Following Elias

Heads Thrown Back

Olive asks her brother the question she recycles, changing the words or the tone, but repeating the essence, hoping that perhaps this time she will receive an answer she can swallow: "Elias, why don't you play with me?" 

He stares at the table.

She doesn't relent: "Elias other brothers and sisters play together. Why don't you like to play with me?"

Nothing.

Just a boy rubbing his eyes and a younger sister determined to try. To reach him. To draw him out of his his box with buttons for up and down but no diagonal, no twirls, no cartwheels in the living room.

He can put on headphones and watch YouTube videos about elevators for hours, if we let him, laughing at the narrator's quirky comments, repeating phrases, pulling them out in public as his own, but play a game with his sister, not without adult involvement, adult negotiating, adult cajoling, not without us making it a big family affair.

And even then chaos can ensue.

Last night we planned a family art night, and when Elias put his headphones back on after dinner, his Ipad aglow, I stormed over from the sink and grabbed it-- I poked the beast-- frustrated by his desire to retreat, tired from a day of trying, not nearly as patient as my husband who had a plan to draw him out, I just yanked out the plug.

A dirty rice pot in one hand, his iPad in the other, I turned away from my son, who rose, enraged, the monster already engaged.  

The beast swung his open hand at me and connected with my chin and shoulder and I thought, bring it on, like a boxer in the ring, I wanted to raise my fists and duke it our with my preteen son-- the adrenaline almost felt good, the anger almost pleasure, oh to just release it all, to roar like Elias.

Thank god for restraint.

Elias redirected his fire towards Olive, prompting Nick to stand between his children as a shield, this is all too familiar place we find ourselves in just when we feel thankful for days of calm.

Elias turned to the table and attempted to upend Olive's new wooden box of art supplies, which made her scream even louder than when he stepped towards her-- and it could have gone on like this, the four of us trapped in this hurricane, if I hadn't spilled rice all over the counter before it began, when I attempted to pour from a wider hole to a more narrow one.

"Look at this rice explosion!" I said, and Elias turned and looked at my mess, laughter replacing rage.

And I unclenched my fists. Stopped biting my lower lip.

Elias never returned to the table, where the three of us attempted to color the night a different shade, instead he lay half on half off our comfy chair, with his back to his family, face in the cushions, just breathing the woodsmoke air. 

"Elias, why don't you play with me?" Olive asks, the morning after.

He stares at the table.

With his iPad hidden until he earns it back, he agrees, albeit reluctantly, and not without cajoling, to make cards with us.

Mom, you are nice, love Elias, he writes.

Olive writes: Merry Christmas Elias. You are funny. Olive

Later I take them to the Sea Life Center, where the young woman at the front desk asks Elias, "Are you here to ride the elevator?"

And of course we do, but we also look at the Puffins and the silver salmon, the Sea Stars and octopus and seals.

Pilot the Stellar Sea Lion swims right up to the large window we watch him through, pauses before us, looks right at us, and then almost bluff charges, making us all flinch, scream, and laugh with our heads thrown back. 

Mesmerized by this mammoth sea creature, who pulls us in with his underwater grace and startles us with his quick movements, again and again, we run back and forth between the windows, the whole downstairs of the Sea Life center to ourselves, just the three of us, laughing every time we get scared.

 

Ode to the Un-Bought Christmas Trees

I see you bare, bound, huddled, hope lost on the eve

of presents opening at your chosen brethen’s feet,

carted off on roof racks, in truck-beds, carried to light-strung homes,

stood upright, arms out-stretched,

for candy canes, shiny apples a fishing bear, santa on skates, Rudolph, Jesus,

paper, plastic, metal, shell, glass, pictures of children past,

tips crowned with angels, stars, symbols of birth deemed sacred,

bodies aglow, trunk skirted,

adorned by a family, graced with a window view.

And here you lean, forlorn, forgotten, forsaken, 

only a chipper on your horizon,

mulch, wooden shards of a once Noble Fir

to blanket Bleeding Hearts, Forget Me Nots,

a gift to soil, to seeds opening, roots deepening, life awakening,

an end, perhaps, more worthy, than the tinsel-bedecked tree,

discarded at season’s end, tossed in a landfill,

with a lone crimson apple still strung on a drying branch,

attractive, but inedible, to the gathering of worms, 

who may or may not be tempted to bite.

Merry Happy All

All I am capable of, on this Christmas Eve morning, as I sip my coffee and cream, at the kitchen counter in my in-laws warm home, is appreciation for all that I see, all that I hold, all that lays in the dark corners, untouchable, unknown.

My children are actually asleep, past 9:00 am, and the temperature rose to double digits. The only sound the crackle of cedar and birch in the fireplace. A trail ride with Nick awaits.

