Following Elias

Just Time

If only I could take a sabbatical from work to write.

Take a year off as Counselor and serve as a Noon Duty instead.

Still see the kids at lunch and recess everyday, spend mornings writing, afternoons sending my work out for publication.

If only we could still pay the bills.

I envy people who don't worry about money, and though its seems that those who have it in excess worry about it even more, just in a different way.

I don't want anything fancy.

Just time.

Time to write before 9:55 at night. Time to edit. Time to submit essays to journals and magazines.

Time to work on the 300 pages of blog posts I printed out for my first book.

The binder filled with writing from Elias first three years sits by my bed untouched.

The file unopened.

I turned 43 on January 16th and my gift from Nick is to attend the Katchemak Bay Writers conference in June.

I can sign up to submit 15 pages of a manuscript and 20 minutes with an agent or editor.

Its a step.

Later than I originally imagined as a lost teenager scribbling away in countless journals, penning poor poetry and adolescent rants, and dreaming about fame as an author.

And yet now I don't want fame.

I just want the freedom to write.

30 Second Wake Up Call

1:30 a.m.: That last glass of red wine (after beer and margaritas) has me sleeping soundly next to my husband.

Until the house starts shaking.

Slow at first and then a prolonged violent shake.

I've experienced earthquakes before, small tremors usually, and one that made me dive under my table at work where I sheltered with a large Samoan boy who was having an off day.

This was different. The walls swayed. Glass rattled. The ground moved.

"Earthquake!"  Nick and I jumped out of bed, fully naked and ready to respond, sort -off.

We stood in shock in the middle of our bedroom riding out the last waves.

"I'm checking on the kids," I said as the aggressive shaking changed to a gentle sway. I stood outside their doors and listened, not a sound, no call for Mom or Dad, it appeared Elias, Olive and her friend Grace slept right through the earth's volatile dance.

My mind dulled from drinks, I went back to sleep easily, despite the shock of a 7.1 earthquake in the middle of the night.

I'm not sure what we would have done if it had been the next Big One, like the '64 earthquake that demolished communities across Alaska.

We do not have an emergency evacuation bag packed.  We rely on power for heat, no wood stove or fireplace. No generator. No bottles of water, just in case.

We are one natural disaster away from destitute and I know we aren't alone.

At least three families on the Kenai lost their homes in the earthquake when a gas line broke. Luckily everyone escaped without injury.

On the upside, I know Alaskans will rally around the displaced families, as we tend to support each other after catastrophes, most of us united by life in the last frontier, as different as our politics and worldviews, we all know what its like to suffer through weeks of darkness and bitter cold, so we reach out to help others emerge from the ashes.

The community that surrounds me will keep me from falling, in this I trust.

If we had mere minutes to evacuate, after the children and our dogs, what would I grab?

Elias's canes and our computer that holds all the words and images of our years together as a family. Our small safe that contains our birth certificates and passports. If there was still time, maybe my old journals and photo albums.

That's about it.

Everything else could go along with the earth's rumbles or flames.

And yet as I sit here at my kitchen table and look around my house, I'm overwhelmed by things. Dishes, papers, jackets, toys, shoes, all of it expendable if it comes down a last minute call between what stays and what goes.

Perhaps its time to purge, while also packing a bag of emergency supplies. Who knows when the next Big One will shake us to the core?

Experts say its not a matter of "if" but "when"-- and not that you can ever be ready for the earth to open up and alter everything you know, but you can at least have a jug of water to drink, as you stand amidst the rubble to begin the process of creating anew.

Oh, and one less drink on a Saturday night might be wise.

A Net of Inclusion

"Mama," Olive says, as we wait for our flight home from Boston to Anchorage, "How do people in wheelchairs get on a plane?"

No one with wheels had rolled by before or as she asked this question. My little girl, newly six, was just sitting at our gate wondering about accessibility and flights-- holding an image in her mind of a chair-bound individual and the challenges he or she must encounter with travel.

