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9) Sometimes you're an ass.
I dont call you this, I call you my Ornery One or Mr. Negative, but really, asshole would work just fine.
This morning, you choked your sister over a found matchbox car at Cuzuncle David's; and when I said you owed Olive a major apology, you replied, "No I don't."
You stared at the ground and showed zero remorse over grabbing Olive around the neck with your man-hands because she rolled a small yellow car across the table-- a car you wanted.
My parents tell me when I turned eleven they hardly recognized me, their big-brother-hand-me-down-wearing, knees-scraped, Broadway singing, dress-up, feisty girl turned awkward pre-teen. Suddenly sullen and wearing eye shadow that matched my shirt. Slamming doors and crying at will.
Eleven.
If your sister wants to eat outside you say, "Let's eat inside."
"I don't want you to sit next to me," you tell Olive, all the time, even after you play store with her for an hour, laughing when she makes up silly words, loving the creative energy she brings to your logical world.
You stand in her way when she wants to walk in the front door and push against her when she beats you to the sink to wash hands.
You grab Olive by the hair when she tries to help you. You tell her, "No" when she asks you to play.
I remember my older brother at age eleven, calling me to his room to play, bombarding me with pillows when I eagerly joined.
He called me Crusty.
And Crybaby.
"What are you going to do Christy, cry?" is all Andrew had to say and my lower lip would protrude as my eyes welled.
I have to remind myself about the mayhem that emerges at eleven, so I don't always blame your disabilities for the monster that is sometimes you.
10. Self-conscious you are not.
You stand in the trailer with your pajama bottoms around your ankles unable to find a pull-up in your packing bag and accept help from your naked younger sister who easily locates one.
You remain free from the tendency to "compare and despair". You are not insecure or embarrassed by your differences and call all your classmates: My friends.
You bombard us with thousands of detail specific questions about everything from house numbers to airplane seats but never ask the more soul squeezing one: "Why me?"
You still enjoy shows like Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and Sid the Science Kid. The only videogames you play are Wii golf and bowling. You know nothing of Hollywood characters, pop bands, or games like "Truth or Dare" and "I Never".
In some ways you are still so young, especially compared to your street-smart peers, kids who watch R-rated movies and play X-rated video games, kids who ask each other "out" and divide into warring cliques at school ready to take their conflicts out on the playground or Instagram or Facebook or whispers behind backs.
You stand alone-- thinking about chairlifts, elevators and trams, machines that magically move people higher...
...far above the pettiness of social cliques and divisions based on assumptions that shatter when lifted.
While others compete with each other for social status, you focus on the process of rising up.
11. Elias: You are the son I didn't expect. My teacher. My worry that keeps me up at night. My ache. My hero. My boy who break my heart apart and rebuilds it stronger.
My first born.
My daughter's big brother, Olive's tormentor and idol-- her larger form both to become and to define herself against.
You are the hands that mold me, the knife that slices me apart, and the language I will never master.
The mirage in the distance, the sun that hides behind impenatrable clouds.
The breath I no longer hold.
You are Elias, and I love you just so.
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5) You run after me on the soccer field, surrounded by able-bodied boys, Samoan, Alaska Native, African American, Hispanic, Hmong, many with challenges greater than yours, hidden behind the closed doors of the trailer park Northeast of school.
You stand out almost as much for your blue eyes and blonde hair as you do for your canes that graze the field every few steps to keep you upright.
"Where's the ball?"
Your limited vision makes it hard to follow the game, especially in the May sunshine, but you run with the pack anyways, a smile wide as your namesake, Mt. Saint Elias.
When the ball hits your canes or lands by your feet, the boys who fearlessly slide-tackle, kick, grab, head, push, and collide, pause.
You plant your canes, swing your right foot, and connect with that nebulous orb, sending it a few feet down the pitch.
"Nice kick Elias," one of the 6th graders says, before he runs off to chase the turmoltuos mass of young boy bodies, in motion, once again.
You smile and follow along.
6) "What a sweet boy," the substitute T.A. says when I introduce myself to her as counselor and Elias's mom.
"He's so cute," I often hear.
Or: "I love him."
You know how to charm older women. At eleven you still want to hold hands. You tell people they are nice, that they are good teachers, or that you like them. You give hugs with all that you have, head against, arms around.
New this year, you also want to hug a few of your female classmates, especially the nice pretty ones. You sit too class to them in library. Tackle them in gym. Lean against them in class. They treat you like a younger cousin, awkward, but harmless.
Not a threat.
Not yet.
You recently stroked a girl's arm, and when she told you she didn't like it, you answered: "But I do."
I wonder, when will you learn this isn't OK? That you can't just throw your bony body into softer ones and claim, "I don't know why I did that."
7) Your mind is a map, holding street names, numbers, and facts. You miss social cues but can direct traffic around our neighborhood, giving precise directions to lost souls.
You love HGTV, shows with names like Flip or Flop, Love It or List It and House Hunters--your vocabulary includes terms such as: popcorn ceilings, granite countertops, list price, and kitchen island.
