Following Elias

Paper Cuts, Multiple Wounds

I could wallpaper my house with all the disability paperwork forced upon us over the years.

Always.

Sometimes.

Never.

Never enough choices on all these countless forms. My child doesn't fit within the format. We can't capture him on the page.

Where is the box that says: Maybe.

It depends.

Depends on not just the day, but the moment in time, when all the stars align, when this child of mine finds the appropriate response, the right words...

Please.

I'm sorry.

No thank you.

Words fail to describe the between times. The ways he both can and can not communicate, move, understand, see.

No measurements exist to define the boy before me.

He will not be quantified.

When our former micro-preemie qualified for public pre-school, at age three, and the professionals led Nick and I through a gauntlet of surveys, as our firstborn sat on the floor with a therapist who tested his abilities, I remember wanting to scoop him up and run for the door.

I just wanted him to be Elias.

Not a kid in the 1st percentile for gross motor. Not labeled visually impaired. Not below average. Not a list of diagnoses.

But my blue-eyed, curly-haired, sticky-fingered boy.

I don't want to name everything he can't do. I don't want to see his skills compared to a typical child his age. I don't want to peer at my boy through a lens of deficit.

I don't want to fill out another damn survey.

Fast forward, and here I am preparing for Elias to turn eighteen next month, with a slew of paperwork before me.

Always.

Sometimes.

Never.

My thick skin from years of progress reports, IEP's and medical forms feels sliced anew.

Instead of starting school, we are transitioning to life beyond-- and the grief I felt in those early days gushes through my veins with surprising force.

We are not planning for a typical send off as our son enters adulthood, with college applications, job interviews or graduation parties.

Instead, we applied for legal guardianship, so now, for the rest of our/his lives, we will need to submit reports to the court on everything from Elias's finances to health to social activities.

I will now be accountable to a judicial system for everything I naturally do as Elias's Mom.

This means endless paperwork.

Paper that cuts at the heart of a parent.

Paper that makes me want to tear down our walls pasted with multiple wounds over the years and scream:

Please!

I'm sorry!

No thank you! 

No thank you! No thank you!

Hope for the New Year, with Puppy Love

2021 was a rough one. Good riddance.

Cheers to a new year, my lucky number that graced the back of countless soccer and hockey jerseys: 22.

How can I not be hopeful?

Today the Williwaw winds barrel down from the mountain peaks towards the sea, as if to sweep the world anew. I can feel our house shake with the 50 mph gusts, hear the rattle of the woodshed roof, see the trees dance with longing for something different, something new.

I can walk without crutches now, though I still use one, with a flip-down claw, to traverse the ice and snow. Not that I travel far, just to my car to drive to physical therapy or to the store for groceries.

I'll return to work next week, assuming we can keep the schools open with the onset of Omnicrom, the latest strain of this pandemic without end.

It's been over two months since I contracted Covid, and I still feel effects from the virus: headaches, low energy, dizziness, brain fog. And yet since I'm also recovering from knee surgery, it's hard to ascertain what causes my symptoms. Am I tired from laying around and not going outside for a run or hike or ski?

Maybe.

I know my dogs look at me with their wide eyes, wondering why I'm not heading outside to play.

I have yet to tell you the story of our second puppy, Caine, named after Caine's Head, a peninsula at the end of Tonsina Trail, the beginning of which is our driveway. Our fourth dog named after the land we love.

During our Trifuckta month of October--when during a three-week span, a hit and run driver killed our six-year-old Border Collie, Lola, I ruptured my ACL while on recess duty, and on the day I was scheduled to see the surgeon, I contracted Covid-19--our friend Jen was looking for homes for a couple of Border Collie puppies that were no longer spoken for due to their coloring. The would-be owners hoped for Sable or Merle Borders, not the traditional black and white.

From my upstairs isolation room, I commented on one of the pictures Jen posted on Facebook: "Is it just me or does that one puppy look a lot like Lola."

Jen replied: "You said it not me." She had told us after Lola's death that she'd bring a puppy to our doorstep, but we weren't ready.

Or so we thought.

From downstairs in the kitchen, Nick wrote: "I may want to meet him."

The next day from the living room, he texted me upstairs in the bedroom: "What about the name Caine?"

The following week, I returned to work, and on Wednesday, my travel day to my small schools with under 25 students, Cooper Landing, Moose Pass, and Hope, I stopped at Jen's mountain-side farm in Cooper, to meet the rejected black and white puppy.

I called Nick on my way home: "Caine's in the car with me."

The kids were never in on this completely-impractical-emotional decision, and so I surprised Olive when I picked her up after basketball practice with a puppy in my lap. Elias and Nick met Caine when we all made it home.

And though every sensible voice might have screamed: This is not the right time to adopt another dog, Hemlock isn't even a year yet and Christy's about to have ACL surgery and you both work full-time and its winter in Alaska...sometimes the best thing to do in life is to just say "fuck it" and bring home a puppy.

And so we did-- with no regrets.

Hemlock and Caine hit it off immediately at Jen's house; and now they spend their days wrestling, chasing, grooming, and snuggling with each other.

I still say the wrong names at times, calling one of them Lola, or even Tonsina, as if they carry the spirits of our lost dogs within them despite their differences. And yet they do not replace our previous dogs-- as if a limited replicable mold exists for pets-- instead they expand the boundaries of our relationships. 

They embody love, and who doesn't need more love in their lives?

The other day, I lay on the couch listening to a story about a bus driver in Tennessee delivering food to families on her route affected by the tornadoes, with houses demolished, families still missing.

At the end of the story the newscaster shared that the kids the bus driver had been searching for were found dead with the rest of their family. I found myself not just silently crying but loudly sobbing. Caine lifted his head from his spot by my feet, looked me in the eyes, scooted up to lick my face, and then rested his head right on top of my heart.

There is so much I hope for in this new year ahead: improved health, abundant creativity, increased time for friends and family, and above all, to embody the spirit of puppies. To remain present and playful and to be fueled not by fear, but by an abundance of ceaseless love.

May we all channel our inner puppies and embrace each other with our whole, wide-open hearts.