The Lady With The Dogs

When trying too hard meant I got in the way.

The metaphor:

I’ve taken a few deep canvassing classes. Every time, I’m struck by how little of the practice is about memorizing talking points, and how much of it is empathy: listening to what someone is saying and finding a way to relate. After each class, the coordinating organization invites all participants to canvas or knock on doors, engaging with strangers to see if they’ll talk with us about closely held beliefs. This is hard, rewarding, and according to data, effective — plus, it helps build the skills I need at home, with my own friends and neighbors.

I’m still figuring out how to stay in relationship across differences of opinion: still identifying moments where I feel sick afterwards, like I pulled away too soon, cutting them off, or gave in too easily, erasing myself for the sake of social harmony. After those moments, like the one below, I feel a sharpness in my chest like the conversation is something I swallowed without chewing, and it hurts all the way down.

The story:

Last fall, I spent two weeks before the presidential election canvassing in Pennsylvania.

At the end of each day, I wrote down highlights from the people I’d met: the registered Republican who whispered to me, “Don’t tell, but I always vote Democrat!” The woman who said, with a southern accent, “My husband’s a Republican, but I got this independent voter thing where I can support whoever I like!” The 12-year-old who spoke for his household: “Oh yeah, we’re voting for Kamala!”

But for the past four months, there’s one person I can’t stop thinking about: the lady with the dogs.

I met her at the end of my first week, in a suburban neighborhood not unlike the one I’m from. I’d knocked on doors in apartment buildings, rowhouses, run-down houses, and houses so big, I’d driven between the driveways. This one was in a cul-de-sac with no sidewalks but big front lawns, lots of gardens. It was early afternoon and the autumn sun filtered gloriously through the leafy trees, my sunglasses on and my jacket unzipped.

Whenever I wasn’t at a door, speaking with someone, I felt election anxiety rise in my throat and tingle in my hands and stomach. My fear that Trump would win again far outweighed the discomfort of speaking to strangers in a state I wasn’t from. I’d been nervous about canvassing, thinking I’d need strong debate skills, but discovered that the reason voters were still undecided was rarely because they hadn’t heard the right fact. What set me apart from the campaign ads and mailers, the news coverage and the handwritten letters, was that I was there in person. We could connect.

No one had been home at the doors I’d knocked in the lead-up to the lady with the dogs, and I could feel my anxiety mounting. I needed to speak with someone. As I came around the curved road, I spotted one golden retriever lounging near the end of her driveway and another walking freely across the front lawn. Electric fence? I wondered, eyeing the dogs to see if they’d come at me.

I kept approaching, and the standing dog sprinted over to the driveway. He came to a stop next to where the other dog lay, confirming my fence theory, but kept barking and hopping up and down, making me wonder if walking up was a good idea. I thought about moving on to the next house, but I didn’t like to leave any undone, and with these dogs outside, there was almost certainly someone in there. Someone I wanted to speak with.

I stepped over the invisible fenceline with one foot, standing sideways and avoiding eye contact to test the dogs. The bouncing one smelled my hand voraciously, then rolled onto his back. I exhaled and stepped in with the other foot. The lying down dog stumbled to his feet, nosing my other hand. I took another exploratory step, and the dogs fell into place on either side of me, like escorts guiding me to the front door. I thought of Chance and Shadow from Homeward Bound, a young dope and a wise but tired mentor. Once I reached the door and stopped to ring the bell, they did full-body wags, grinning like I was a gift they were offering their people.

A woman came to the door almost instantly. “Wow,” she said, “I guess you’re not afraid of dogs!”

“Well, this one made me wonder,” I said, gesturing to the younger one. “But he reminds me of my dog, when she can’t contain her excitement.”

“Yes, exactly!” She laughed. “He loves to meet people so much, sometimes he scares them away.”

“Honestly, I relate to that,” I said, lunging for the joke like a football player on a live loose ball.

She laughed with surprise and pleasure, which is one of my favorite things – to cause a laugh someone doesn’t see coming. “Well, you are a delight!” She exclaimed, and kept grinning as she asked, “So, what can I do for you?”

“My name is Gwen. I’m just checking if folks have what they need to vote in the upcoming election.”

Her smile widened. I felt like she was going to ask me in for lemonade. “How wonderful! My polling place is just a couple streets over, I’ve lived here for years.”

“Great!” I told her, reaching for my flier. “I’m volunteering with a hospitality workers’ union that’s endorsed the slate of Democratic candidates.” I held it up, showing their beaming faces, Kamala Harris at the top. “I hope you’ll join me in supporting them.”