Two words pulse in my veins, in the air I breathe: Thank you, thank you, thank you...

I am forever grateful to you, my friends, family, and readers, for returning here to this place, where I make meaning out of mayhem, find solace in the angle of the sun, beauty in the shadows.

Love and light to you all!

 

The Morning After the Longest Night

You have survived the longest night of the year, which means you will survive the Holiday Season, winter's cold embrace, the frantic pace of modern life, the way it pulls you with its opposing magnetic poles, so you just want to curl up in a ball and roll wherever gravity leads.

But you climb out of bed each morning, and look out the window towards the sky, still dark with night, despite the start of another day. You will do this again and again, like a Newton's Cradle that swings between sleep and wakefulness, always choosing to open your eyes, despite the call to keep them closed.  

And this is how you will survive the next four years, even eight, if we fall that far. You will survive the inevitable losses ahead and the emptiness that follows, the anger, the denial, the bargaining, the grief.

You will survive it all.

You are stronger than you know, made off light and air and water, forces of nature that do not break but bend, transform, shapeshift over and around barriers.

You are the avalanche and the sunrise, the raindrop and the hurricane, the single golden ray that cuts through all the grey and the salted waves of the Pacific that beat the shore like your heart that carries on despite the weather or the time of year, despite politics or all the "what ifs" you fear, this organ of yours plays on like the drummer boys at the battle lines,

thump, thump, thump,

the back-beat of this life that carries the capacity to create change, to love the person you once deemed as other, to walk in realms you once considered closed to feet like yours, to speak the words that smolder inside, that keep you awake as the darkness descends, the syllables that slice your tongue, phrases like knives, sharp-edged sentences that bleed the truth out of your pours, like sweat, like tears, like rivers of wisdom collected in silence for so many years,

unleashed, as the torrent unfolds, as everywhere across the globe people rise like the sun, choosing to open our eyes, despite the call to keep them closed, and speak, no sing, of the air we breathe, the water we drink and the emerging light that shines from within.

Seward Alaska sunrise Winter Solstice, December 21, 2016

Olive Turns Seven

If only I could clone her and keep a copy, like a living photograph, on this boundary line between six and seven, let her continue to grow and unfold, but keep this child of mine-- but not mine-- here at this age of discovery, when the world is still so innocent and unexpected, when her fresh eyes teach me to look more deeply, to see the hearts in the snow, the wonder in the flakes as they fall.

I want Olive to grow, to celebrate each circle around the sun, but I want her to stay young, to be this cool kid with her cartwheels and cardboard dolls, her made-up games and questions--Does space end? Is god real? Why is it called mother nature?

So I joke that I've been putting magic dust in her water to keep her from turning seven, to make her go backwards instead, and yet yesterday, we celebrated Olive's birthday, with a weekend getaway at Alyeska, not five but seven years of her calling me Mom, Nick Dad, Elias brother who, as she said a couple days ago: "Isn't like other brothers, not like Finn or Owen, because he doesn't play with me."

True words that hurt to hear and yet Olive never gives up on trying, Elias look, Elias watch, his eyes flicker in her direction as she stands on her head, ties a balloon for the first time, jumps from hotel bed to hotel bed to cot in the corner before doing it again. She uses made-up words she knows he'll find funny or falls and crashes onto the couch, on purpose, just to make him laugh.

She is learning to be a vigilant entertainer, to draw her brother from the world of autism to the land of make believe, even as he resists, as he calls her bluff with his logical assertions, her charm and persistence capture him, if only briefly.

And when she can't pull him away from elevator trivia, she talks to her stuffed animals as she pretends to teach them how to read, she chases our puppy Lola around the cabin, turns cardboard boxes into computers, asks to help us make dinner, growing more competent in the kitchen every day.

Olive won't stand still, leaving the table between bites to do gymnastics, and as much as I'd want to try, I can't clone her, can't capture her essence in this moment of time, can't keep a piece of her childhood forever by my side, her resilient spunk, her creative chaos, her sensitive heart, Olive, now seven, will travel onwards, as grace allows, through the snow and wildflower years ahead.

She will never be my six-year-old daughter again, not that she has ever really been mine--but I will follow her anywhere, through the thickets of civilization to the middle of nowhere, which Olive likes to remind me is actually somewhere.

Happy Birthday plus one to grow on Olive!

If Only There Was A Button For It

When your child never complains of physical pain or sickness you need to act as a detective, gathering clues, making hypothesis, and sometimes you just get it wrong.

You don't know.

If we hadn't started working with a clinic in Denver that specializes in elimination issues, that asked us to take an X-ray of Elias's bowels, we wouldn't have known he is, and has been, possibly for years, extremely constipated.

We can't see his insides and without the clear sign of an absence of bowl movements, how would we know?

