The Sound

Boston Beach

There are no photographs
Of One of my most
profound memories
As a mother
Because I left my phone
In the house
(Someone else’s house, a borrowed treasure)
And after two days of driving
It was cold, so cold,
The wind a dervish,
Me in a thin caftan
And holding you and your brother close,
Goose pimples on your legs,
Your precious legs,
A cobalt blue gingham rash guard
Covering your arms.
When we walked out I told you we were going to the beach.
You started to run across the street, back to the bay
We’d played in earlier.
I remember that too:
Link asleep in the backseat, finally,
Us two hours before check in,
Exhausted pulling into the driveway of the rental house,
You and dad
Crossing the street to play in the bay,
A small beach maybe three feet across and stretching less than the length of a couple of cars,
Murky water and rocky sand,
But I watched you in the rear view mirror for 83 minutes while I waited for link to finish sleeping
And your joy was as wide as the whole world.
It was cold but I watched you run
And scoop sand
And find hermit crab shells
And play with your knobby knees cold in the march wind
But finally
When I approached
(Lincoln crying in my arms, screaming in tired delirium and discomfort, three days of less than normal sleep)
I smiled, as tired and sore as I was, as hard as my arm and back and ear muscles were working to hold my screaming last born, a two year old but tall and loud and inconsolable
And yet my soul soared
As I approached you across the small grass park
Of Lafitte bay playground
And when I had almost arrived
A chorus of oh look, it’s mama
Arrested your attention
And you saw me see you
And you ran, you ran halfway to me and then stopped,
And turning back to the bay, you planted your front leg
And gestured with you arm to enclose the whole of the tiny bay in your view
And you looked at me and looked at the bay
And you made a sound
That I had never heard
And that I will always hear
But that I will spend the rest of my days trying to hear again in my head
Because in that sound was your description of the wonder of the entire world:
It was multisyllabic, a wonder for you, and also a single syllable roar, a dinosaur singing, a bird waking up,
The sound of a soul
Being born, an effervescent hum like a spark, a multitude,
A guttural roar
Meant to elucidate to me
The entirety of the majesty and miracle of the world.
For you that bay was the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. For me, it was you: you, raised up on one foot, left arm gesturing wide, body bent forward towards the horizon, chin turned halfway between me and the magic
And the miracle of it all is that you are a child with apraxia: a three year old who wants to speak
But cannot:
Not because you don’t want to communicate
(Oh, how you long to)
But because the muscles in your mouth and face
Are cut off somehow from the mother nerves in your brain
And the motor plan won’t play
When you try to form the words
You think, the words you know, the words you want your voice to speak.
You are trapped in there, and my mother heart breaks
For you and because of you, because of me,
But for this one brief moment (my favorite, probably, of all time)
As I was holding your tired little brother in my arms
You ran toward me
And made that sound for me,
That guttural cry that demonstrated every beautiful thing
I’ve ever seen
In one bizarre sweet birdsong of a noise,
And then you ran, full force, back to the little beach on the bay
And continued playing in the sand
Until your little fingers started to curl from the cold
And I made us all go back to the car.
Finally, finally we went in the house, up a flight of stairs, a turquoise and pink oasis,
You and Lincoln marching inside side by side
Saying happy happy happy.
An hour later I brought you back outdoors:
“We’re going to the beach!” I said,
Are you so excited? Are you so happy?
Yeah, you said, and you started to run back to that little bay beach across the street.
No, not that one, I said, and you, you kept running, holding my hand, pulling me toward it. No, a bigger one, I said,
And you started to cry.
You don’t understand the enormous beauty
Of what’s to come.
I don’t either, and I didn’t.
I never do.
I dragged you by the hand, softly, gently,
Trying to explain:
Yes, yes, baby, I know, you want to go back to the little beach to play. We played there earlier today, remember? But there’s a bigger beach on this other side. That one is little. But there’s a BIG one. On the other side. You’ve never been there.
And I know, I know you feel sad because you thought I meant we would go to that fun little beach, the one that made your soul roar like a dinosaur,
But trust me, child:
Greater things are just over here, on the other side.
We’re going to have to walk for a little ways first,
But trust me,
We’re going to the big beach and
It’s going to be so much fun,
And so beautiful.

And then your soul cried but

We walked together, the opposite direction of the bay, across two streets and were about to board the boardwalk
When your father joined us,
Big smiles
And he carried you,
Because I was carrying your brother
And I think your feet hurt.
Your heart hurt, you not quite believing me,
Wanting to go back to the little joy you knew at the bay beach.
We followed the boardwalk, wind whipping my ankles.
Up. Far, again, more and more, to the left, and then some more.
We found the horizon then finally, caught a little glimpse of the sea over our right shoulders,
And your face began to understand a little.
Just a little.
When we made it over the dunes
To where the boardwalk finally ended,
An awning of sand, a short fenced walk
And we were on the white sand beach,
Alone, so soft it squeaked
And you dove down face first into it,
Shrieking with joy.
You threw handfuls up into the sky,
Which had turned golden,
And with its soft golden glow on your face
You laid down on your back in the sand
And made snow angels.
I’ll remember how your laughed echoed up into the sky

As we ran hand in hand

Across the golden shore

And chased the birds, making them fly,

And I fell when we made it to the sandbar

But picked you up and held you up to the sky, golden meeting golden

And I knew

I would never find a happier moment than this: happy, happy, happy.