Following Elias

Olive My Love

On the cusp of childhood and an evolution into someone beyond my reach, who can cartwheel down a mountain slope and land in scree with a smile on her face.

My girl who is joining the Junior Mount Marathon Race, competing against girls and boys age seven to seventeen. Who climbs up the cliff with ease. Feels proud of the scrapes on her knees.

Eight-years bold, she walks on her hands across our gravel yard, climbs our Spruce and Hemlock trees, scales our scaffolding to the second floor, without looking down.

I raise my hands to catch her but she's climbing beyond my scope, asking bigger questions, dreaming wider views.

May she retain her wildness as she develops, hold her convictions as she grows, keep her soft brave heart wherever she goes.

May social structures crumble at her feet, as she remains free to be--free to choose, to speak, to stand, to growl, to scream, to cry, to love, to rejoice, however she pleases.

May her body belong to her without comment.

 

May she define her own pleasure, her own language, her own back road through this world of brier patches and feather beds, razor blades and warm embraces.

Her name is not in the title of this blog, a story that began before I imagined another being taking hold of my heart; and yet Olive's hand-prints grace every key, she is part Nick, part me, all her, and Elias's only sibling, full of maple syrup and porcupine quills.

Part assistant, part provocateur, all guts, with a creative swirl, turning decaying logs into dessert stores, brush piles into elevator factories, trees into rooms of her own.

Her forest her home.

She dances across wet rocks and laughs with bald eagles. Plants her own Fireweed garden next to mine, caring for what I discard, and draws sea otters with sea stars in her top bunk at bedtime. She defies the clock, growing more inquisitive as the long days tick past ten.

"When can I snuggle with you?" she asked last night, my bed half-empty with Nick away again. 

"Come on in," I said, and as she rested her soft head against my shoulder, I found myself thinking how lucky am I to be her mother.

My forest-mountain-beach girl, all of my love: Olive.

 

Small Town Elevator Love

Elias knows all the elevators in Seward, unless an Otis or Schindler sits in a private dwelling hidden from the public, otherwise he travels the town riding them all.

So when the National Park visitor's center received a facelift this winter, that included the installation of an elevator, Elias watched the progress with brewing excitement.

"When do yo think it will open?" He asked every time we drove through the harbor.

"I don't know Bud."

What he didn't know is Nick and I made tentative plans with both our friend Alan who helped lead the renovation and our friend  Shawna who works for the park to give Elias a sneak peek.

And so on Tuesday, before the doors officially open to the public Saturday , Shawna arranged a ribbon cutting with Park staff. 

Nick and I arrived first, Elias unaware of the event, came with his respite staff.

"So where's the elevator?" Elias asked the moment he walked into the lobby.

As we delayed the unveiling to introduce him to some of the people present, a Ranger asked him about the different elevators in town. Elias named some of the various models and locations and sure enough, when they led him around the corner to the small alcove with the newest elevator in Seward and a staff member asked him what kind it was without even pausing he answered: "Otis Series Seven."

As he took the inaugural elevator ride he commented, "The motor sounds good."

So the latest elevator to grace this idyllic small town has been blessed with Elias's approval.

"I'll be back to ride this elevator real soon," our boy said as we left.

Thank you Shawna--and thank you Seward for embracing our quirky kid.

Happy Friday All! 

 

When There Is So Much More We Can Do

When the name of a mountain flower is never the same: Columbine, Columbine...

 

Columbine.

When your eight-year-old daughter is trying to figure out where a yellow plastic triangle fits in her Playmobil set and she places it in the hand of the teacher and you say, "Sure, maybe teachers need shields"-- and your sentence sinks to the floor, slithers to the corner, tail between legs, abruptly aware that the light of its words left years ago when school children slaughtered at desks became a regular feature of the nightly news.

Maybe teachers need shields. You swallow the irony that lands over your daughter's barely-still-innocent head.

When you can't keep all of the names straight anymore and you know some get more press than others, you remember Sandy Hook, Parkland, and now Santa Fe.

So many blooming children. Gone. Dismembered. Remembered. Forgotten.

