Following Elias

Perspective, Perspective, Perspective

Last Thursday, I walked into the staff lounge after an hour of recess duty in heavy rain and was just about to say, "Well I learned my boots aren't really waterproof" ...when a coworker said something like: We're lucky we aren't teaching in the Ukraine today.

His words lifted me out of my small self so I could look down at my petty problems from a window seat on a jet plane. My soggy feet no longer felt necessary to complain about. 

How luxurious to get to stand outside in the slush and rain while children play. How lucky.

No sheltering in subway stations, no fleeing on crowded trains, no hiding in friends' basements. No air sirens howling, no missiles deployed, no school yards under attack.

Just a typical wet day in Seward with kids breaking minor rules by throwing snowballs and rolling in puddles.

Perspective.

The day before, on Wednesday, I saw the faint line on a home covid test and my heart accelerated as I turned towards Elias and said, "You just tested positive."

His lip trembled, his pupils shook more than normal as they held fast with the ground, he wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, and said, "Mom, my eyes are watering and I don't know why."

"Oh Bud, it's ok to feel, to feel sad or scared or worried about it."

Nick and I looked at each other, both wanting to say: Fuck! We felt sad, scared and worried too.

Three days earlier, on Sunday, Olive slept late as she often does on the weekend. I heard her get up around 10:00 but she never came downstairs; assuming she got back in bed to read, I didn't think much of it. Half hour or say later, I walked upstairs and peeked into her room.

She lay there crying and when she saw me, said: "I tested positive!"

My independent private girl woke up feeling feverish, took a home test in the bathroom without saying anything to us, and then got back in bed to process the results, alone. 

I hugged Olive and cried with her, thinking about the week ahead and her anticipation of not one but two field trips with her class to Alyeska for downhill skiing.  Her final week with her x-country ski team. Cousins coming to visit that afternoon.

Not to mention a fever of 103 and Covid-19 back in our home.

Olive isolated upstairs in her room but when Elias woke up warm on Wednesday I knew. My pandemic fear had come true.

We made it almost two years, made it through my trial with Covid-19 this fall, but despite all our precautions, our boy with damaged lungs held the virus somewhere inside him without words to tell us how he feels.

My eyes are watering and I don't know why.

And yet here we are, day six of Elias's quarantine, he sits next to me on his iPad exploring Anchorage on google maps, and besides his usual congestion, remains symptom free.

Elias spent a couple days lethargic on the couch, with a high temperature, but it broke and he started asking us repetitive questions by Friday night, so we knew we were going to get through the scenario we feared.

Anticipation of an event is often worse than when it finally unfolds.

Olive didn't end up missing both ski trips, one was rescheduled to tomorrow and today she is skiing with the 8th graders to make up for missing the 6th grade trip last week. And though she missed a week of practice, she got off quarantine just in time to compete in the final Burroughs meet of the year where she placed 10th, despite her lungs hurting when she raced.

Elias is cleared to return to school tomorrow and because I missed work to stay home with him I had time to walk to Tonsina with a friend this morning. A beach walk on a Monday morning. Not bad.

Perspective.

And honestly, after listening to and reading stories about Russia invading Kyiv and Kharkiv and Zmiinyi Island, Covid-19 feels minuscule in comparison. The pandemic has not displaced us, the sky remains free from rockets, a line of tanks is not en-route to our home.

Perspective.

I wonder, would we line up to defend "the land of the free?" Would I join the queue to enlist in a citizen army if enemy invaders threatened my doorstep?

The most I've been asked to do is wear a mask, wash my hands, and stay home. 

Perspective.

If Only I Could Remember

The sky shook my shoulders and whispered: "Open your eyes before you miss me."

Despite my body wanting to stay in bed, on a slow Sunday morning, I followed Sky's advice and absorbed the beauty of the changing light.

We need these moments of Ah. At least, I know I do.

Especially when my head throbs, and my energy ebbs, and I haven't felt like myself in months. I can hear the bacon sizzling but I can't smell it. I get dizzy walking up our driveway. At the end of a busy work day, I sit in my office, unable to think clearly about the tasks I need to accomplish to prepare for the next day. Even packing up to go home feels like too much work.

I find myself staring at nothing, no thoughts, a grey outline of my former self, filled with nothing but air where my stamina and creativity once lived. The color long gone.

It's fair to say I fall into the category of long Covid, considering I contracted the virus in October. And yet I've also had knee surgery in November, after rupturing my ACL, and so my normal active routine has been doubly disrupted and its hard to know if my lack of energy stems from Covid-19 or my lack of movement.

I also recently returned from a whirlwind cross country trip to visit my parents in Florida, from Thursday to Monday, my return flight re-routed, delayed, arriving in Anchorage in the middle of the night, and still working Tuesday-- just writing about it makes me tired.

And yet it was so nice to spend a few quality days with my Mom and Dad. Just me. No kids. I slid back into the role of daughter, with multiple beach walks and meals together, conversations without interruptions. No one's needs to tend to besides my own.

Warm weather. No down jackets, no gloves, no hats. No snow and ice to navigate with my surgically repaired knee. No starting the car before leaving the house, no scraping the windshields, no avalanches blocking the road.

Just my Mom, my Dad, and me.

The earth has orbited the sun over eighteen times since I last visited my parents alone, without my family. Eighteen times too many.