The night before, Olive noticed the fire alarm on the wall of our hotel room and asked: "Mom, how would someone know there's a fire if they can't hear?"

She jumped on the bed as we spoke, her body so strong and capable. Her brother Elias sat on the other bed next to me, unable to enjoy the classic childhood joy of bed-jumping, he waited for us to leave the room to go ride elevators and escalators, his preferred activity.

(Is it time yet? Can we go now? When are we going? Is it time?)

Sometimes the berth between siblings seems insurmountable, other times I see how the differences only enhances the souls of the other, sister to brother, brother to sister.

She pushes him. He widens her.

I look at Olive as she turns her jumps into somersaults: "Well, hopefully they'd smell the smoke and realize it was a fire so they could escape."

Not willing to stop there, casting her net even wider to include us all, Olive asks: "What if they can't smell?"

The Sound of my Voice

Here is the link to the audio recording of my story at Arctic Entries: https://soundcloud.com/arctic-entries/christy-everett-jordan?in=arctic-entries/sets/of-moose-and-men-stories-of

(Photos by Will Koeppen)

I Did It

I stood on a stage in front of 700 people and told the story of Elias's birth through a story frame of dipnetting for salmon on the Kenai.

I'll share the recording when its posted, in the meantime, below is essentially the story I shared at Arctic Entries. (Longtime readers will recognize parts of it from former blog posts):

 

I stand here at the mouth of the Kenai River, hands clasped around my pole, with nothing but an empty net and a hope for a fish to find it.

I wait alongside thousands of other Alaska residents for a sockeye salmon to find my net. Not the net inches from mine. Not the net at the front of the line. But mine. I want to be the chosen one.

I silently talk to the fish. Please, please find my net.

I talk to the people around me, as diverse as they come, all of us united by fish. When a fellow dipnetter loses a fish at the shore, and stands there shaking his head at the empty net, I feel the guy’s pain. I’ve been there before.

Haven’t we all lost something we wanted, arrived empty-handed, heart shattered, when we expected to be full? When tragedy calls my name I deny or blame or try to rewind time like Superman saving Lois Lane. When it happens to others I question their decisions or label them as a smokescreen to keep me safe. Like the way people give me false praise for raising a child with special needs. God must have chosen you to be his Mom. You are so good, so strong, so brave …

Because if there is something special about me, then maybe it couldn't happen to them. But it could happen to anyone. Chance. Luck. The fish that swims past a thousand nets, and gets caught in mine.

I lick the salt from my lips, remnants of waves far bigger than me, waves that crest and break when I can’t escape. I can’t feel my fingers, my arms ache, my bladder’s as full as my stomach’s empty, but I stand chest high in the fifty degree water for hours, waiting for that first salmon, for the rush of a fish swimming full tilt into the net I hold.

As I scan the row of anglers, it appears we are all just waiting…

What if we didn’t have to wait, that night,  in the emergency room? The night my water broke four full months too soon.  Nick and I alone in a room waiting to be seen. This can’t be happening, its not time. Please stay in, please, not now. Not us. Please…

When a nurse finally checked me she saw my baby’s foot and couldn’t hear his heart and that’s when everything moved too quickly. I remember my husbands eyes as they wheeled me away for an emergency c-section. The fear in me practically bouncing my legs off the gurney.  I wanted nothing more than to rewind: Back to my bed, Nick asleep by my side, baby boy safe inside—rewind.

I woke up in a surgery recovery room with an unfamiliar doctor by my side:

“Where’s my baby?” I asked.

She told me he was in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit.

“Is he Ok?”

Her dark brown eyes looked into mine and she said: “He’s alive—but I can’t tell you he’s going to survive.”

It wasn’t till I saw Nick’s face that I realized alive didn’t mean OK.

Our son Elias, our first child, arrived with an Apgar score of zero. No Movement. No heartbeat. No breath. At five minutes, still zero. Our one pound baby died and the doctors and nurses brought him back to life. I couldn’t hold him for the first two weeks, so I planted my feet by his side, my hands on his isolette, I stood there and I waited. We spent 94 days in that NICU and despite dire predictions Elias survived.