When the Columbine you transplanted pokes green shoots through the composted soil and dirt creeps beneath your fingernails and you dig up the Fireweed, the majestic bloom that threatens to overtake your other plants.

Fireweed, royalty of the hillside, queen of the weeds, capable of spreading underground.

Fireweed like triggers pulled, like inaction, like thoughts for the family, like political gridlock, like prayers and promises, like stalled legislation, like fingers pointed elsewhere, like too many doors, like broken families, like arming teachers, like asking why, like throwing our hands up and saying there's nothing we can do.

When there is so much more we can do.

And yet you can't remember all the schools filled with teachers and children, schools with names like Columbine, the one that remains forever etched in your mind, back when massacres in locker-lined hallways still shocked, still mesmerized, before, like voracious weeds, they multiplied.

Before you forgot to remember.

Every last beautiful one.

Nursing Narratives

I had the honor of sitting on stage last night, alongside eight nurses, seven of whom shared stories from their profession as part of the second annual Nursing Narratives show during National Nurses Week.

I ended the evening with the following story, an ode to one nurse in particular and a tribute to nurses everywhere.

 

*********

 

“Where’s my baby?” I asked the unfamiliar doctor when I woke from an emergency c-section.

“He’s in the newborn intensive care unit.”

“Is he ok?”

“He’s alive, but I can’t tell you he’s gonna survive.”

Born with an APGAR score of zero— no movement no heartbeat no breath— our son Elias weighed only one pound twelve ounces when he arrived breeched during my 24th week.

“Can I see him?” I asked.

So they wheeled me into the science lab that served as my womb, where my first born child looked nothing like the baby of my dreams, where highly skilled doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists re-started his heart, hooked him to machines that breathed for him, covered his small purple body with wires and probes and prepared to place him inside a high-tech plastic box.

“You can touch him,” someone said, so I reached my arm up from the gurney, placed my pointer finger in the palm of his outstretched hand—and my son Elias closed his tiny perfect fingers around mine.

Later, I’d meet the voice who invited me to greet my son, a nurse working extra shifts before a vacation in Ireland. I don't even know her full name, I remember her as Laura but she might be Laurie, what I do know is she spent almost six nights in a row with my husband Nick and I as we learned how to parent a micro-preemie. 

I can't count the number of times she saved Elias’s life during those critical hours, as his alarms blared, as he wavered between worlds wondering if the fight to live in this one was worth it.

“Do you ever wonder if your doing too much for him?” an acquaintance asked, when she visited us in the NICU, visibly unnerved by all the equipment surrounding our son who looked more like a science experiment than a baby, a poster-board fetus with his eyes fused shut.

And in the silence that followed I felt like I was swallowing double-bladed knives. I couldn't answer because I did wonder, but I resented her for saying the words aloud. And I felt like a monster because I wasn't sure if I could let myself love my own baby, my baby I couldn't yet hold.

Did I want him to survive? Who would he, who would we, become?

One night during that first week, when Nick and I stood by the isolate with our arms through the holes, Nick’s hand covering Elias’s tiny back, mine cupped around Elias’s fist-sized head, Laura told us that she had not one, but two babies born around Elias’s size. 

Neither one survived. 

If she had the choice between alive with disabilities, or deceased, she’d choose alive every time. She’d choose alive, regardless of the challenges. 

She’d choose alive. 

“And yes, Elias might die,” Laura told us. “But don't you think you'd regret not loving him while he’s alive?”

We’re all gonna to die eventually. Does knowing this make us refrain from loving each other or love with abandon?

Laura’s story crumbled the wall I’d resurrected around my gaping heart and allowed me to finally bond with my fragile son. To love without set expectations, without a guarantee.

Laura encouraged Nick and I to participate in Elias’s care in the ways that we could. She showed us how to change Elias’s diaper and the first one we ever did, we did together, each of us reaching one hand through a hole in his isolette, standing across from each other in this awkward dance of a diaper change, our single hands struggling to work together as two.

 “I’ve seen marriages die in here,” Laura told us during that first week in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. 

