Following Elias

Pluto Cove, by Arran Forbes

We interrupt the saga of my life to bring you a book review.

I started reading Aaron Forbe's Pluto Cove on my return trip from Boston to Anchorage this summer. I read nonstop the entire flight home, absorbed in the story of Enna Martinez, and her family's escape to their seaside cabin in the woods during an apocalyptic event dubbed the Polar Storms.

In this fictional debut, worldwide drought affects the entire globe because for reasons no one can explain all the rainstorms gravitate to the North and South Poles. Water reservoirs disappear, rivers run dry, taps stop working. At first communities work together to face the crisis, but like in our current pandemic, soon divisions, anger, and finger-pointing emerge.

A mysterious figure named Cloudburst claims that the few rainstorms that do fall between the poles only grace communities with "true Americans", and despite the lack of science to support his findings, he soon gathers hoards of followers hungry for someone to blame. They call themselves the LFR (Let Freedom Rain) and soon begin rounding up immigrants and sending them to detention centers, where they are never seen or heard from again.

Enna Martinez, our narrator, is a young teenager living in Anchorage, Alaska, when the Polar Storms begin. She is more focused on her soccer games and classmates than on the world news, but her mother Lisa, prone to anxiety after her "accident" years before, begins stockpiling supplies in their small cabin in Pluto Cove across the bay from Homer. Once a week, she fills their van with supplies--clothes, canned food, drought-resistant seeds-- and drives Enna's younger sister, Callie, not yet school-aged, down and back. This hoarding behavior worries her practical physician husband, Alex, who believes the rain will return and the LFR won't make an appearance in Alaska.

Alex was born in Mexico and migrated to the U.S. with his mother as a child. Enna inherited his dark skin and hair; her younger sister Callie received their mother's blond locks and fair skin. In a scene early on in the book, Alex tries to talk to Enna about this difference:

He sighed. "It's hard sometimes, Enna. I guess I feel like you should know that. You gotta be tough. You gotta be sure of yourself. Because everyone else is going to second guess you. Going to think you're less than. Because you look like you come from a different place."

"I'm a fourth generation Alaskan," I chirped, repeating a fact Mom taught me about her side of the family, a fact that impressed a great number of people. Most non-native people living in Alaska were new. Like Dad.

"You are," he said affirmatively. "You are, and it's amazing. But you are also Mexican. And I hope you think that's pretty cool too."

I nodded passively, staring out the window. I didn't think it was cool, but I wasn't going to show Dad that. He meant his talks to empower me, but too often they filled me with shame. Instead of making me feel confident, they internalized in me a bigotry that made me feel weak, defeated, and inferior.

As a multi-racial family, Lisa worries they will be targeted by the LFR, despite her husband's optimism.  I'm not a freak. I am not ill, Lisa repeats, as a mantra, when Alex questions her sanity. Enna just wants to fit in with her light-skinned friends and wants her life to continue as normal; but when the Martinez family wakes up to a Cloudburst symbol painted on their garage door, they load up their dog Benji, their chickens, as much supplies as they can stuff into their van and make the drive down Turnagain Arm to their getaway cabin in Pluto Cove.

The world we knew had crumbled. A shift in global order on the magnitude of a change in gravity or plate tectonics--the very things that anchor us to solid ground. We drove away from our sky blue home that day, from our swings in the yard, from our bikes piled in the garage, from the tick marks of my and Callie's growth etched on the wall at the bottom of the staircase, with no idea of when we would return.

Enna struggles with the transition from sleepovers and school hallways to traplines and isolation. She feels as though her mother's psychosis led them there and not the bigger world events that affected their family. Enna narrates the story from sometime in the future, and because of this perspective of time she is able to reflect on her own adolescent shortcomings:

Things were bad on the mainland. I could understand that. But to me nothing could be worse than being forcibly outcast by my parents. I knew it was selfish and nearsighted--even an undeveloped brain could see that--but it overwhelmed me.

Hunger and loneliness pervade their days as they learn to adjust to life without grocery stores, internet or neighbors. You would think this forced survivalism would be the hardest hurdle they face, but when the Birds arrive, a vicious gang of brothers, it turns out humans can be scarier than the wilderness.