Years later, he holds himself upright with the help of forearm crutches, which he uses to poke a salmon carcass on the beach. “Mom, how do I un-dead the fish?"

How do I go back in time? How do I get a second try?  What if we didn’t have to wait so long? What if my cervix hadn’t opened? What if I’d been more cautious? What if…

I look back at my son on the beach and say, “Oh Bud, you can’t."

"When I'm bigger, I can go out there. I can fish too.”

“Yes, yes you can.”

And I mean it, I know we’ll find a way for Elias to dipnet someday; though, I must say, I love this time in the water, without my kids, I love the physical work of holding the net against the tides, the beauty of the light on the ocean, the volcanoes in the distance, the simplicity of my role: Hold the pole. Harvest fish. So different from parenthood.

People often say to me: I don’t know how you do it. What they mean is how you parent a child with so many needs. Elias’s short list includes visual impairment, cerebral palsy, and autism.  I don’t know how you do it?  What is the alternative? To not? Sorry god we said we didn’t care if it was a boy or girl, as long as it was healthy, you can take him back.

 
I plant my feet in the sand, hold tight to my net, stand in the water and wait.

The woman next to me catches one and I can’t help but wonder, out of the thousands of nets waiting, why hers? I mean is it fate or timing or equipment or skill?

I think it’s chaos theory. I think everything doesn’t happen for a reason. It’s random and luck and just being in the right place at the right time. We can look to our skills or our tools as factors in our bounty, but we can't isolate the cause.

Just as I can’t claim there’s something special about me for parenting a child like Elias, a child with an injured brain and miles between stones. I parent Elias by following his needs, winging it, and I’m always wondering if I’m doing it right.

The strength comes from loving him, not from some innate goodness in my soul.

I am not a chosen one, just randomly selected.

A salmon hits and I yank and flip my net with everything I got.  Please stay in, please…

When I finally land the sockeye I do a little dance around the net. Thank you. I lay my hands on the silver scales and study this first fish of the season longer than normal after waiting so long. Thank you, I tell the salmon with each strike, thank you. I raise it high above my head, as as both an offering and a prayer, for my loved ones who watch from our camp above. “Yay Mom,” I hear Elias say as he claps his hands together, the way that he does, in his standing ovation of one.

I bow to my boy, then I turn back towards the water, pick up my pole, and wield my giant net like a direct line between family and sea, luck and will, sustenance and soul, and as I face the oncoming waves, I think, one more, just one more…

Wagon Wheel

Picture this:

I sit next to Elias at our kitchen table for a late dinner Thursday night. He's finishing some gluten-free pizza and I'm just starting a bowl of turkey chili. Nick washes dishes and Olive plays in her room where she's been sent to get into her pjs.

The kids returned after 7:00 pm from Elias's Top soccer program for kids with special needs. And I walked in after 8:00 from my rehearsal for Arctic Entries, an evening of storytelling in which I am sharing a piece that weaves together dip-netting on the Kenai with Elias's premature birth and subsequent challenges.

My story's emotional and I'm drained after the adrenaline build up of anticipating sharing it with the Story Board and other participants. Nick puts on Elias's favorite song, Wagon Wheel, by Old Crow Medicine Show, and my boy who barely sings Happy Birthday above a mouse's whisper starts to sing:

So rock me mama like a wagon wheel
Rock me mama any way you feel
Hey mama rock me

I put my spoon down and join in with my boy:

Rock me mama like the wind and the rain
Rock me mama like a southbound train
Hey mama rock me

We sit at the table and sing to each other, just like this, humming along with the lyrics we don't know till the refrain returns and we can croon actual words:

So rock me mama like a wagon wheel
Rock me mama any way you feel
Hey mama rock me

Elias shakes his head side to side and looks right at me from time to time as we sing, I return his gaze with tear-line eyes, amazed at how far we've come.