“You need to take time to listen to each other, to truly listen, because you will respond differently, you will grieve differently, you will communicate differently…

And leave this place— go out to dinner, go for a walk, get outside, whatever it is that you enjoy, don't feel bad about leaving, you need to do it for you.”

And so we did.

Nick turned 26 during Elias’s seventh week in the NICU, and instead of standing vigil in the mechanical womb holding our breath as we waited for Elias to breathe, we put our cross-country skies in the car and drove up towards Flattop. 

We started on Power-line Pass, but soon found ourselves heading down into the valley, forging our own trail, we climbed part way up the opposite ridge and sat there in the sunshine on the edge of everything, we stripped off our layers, cracked open beers, looked directly into each others’ eyes and toasted this unexpected life of ours.

It is now fourteen years later, our son Elias survived, and so has our marriage.

Elias’s list of challenges is long—he experiences visual impairment, cerebral palsy, incontinence, and autism, with behavioral issues that include unpredictable violent rages, that leave the rest of his family tiptoeing around his frayed nervous system, and that’s the short list— there is nothing easy about this particular road of parenthood, and yet my relationship with Nick remains easy, easy meaning so damn good, and its because we have both practiced the art of truly listening to each other, of respecting each other’s differences, of giving each other space to grieve, space to communicate in our own ways, space to grow…

And we have continued to nourish our love of the outdoors, our need for adventures— when Elias was three, we skipped a summer of therapy and biked from Washington to Wyoming with our little guy and his walker. 

Two years ago, we sold our house in Anchorage, nestled between hospitals, to pursue our dream of building a home outside of Seward, on Lowell Point, up on the side of Foundry Peak.  I wish you could see Elias, with his forearm crutch, bushwhack through the woods, down the cliff and over the rocks on the beaches of Resurrection Bay, the way he laughs at himself when he falls, or how often he picks up stones that resemble hearts or pieces of broken shells and hands them to me, saying:  “Here Mom, I found this one for you.”

How often he reminds me to slow down, to notice the tiniest of details, to breathe, so yes, Laura (or Laurie), I too, choose alive. 

I choose alive.

And since I haven't been able to track you down to thank you for saving both my son and my marriage, I want to extend my thanks to all the nurses in the room for the work that you do— for all those countless times that the lives you save are more than just the patient before you. 

People often call Elias our miracle baby, a miracle that is only possible because of those who work in the medical field, you are the miracle workers —thank you!

Schindler: Or Hot Damn People Are Good!

******

"I wonder what it is?" Elias says, when I place the large package before him. "I wonder who its from?"

"Hmm...you'll have to read the return address."

And so Elias leans over, his nose an inch away from the label, the close proximity that allows his injured brain to receive the messages his eyes send.

"What?" he says, in that way that he does when surprised in a good way, "What?! Schindler? Its from Schindler elevators! What?!"

 

*******

Let's back up.

How far back should we go?

Elias's first and most consistent infatuation has been with elevators, squirming out of my arms to crawl towards one in a waiting room, rolling his walker down hospital hallways, breathless, as he repeats: "Abater abater!"

Learning to say the word correctly--elevator-- and memorizing all the different kinds in the various therapy and doctor offices we frequented, studying their features, watching elevator films on Youtube.

"Perfect leveling," he'll say. Or "Classic Otis buttons," when the word Otis is nowhere to be seen.

He can list off the various makers: Schindler, Otis, Montgomery, Dover... and he once laughed hysterically at his Dad when Nick mispronounced Thyssencrupp.

(I mean, come on Dad, weren't you born speaking elevator too?)

Whenever someone asks Elias what he likes to do for fun, he responds, "Ride elevators."

So for his thirteenth birthday, a friend helped us set up a behind-the scenes tour of the Anchorage airport elevators with the Otis crew who worked there; he got to check out the elevator shafts, the mechanical room, learn about all the different levers and switches-- and at the end of the day, they showered him with elevator gear.

Part of Elias's love for these mechanical boxes is rooted in the pushing of buttons. It is also in the joy of movement, the magic of rising and falling to different floors.

