The Bean Queen
- Andie Kantor
- 6 hours ago
- 7 min read
"Attention is the beginning of devotion."
— Mary Oliver
I live with two dogs.
The first, Mim, is a 15 pound agent of chaos who snapped and lunged at a garbage truck on our morning walk, then looked back at me expectantly. After sighing a moment, I praised her for menacing a garbage truck. She’ll pee anywhere–a specific leaf, a crack in the middle of the street while we are crossing it, on her sister’s head. She has a chonky torso, long, spindly legs with knees that bend where her wrists would be, and a very small cranium. She is nosy and needy and always wants to be in the center of whatever is going on. I have never met a dog with so much personality and she constantly makes me laugh and shake my head.
Every weekday morning, my alarm goes off at 5. I tiptoe downstairs in the dark, make my tea in the kitchen, and carry it to the coldest room in the house to sit down and do my practices: meditation, prayer, whatever the morning asks of me. And every morning, without fail, both dogs join me. There's a warm bed upstairs with a lot of blankets and a sleeping Dave in it, but they get up anyway, shake off their sleep, and follow me down to the coldest spot in the house just to be in my presence.
Mim gets there first – while she, also, is aging, she's younger, faster, more certain of the route, more curious to see what I’m doing.
And then there is Bella.
Her full name is Bellatrix. She has so many pet names: Beandog, Beans, and The Bean Queen, among so many others. She is treated like royalty in our house by all, including guests. The rescue told me she was two when she came to live with me the year before my son was born, and as of this writing, he is thirteen–so at sixteen, she has earned this title.
Bella comes downstairs in the morning a little slower with another goal in mind.
She takes herself outside for a potty trip before she makes her way to find me. Sometimes she walks around the house looking for me —I hear her paws on the floors as she searches and I have seen her, ears alert, body in search mode, moving with quiet purpose through room after room. Yesterday morning I was in the living room instead of the meditation room, and she walked right past me, not seeing me there in the blankets on the couch. I had to get up to go get her. When she finally saw me, her ears relaxed and she bounced toward me, and that shift — from searching to found — is one of the best things I've ever witnessed. No matter what I'm in the middle of, even if it's a ritual or a deep meditation, I stop and open the door for her to join me or go to her, because she got up and came downstairs just to be with me – and how could I not? When she gets to me, she comes right over and inserts herself into The Position.
A few years ago I was at a drive-in movie with my son, his friend, and the friend’s dad. I was in the front passenger seat and when the movie started, I immediately moved so that my knees were bent to one side and my feet were towards the door side of the seat–which is a really odd position to be in, in a car. I found it very strange, although it seemed like the position I should be in while watching a movie. Cut to the next time I was at home and watching a movie and assumed The Position, and Bella came and curled up behind my legs and beaned on my knees. I do not know when she trained me to do that, but she definitely did.
Beaning is when she rests her head gently against something, usually my leg, and just stays there. She beans on me when I'm meditating, when I'm watching TV, when I'm reading, during Zoom meetings — whenever I'm sitting on a couch, really.
One morning, I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth at 5:15, like I do every workday. She whined gently at the door, so I turned off the bathroom light — because I didn't want to wake Dave — opened the door, let her in, closed the door, and turned the light back on. She walked over to the dog bed I keep in the bathroom just for her and beaned on it. I noticed her shivering–it was really cold in there! – but she wanted to be with me more than she wanted to be warm so I went and got her a soft blanket. I have random blankets for people and for dogs all over the house.
She really was cold that time, but a thing about her is that she trained Dave – or he trained her – to shiver and look pathetic when she wants a treat. This is reinforced all the time by both of us. The hilarious part is that she does not shiver or look pathetic at 6:30 in the morning when the sun is barely up and we're out on our walk. On our walks, she is jaunty. She bounces from yard to yard, investigating every single thing the night left behind. She is not cold. She is interested and sniffing. And I let her sniff.
I didn't always. I used to tug the leash a little, keep things moving, stress about getting to work on time. But somewhere along the way I stopped doing that. If she wants to smell something for a full minute, she gets to smell it for a full minute. I'm just the one holding the leash. The walk is for her.
I make up songs to regale her, and I sing them to her often. I have kissed her cheeks so many times over the years that their color has faded and they've gone white. Every morning, she and Mim eat breakfast but first get a treat as an appetizer. They get treats if they are good girls–which is of course all the time, and if they act cute–which is also all the time. They get treats for going on walks, for being good, for existing. The Bean Queen expects nothing less.
Bella forgets things. She gets lost in the house sometimes — she'll be looking for me and can't hear me calling her. She’ll just stand in a room, a little confused, waiting to figure it out. When that happens, I get up from wherever I am and go to her and tap her gently so she knows I'm there. She can feel my hand, and that's enough. When she does find me — or when I find her — she always jumps up on whatever couch I’m on and beans.
I didn't set out to learn patience or kindness. I just loved this dog. And loving her — really loving her, in the daily, unglamorous, picking up the poo and tapping her back when she couldn't find me way — required a gentleness from me. And somewhere the gentleness stopped being something I was doing for Bella and became the way I move through everything — not because I set out to be a more patient person in some grand, aspirational way, but because she needed me to be. She's slower now. She needs more time, more gentleness, more attention. And giving her that has changed the way I move through the rest of my life — with my family, with my students, with my friends.
I do have a confession: I haven't always been gentle with her.
Once when my son was an infant, he had just fallen asleep — and if you've ever had a baby, you know what that moment means, what you'd give to protect those first fragile minutes of quiet for them. Something happened — I think the mailman came and Bella barked, loud, and I was so tired and stretched so thin and so desperate for that baby to stay asleep that I smacked her in the face. She froze. Her face stayed exactly the way my hand had smooshed it, and she just looked at me with her beautiful warm eyes.
I froze too. I couldn't believe I had hit a dog — my dog. I apologized and petted her and kissed her and loved on her until she got annoyed with all the attention and squirmed away. She was already over it. She was never afraid of me and that incident didn't seem to affect her at all.
But it affected me.
I've carried it for thirteen years. She moved on in thirty seconds. That's the difference between us — she leads with love, and I had to learn how. She's been teaching me ever since.
And that's a big part of what I've learned from her. Not patience as a concept or kindness as a resolution, but patience and kindness as daily practice — the kind that happens at 5:15 in the morning when you turn off the light so you don't wake anyone and you open the door for an old dog who just wants to be near you. Patience from love.
Bella taught me that kindness comes first. Before the meditation. Before the ritual. Before the schedule and the routine and the thing I was in the middle of. Kindness first. Always. Kindness from love.
I am gentler now because of her — with her, yes, but with everyone. I let people sniff around a little longer before I tug the leash. I get up and go find the people who seem lost. I try, every day, to lead with what she's been showing me for almost seventeen years.
I am so grateful for her. For every cold morning she chooses me over the warm bed. For every jaunty bounce on the sidewalk. For every pathetic shiver that earns her a treat she was going to get anyway. For every bean on my leg. For every song I sing that she pretends to enjoy.
She is my teacher. She always has been.
I am grateful.