Her smile froze. Her hand shot forward but stopped short of touching my arm. Reaching out to me. “Well, I – I won’t be doing that, but I – I just think it’s so important that we can still, you know, be cordial to each other.” Her outreached hand gestured back and forth. “You know, that we can still get along.”

I’d met plenty of voters who didn’t plan to vote Democrat. Some merely nodded, their silence speaking for them. Some declined as though I were selling something – “No, thank you” – or like they were turning down a social invitation – “Well, I don’t plan to do that.” Some explained their reasoning, from “Biden made a mess of Trump’s economy” to “I don’t like him, but life was better under him.” But no one had asked me to forgive them for it, the way it felt like she was doing.

As a canvasser, as soon as it was clear someone planned to vote Trump, the best use of my time was moving on. I wasn’t going to be able to undo someone’s impression of reality, from how little a president influenced inflation to how many lies they’d ingested from Fox News or Trump himself. On my way out, though, I’d generally try to convey the same care for people that had motivated me to canvas in the first place.

It was tempting to treat them as a cypher for Trump’s whole candidacy, for the complicit, conniving Republican leaders. A part of me wanted to channel all my fear and anger at this one person. Instead, I thought about how I had asked them for their time and they had given it to me. I thanked them for that and wished them well, earnestly. Sometimes, I felt like they were engaging in the same practice: like there was an electricity between us as we fought to sustain eye contact, wished each other good day across the divide. Like we were inventing a new possible path together, one where neither of us held the other with contempt, even as we parted as quickly as possible.

This moment didn’t feel like that. Confused, I could feel two opposite reactions fighting inside me, recoiling from her and aching to smooth things over. No, it’s not fucking fine! I wanted to yell, and Of course, the most important thing is voting, I wanted to coo. I had learned not to be aggressive, and I didn’t want to be appeasing — to act like this was a social call, like voting had no stakes — but what other options were there?

I said something like, of course, have a great day, and it felt terrible. As I walked away, my chest ached like I’d swallowed a whole tortilla chip and could feel its edges all the way down. I felt like I had somehow let her off the hook. I’d avoided jumping to debate or berate her, but I felt like I had somehow abandoned myself.

For the past four months, I've been wracking my brain for what I could’ve said — not to change her mind, just to represent myself. Maybe to plant a seed. I toyed with, “We each have to vote our conscience, but I’m volunteering because I’m afraid of the way Trump treats people.” Nothing sounded strong enough. “I want leaders who care about me?” I knew that whatever I might’ve said, she could have written it off and never thought of it again – but also, it might’ve stuck with her, come to mind the next time he was cruel and derisive on TV. It might’ve sat heavy with her while she cast her vote, even if it didn’t change it.

Just writing this brought back the full fight-or-flight response, the misery of not knowing how to use the moment. The moment is gone, but the stakes still feel high because this skill is the one that really matters back here in my own community: to know how to sit in disagreement. There has to be something in between berating and accepting. There has to be a way to stay kind and connected without leaving my own beliefs behind.

I stopped writing to meet a friend for a drink, and I was upset when I got there. I explained that I was still trying to figure out how I could’ve resolved this canvassing interaction. I knew I didn’t need to offer a fact, but didn’t know what else to give.

“It sounds to me like something in her vote was already troubling her,” my friend said. “I wonder why she was asking you to stay cordial preventatively? You had been nothing but kind – what was she afraid of?”

The tension in my lungs released, allowing a big breath in. I had been looking in the wrong place. The opportunity wasn’t finding something to offer her: it was drawing out what was already there. I could’ve asked her a question. What do you mean? Far from needing perfect words, anything that drew her out would’ve worked. What makes you say that? It sounds like you’re worried, tell me more about that.

I was already holding back all my knee-jerk responses: I had avoided fighting, I wasn’t fleeing, I could get over my initial freeze, and I wasn’t going to fawn — to tell her it was fine — even though I felt all four of these in me. I hadn’t known what to do with the space I’d made, but the answer was to give it to her. She still might not have answered, might’ve written me off — but it would’ve felt a million times better to call her on her own comment and ask. Not as a canvasser: as a person. She had liked me, and she was afraid she would alienate me, and I didn’t have to punish her for that or save her from it. I just had to shine a spotlight on it and invite her to work through what was already there. In connection.

In that spirit…here’s a question!

Have you had a moment like this? Maybe one that went well, where you asked a good question, or someone asked one of you? Or one that went poorly – would a question have helped? I’m not asking hypothetically: I really want to figure this out!

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