And it is also in part the predictability of elevators, the familiar patterns-- you press a a button to call it up or down, you pick a floor, the doors close, the elevator stops at your destination--but with enough slight variations--the brand, the buttons, the carrying capacity-- to fill his mind with details.  Elevators are logical predictable patterns filled with just enough minute information for a kid like Elias to absorb. Both familiar and specific.

The Otis folks were impressed by his knowledge and enthusiasm and shared my post about it in their union newsletter which goes out to elevator contractors who work for various companies.

A man in Florida contacted me, interested in sending a care package to Elias from his local union and from the Schindler Elevator Corporation-- unfortunately, I mistyped my PO box and he mailed the package without a name, and the recipients of the package brought the contents to the Good Will in Anchorage, never to be tracked down again, despite multiple attempts.

And of course, I wrote about this too.

And my friend and former highschool hockey teammate Helen Froelich Plummer read my post and contacted her friend Heather Bowen who works for Schindler, in New Jersey, just to see if there was anything they might be able to do.

And then life went on... the grass turned green, tourists arrived with the geese, days grew longer before falling back to night, rain blew sideways across town, leaves fell with the wind, snow piled up at the end of our driveways, Elias turned fourteen, puddles appeared, the swans returned to roost, buds emerged on the trees, and Helen reached out to me again.

"You won't believe this...."

*******

"Open it Buddy, see what's inside," I tell my curious kid.

So.... yes, the NJ Schindler folks sent some cool swag-- a shirt, hat, key chain, mug, but... OH MY GOD!

Are you ready?

They made Elias his very own, one-of-a-kind elevator-inspired educational fidget cube!!

It says his name, it lights up in different colors when you press the different letters of his name and even makes new colors when you press two letters, it has genuine elevator buttons, one that even makes a sound, a key that turns, the red emergency button that when pulled out stops all the the other buttons from working, it has logos for Schindler and EPC (Elevator Products Corporation), and get this, it has a couple glass sides so you can see all the machinery working on the inside.

"How did they know I wanted it?" Elias asks, with his elevator-riding grin.

How did they know I wanted it?!!?  As if he dreamed it up himself and with his jeteye mind convinced the engineers to make it for him.

I explain that I've written about his fascination with elevators, and that a friend reached out to a friend from Schindler, where some obviously very caring compassionate engineers created the elevator box that now sits on our kitchen table.

He can't stop smiling, turns away from me and studies every aspect of his gift.

Olive, obviously a little jealous says, "Mom, what am I really interested in?"

What she doesn't get, yet, in her oh-so-long eight years of life, is that her brother's experience of autism, cerebral palsy and visual impairment exclude him from so much--from birthday invitations, from eye contact, from sports teams, from sleep-overs, from a body that operates with ease--and so getting recognized for his devotion to-all-things elevator is not only fair but pretty darn spectacular.

Thank you Helen for reaching out and connecting and beginning a chain of creative processes that ended with the creation of such a cool gift for Elias!  

And thank you to the Schindler and EPCO elevator folks from New Jersey for sending some of your beautiful kind ingenious light all the way across the continent to a quirky kid in Seward Alaska!

He might just be your biggest fan.

Hot damn people are good!!!

And Then You Remember

You go for a walk on a Saturday night, when the heavy rain turns to drizzle, a walk that begins with luring your children outside to show them the strong green shoots of the Himalayan Poppy, the only perennial you let yourself buy last year, one of your favorites that you struggled to winter over at you last house in Anchorage, always envious of your neighbor's thriving plant as yours never returned in the spring, never graced your garden bed with its rare ice-blue face.

But here it is, emerging from hibernation, looking solidly rooted in place, giving you hope that months from now it might even bloom.

Your kids aren't nearly as excited as you are, but they come away from their huddle by the propane heater into the grey evening and Elias asks, "Can we walk to the big tree?"

So you follow a trail through the woods, Nick in the lead scouting how to shape the trail for biking, Elias pulling up the rear with his awkward grace.

Olive finds an Artist's Fungus on a wet log, the kind she once called "funky man" and you didn't correct her because you loved hearing her say, "Look, I found another funky man!"

