Following Elias

Good Enough

Drinking tea instead of wine at night to smooth the tickle that disrupts the back of my throat, throwing me into coughing fits mid-conversation, my elbow over my mouth, back turned.

Been thinking a lot about sickness and health.

(Till death do us part.)  

Why do we hide from the shared fact that we all die?

We deny this final page as if we can read backwards to the prologue, as if the covers of the book never close.

*****

"Mom, why is the girl just lying down?  And the boy leaving her?"

"It's part of the dance."

Olive and I sit in the back row of East High's auditorium to watch Reni perform with Dance Contempo. The diverse beauty of the girls and boys bodies as they move together across the stage holds us captive. Every dance a different style, from ballet to hip hop to modern to tango, polished to to an athletic art that speaks directly to the soul.

Beauty in action.

Olive never takes her eyes off the stage when she asks me questions about the performance.

'Where's Reni?"

"She's not in this one."

"Why'd those girls walk off stage?"

"They'll be back."

Half-way through the performance, during a love story duet, Olive says: "Mom, she has a pretend leg too," and its only then that I notice the girl's prosthetic.

Mom she has a pretend leg too.

Too.

We all have something wrong with us, an injury, a flaw, a secret we harbor as if it is our burden alone. We waste so much time pretending to be whole when all we really need is to be embraced broken.

As is.

We spent almost every Saturday this winter at the Challenge chalet, an adaptive ski school on the slopes of Alyeska and besides the obvious benefit of skiing as a family, the biggest bonus is being a part of a community of people forced to acknowledge the human condition of loss and flipping it on its head by living even more completely in the present.

*****

Last week I learned I don't have cancer but that my body contains cells that could continue to mutate if left unchecked. I tripped on the word "pre-cancerous" in my report, falling over the letters and the fear they hold.

Not yet, I first thought, brewing worry with words, until I read it again and landed on not now.

*****

"Mom," Elias laughs, "Where's the ball?"

"Did he just call you Mom?" the new kid from Mexico asks in the middle of our recess soccer game.

"Yeah, I'm his Mom."

"Wait, you're a Mom?" he squints his eyes up at me and cocks his head.

"Yeah, I'm Elias's Mom. And I have a daughter Olive who will be here for kindergarten next year."

The ball interrupts our conversation but later he runs near me again and says, "Why does your son need... ?" Not sure of the word, he mimics walking with canes.

"They help with his balance. You know how some people wear glasses to help their vision, well his canes are like that for his balance."

 "But," He shrugs his shoulders, "He's fine. He doesn't need them."

I smile into the sun at this 11-year-old I knew I liked when I first met and say, "You're right, he can walk without them. He doesn't always use them." 

"Yeah," the boy nods, "He's good." And as he runs down the field my heart follows in his wake, arms outstretched to embrace the truth of his words.

He's good.

And that is just it: We are all good.

Good enough.

Here. Now.

As is.

*****

 

What Playing in Dirt Reminds Me

"This is fun Mom," Olive says as she scoops potting soil and places Gladiola bulbs in pots. "Fun, fun, fun."

"Yes, yes it is."

I hold a huge mass of Dahlia tubers that looks like a bunch of deformed potatoes and search for eyes so I can attempt to divide it. After years of growth I think its past time. I'm not sure if the tubers in my hands will produce orange flowers like the sun or white petalled flowers with fine purple stripes.

On this barren April day its hard to believe the tubers will grow at all as our world has yet to turn green. A cool wind blows but the sun is high in the sky and warms our faces as we work.

"Its fun and hard work," Olive says as she fills another pot to the brim.

I smile at Olive, so competent at five, no longer un-planting in my wake. I trust her to plant the bulbs as I showed her, with the round side on the bottom and pointy side facing up and decide to let go of concerns about how deep or shallow they go.

If they want to grow they'll find their way.

We all will.

There is something so innately hopeful in tubers and bulbs. The belief that beauty will emerge from the dark underground. From shriveled "deformed potatoes" flowers will grow.

"Mom, I love gardening with you."

"I love gardening with you too Olive."

I often rage against the uncertainty of life, wanting future answers in the here and now, instead of trusting in the process of time. I fill my pockets with worry, hoarding questions to feast upon on sleepless nights.

But the soil that seeps beneath my fingernails reminds me that life itself is anticipation, and to live is to stand in awe of all that you see.

Happy Earth Day.

May Beauty Find You

Happy Friday!

Not less than, just different.

"Did you pack a Magic Treehouse book?" Elias asks.

"Yes, two."

We are in Seward for the weekend, settling into Cuzuncle David's travel trailer for the night, high above Resurrection Bay, surrounded by Spruce and Hemlock, in a place where both magic and tree houses seem possible.

Elias has read all the Magic Treehouse books with his Dad and he and I are re-reading them in random order.

"What numbers did you bring?"

"I don't know. I didn't pay attention to the numbers.  I grabbed one about the Olympics and one about Abraham Lincoln."

Elias pauses, then turns a thought into a question, as he often does: "Is the Olympic one number 16 and the one about Lincoln number 47?"

How does he remember that?

As I pull out the books and confirm his numeric memory, I am reminded, once again, how different Elias's brain works than mine. 

Not less than, just different. 

I Don't Know

 

"I don't know what I'm doing," Elias says, as he pushes his body into the 5th grade girl sitting next to him on the couch.

She puts a pillow between her and my awkward son, who continues to throw his bony body into her long lean one. The pretty girl smiles, her shoulders hunched, and tells Elias to stop, in a different way than she would for a typical boy, one without canes or pull-ups in the 5th grade--nervous instead of righteous.

I don't know.

I don't know if my son will ever outgrow diapers, and this worries me more than wheelchairs, more than the words autism, cerebral palsy, and legally blind written in the many folders that contain the many labels for my son.

I don't know what all his diagnoses hold for our future, for tomorrow...

...for yesterday, for what we could have done differently in the past.

I never know if I'm doing enough-- if I missed a path somewhere that might have led somewhere else, where I'd know fewer acronyms, endure fewer stares, find fewer lines in my forehead after another restless night wondering what if...

What if he could...

What if I did...

What if we never...

What if we can...

I don't know whether Elias can't listen to his body or whether he chooses not to hear.

I don't know if he feels more than he expresses.

I don't know if he dreams at night.

I don't know.

I don't know how to hold the heartache of this complicated life I lead within the confines of a 24 hour day.

Sometimes the uncertainty seeps into my exhales, infusing every moment with worry and wonder about a world that isn't mine to control.

I don't fucking know.

I don't know.

It's a mantra of sorts that gets me through the many moonless nights.

I don't know.

I don't know if the oceans will rise, if my cells will divide, if a car will collide with mine as I wait for my light to turn green.

Uncertainty reigns.

This I believe.

This I know.