I collect moments, like a hand-strung necklace worn close to my heart. Selected circles of light to warm my dampened spirit when the crush of this life bends me to my knees.
When the boy we love lashes out at his family, when his voice growls, and his claws strike. When his sister flinches if he steps too close, even after he’s shape-shifted back into the quirky boy we know. When I feel nervous to leave the trailer for a much-needed trip to the outhouse, scared to leave my two children alone— because the last time I stepped out, just to grab some ground beef from the cooler, my daughter’s high pinched scream brought me running.
Always on guard, vigilant, like a small dose of what I imagine a soldier feels who walks the perimeter, never knowing what lies underfoot, in the shadows, on the horizon, overhead in a once clear sky.
This is when my hands instinctively land on my chest, if they aren't holding my head wet with tears.
This is when I remember the hairdresser asking Elias if he wanted a lollipop and his words in response: “No, but my sister likes lollipops. Do you have any purple ones? Purple’s her favorite color. Olive would really like that!”
This is when I remember the way Elias and Olive played together, with pieces of pink foam insulation, for hours, on Mother’s Day, making pink ice-cream and pink frosting and pinkies (think brownies but pink), serving me two by four plates of foam desserts; the way they built forts with the leftover pieces, the two of them cooperating without a referee, letting me measure and cut, as Nick drilled the foam boards around our foundation.
This is when I remember hearing a girl call Elias’s name, as we stood by the bleachers at Olive’s little league game, the way Elias smiled when he saw a peer from his resource room, the way he hugged her and she said, “more gently,” and he loosened his grip.
“Come with me,” she said.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Just come.”
And he did.
He followed her down the hill to the other baseball diamond, where the bigger kids play, where her more typical sister sat in a dugout, like Olive, goofing around with friends. Elias and his friend— I honestly think I can call her a friend— held hands as they walked to another set of bleachers to meet her mom, not as the teenagers they physically are, but as their socially developmental age, mere children at play.
This is when I remember standing on the side of Mt Marathon, with Olive, about a third of the way up, her first time on the mountain, looking across the ravine at a small black bear on the other ridge, a bear that Olive saw first—“Mom a bear, a black bear”—holding each other, not out of fear, but awe, as we paused in our hike and watched from a safe distance as this wild animal, a milk-bearing mammal like us, dug in the dirt, before turning and walking through the brush.
Like the probable coyotes I thought were wolves, who shared the same mountain with me and our Border Collie, Lola, a few days earlier, just the two of us, and a pack of five who watched me watch them before slinking back up and over the ridge.
These are the moments I collect.
The humpback whale breaching along Lowell Point road as Olive and I drove to her dance and gymnastics recital, the bald eagle we saw in the bay that appeared to be doing the butterfly—“Mom I didn't know eagles could swim?”—the bird’s wings unable to pull the weight of the salmon in its talons out of the water, so it stroked its way to the shore before flying off, clutching the fish high above the beach.
I remember walking at dusk, Seward time, which this time of year means eleven pm, over the green seaweed and black rocks, where Spruce Creek meets Resurrection Bay, under an unexpected fuchsia mango sky, when the rain finally broke, no words needed between my husband and I, just time.
Just a moment without worry, without decisions, without the need to respond.
These are just a few of the moments I wear like rosary beads to carry me to the next one.
To help me through the mayhem in between.
And this place we now call home, up here on this mountain bench amongst the Spruce and the Hemlock, may be challenging at times, with our thirty-feet of living space, and our boy that is sometimes a bear,—yet we wake each morning only a doorway from wonder, from air that’s easier to breathe, so much so, that at times I even forget to struggle.
I love that analogy and I don't think of myself as religious. It must feel so hopeful to throw off the yoke of winter and have those incredibly long days to work and play in. Enjoy, friend!
Posted by: Fleming | 06/01/2017 at 05:32 PM
I am guesing that you've kept a log/list of foods and drinks he consumes 0 - 24+ hours before he erupts, to see if a pattern correlates with his eruptions ... Milk and chocolate are common culprits ... :-) But you already know this, so I'll quit writing the obvious Hugs - Colby Sc.
Posted by: Colby Sc. | 06/01/2017 at 07:22 PM
Hi Christy,
What wonderful imagery.
I am glad Elias has found a friend, and that she has found him.
I am so excited for your new house! Keep the pictures coming.
Best,
Danielle
Posted by: Danielle in Zurich | 06/02/2017 at 01:51 AM
Oh so wonderfully written as always. I want more pictures of the building!!
Lots of love always
Posted by: Noel G Dennehy | 06/05/2017 at 03:08 PM