He doesn't ever speak of discomfort.

Ever.

I often wonder if the squinty look in his eyes that often precedes defiance and aggression isn't connect to headaches he never tells us about.

Elias has never once said: "Mom, Dad, my _______ hurts." My head. My toe. My stomach. Nothing.

No pain ever spoken. 

And then there is Olive.

Our girl who climbed out of bed and down the ladder from the loft, not once, but twice last night to lament ailments. The first time she needed a bandaid for an old scab on her finger and she had to show me the faded bruise on her ankle that hurt as well.

The second time she told me her wrist hurt when she lay on her side with her hands together the way she likes to sleep.

I'm not even sure if I kissed her goodnight, so was my patience with her constant need to disclose all kinds of injuries past bedtime, hurts not noticed until its time to lie down.

And then theres Elias who doesn't reveal a six inch gash across his back until I help him shower.

"Does it hurt?"

"No."

"How'd you do that?"

"I don't know."

"Can I look at it?"

"No."

Or the constant bruises, like shifting tattoos, always present, just changing in size, color, and location.

Over the past two years, there has been some concern Elias is experiencing seizures. But there is not enough evidence for our Neuro Doc to want to submit Elias to another EEG. For a strong kid who fights a bandaid--not wanting anything to stick to him after his NICU beginning when you could barely see his skin with all the wires and probes-- an EEG would be torture for all involved.

But I wonder. I wonder about my boy's brain.

With Elias it seems I am in a permanent state of wonder, navigating our relationship with clues and missteps, falls and try agains, two steps forward and one step back.

The elevator doors close and the silver box takes Elias for a ride, as I stand in the hallway wondering what it's like inside.

"Mom," Olive asks, "Why does Elias like elevators so much."

"That's a great question, ask your brother."

Olive leans on the table as Elias watches a YouTube video on hotel elevators. He doesn't answer his sister. I make him pause the video and look at us.

"I don't know," he says.

I don't let him off that easy. I tell him before he can finish the homemade video-- someone like my son filming details about elevators with his phone and posting them online, his hits multiplying every time I allow Elias screen time-- he needs to tell us what it is that attracts him to elevators.

I wonder if he is drawn to the narrator as well as the buttons and doors. Does he feel a connection to a kindred elevator spirit?

"I don't know," he repeats.

And maybe he doesn't really know. Can I fully explain why I like the mountains or the sea? Why I write? What draws me to seeds in the Spring?

"Elias you don't have to tell us the whole reason but you can't just say: 'I don't know.' What is one thing you like about elevators?'

"I like the way they move," he says, my boy whose body doesn't do as he pleases, who can't connect language to muscles and organs and joints, who faces more obstacles than I can name.

I like the way they move.

Up and down.

In a fairly predictable way.

Unlike just about everything else in time and space. Where there are no buttons to open doors.

No straight lines to travel.

Scavenging for Something

I wouldn't have even noticed the sea lions, if they hadn't roared at me from the water's edge.

Head down, I stop mid-stride on Lowell Point Beach and look out towards Resurrection Bay. Two, then three, then five heads, peer back at me and my two Border Collie mixes that run where the waves lap the shore.

I roar back in my best sea lion, which prompts Lola, my pup, to jump on me, worried. "It's ok, Lola, I'm just talking to the sea lions."

Their curious faces stare at us on the land, as I stare at them in the sea, in awe of their ocean life, so different than mine.

"Thank you for saying hello!" I holler, alone on the beach, on this twenty degree December day, the majority of the houses behind me shuttered for the dark winter months ahead, holding empty rooms for summer visitors.

"Hellooooo!" I call out again, happy to connect with another creature on this lonely day where the language in my head has only been frothing up despondency, endless waves of negative speak.

What am I doing? Maybe I'm not suppose to write a book. How can I make a difference in the world? Should I just look for a job and call it good? What is happening to this country? Who am I to write? Where do I begin? Where do I end? Are we really headed towards a world without giraffes?

I take a few steps further down towards South beach, walking on the rocks that only reveal themselves at low tide, stepping over the frozen jellyfish, my eyes no longer only downwards scanning for sea glass and heart rocks, but cast to my left towards the sea lions that follow me, swimming underwater and popping their heads up again and again, eyes watching me watching them.

I roar loud and strong, in a way that's not meant to be threatening, but more of an invitation to see me as animal too. To see me as a vulnerable critter on the beach scavenging for something to hold onto, something solid, like the driftwood tree I admire but can't lift. Tossed by salted waves, pulled by tides, rolled smooth, waterlogged, no longer alive but impermeable, as much a part of the beach now as the forest.