She grabs your hand and swings it, an act she won't do forever, just as she has corrected her terminology "funky-man" becoming "fungus", she will someday stop swinging your arm when you grasp hands if she'll even still hold it.

But tonight, she swings with ease, and says, "Mom, I have an idea, we could have a Fungus Day, like Easter, except we find fungus. And then we could cook with fungus, and eat fungus and draw on the fungus..."

And then you remember, this is why you live here.

As hard as it might be to live in a trailer during a cold soggy end of April, you chose to build a house here because you fell in love with this place, with this coastal rain-forest on the edge of a mountain range-- with the trees and the moss and the smell of decay, the view of Resurrection Bay, the silence, the eagle's nest, the Spruce tips in Spring.

It wasn't a building that called you here to the side of Foundry Peak, it was the land, it was a moment just like this, walking in the woods, hand in hand with your daughter, as she dreams about inviting friends to your place for a great fungus hunt, to make a special day of it, like Easter.

"Lets do it--I think that's a great idea."

You reach The Big Tree, the one that survived the logging of this lands' past, though it lost its top in a storm so how tall it would have been remains a mystery.

Its the first place you considered building, years ago, and spent some time clearing here, which turned into the start of your trail.

The saturated ground loosens its hold on the roots of the standing dead trees, and so you push one over with ease, to Elias's delight, who yanks a Spruce out of the ground roots and all.

"Mom, I thought we weren't gonna get distracted by breaking, " he says, something you say to him a lot when you just want to walk through the woods faster then a snail.

"It alright Bud, we can pull some trees out," you say. "The conditions are kinda perfect."

And so there you are, a family of four, knocking down the dead Alder and Spruce with your bare hands, feeling the satisfaction of breaking shit, of clearing space, of making room for light, of pulling away the old dead trunks so the live trees can grow. 

"I did it!" Olive says, with pride, as she holds up a Small Spruce with the roots still attached.

"Mom, did you see me knock that one over?" Elias asks. And you heard it but you didn't see because you were throwing all your weight against a moldy Alder trunk and when it finally cracked and fell you momentarily felt like a god, or at least like someone who can accomplish something, who can break a tree in half with her bare hands. Anything is possible in that moment when the relic succumbs to your strength, to your power, to your stubborn will.

Maybe if you can splinter apart old trees, if you can pull them straight from the ground with the decaying root ball still attached, you can also fix something and make it right, a house perhaps. Maybe the equation doesn't work in reverse but maybe logic isn't always your guide.

Maybe if you can find ways to persevere, when forces seem to fly in the face of your progression, if you can work together and cheer, even when you fall, maybe, just maybe, the sun will return unfiltered, raw, and oh so warm.

Your family breaks and pulls and celebrates as you walk, until the trail leads you back to your driveway, where Elias asks: "Can we check on the neighbors' place?"

You share your driveway with one other neighbor, who lives in Texas most of the year but owns a secluded cabin on a private lagoon with a creek running past that salmon swim up in the fall. Its a magical place and you are privileged to be part of his neighborhood watch crew, checking on the cabin whenever the conditions call for it.

"I don't know," you say, unsure whether to commit to a walk that long past eight at night.

"Please Mom!" Olive says, "I want to go to the beach. We both want to go, please can we walk there, both me and Elias want to, please Mom!"

You make eyes with Nick and nod.

"Alright, " he says.

"Yay," Olive skips ahead and Elias walks with more purpose down the steep driveway.

And this too, is why you live here, where you can be in the mountains, woods, and beach all in a day.

And Resurrection Bay greets you with a low tide, where you all end up scrambling over barnacle-covered rocks, climbing farther than you have before, during a momentary pause in the rain, you walk along the wet slippery rocks, farther than you thought Elias could because he wants to go even farther.

"Can we walk all the way to Tonsina?" he asks.

"Not tonight Bud."

Yes, we can, and farther still.

We will keep putting our roots into this place, even deeper, we will make it through the toughest of winters, we will reach towards the stubborn light and bloom-- in all our brilliant  broken glory.