Moose Meat with Soy Milk

You begin somewhere.

A vegan in Maine and find yourself cooking moose meatloaf in Anchorage. With soy milk. This is your oxymoran of a life, your virtual reality with all the light and darkness of contradictory poles. 

As summer sosltace nears, your backyard never darkens and you find yourself pulling weeds at 11:11 pm, wishing for answers. You know you are your own worst enemy: that pretty ugly side of your brain that concocts demons as never-ending "What-ifs?" that lead you to swamp-filled tunnels. Where rusty claws reach for your ankles, hoping to pull you under too.

A raven calls, a child laughs, a ray of light finds you and saves you from the deep. You breathe again.

 

"What flower is that?" Elias asks.

"Do you know?" you rebutt.

"An iris."

"Yes." You smile.

 

You can look at your boy and see all the holes. Like a screen door, you look through him at where you want him to be. You compare. His baby sister magnifies his deficits when you let her. When you hold them both up to the light and only see the shadows that fall. Or you can let their feet imprint on the earth and savor the sound.

 

You and Nick walk quickly behind your children as they bike along the sidewalk. Elias in his yellow recumbant, feet strapped to the pedals, leads the parade, steering with ease.

"I want to go first," he says, when you begin, as he says everyday the bikes emerge from the garage.

Olive, on her red bike with training wheels, calls her brother's name: "Yias! Yias! Yias!."  She could pass him and often does, but is also content to follow her brother.

Elias brakes at a crossroad and waits, aware of the risks of the road; she slows but gently knocks into his bike to stop, as she hasn't yet learned how to brake. "Tuck! Tuck!" she says. Stuck! Stuck!

Elias looks back towards his sister and says: "You're suppose to be!"

And you find yourself laughing on the edge of the sidewalk. In that place between poles. Somewhere between right and wrong. Light and dark. Between moose meat and soy milk.

Between what could have been and what is.

 

You could spend your life researching, looking for ways to "fix" your son. You could lose yourself in medical jargon, forever wonder the hallways of hospitals, become a fixture in the waiting rooms of clinics. You could.

Or...

Comments

[Niksmom]

The constant balancing within our own psyches is exhausting, isn't it? Sending you a wish for more laughter and irises than swamp-filled tunnels. For both of our families.

[danielle in zurich]

or....you can do what Christy does. Live, love, laugh.

[Christy]

It is a constant see-saw ride NiksMom. Sending you light and flowers as well.

Thank you Danielle for your faith in me:)