Cabin Fever

With the holidays tucked neatly behind us, we're disheveled. You are in the next room, clearing your throat and sucking snot through your nose, as you play some loud thing. I pound green tea to prevent the body from giving in to the cold that hovers in our living room.

Alaska: you are so large and dark in the winter. When we first landed, our plane shook in your freezing air. I held my stomach and averted my eyes from the window. When we are sick, we are alone.

At touchdown, we clacked onto the peach shining tile of the new Anchorage airport. Things change, you must have thought. Your hometown, where your heart grew in its palms, grows without you. It mars your memory. I know this because the Fargo from my youth doesn't exist anymore either. It is something else entirely. It is present. I am past. When I visit, its new buildings tell me, I don't belong anymore.

Through the cold window in the car, the night white snow mesmerizes me. I am not speaking as the black spokes of the trees zip past. A dark organic silhouette emerges on the street, lit by the yellow globes of the quiet winter street. There's our moose, sauntering through the streets like a living poem. Only in Alaska...

I am grateful to love your family. Grateful to hole up in the dim light of that cozy cabin. Grateful for the five-day hibernation that felt like a warm hug. Grateful for blankets, tea, Christmas lights, and carbohydrates.

We were so silent together, the five of us. Even the dogs outside barely barked. When Humvee, the sheep, wanted crackers, he butted his head against the window without a cry. The only peep I heard from him was when we were leaving; his thick hooves crunched in the driveway as he galloped after the car.

I saw you unwind there. I'm not sure who needed that more--you or me. Since we moved to San Diego, I've seen you hold that tight rein around your life. Squeezing it so hard your knuckles whiten, your neck stiff. I know you do it for us and I love you for it, but I miss you.

It's temporary. It's temporal. It's necessary i know. But gawd my heart screamed when I saw you breathe. Even as you got sicker and sicker, your nose stuffed and your head clogged, I was still relieved. It meant, to me, your body letting go. Laying down. Sleeping.

When we boarded the return plane, you handed me our tickets: first class. You smiled at me. I punched you. We sat down and you held my hand. I started to cry. You said, 'we'll figure it out.' And we will.