Following Elias

Snapshots

 

 

 

 

*****

My four-year-old watches dinosaur train on an ipad as I watch the Rangers play a hell of a game of hockey.

"Mommy, I want you to watch my show with me."

I glance at her screen.

C'mon, c'mon...

She elbows me and says, 'Mommy watch!"

"Mmm..."

Nice pass!

"That's Tiny, Shiny, Buddy and Don, two brothers and two sisters. They all like each other...

Oh almost!!!

"...Elias doesn't like me."

What.

I turn and look at my growing girl, the younger sibling of a boy who experiences both autism and cerebral palsy, my wounded warrior, my resilient one.

"Oh Olive, he likes you, he... just doesn't always know how to show you."

Oh my heart.

*******

******

Olive sits in her bed and I lay next to her reading The Summer My Father Was Ten.

The story begins with a daughter planting a garden with her Dad, tending to the plants, picking flowers for  their neighbor who walks with a cane.

"Like Elias uses canes."

"Right, like Elias."

"Did she hurt her brain?"

"Um..."

*******

*****

Easter evening, on the way back from Nick's parents house in Palmer Olive asks, "Do Wolves eat lambs?"

And I think maybe she's thinking about the story, The Boy Who Cried Wolf, and the danger that comes with lying. I told her this  tale recently in hopes she'd tell the truth more often.

"Yep, they do, "I answer.

"That's so sad," she says from her car seat.

I don't look back.

And I choose not to tell her the name of the meat I just coaxed her to eat for supper.

*****

*****

"I'm washing my butt." Olive stands in the tub, riding her washcloth.

"Your butts in the back, Sweetie"

"Oh, whats this again?"

"Your vagina."

"How do you know?"

"Uh, my Mom taught me."

Boys have penises, girls have vaginas, but we all have fannies.

"And how did you remember?"

"Um, well, I just did."

Someday, Olive, you'll know why you'll never forget the word vagina.

But right now, just relish your body for what it is, all naked and clean and made just right.

*****

Goodnight.

 

If Only I Could Freeze These Frames

Before the meltdowns

When all was

Good.

Friday everyone.

In Search of His Smile

Sometimes its just so damn draining acting like a detective trying to decipher why my son just doesnt seem right.

Not himself.

His furrow deeper, his eyes down, with dark crescents beneath his baby blues.

My baby, still, on life support, unable to breathe, except now he is ten sitting at the table doing multiplication, his head bent close to his paper, his pencil held midair, me watching, wondering, forgetting to breathe.

"Do you feel ok?" I ask daily, for the past week, as he seems like a shadow of usually energetic self.

I'm not sure why I ask, since he has never once complained of sickness or injury, it is only bruises, blood, vomit, or a fever that lets us know he doesn't feel good.

"Yeah," he replies rubbing his eyes.

"I just don't want to go to school," he tells me every morning now. And nor do I, but I tell him I do. I want to stay home with him and search for his smile. Find the missing pieces to his heart.

Or take him to a hospital for a blood test, an x-ray, a full body scan to quiet the worrier in me that thinks this is it.

This is the final doom that's been lurking ever since: "He's alive but I can't tell you he's going to survive."

He may just have the cruds or his brain could be bleeding again...

And I don't want to think this way, and I can hear people saying, Christy it's all in your head, but my relationship with Elias is wrapped in what ifs. I can't fully untangle the fear of loss from this complex web of love and devotion I hold for my son.

My miracle child, or my science project, depending on who you consult, a boy born four months too soon, who despite dire predictions did survive.

And now he is ten, understanding something as complex as multiplication, but unable to point to the source of his clouds.

And here I am, still, as if my hand is through the hole on the isolette gently resting on his tiny head, hoping, praying, that everything will be OK.

 

Did you say Friday?

May We All Grow Back Down

"Mama, I was dreaming about butterflies last night."

I sit on the side of Olive's big girl bed, painted purple by Pop, formerly Nick's great grandfathers.

How many of Olive's relatives have slept atop this solid frame? What were their dreams?

"Tell me about it."

It's a school day and we are behind schedule, as usual, but I put aside my need to get going to listen to my four-year-old daughter's inner mind.

I feel hungry for dreams.

Elias, now ten, has never once articulated a dream. Not a single one.

I ask him often: "Did you have any dreams last night?"

"No." he replies.

And yet he must.

Dream.

I have heard him talking in his sleep, when we all stay in the loft at David's cabin, but I have not been able to make out the words. If I could guess, there would be a chairlift or an elevator amdist his late-night mumbles.

Olive is just beginning to share her nightly wanderings.

"I was dreaming about caterpillars making chrysalis and then becoming butterflies. And then doing it again and again. Caterpillars then butterflies then back to caterpillars and butterflies."

Her animation wakes me up more than the coffee I hold; and I smile at this girl before me as if seeing her for the first time.

She talks with her hands out in front of her, one for caterpillars, one for butterflies. "Its the life cycle, Mom. Caterpillars, butterflies, caterpillars, butterflies..." Her head sways with her words.

Olive once told me that after she grows up, she will grow down again.

"We all do," she said, with a serious look.  This was on the day before her birthday when I said she would never be three again. "Yes, I will. After I reach the top number, I will grow back down, until I'm three again, then two, then one."

(At first she claimed the top number was 61, but when I told her all her grandparents were past this age, we upped it to 100.)

And metaphorically she's right.

We do become young again, once we are old.

And I hope she holds onto this circular vision, keeps it nestled between her ears, alongside her dream of the life cycle of butterflies-- and remembers that everything that truly matters in life is less linear and more spiral.

Not a trajectory to some future point but more of a deepening, a return to a familiar place, like dancing amidst old leaves