 

Happy Friday All.
 

In No Particular Order

1) Winter break ends in a matter of hours, and you could say I'm in denial, as I sit here at my kitchen table, drinking wine, as if my schedule is still all mine.

2) I spent a lot of time during this vacation sitting on my parents couch, coloring, like I did as a child, as my own children clamored for Nana and Papa's attention-- my Mom and Dad rose to the occasion, giving Nick and I the gift of relaxation, something I've forgotten to do for the last eleven almost twelve years.

3) On Christmas day, Nick and and I kayaked through Nauset Marsh, on Cape Cod, as unusually warm weather graced the East Coast, giving us a wind-free 60 degree paddle through mirror-water as the seabirds sang their tunes.

4) Today, I peeled the last of my garden carrots, the odd shapes ones from the bottom of the fridge drawer that finally revealed themselves, in full, to me:

5) On January 12th, I'll stand on a stage at the Performing Arts Center and share a seven-minute story in front of 700 people. I submitted an essay I wrote about dipnetting and when I met with two members of the Story Board they told me that in its current too long version my story was 90% dipnetting and 10% Elias and they wanted me to swap those percentages.

By the way, no notes are allowed on stage.

So if you've wondered at all where I've been over these past two weeks, don't worry, I've still been writing. (And trying to memorize). Tickets for Arctic Entries go on sale Tuesday the 5th at 2:00 and I'm told they sell in a matter of minutes, so I'm guaranteed a full house. (More wine please.)

I know many of you can't be there, so I'll share an audio link after the event if you'd like to listen.

6) I ran today on the ice trails through the woods, with screws in my shoes, and I still slipped often. I ran with our pup Lola who loves to sprint far ahead of me on the trails, a six-month old running fiend who pulls me too fast when on leash. On a couple of the trickier parts, where her paws slid across the icy path, instead of continuing on at mock speed, she'd stop, and look back, as if willing me not to fall.

7) I'm thinking its time for a new blog title, as a second child myself with all my past you-love-him-more rants over my brother's bigger stocking and baby book and well, I don't want to minimize the existence of Olive. But I don't want to lose readers or take the time to set up a whole new page so I may be thinking about this, without acting, for awhile.

8) "Mom can I have another one of those chewy chocolate nut things?" Olive asks.

"They're called turtles and no, not now, you haven't even had breakfast yet."  My girl got the Everett gene for sweets and the holidays sure make it hard to deny all those cravings.

"But Mom, they have nuts in them. They're healthy." Oh and she got my ability to rationalize every bad decision.

9) On Christmas Eve we gathered with my parents' neighbors and participated in one of those gift exchanges where people can swap gifts based on a hierarchy of numbers. I warned my Mom that this might not go over well with my kids. Elias being rigid and particular and Olive being newly six. So we made a plan for the kids not to swap but then someone at the party said they could trade gifts if they wanted to and well, Elias sure as hell did want to trade his binoculars for Olive's pop-up game or one of the other children's presents but no one wanted to engage his wish. 

My eleven-year-old boy teetered on the edge of a freak out so I told him, "Elias, I have a good number for the adult swap and whatever I get I'll trade with you." This calmed him down and when they announced 15 I grabbed a big gift bag with a picture of Santa Claus. I reached in and pulled out a flashlight and you'd think we opened a trip to a water park with elevator rides.

"Yes! Yes! I wanted this!" Elias bounced up and down and clapped his hands. "This is exactly what I wanted!"

I announced to the three adults left to choose that this gift was officially off limits for a trade. The older gentleman who brought the flashlight smiled and said, "It floats too, ya know."

10) I vow to relax a little more this year. To pull out my markers and color between the lines. To write for myself in a way that makes me want to share it with others. To love deeply and go easy when I fall.

11) Thank you readers for being here too. For giving me a reason to return again and again to this place where I wrestle with words to reveal meanings. It wouldn't be the same without you.