Mile upon mile

Three deaths in the course of a week. All unexpected. All parents of young children. Tony, Amy, Lulu. Too much.

Lately, my heart is heavy for everyone who has lost someone, but mostly for the children who have lost a parent, my own included. It’s like you can see the wound that is there, that will be there, the way you see a mark on the wall, and you want to take a Magic Eraser and scrub and scrub it away. But you wear the sponge to a nub and the mark is still there and you realize finally it is not yours to erase. So instead you come to accept it and even love it because after all, none of us get through life without getting scuffed up.

The other night my son asked to sleep next to me. It was going to be his birthday the next day. He was turning six. Please Mommy. He gave me his sweetest look. Of course I relented. And so it was only fair that my daughter slept on the floor, on the other side of me, and thusly we drifted off to sleep. I don’t know how long it had been, it couldn’t have been that long, when I felt his hand on my wrist and his distinct presence in the room. Even in my panic I remembered that I had locked the doors, all of them, and yet here he was. I thought, my god, it doesn’t matter that the kids are right here; he will cross every boundary. And then I screamed and screamed. I felt them on either side of me, shaking me awake. “Mommy, you’re scaring me.” The dream faded away and I was there, sitting up in bed with my children. I held them. “I’m so sorry. Everything’s okay.” They fell quickly back to sleep and I lay there and stared into the dark.

The next day we were gone again. Our fractured, endless, destinationless road trip across middle America. “For your birthday we will go to a hotel with an indoor pool.” He was excited about this, beyond excited. “And we will go to the zoo.”

I let him pick the restaurant for his birthday dinner. We opened presents there—several for Danny and an unbirthday gift for Anna. At the table next to us were two men, one middle-aged and the other younger, probably his grown son. They didn’t talk much, just sat quietly. The older man smiled at my kids a few times as they oohed and aahed over their toys and I smiled back. I wondered if perhaps he was nostalgic for younger days when children’s desires were transparent and their love given freely.

When it was time to go I gathered up the gifts and picked up the check, reluctant to look at the total. I hadn’t even begun to pay off Christmas. The waitress stopped me as I pulled out my card to pay. “The gentleman who was sitting at the next table paid for your meal,” she said, “he said it looked as if you all were having a good time.” I was dumbstruck. The kindness of random strangers.

In the evening we swam and in the morning we swam some more. We watched cartoons on the television because we don’t have television at home. We went to the zoo and looked at the gorillas and the penguins and walked through the butterfly enclosure. Anna said the only thing she didn’t like about zoos was that they stole animals away from their real homes and put them in little spaces, and I loved her even more for saying that. We caught snowflakes on our tongues and took silly pictures of each other. Then it was time to go back to the house that is our home and not a home and we all grew a little quiet.

On the drive back, I feel an exhaustion come over me that is profound and complete, the slow giving out of a body run too long on adrenaline. The kids watch a movie in the back of the van and I look out the window at the snow. It is so beautiful. I love the Plains. Snow upon fields stretching out into the distance, mile after mile, framed by gently rolling hills. When I drive across the Plains I feel like I can breathe. I feel my body relax and my soul open up and my dreams unlock from my heart and spill into the light.

Someday, I will live far away from here, in a home that is mine, with yellow walls in the kitchen and handmade quilts on the beds. My children will run with abandon throughout the day and sleep deeply in their own beds at night. When I awaken at 2:00 in the morning, it will be with peace in my heart. My someday. There are moments when it is right here and I can taste it sweet and rich before it dissolves like snow on my tongue.