(This fall, you walked into a teacher and colleague's kitchen and said, "Don't you think that refridgerator is dated?")
When someone comes to our house for the first time, you point out not just the kitchen and your bedroom but our furnace and washing machines.
You could be a tour guide, an architect, a greeter, a map maker, you could design your own home or live with us till we pass.
8) When you fall, and boy, do you fall, if unhurt, you usually laugh and say things like:
"That hole just up and grabbed me."
"Well, that was unexpected."
"I just got rocked." (Or hosed, floored, walled, doored, treed...)
"I didn't do that, the chair did."
If hurt, you swing your hand to maim whoever responds, and don't answer when asked, "Are you OK?"
You amass bruises and scrapes that mark your body like resilience tattoos, that don't wash of in the bathtub, where you still let me, your Mama, wash your hair.
"Lie back," I say as I help you bend your legs and move your growing body down till your head reaches the side of the tub. I scoop water onto your hair, thick like your Dad's and the same dirty blonde as mine when I was a younger girl.
I cup the warm water with both hands, release it slowly onto your forehead, careful to direct the water away from your glacial eyes.
I wonder if this is how it will always be, you laying down, with me on my knees.
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1) "That's my chair," you say, if someone sits at your particular spot at the end of our kitchen table, where you sit crisscross applesauce and look up at me most mornings as I emerge from the shower to say, "You look nice today, Mom."
2) From your thrown, you spell: firefly, funnier, happiest, on a large well-used whiteboard. When your sister sits beside you with a whiteboard of her own, you race to form large letters, on the edge of legibility, and swipe your paper towel across them as soon as you make the last mark.
"Elias! I can't see!" Olive whines, so you bury your head closer to your spelling words and write as if chased by the wind, by mosquitos, by a boat you can't miss, chased by the the approaching steps of your opponent, by loss, by the failings of muscles following messages from the mind, chased by Shakespeare and mythology and generations of siblings juggling jealousy and spite. You write: trying, eye, copy, hurried, deny, rely, contrast, empty.
3) You scream and slap my leg, claw at my face, a hyena mixed with bear, a fire alarm, a twister, neurons firing not quite right, a monster, mayhem, might-- a fight with my heart in the form of an eleven-year-old boy, my son, with hands almost bionic from years of walking with canes, you swipe at me, claws raised, and shout in a strangulated voice not yours, "I WANT TO HURT YOU!!!!"
4) "I don't know," you always say, when I ask you later why you acted that way.
"My mind just told me to throw things, " you told me after one of your more recent storms.
"Well what could you say to that part of your mind?" I asked as I smoothed the six blankets you like (in order) over your tired little bones.
"No," you say, like usual.
Or if I'm asking you to do something: "Ok."
As if rehearsing these words, when calm, will somehow prevent the six-bell alarm that sends your nervous system into full-freak out mode.
I place my hand on your head, like I once did in the NICU, where you spent those 94 days, not in the nest of my womb but poked and prodded and cut open and patched together again, where you almost died and your Dad and I became parents, learning to love each other with our hearts on the outside, so we can stand together, beside you, with no guarantees.
"I always love you," I say. "Even when I'm sad."
You rub your eyes that I long to fall inside but you hide from me, and say, "Love you too... Can you fill my water?"
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I applied for an Individual Artist Award with the Rasmussen Foundation, hoping to earn $7,000 for a new laptop computer and childcare so I could write more often.
I want to turn blog posts into essays for submission to magazines while I work on the chapters of my first book.
My letter arrived Sunday and as soon as I read the word "unfortunately" I knew.
Rejected.
Again.
Hard to keep submitting when I receive letters like this.
As I read on, I learned that out of 331 applicants only 36 artists received awards and the ratio helped quiet the voice that tells me I'm no good.
(Why try?
Stop writing.)
The letter went on to say: Enclosed you will find panel comments...We hope you will be able to use these comments to improve your chances of success in future competitive opportunities.
It is rare to find out why the reviewers rejected my submission, I flipped to the next page and read:
Panelists Comments for Application:
Did not represent herself well on her application. Immature artist statement. Beautiful writing samples. Emerging.
So yes, I filled out the application the day before the due date finding myself with a workday at home with a sick kid, I pieced my artist statement together with two blog posts and called it good.
And I still have no idea how to write an artist statement.
How do I write about how and I why I write?
Still, I read on:
Comments:
I just really like this artist's writing and sensibility. She is an emerging writer, and the field is too crowded and competitive to move her proposal forward THIS YEAR, but I hope she can get a real sense of my solidarity and admiration for her work. Her identity as a writer is not in question--in addition to all else she is, this is a writer. I looked at her blog and love the work she is generating, consistently, despite the pressures upon her. I so wish we could have funded her to get the additional writing time and equipment that she is requesting, but I trust that a writer of this caliber is on her way regardless. I thank the writer for the opportunity to come to know her work.
Maybe I'll keep writing after all.
"This is a writer."
Thank you, oh mystery panelist, writer, you.
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