I am so worried about this country of mine and our effects on the world in the months and years ahead, and yet I don't think my angst is helping anyone, certainly not me, or my family, as I sit paralyzed by fear reading CNN, BBC, or political stories on my friends' Facebook pages.

But what then? It seems entitled to retreat to my cabin in the woods and let the cards fall where they may. Do I get involved locally? Politically?  Find ways to use writing to make change?

Do the sea lions have any answers for me?

Are the five of you friends or family? Are there more of you underneath the spray of the whitecaps not interested in saying hi to a human like me? I gather questions, like feathers, shells, rocks, as I walk this familiar beach.  

The mountains never slouch as I leave solitary foot prints in the black sand.

When my path leads away from the water, towards the Spruce trees and Hemlock, I look back at the sea lions one last time and only one head remains above the waves, looking back at me.

I wonder what does the sea lion see? What does it make of me?

Just a mere person and her two black and white dogs, walking away from the mysterious deep of Resurrection Bay, towards the mountain with no name. 

Do they know my shoulders rise from their eyes searching out mine, from their saltwater language reaching into the whirlpool in my head?

As I walk into the woods, a raven calls. I can't see the large black bird, but I suspect its on the mossy limb of a Spruce tree watching me and my dogs make our way up hill.

This Season and All the Rest

Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is for my daughter, and my disabled son, and their friends of different colors, to be seen as fully human in the years ahead.

And that we leave them a world in which their children can chase butterflies through the forests, drink from glacial streams,

and fall in love whomever they choose.

 

And not just my daughter, but all girls.

And not just my son, but all people who experience challenges. Who are different than those in power.

 

 

Is humanity for all too much to ask?  Life on earth?

Please--I've been pretty good. 

Love,

Christy

 

PPS. I'll bake you cookies.  And leave you a cold beer.

 

The Circle of God

I am not a church-goer.

Not sure what I believe when it comes to the concept of God.

I am ashamed to admit I have taken "the lord's" name in vain more than I have spoken to him (or her) on my knees.

I wasn't raised with the walls of organized religion; and we are not bringing our kids up within a particular affiliation.

When we stay with Nick's parents, we occasionally attend their warm inclusive thought-provoking Methodist congregation, and I see the beauty in being part of a community of believers.

Its just not a part of me. Not in my past or present anyways.

I was raised with the beach and the woods as my spiritual places and sports teams as my community of one. And I'm Ok with this, as nature and my teammates have come to my aid in desperate times.

The consistent rise and lowering of the tides gives me faith, the sun's return, hope, the way grown players hug each other after a particularly hard fought win, devotion.

This is enough for me. Along with poetry, art, stories, and relationships deepened over time.

And I do believe is some sort of spirituality, I just can't articulate it in words. Not sure if it can be contained or explained in a way that follows the rules of language.

But Olive asks me, yet again, "Is God real?"

We don't talk about God at our kitchen table, our bedsides, and yet my curious girl listens and absorbs and wonders about the all knowing one. She is forming her own relationship with divinity, separate from me.

"What do you think Olive?"

"Yes."

"Then God must be real," I say, as I did this summer when she asked the same question on a drive from Anchorage to Seward. When we spoke about God being inside us all, as well as in the mountains and the trees.

I can't give her a more definitive answer.

And I guess I want my daughter to form her own understanding, just as my parents wanted me to form mine, free from doctrines and dictates, even if it means stumbling in the brush for awhile, uncertain who to call out to in the darkest of nights.

I know when one-pound Elias lay in the isollette, unable to breath, a brain bleed, surgery pending, I prayed to every god and goddess, with or without names, with no formal structure to my words, more of a broken-hearted Mama's love song for her son born four months too soon.

I crooned for my baby that was suppose to be warm and wet in my womb.  

On the morning of his brain surgery, I put drops of liquid gold in my coffee, like a tonic, a witch's brew, as if my milk had the power to save us all. Anything goes when desperate without memorized prayers in my pocket for reassurance-- I am open to the world of possibilities, stars to wish upon, sticks to cross, striped rocks tossed over my left shoulder into the mighty waves.

And then there's my baby girl.

Olive already, at six, almost seven, seems quite at ease with her spirituality.

She is an artist at heart, a creator, constantly cutting and taping paper and cardboard to make new things. She recently drew a picture, that she didn't want me to take a photograph of so I am respecting her wishes, that showed people of all sizes in a circle holding hands, in the middle of the circle, a rolled piece of paper stood upright, where she taped a large rainbow-colored eye to the top of the tower.

On the bottom of the page, she wrote: "The circle of God".

She taped her artwork to the top of her bureau, moving her bin of pajamas to the floor to make space for the eye of God and all those folks holding hands as one.

And there it sits, watching over her as she sleeps.  As she dreams her own religion into the world.

My girl, and yet spiritually, individually, not mine.