Hi, I'm Maggie Smith, new host of The Slowdown.

As we get ready to launch the new season on August 18th, we're revisiting some gems from the archive.

Today's episode comes from Tracy K. Smith, who helped build this beautiful space for poetry and reflection.

Music space for poetry and reflection. I'm Tracy K. Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

I'm Tracy K. Smith. When I was growing up in California, we had what we referred to as outdoor pets.

My dad built outdoor houses for our dogs.

He built a two-room rabbit hutch for the brood of Dutch bunnies I kept briefly as pets.

It never really occurred to me that I could or even should have been sharing my bed with our pets.

One Christmas, my brother Michael brought a pet python home with him from college. The first night of the break, the snake named Monty, of course, slithered out of his

tank to terrify our other brother in his bed. In my late 20s, I adopted a sweet stray tabby I found wandering my

neighborhood. I named him Lalo. The first few nights sharing a bed, he pounced on my feet as if they

were fugitives hiding under covers. Eventually, he'd curl up beside me, purring us to sleep.

The first time Lolo gently, deliberately wrapped his teeth around the bridge of my nose, I was

frightened. I came to understand that the gesture, which happened maybe three times max in our life together, was a love bite.

Early in our relationship, I thought my husband was joking when he asked if Shaba, his hundred-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback, could sleep in my bed.

The idea so angered Lalo that he lashed out like the tiger he believed himself to be. When my daughter Naomi was little, sometimes she'd

wander into our bed at night. Sometimes she'd lie perpendicular between Raff and me,

so that our bodies formed the letter H.

Sometimes she'd come in, get settled,

and then make a big fuss about there being too many people in the bed.

Sterling, whom we've nicknamed Mr. Comfortable,

props two pillows behind his head and lies spread eagle on his back, like a starfish.

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