightly crooked, dog tucked under his arm, glove at the ready — I see a kid who knew he was cared for. Not in some vague, ambient way. Specifically. Concretely. In the way that someone buys a little knickknack made from a volcano because it means something — because it is from a place, because it carries a story, because she knows her son well enough to know that he will see the layers in it and love her for them.
That is my mother. She is a woman of small, significant gestures. She notices. She remembers. She finds the thing that holds the meaning and she gives it to you without explanation, trusting that you will understand.
I have understood.
This figurine has sat in my study through college, seminary, my Ph.D. program, and marriage, through children and loss, through every version of my adult life. It has never moved far from my eyeline. It whispers to me — and I mean this — it whispers to me the truest thing I know:
Sometimes all you need is someone to love you well.
That is the model. That is the legacy. That is Mother Arlene.
I am a lucky man. I have known this for a long time, but I feel it most acutely on days like today, when the calendar asks us to pause and remember who first held us — not just our hand for a little while, but our heart, and our whole becoming.
She held mine. She still does.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I have always been proud to be your son. I love you!
As you look around your own life today — is there a small object, a quiet inheritance, a person whose love shaped the contours of who you are — that you haven’t stopped to thank? It is not too late. In fact, today might be exactly the right day.
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Thank you Tryg for the kind overview of my life ❤️