I wanted to call my dog Matt Damon because I wanted to write about hanging out with Matt Damon. I wanted to call my dog Matt Damon because when I saw him—Matt Damon—in Good Hill Hunting, he felt like home to me. Every time I get a new alert from 23 and Me that more relatives have shown up, I hope Matt Damon is on the list. I feel related to him and I’d love genetic proof that we’re connected.

I’m 56 and the clock is ticking, so I figured if Matt Damon wouldn’t come to me, I’d fuck with the story and bring him into my life that way.

I believe in adopting dogs who need homes, and so I went online and searched various shelters. I was not the only one doing this! The word “unprecedented” is used so often when people talk about COVID that it makes me aggravated. Uh, actually, this kind of thing is not exactly “unprecedented”. Plagues and economic crises are not new concepts or events. However, I am wondering if the run on dogs in shelters during COVID is “unprecedented”. Dogs are going like hotcakes. (Yay!)

My daughter and I drove to the Milo Foundation near Berkeley to look at a dog, one of many who had been rescued from a hoarding situation. The dogs were adorable and wild. I live in a place that requires two things 1. the dog won’t make a mess inside the house and 2. the dog is safe around strangers. In my past life, I would have embraced a feral dog fearlessly, but in this new life I have to be more careful.

My daughter suggested I get the dog of my dreams. What? Get what I really want?

Huh.

Spend money on something I could get for (almost) free?

Go to a breeder?

But here’s the thing: I worked for a breeder when I was 14 and 15 and 16 and it was a magical time. She raised Australian Sheperds, and I got paid $1.25 an hour to clean out the kennels, wash dogs, and play with puppies. It was heaven. One day she gave me a puppy.

I loved Polly with my whole self, and then when I went to college she got hit by a car while my mom was in the front yard gardening. It still makes me cry. The grief I felt was so enormous I didn’t know what to do with it. I went for a run late at night on the dark, hilly roads of Gambier and wondered how I would survive a thing that the people around me didn’t seem to understand. Your dog died? That’s so sad. I’m sorry. Did you do the ready for Philosophy yet? Did you get it?

I’m not sure I’ve recovered from that event, even now. I had lost my dog and no one in my world could mirror my grief back to me, and so I got quiet, ate more, transferred to another college at the end of the year.

I never gave my whole heart to a dog again. I even gave two back.

Amy Geller, a friend and therapist, is working with me as my love coach. I told my story, and now I’m working on my heart. I want to love wholeheartedly. Actually, I do love wholeheartedly. I want to admit it, swim in it, let my body feel it all.

I found a puppy online, but I didn’t have that feeling of you, but he seemed close enough, and so after I put down the deposit, I walked around and felt what I felt and changed my mind. No dog, I decided. I guess I’m not ready.

But I kept going online, searching.

And then I found him.

It was him.

Mr. Right.

In my head, I was going to name my dog Matt Damon, but this dog already has a name. This dog is seven months old and is part of a family. This dog has a story. This dog’s family is too noisy and busy for this shy dog, and this dog needs a quieter home, so even though the family loves him, they are getting another home for him so the dog can thrive.

His name is Nash.

It’s not a name I would choose. It’s not a name that comes easily out of my mouth. Something happens with the a and it takes work for me to say the name. It doesn’t flow like water when I say it—I have to do a little work to get it out. For example, when I say Matt Damon, the words feel easy to me and connect me to the home in the center of my brain. When I say Nash, the word goes to a part of my brain that has to process the sound before my brain lets the word sink in.

Nash is someone else’s dog, but next week he’ll be mine.

So what do I do about his name?

When I was born, I was named Sarah. Ten weeks later I was adopted and my name was changed to Anne. My question it, What happened to Sarah? If I’m Anne and not Sarah, does that mean the first ten weeks of my life (and the nine months growing into Sarah, perhaps, if I was named early on) get erased? And who does the erasing?

It would have been inconvenient for my parents to keep the name Sarah because every time they said it they would have had to remember the name was given to me by someone else, that I was someone else’s first. Easier to erase the past and get a fresh start.

But easier isn’t always truer.

Nash was not my dog first. Other people loved him before I will get to love him.

Nash is not just himself. He is his family, canine and human, and if any of those things are cut off, pieces of Nash get lost.

I want the whole puzzle. All the pieces.

So it’s Nash.

Sweet baby Nash.