a swing and a slide

Thursday, November 02, 2006
Wind At My Back

It's the last of the sunshine-on-falling-leaves days, swirling color against the bright blue sky. We've been borrowing time for at least a month now and it's not just the weatherman that tells me this is the day to get out and do something about it. I know. I just know. Nov. 1, - it should have, could have been dumping on us all last month. Get out now or nurse those regrets to the rhythm of winter raining down for months.

Today is not a school day. It's special, because I don't get whole days to play and waste with my girls. There are school days and there are his days. Weekends are not mine. Weekends are work time. Weekends are late nights at the paper, then slipping, sipping, typing into my favorite hours - when quiet sanctuary lures whispered secrets into being. So much safer to tell a story when no one is awake to hear, isn't it? This day is rare. A diamond. No work. No school. Just me and my young travelers on our own with two buckets of Halloween booty and unscripted hours sprawling clear to dinnertime.

Amelia wants to go to the coast.

"It's morning," she announces, wrapped in pink footy pajamas, her footsteps rattling the apartment.

Morning. That's subjective. It's getting light outside, yes, but morning? Hardly. The thing about living in the living room is there is no place to send her. "Do you want to see what's on PBS kids?" Not an option. Not unless I want to watch Curious George, too.

At four-and-a-half Amelia is the size of a six-year-old and strong enough to take down a 10-year-old boy. My body braces for her hugs, a billion tiny strings pulled taught inside, just in case.

"Good morning, morning bright new day," a reflexive response, just like steeling myself for the hug. "Hurts aren't hugs, sunshine girl."

"Can I snuggle?" The bed shakes.

"Climb in, Sweetie." Her body softens until she feels like a four-year-old again, lying with me. Soft and perfect. "You know, it's not really morning yet. The clock is all mixed up right now." I'm stretching for kindness, but morning has never been my time.

And, Amelia has never been her age. "Has anyone ever told this child she's a baby?" people used to ask.

The moment they placed her on my belly, eyes wide and clear and blue, I saw a teacher. At less than 10 months she walked. At 15-months she spoke 5-word sentences, lamenting in the back of the car while our best friends were on vacation "I miss Laura, Jesse too." At 18-months she denounced diapers. At 20 months, during the first cold war, the first go at marriage counseling, she cut the breakfast table silence with the tiny plea. "Mommy loves Daddy. Daddy loves Mommy. Mommy hug Daddy."

She wants to go to the coast. The ocean has been pulling, pulling at me, too. Not today though, this is not the time. I can't reconcile my vision of staring at the water until I'm lost in the waves with the reality of chasing my children along the tide line until they are wet and whining, shivering and sandblasted. Can't let go of what I want it to be, but can have the grace to not attempt forcing it into being.

Anyway, the Subaru's alignment is off and a trip through the Coastal Range will push it past what I can afford to fix.

We'll go to the Gorge.

"Don't go to the Gorge," my best friend warns. "Do you know how windy it will be out there? Go to Forest Park or Tryon Creek."

"Yeah, you're right," I agree. "I just want to get out into the woods anyway. I just need to feel the earth under my feet."

But it's not right. I don't just want the woods. I want, I NEED, wide-open space and big water. I need the ocean and if I can't have that, then the gorge. Let the wind blow. The harder the better.

And the road, too. I need the road. These roads are as much my home as anyplace I have ever made a bed. All four directions converging on one point, carrying every possibility, all of it connected. My song is louder to the rhythm of the road. My mind turns faster with the rotation of the tires. My spirit is freer knowing with the turn of this wheel I am anywhere. I am following the harvest moon north along the Pacific to morning and breakfast in Arcata. I am racing the boar tide out of Anchorage along Turnagin Arm. I am churning through the Sierra Madre Del Sur, swift turns and unforgiving drops marked with peeling white crosses. I am chasing Spring north from Quintana Roo up the Gulf Coast to North Carolina, to rest and a month at the beach. Following the water, following the moon, following the flow always.

Pual Thoreaux said "Travel is flight and pursuit, both in equal parts," It echoes between my ears in ways that make me squirm.

Amelia and Josie are wrestling sleep when the big Columbia opens the sky above us. Clear blue to the Cascades, Mt. Hood piercing the sky and a million white lines chopping along the water. The baby's feet are nestled in Cookie Monster slippers that she refuses to trade for boots. I steer off the freeway to my favorite type of road - two lanes, no shoulder - passing waterfall after waterfall.

"Can we get out here?" Amelia asks at each. "When do we get to hike?" Nothing feels right. We keep going, going until I have looped down to I-5, dropped to the river.

Finally we are back to Rooster Rock, high basalt cliffs stretching above to the Crown Point. "How about here Mommy? How about the beach with the playground?" Yes. Here.

Amelia has never felt wind driving like this. "See all those white squiggles on the river," I point. "It's all the wind. The wind is pushing so hard along the water that it's making waves."

"Too cold, mommy. Too cold." Josie pleads to the open door. We make our picnic in the car, girls in the front and me squeezed between the booster and the car seat in the back. The baby at the helm. I've let them navigate and they chose to eat looking out to the playground (and freeway entrance), river behind us, because really there is no greater beauty than a swing and a slide. Wind pushes against the side of the car, nearly rocking it, and works the trees into a joyous dance.

"Playground?" I ask.

"Playground," they echo. We won't last long, but no way are we coming all the way out here and not playing.

The wind rips.

Josie shutters, drops to the ground balling herself into a tight blue heap with furry white borders.

Amelia runs, testing the wind. It pushes against her back and she leaps, laughing as it lifts her.

I spread my arms wide from my body, back to the wind, and let go. Let myself go, trusting in the wind. And the wind holds me.

***

Two hours and eleven minutes into Fiday.