When Callie goes missing, something we know as readers will happen from the first sentence of the book--Callie was six when she disappeared from the blueberry patch-- the grief Enna felt at losing her friends is nothing compared to the loss of her baby sister.

The day I lost her, the wildfire smoke had turned the blue sky to brown. The air we breathed had the texture of gravel and I tried to pull it back as though it were a curtain I could throw open into another clear-eyed world. But there was no other world at all. Just this one. My lonely burning world. I ripped at the empty space in front of me like a person tearing their way through a house in flames. I screamed her name, clearing a coiled path in the smoke with the vibrations of my voice. Not even the birds replied.

Enna blames herself for her sister's disappearance and finds herself unable to communicate with her family or to think beyond her basic survival needs. As she says on the first page: Grief and hunger leave no room for abstract thinking, let alone imagination. Yet as Enna's parents wallow in their own despair, Enna is forced to grow up as she takes on the responsibility of keeping her homestead going. As she becomes stronger and more capable, her creative thinking returns, and in the pages that follow, Enna leads us on a heart-pumping quest to save her family.

Enna’s coming of age story in Pluto Cove, gives us an authentic heroine: flawed, reflective, resourceful, and strong. We watch as she transitions from a sullen, awkward, self-obsessed teen to a self-sufficient young woman who understands the complexities of human relationships and forgives her own parents for their failings.

Lying there on the beach with Dad, Callie, and Benji, I realized my young age was an asset. For all I had left behind in Anchorage, it was a fraction of what Mom and Dad had abandoned. For as many dreams and goals and ambitions I had, most of them ended with soccer scores, test results, and school dances.  Mom and Dad had more than dreams or ambitions--they had an expectation, a confidence--that they would lead secure, contented lives and raise me and Callie in the same way. For me Pluto Cove was a change. For them it was a failure. I did not fault them. Or blame them. Or resent them. I just felt so, so sorry for them.

Arran Forbes's ability to bring the family dynamics to life, through her beautiful rendering of grief and resiliency, make this book more than a dystopian novel but a tribute to the bonds formed between relatives in the darkest of times. Despite the subject matter--climate change, racism, anxiety, social divides, survivalism--Pluto Cove is not a depressing book, but rather a lightening speed read and a story of love, hope, strength, adventure, and magic.

As I devoured Forbe's writing, I couldn't help but make comparisons to our current environmental and social conditions, for though the setting is more extreme, with worldwide drought and a mass extermination of immigrants, I found the story fully plausible and not so far from reality. While a fiction story, Forbes combines fantasy and realism to reflect upon modern times in a book that will delight adults and young adults alike.

I finished Pluto Cove a few minutes before landing in Anchorage, where we arrived to torrential rain. While my fellow passengers looked out the window and groaned, I found myself, after being so fully absorbed in this haunting, heroic story, wanting to leap up and cheer: "Its raining, it's raining, thank goodness for the life-giving rain!!!"

This too shall pass...

I hear my family's sounds below me. The kettle boils. Sausage fries. NPR plays. Nick urges Elias to get ready for school, the frustration in his voice mounts as Elias stalls and spews negativity.

Elias: "I don't know why you make me go to school."

Olive: "Elias, you're lucky you get to go to school."

The relief I felt yesterday at my family's negative tests is replaced by guilt that I can't walk downstairs and help. That I can't check Elias's backpack for supplies and talk to my stubborn son directly instead of yelling down from my room.

Elias, do you want to go to the Sea Life Center today? Well, put your shoes on!

I feel like such an inefficient parent and partner, as the burden of our household and children falls on Nick.

This feeling is vaguely familiar, me stuck in bed, Nick responsible for everything: six weeks of winter bedrest almost eighteen years ago. Only then we had no children, just the baby we desperately wanted to stay inside my womb as long as possible, and a roof that leaked.

I remember looking into Nick's eyes, as he tried to hold it all together, knowing what he would give to just lay down, as I desperately wished I could get up and do.

Here we are again.

The same feeling of inadequacy on my part. The overwhelming responsibility on Nick's. 

Only this time we can't touch, which adds a layer of challenge, even if the timeline remains days, not weeks of an off-balanced partnership.

