The Trip

Tonight Canyon's face is swollen like a bee stinged balloon.  But, it was just a mosquito bite, put there on a recent trip to Lowman.  This time, not like other times in past summers with Canyon this time he reacted like River did that summer after turning one in Colorado.  That summer around now, after returning from abroad, no home, just the van, and then the heat, and the westward boundedness--straighshooting cross country.  Flippin' the passenger seat round, facing the baby in the car seat--wailing from Pennsylvania through Illinois while we sung our hearts out to Old McDonald.  The halt in Indianapolis.  A complete van repair in middle-america.  A tornado.  Also the fever in Ohio.  Ohio?  Somewhere. And the cat in the van and a big fight during the fever, the first since the birth.  

Then Colorado, and Boulder with the baby where a hippie boy at auto-repair works hard on the van, and Steamboat.  The columbines, mad creek, elk river, and River got the bites.  He swelled up.  Now, that's what Canyon looks like tonight.

I told a friend once that I felt like life was existing in multidimensions, so that the spheres of influence we want and are obligated to are not flat lines, that we can step out of.  Nor are they static.  They are shimmering hoola-hoops of spiraling energy radiating electric charges.  My boys, my work, my love, my words, this home, this garden, that nuke plant, my body, those shoes, that hair, these things, and that food, car, bike.  Spinning.  That's how I feel when one of my children is hurt, like I want the loops to stop spinning and just heal.  But, I also fear the halt.  Would I gain the momentum again?

After Steamboat, and another van meltdown, we continued on to Boise.  The van broke-down at a nothin' place in Utah.  The people who finally repaired it said we were lucky to be alive after traveling cross-country in that van.  Some heat emitting part was hitting the gas line.  We should have exploded into flames. During the rest of the journey I wrote a story in my journal called "charred Family" about our narrowly avoided demise.

Can't end there. Canyon's legs extend beyond the scope of my expectations.  He flattens me as I rock him, he mutters and twitches, trying to get comfortable with one-side of his face hot and puffy.  He soon breathes evenly, buried in my skin, I am tempted to not even peal him off, just to sit here with him and watch the colors beyond my eyelids as I hold him close, nose buried in his air, taking in his scent, filling him with light.  Healing.