He wakes me up now with questions.
There was a time when there were no sounds, then no words, and at every stage an intervention designed to reach that next step. Once there were words, there were exercises meant to encourage questions. At first they were stilted and out of context, forced and unsure. Now, the sun comes up and he pops up beside me, grinning and filling my ear with the whys and hows and whens and wheres and I have to remind my pre-coffee, barely-conscious brain–and heart–that this is what I once dreamed of.
“We could be anywhere,” the man said as I finished my hike on the beach last week, where he was playing fetch with his dog. “The Caribbean, the South Pacific…” he trailed off. “Gorgeous weather. Beautiful water.”
It was one of those first spring days, when the sun feels brighter than it has in six months and the air holds warmth that feels like a promise, and people smile more readily, hardly believing their luck that it happened again: winter became spring. “We could be anywhere,” he said, and I thought, “But we’re here.” Which is so much of everything right now.
Last September, we boarded a plane and left Sydney on the first day of spring. This year, we’re staying, staying into our third season here, rounding the corner on our first year. We’re staying for spring this time. Staying for the removal of heat lamps outside, for the rising hems and sweatier runs, for the lengthening days. Staying for the smoke from the back-burning floating through the air, this protective measure against the brush fires of summer: burning to save. Destroying to keep.
And I feel the burn in our own lives, the hours The Kid spent in therapy now turning into words and questions. The dream I had that he was telling me “I love you”, only to awaken and find it untrue…yet. And now? As real as the sunrise, as spring following winter. His spine jutting through his skinny back, the straightness of it a function of burning–surgery–and growth, and now I feel it beneath my hand and take it for granted. The boy who fights having to dress himself, who is still inching toward being fully toilet trained, but who finishes his assignments first in computer class and waits, bored, until they can all move on because things make sense for him in that room, and within numbers and inside cars, in a way that finally makes him faster instead of lagging behind.
The burning away of all that happened before–the hospital stays, the waiting rooms, the initial scans, the lost pregnancy, the uncertainty–to get to this moment where two boys in their minion pyjamas lie pressed into each other on our bed watching Moana and singing along. All the moments I never dreamed of, never asked for, wouldn’t have chosen, being the very ones that make this one mean so much.
“You’re having a fabulous time here, aren’t you?” she asked as I dropped the kids off with her in the childcare area at the gym (creche if you’re nasty or Australian, and I’m a bit of both). I had told her about an outing the night before with friends, and we commiserated on the days that end in drinks, and we ended in laughter as usual. Last September I didn’t know her or anyone here. I was reminded of that later in the day, when TK took off his goggles during his swim lesson and popped his head above the water: “My eyes can’t see!” The only way he used to swim, goggle-less, now supplanted by a new thing and a new form of seeing. Seeing, period. All that I couldn’t see a year ago, and all that we can now, the smoke clearing and new life showing up everywhere.