And this time an invisible virus claims home to my body instead of a baby.

I feel tired but not sleepy, light-headed and foggy, as if a grey film permeates my brain. My cough lingers and headaches prevail. I feel as though I should be productive up here in my room and need to keep reminding myself it's ok just to rest. It's OK to be sick.

Covid-19, the phantom I've been following in the news for years finally found me. No longer abstract, no longer a headline, no longer someone else's story but now the virus lives in my lungs, my throat, my skin. I can't imagine how I'd feel without the Moderna vaccine. Or if I wasn't lucky enough to be a relatively healthy person without preexisting conditions. 

It's hard not to wonder what encounter brought Covid-19 to me. Was it my trip to Anchorage to get an MRI on my knee? Or an asymptomatic student who shared her story with me? Was it from touch or speech or the passing of objects one to another? Was there more I could have done to prevent contracting the disease?

Masks remain optional in our school district, despite our high case counts in Alaska, and though I wear mine all day most students opt not to keep their mouth and nose covered. As I sit here feeling so far from myself, its hard not to harbor anger at my district for not doing more to protect us. I want to feel healthy and energetic, not lethargic and ill.

I want to hug my kids. I want to kiss my husband. I want to touch my family.

When Olive forgets her mask during a delivery, she plugs her nose and holds her breath like I'm the "cooty" kid from my childhood. Its hard feeling segregated and alone in my own home.

And yet my family continues to care for me, bringing me coffee and breakfast in bed. Olive brings me ice for my knee whenever I hollar down for help. Nick cooks me gourmet meals, lamb chops, salmon pasta, fried egg on the Cookery's homemade bread with our last homegrown tomato.

My puppy Hemlock and cat Spruce Tip take turns keeping me company, sometimes they visit at the same time and provide me with a brief respite of entertainment as they wrestle in bed. 

Friends have dropped of care-packages with everything from books, flowers, wine, chocolate, cards, candles, plants and a home-cooked meal of chicken and biscuits. I receive phone calls and texts daily from friends and family checking in with me.

I feel loved.

The view out my window constantly transforms as the tides change, the clouds merge, the sun returns.

During my brief stints outside (I feel dizzy if I'm upright for long), the mountains remind me of the beauty of remaining anchored to one place, of settling in for the storms that unexpectedly, but inevitably, shake us to our core.

Like every hurricane, tornado, bomb cyclone and Nor'easter, this too shall pass...

I just wish it didn't have to pass right through me.

Trifuckta

The week after we found Lola in the ditch, I stepped outside to recess wearing flat-soled sneakers on a wet day.

"Do you want to play soccer Ms. Christy?"

I did.

I played with this same group of 5th grade students three days after Lola died, and thanked them afterwards for the much needed temporary getaway.

Sports, even a twenty-minute game of pick-up soccer with ten and eleven-year-olds in the middle of my work day, always helps me transcend whatever weight I carry.

In the pursuit of a ball or a puck or a frisbee, I can't worry about Elias or Olive or all the other children I love. I can't worry about house projects or finances or phone calls. I can't worry about pandemics or politics or the myriad of potential problems we face.

I can forget for a moment that someone hit my dog and left her in a ditch to die. That she won't greet me on our driveway at the end of the day. That Lola's collar now rests on a grey stone.

I can just run, skate, kick, catch, shoot, defend, as others do the same. A tribe of bodies in motion with one pursuit: to play.

So my answer was and always will be: "Yes, I'd love to play!"

As I defended one of the boys, I slipped as I turned to contain him and felt my knee pop.

Shit!

I didn't fall over, just stood there trying to figure out if I could bear weight on my left leg. The kids kept playing, oblivious to my pain. I finally had to make a T with my hands and yell, "I'm out. Don't pass to me. I just did something to my knee."

When the bell rang, and I slowly limped towards the door, taking very precise straight steps, a girl came to me in tears about the actions of a boy and a different boy approached me angry about the antics of kids in line.

As I said, oblivious to my pain. 

Turns out that the "something to my knee" I did was a full rupture of my ACL, strained MCL, and a possible torn meniscus from the root.

