I woke up homeless and alone on my 30th birthday in April 2016.

Well, alone except for Charles.

Charles in the Flowers, acrylic on canvas

Charles is the subject of my painting “Charles in the Flowers,” and anyone who knew him can attest that he was loud, incorrigible, and generally a menace to society.

Still, I ended up loving the little guy, who, in his better moments, was also a cuddle bug and had more personality than his miniature terrier body could feasibly contain. He’d often start staccato-howling at the sound of a siren and, a minute later, look at us with a panicked side-eye as if to indicate he wanted to stop but physically couldn’t, let me out, help, I’m a dog trapped in a howl.

Back to being homeless with Charles. The morning prior, my boyfriend at the time (we’ll call him X) and I, and Charles, had been sleeping in our car in a Walmart parking lot in Colorado Springs. We woke up to a harsh knock on the window.

It was a cop, doing what they call a “wellness check.” In spite of nearly four months of living out of the car, we’d never had any kind of personal interaction with the cops. This was probably due to being white and also due to being in Colorado, where plenty of people were deliberately unhoused. That was our plan, live out of the car, climb and hike, save up enough money to get a small place.

The cops requested our IDs and there turned out to be a warrant out for X’s arrest for a year-old drug thing that we’d both forgotten about. X was immediately taken to jail and I wasn’t given any information about what was happening.

Cold and running on adrenaline, I drove Charles to the Black Bear Cafe where I could sit outside and use Wifi and figure out my next steps.

I didn’t have any money. I had sporadic freelance work that had mostly dried up. I probably had twenty bucks to my name. X had just gotten a new job and was expecting his first check that week, but of course he couldn’t pick it up because he was in jail.

So Charles and I were kind of stuck together, broke and uncertain about what we were supposed to do.

This is where I’ll admit I wasn’t a dog person. Charles was X’s dog. The first time Charles met my daughter (when she was a baby) he stood over her and drooled, visions of sugarplums or sausages or whatever whets a dog’s appetite dancing in his eyes, which, as a new mom, made me very nervous.

I wanted to like Charles, but it was difficult. He was loud, I liked quiet. He jumped up and was sharp and scratchy. I was always kind to him, but I didn’t feel that bond you’re supposed to feel with a dog that people always talked about. I grew up with cats, thought maybe I just wasn’t a dog person.

Waiting at the climbing gym on the morning of my birthday.

I could appreciate his cuteness; I just didn’t feel much for him.

But now, the day before my 30th birthday, this little shaggy canine was the only companion left in my life. I was in a strange town where I still hadn’t made any real friends, X was in jail, and my daughter was nearly 800 miles away living with her bio dad while I was attempting to get a place to live so she could move out there with me — a goal that was feeling less tangible every day.

So Charles and I pressed onward. I was too distracted and stressed that day to get any work done, and my go-to coping mechanism at the time was avoidance, so I went to a wine cafe and had a drink and tried to squeeze a little more work in.

I don’t remember the order of events over those couple of days, to be honest, but I do remember at one point I had to go into the grocery store, and dogs aren’t allowed in grocery stores, so I cracked the windows for Charles and ran inside.

When I came out, this scowling woman was shaking her head at my car, then me. She was standing outside her own car, rooted in place as if she’d been waiting awhile for me to come out. She looked affluent. Vitamin D deficient, too. She might’ve even had a fur coat. I could be making that up.

But I do remember her scolding me: “Oh, you really shouldn’t leave your dog in your car.”

I don’t remember what I said, maybe I said my car was my house? But I do remember a sort of throat-punchy-rage bubbling up.

The rest of the day was a blur. At one point I drank too much and got really sad, and my only good friend at the time, a really nice lady named Sam, told me to come to her house. I drove over and Sam’s daughter came out and scooped Charles up and carried him inside. All four of his legs went stiff, straight down as she carried him, like he was a toy or something. Oddly, he surrendered to it, as if he knew their glowing house was an upgrade from our cold car.

Sam, with her daughter in the middle, and my daughter far left. We met Sam in a park one day (our first stint in Colorado, a year before the homelessness) when we all happened to be slacklining. Her warm spirit and love of humanity and nature made us fast friends.

Sam was so kind. She said I could park and sleep in her driveway until I got things sorted out. I went to sleep in a kind of stupor and woke up early the next morning…

With a flat tire.

Sam was already off to work. The closest bathroom was the climbing gym, a mile or so away toward downtown. I had to pee so bad. I was hungover and thirsty, too.

There was a little birthday card from Sam on my windshield with three five-dollars bills in it. Those three bills felt like a fortune.

I put Charles on a leash and we walked, as fast as possible, toward the gym.

I told the desk worker (I think his name was Matt) what happened. I remember he was an ice climber, too, and that he was stocky and kind of like a dwarf from World of Warcraft or something. He said Charles and I were welcome to sit in the lounge until we figured things out.

Later that day, Matt helped me replace my flat tire with the spare and showed me how to do it (I’d never changed a tire before).

Charles and I trucked along. X’s boss, Eric, reluctantly gave me X’s paycheck after I explained what was happening. He’d seen us together inside the bar where X worked enough to trust me. I suppose in retrospect he was probably right to be skeptical, and was breaking some rules giving me that check.

I deposited it in our joint account and started on my way to the tire shop. Then I got a call — X was being extradited. To Nebraska.

I had a flat tire, no food, a dog, and now I had to get to Nebraska.

I remember being consumed with guilt that everything felt like I was moving farther and farther away from my goal of seeing my daughter again. Everything about this life was misaligned, and here I was with this scraggly dog and we were trying to figure it out together.

We drove through the night. Sleep deprived. My phone battery died at one point and I got lost on a black side road. I hit a bunny because it was so dark. I about lost it.

Charles and I made it to Nebraska and we picked up X. His grandparents had come and bailed him out already and were almost going to head to Missouri without me, even after I’d driven halfway across the Midwest.

I wish I could say this experience bonded me and Charles, and it certainly contributed since it was the first time I was left alone with him for days, but it was more of a slow build over the next several years. We moved back to Springfield, Charles went from being a hobo dog to living in the lap of luxury in a real house after my business took off.

We went through a rollercoaster of ups and downs, our family, ultimately adding another dog and another child, adding to the commotion and chaos.

As you can see in the photo below, Charles was clearly pissed about it.

I don’t remember the last time I saw Charles. He passed some time in 2023 after I X and I split up.

But I had kept a painting I’d made of him in 2022 to commemorate his more peaceful moments, and to remember him as the cute little shit he actually was. It remains one of my favorite paintings to this day.

Although, after writing this up, I’m feeling a call to paint one more…