In Florida, the sky also called my name in the morning, shook my shoulders and whispered: "Open your eyes before you miss me."

Instead of boots I donned bare feet and watched the sun rise from the horizon instead of over mountain peaks.

Same star, thousands of miles apart.

Whether I stand on the shore of the Atlantic or above Resurrection Bay, I always watch spellbound as the sun transforms the morning, and me, for a moment, making me forget my body's ailments, my endless worries, the world's woes, and see only the beauty of the awakening day.

Now if only I could capture the energy of the painted sky to fuel me during all the mundane black and white moments in-between.

If only I could remember the light.

If only I could remember...

Eighteen Years That Might Not Have Been

Dear Elias,

In the beginning of this month, on February 2nd, you turned eighteen years old. On the eve of your birthday, your Dad and I stayed up too late drinking wine, feeling a mix of wonder and denial that your transition to adulthood dawned.

But dawn it did, with a magenta sky to celebrate you, after a slate sky week of sleet, snow and rain.

You’ve heard your birth story many times, the mad rush to the hospital when my water broke at twenty-four weeks, how I felt you move into my birth canal as we sped through red lights, the agonizing wait for someone to see us, the surge of medical personnel when the nurse couldn’t find your heartbeat, how they whisked me off to emergency surgery without your Dad by my side, the NICU doctor’s first words when I woke up: “He’s alive but I can’t tell you he’s going to survive.”

The doctor didn’t sugarcoat the truth of your one-pound, twelve-ounce existence. Your APGAR score of 0,0,3. The fact that you looked more like a science project than a baby.

I have written your premature arrival into poetry, spoken word, blog posts, and essays, circling and re-circling your beginning, as if through telling your origin story, I can change the trajectory. Or find meaning. An escape hatch. Peace. 

“I’ll write my way out,” Hamilton sings, in the acclaimed broadway play, and I can say I too have been writing my way out of grief and despair, towards understanding, towards hope, towards you. 

You, my son who survived. 

My son who lives with lifelong challenges that affect communication, vision, balance, and mobility, but somehow manages to channel the sun amidst a storm. “Isn’t it beautiful,” you used to say, on even the ugliest of days.

“I wonder where tomorrow is?” you asked, shaking me from my stupor of trying to rewrite history.

“Mom, what are you wondering about?” reminding me to harness more awe, less angst.

And yet sometimes you are the storm. Wreaking havoc on what started out as a beautiful day. You are the bear lurking in the woods as I walk, ready to pounce the moment I think how lucky I am to be in this particular forest, on this particular day. Claws raised you swing your beefy paws at my heart.

And then an eagle passes overhead and you are my charming sweet boy again. 

The one who eagerly invites folks over to our house for sledding and eggs Benedict, even if we’ve only just met, even if your Mom and Dad rarely follow through with all your invites, too overwhelmed by life to plan something new. The one who says to friends and family: “I’m so happy to be with you!” “I can’t wait to see you!” “Thank you for being here!”

Elias, thank you for being here.

If I’m really, really, honest with you, Elias, there have been dark moments when I’ve wondered what my life would have been like without you. Or when I’ve grieved the boy you might have been, born full-term and healthy, helping your Dad with house projects, leaving me in your shadow on the mountain, looking after Olive your younger sister, hanging out with friends, playing sports, reading.

I let myself imagine a different version of you. And alternate reality for me.

But what I often fail to recognize, in these moments, is all the gifts you’ve given me over the years. How you’ve taught me to slow down, to celebrate small steps, to laugh at myself more often, especially when I fall. You gifted me increased compassion, a greater tolerance for differences, strength long buried beneath false aspirations, and the ability to advocate for those who can’t speak up for themselves. 

By breaking and remaking my heart, you made me kinder, softer, more present, less selfish.

I can’t image forty-nine-year-old me without eighteen-year-old you. 

I am me because of you.

You, my eighteen-year-old son. An adult in the eyes of the law but not yet ready to stumble away from our home. Next week a judge will most likely grant us guardianship, a decision you support— and for years to come your Dad and I will submit reports to the court on everything from your medical history to your social life to your finances. A judge decides whether we can keep doing what we’ve always done, assist you as you navigate this world that wasn’t designed for kids like you.

You will not take the path well traveled. You can stay in school until you turn twenty-two and then what? Where will this overgrown trail lead? The college highway is not where you amble. Exploring the world on your own, not your path. Stepping right into a career seems like a substantial leap for your particular shoes. 

What comes next? 

I can’t jump ahead to pen the chapter after this one. You will write your own story. In fact, it’s always been you, the narrator behind my lines, the protagonist who builds the paragraphs, word by word, step by step, breath by unsupported breath.

“Mom, what are you wondering about?”

“I wonder where tomorrow is?”

“Isn’t it beautiful.”

If I circle back to your birthday, to the first time I lay eyes on your tiny body that didn’t belong outside of mine, as I stared at my heart on the outside, and reached my hand towards yours, you gripped my pointer finger with a strength impossible for your premature size, the bear in you already awakening, telling me: “It’s ok to love me Mama, we got this— I’m going to survive.”

And here we are, eighteen years later, celebrating your transition into adulthood.

I love you Elias, we got this, whatever this may be. 

I’m so happy to be with you.

Love always,

Mom