I know this because I drove myself to a walk-in orthopedic clinic in Anchorage the next day and received the MRI report last Friday.

On that same Friday night, I sat in our car at the Alyeska Day Lodge parking lot, watching a Teton Gravity ski movie, a fundraiser for Challenge Alaska we purchased tickets for weeks earlier, thankful it was dark and my family couldn't see my tears.

No ski season. No pond hockey. No indoor soccer (finally happening this winter in Seward for the first time since we moved here). As the Physician's Assistant who saw me at the clinic said, even before the MRI results: "No running, biking, swimming, or anything that's fun."

No fun.

My follow up appointment, to discuss the MRI results with a doctor and determine a plan of action, was scheduled for this Wednesday. Tuesday night I felt a tickle in my throat and my head started to feel a little stuffy. I woke up in the morning feeling worse.

Shit!

Convinced it was nothing more than a head cold, I called my school nurse to see if she could test me in the parking lot, hopeful that I could still see the knee doctor if I had symptoms but a negative Covid-19 test.

As I waited for my results, alone in my car, in the dark of an Alaska morning, I watched the activity inside my school through the windows. It felt odd to be on the outside looking in and I found myself missing the hustle of the school day, despite how exhausting this year has been.

I love my school. I love my staff. I love working with all the kids from preschool to 5th grade. I feel honored to bear witness to their lives. Privileged to use puppets, art, stories and games to communicate. And though it is not always easy, with trauma and heavy responsibilities as part of the weekly stew, my job is essentially to play with children.

... my answer was and always will be: "Yes, I'd love to play!"

Twenty minutes later, the sun still not above the mountains, I received a text from our nurse: Positive (+)

Shit!

So now here I sit, alone in my bedroom, listening to the sounds of my family below. It is especially lonely to dwell in the same house but remain separated from the people you love. I can hear them, even see them from afar, but we can't touch. 

Olive, our runner, delivers meals, drinks, and ice to my door. She even offered to cook me breakfast without prompting. Despite her forced separation from school and friends-- my kid who never wants to miss a day--she remains cheerful instead of sulking and for this I am grateful.

And I will always be grateful for Nick, forced to sleep on the couch, despite a bad back, who continues to cook, clean and care for the kids, while working full-time from home. My love who, despite all the grief and stress, still gives me a tired smile from a distance. Even masked, I can see the warmth in those glacial blue eyes I fell into all those years ago and called home.

I miss Nick's hugs already. And Olive and Elias's growing awkward bodies next to mine.

The big worry now, the weight I can't outrun even with two good knees, is the fear that everyone else in my family will develop symptoms. That they too will get Covid-19.

Nick, Elias, and Olive test on Monday.

Elias started sniffling this morning. He never tells us how he feels. So if his head or throat hurts we wouldn't know. Like detectives, we just need to listen and watch. Tough to do from a distance, from a floor above, the Mom in me wants to to put my hands on his forehead, his chest.

Will his damaged lungs handle Covid-19 if this virus finds him? Will he be prioritized for care if he needs it? And what about Olive, the only unvaccinated one amongst us? Yes, she remains healthy and strong but colds and flus tend to dive down into her chest; she's needed an inhaler for coughs in the past, what could Covid do to our young athlete? And what if Nick tests positive but our children don't, how then do we handle our life?

My brain can't contain all these answerless questions. I can't stop the waves or the clouds or the wind from howling.

Its quiet downstairs now, all of us on separate devices, NPR plays on the radio but I can't understand the host's words, another grey day emerges. 

I look out my windows and wait...

...but I will say to the universe, you've sent us one hell of a trifuckta already, so I'd like to be through now.

Nothing but sunshine and roses over the weeks ahead, please.

Thank you.

To the Person who Hit our Dog on Lowell Point Road

A) Her name was Lola, a nod to Lowell Point, the place we call home.

She turned six in June, part Border Collie, part English Shepherd, hundred percent loved. Lola wore a collar, handmaid by Nick's sister Lyndsay, with our number engraved on the tag.

B) I struggle to write about Lola in the past tense.

