Starlings,

You may have noticed your valet sitting cross-legged atop the picnic table during our morning dog park excursions.

Please know: It’s not that I’m a helicopter dad, though I certainly am that. Here’s the deal: I dig your dog park. It is an amazing place for meditation.

Not for the quiet. Not for the peace. Certainly not for the janitorial duties.

I love your park because, everyday, I see a display of life lived right.

You both have made the off-leash Victory Dog Park your second home and, thus, mine. You whimper when we near in the car, strain collars when we approach on foot, and burst forth when we finally! unfasten.

So I take a hoisted seat, and marvel at the Great Canine Stage, where you and your wolf cousins seem so joyous, so unbridled and becoming. As best I can tell:

• You hold the right amount of consciousness. I can spot no ego, vanity, posturing or scheming. If you’re worried about how you look or what others think, it doesn’t show. If mortality frets you, your poker face would school Gaga.

• You hold anger for the right amount of time. Seven seconds, I count. Enough to feel it, express it, and move on.

• You hold memory for the right amount of time. A half day, tops. Enough to greet yesterday’s friends like today’s kin. Enough to forget parental failures — or at least to forgive so deeply it feels like forgetting.

A confession: I also like the park because I suck at meditating. I’m too much an emotional hoarder to clear my mind.

So I wolf a version of meditation, based on what you do. I take a corner of the table, hopefully dappled in sun, and cross legs. Elbows on knees. In through the nose, out the mouth. Deep both ways. Slow. Down. Time.

And I will watch you all and think: More than the joy, more than the forgiveness, more than the love amnesia, teach me how you are never anywhere but in the now.

I’m pretty sure that’s where meditation is supposed to take you. I’m positive it’s supposed to take you to a place place that embraces life, which you do without conscience. How did we help form something so present-minded yet forget ourselves?

It’s not just at the park. I think I have photographic proof of you both lazing in the sun on your backs, gazing at the sky, perhaps pondering what a nimbus smells like.

At least it looks that way from a tabletop.

So ignore the chauffeur in the corner of your eye, practicing his breathing and trying to take mental note of your dance moves. 

Dad’s just trying to dog.