Kelly S. Thompson’s Writing Space
My military dad always had a saying: Flexibility is the principle of administration. Not exactly a warm family motto, but when you move around a lot, a necessary one.
Now, as a spouse of a Canadian Forces Officer, I’m used to moving all the time—at least every year or two, which means the space in which I do my writing must be flexible, too. Sure, I usually have my office, which is the first room I set up when the movers unpack my boxes (and boxes, and more boxes) of books. Inevitably, at each new post, I arrange the vintage typewriters, the knick-knacks, the collected art, the tomes, and I recreate my space in province after province, state after state. There remains one constant though: a snoring dog nearby.
In fact, I’m in the middle of another last-minute move to upstate New York, with my furniture still lingering somewhere in Kansas, if the AirTag is to be believed. Amidst the election results, amidst so much war and killing, I’m sitting in my hotel with the lingering scent of bleached towels and floral air fresheners, struggling to create here, to make anything beautiful amongst all this hate. I’m used to not having a particular writing space, but I’m not used to such racist, misogynistic, homophobic, bigotry swirling in every vortex.
My empathetic heart is hurting. And my dog knows it.
His solution? A good smothering.
“If you love a pet, you know what it is to feel unconditional, joyful, smothering love that only furry family can deliver. They demand nothing of us other than food, some snuggles, a warm bed, ideally. They demand that you live in the moment. Smell the literal roses and embrace the beauty that is in the everyday. Love without restriction. And if you have a bully breed, then you know your 65-pound chonk knows is a lapdog in spirit only, and laying directly on top of you is the only way for everyone to find symbiosis.”
We adopted Ham, my third bull terrier, when he was two, and has such an impossibly gentle soul that my husband and I often wonder how we got so lucky. If I cry, he brings me Essie (his stuffed emotional support squirrel) and plops himself atop me like the gigantic, snuggly potato that he is. My students have come to expect him to bomb all our Zooms, because writing nonfiction is emotional work and Ham knows that we need him there for comical relief, if nothing else. Pets do all the good work without any pay, any biases or judgements. Humanity should take a page from their books.
Which brings me back to my writing space. What does it look like? Sometimes it is a perfectly curated office in a bungalow, with framed photos of my loved ones behind me. Sometimes it is smushed into the backseat beside a pile of luggage while driving across the country to the place that I will learn to call home. Right now, it looks like an uncomfortable hotel couch. It looks like 65 pounds of snoring on top of 170 pounds of curvy human. It looks like slivers of dog hair stuck in the laptop keys and a bit of drool on the mousepad, which I’m pretty sure is Ham’s but am unfussed if it’s mine.
Most of all, when I sniff his Frito-feet, kiss his anvil-shaped head, my writing space looks like the antithesis to hate. Hate doesn’t live here, even when it feels like it’s multiplying around me.
And in my writing space, buried underneath the most perfect of boys, the conditions are set so that I can create words aimed to fight hate, to cast light to the beauty and complexity of what unites us.
Kelly S. Thompson holds a master’s and a PhD in creative writing and teaches the King’s MFA in Nonfiction. Both of her memoirs, Girls Need Not Apply and Still, I Cannot Save You were national bestsellers.
Photo by sarandy westfall on Unsplash