C) Did you stop driving after you hit her? Was she still alive? (Please say: No, she died instantly.) Did you move her from the road to the ditch where we found her? Did you look at her tag? Did you think about calling? 

Maybe you didn't stop, maybe you just kept traveling to your destination, just kept moving from "what is" to "what's next".

D) There is no "what's next" for Lola.

E) Lola was a big "sister" to our nine-month-old puppy Hemlock, the Sable Border Collie we got for Lola to ease her grief over the loss of her big "brother" Tonsina, who died last summer of old age as we lay with him on our porch. Lola changed after Tonzy passed. Didn't want to come inside. Slunk down the driveway or under the porch when we came home. She watched Tonsina die in our arms, as we sobbed and told him it was Ok to let go, and I almost feel like Lola blames us for his death.

Over the past few weeks she had finally returned to us, sleeping at the foot of our bed, rolling on her back for tummy rubs when we stretched in the morning, playing with Hemlock in the front yard, always eager to go for a run, walk or hike. She had so much more to teach, so many more years to live.

F) I want to blame you, to hold you accountable for the death of our beloved pet. But I'm the one who chose to drive down the hill from our home, when the sun sunk behind Foundry Peak, for a walk in the sunshine on Spruce Creek Beach. I'm the one who let my dogs off leash, as the kids and I meandered over the rocks. I'm the one who decided to make the loop through the campground by heading up the creek bed, knowing the dogs always chased rabbits in the woods between Stormchaser's boatyard and the road.

I'm the one who brought my family down to you.

G) Plus, how many times have I taken the curve too quickly on my way to "what's next." How many times have I read and responded to texts while driving down Lowell Point road? How many times have I driven tired, distracted, or when I felt "fine" to drive. How many times could I have hit someone's dog?

And yet I know if I did, I would do everything in my power to let them know. Call the number on the tag. If no collar, post a picture with my contact information. I could never just drive away. Never.

H) But here's the thing, if you had called on Sunday, you would have reached Nick at his campsite on the Anchor River, where he fished with our buddy Gavin. He would have then called me, and I would have met you with our two kids, our daughter Olive, age eleven, and Elias, our developmentally delayed seventeen-year-old son. Instead, I waited to tell Nick Lola was missing till Monday morning, when he was already driving home, and we found her together, with the kids at school, saving Elias and Olive from the image that haunts us still of Lola dead on the side of the road.

Nick and I held each other, and gave each other space, we let our grief overtake us, for a moment, before the kids came home from school.

I) I imagine you driving around the corner, as Lola bolted out of the woods after a rabbit, you with no time to stop. Maybe she even hit you, running into the side of your car like the deer that crashed into the side of mine years ago, denting the driver's side door.  I remember stopping, looking in the rearview mirror, seeing that deer pull herself back onto her feet and run off into the Connecticut fields. I still wonder did the deer survive or run away from the road to die? My insurance company covered the damage under a clause titled: "An act of God."

J) Is God responsible for car accidents? For pet deaths? I'm not sure what I believe about God's role in any of this, or if there is a God with control over who lives and dies. All I know is I want Lola back, alive. 

K) Please tell me Lola died right away. That she didn't suffer all night. I don't want to think we could have saved her if we searched longer, if we found her sooner.

When she didn't come out of the woods Sunday evening, when only Hemlock emerged, I wasn't worried. I figured she circled back to the car. When she wasn't at the car, I thought she walked herself home. Lola knows all of Lowell Point, as she often took herself on walks without us.

I drove right past the small ditch (where we later found her) on my way home. Was she already there? When we got home and saw no sign of Lola, I left Elias on the couch with his iPad and returned to the woods with Olive. We tromped through the Alders and Spruce, around the rusty old machinery, over piles of broken parts and logs calling, "Lola...Lola...LOLA!"

"Mom," Olive said, "I think I'm becoming a worrier like you. I'm worried she's caught in a trap."

I started to worry too.

L) That night, I dreamt Lola walked in our dog door and we all shouted her name. LOLA!! We hugged her and pet her and she poked her nose into our soft bodies as our shoulders sank from our ears and our worst fears left the room. Lola is back!

M) The relief I felt when I woke up quickly changed to dread when Lola was nowhere to be found.

N) I brought the kids to school and told my Principal I needed to leave to search for my missing dog. "Lola wouldn't be lost and she wouldn't go with anyone" I said, "She is either injured or dead."  

O) I wonder, did you wake up thinking about the dog in the road the night before? Did you feel guilt, regret, shame, sadness, nothing? Is it possible you didn't know you hit a dog? Did she bounce off your car and land in the ditch? Woah, that was a big pothole! What's next? If you knew and hold no regret, how do you do it? How do you do you?

P) Do you have a dog?

Q) I know I need to accept never getting answers to my questions, like calling for Lola and never seeing her bound towards me again, the letters travel in the air with no place to land.

R) Lola had such a good smile that she saved for mountain hikes and tromps through the woods. If you drove up our driveway she greeted you with a fierce bark. She often scared folks on Tonsina Trail with her aggressive approach and loud voice, even though her tail wagged. She nipped dogs in the rear, even the occasional hand that tried to greet her. One man pulled his bear spray out on her as I called "Please don't spray she's just trying to herd you."  

I have a hard time with vowels and the letter R so sometimes "herd" sounds more like "hurt." Don't worry, she's just trying to hurt you!

S) God, it hurts knowing I'll never see her face again. Never wake to her head resting on the side of our bed. Never bushwhack through our property with Lola in the lead, easing my fear of bears as she runs forward and back, ahead of me, so excited to be on another adventure. I'll never hear her whine at the start of our driveway, as she begs for us to let her out, so she can race the half mile up to our house. Man, she ran so fast, often kicking items out of the car and hitting the door in her eagerness to fly.

I still expect to see her emerge from the woods when I drive home. She is still everywhere and now, nowhere, all at once.

T) So far it's taken me two days to write this letter. I've stopped multiple times for full-body shaking, loud, ugly cries. Does it get easier? Will the image of Lola, dusty and broken in a ditch on the side of the road, ever leave my head? Will I stop expecting to see her every time I come home?

U) Please know I forgive you. I do not hold you accountable and carry no malice or blame. I would hug you if we met. We could carry the burden together. I'd show you pictures of Lola as a puppy. Lola on the beach. Lola in the mountains. We could walk up our driveway to the where Nick, David, and I buried her. Right next to Tonsina. We placed Lola in the ground with a frisbee, ball, Spruce bough and flowers, and covered her with earth, before we picked the kids up from school, giving them a more sanitized version of death, easing their experience of grief.  

Heart rocks and Forget-Me Nots grace both Lola's and Tonsina's graves. Olive and I found two good-sized heart rocks the evening we returned to Spruce Creek search. We each carried one back to the car, oblivious of their significance.

V) Its easier to forgive you than me. And yet I know all my "what if" thinking--what if I hadn't decided to go for a walk, what if I searched harder, what if we walked a different direction, what if I stopped to take more pictures, less pictures, what if I could change our sequence of events by a matter of seconds-- will be the death of me.

I know, I know, I know....

W) Lola died doing what she loved, running free through familiar woods, after wild rabbits, she never caught the bunnies, just relished in the pleasure of the chase.

X) Hemlock came back when we called. Hemlock didn't follow her sister into the road. Hemlock sits on the couch next to me as I write.

Y) I took Hemlock for an unleashed walk through the woods on our property yesterday and when she ran after a squirrel, I called: "Lo.... Hemlock". I realize I always called Lola's name first. Never: "Hemlock, Lola".  Always: "Lola, Hemlock".

I still sometimes say "Tonsina" by accident. Now its only Hemlock. Hemlock, alone on walks. Only Hemlock at home, along with our rescue cat, Spruce Tip.

Yet reminders of Tonsina, and now Lola, remain everywhere. I see them everywhere I look. I carry them wherever I go.

Z) And though it's unlikely you'll ever read my words, they felt necessary to write.

I may have run out of letters in the alphabet, but Lola's story doesn't end here. It doesn't end in the ditch, but continues through the memories we carry, the lessons she taught Hemlock, the love she gave us to pay forward--for our pets, our family, our friends, this world, and for you too.

Yes, you. And me.

Her name was Lola, her name is Lola, her name will always be: Lola