Mammoth

On Christmas Day we got in the car and we drove. And we drove and we drove and we drove. We drove through rain, and sleet. We drove through mountains and snow. We drove through text messages and phone calls from family and friends telling us of the weather forecasts we were experiencing out our windows. We stopped to put on snow chains, and then we drove some more. We drove through the light, and we drove through the white, and we drove into the dark.

And finally arrived in Mammoth.

My sister-in-law's parents own a home in the mountain town of Mammoth, and ever since our boys died, they have been begging us to get ourselves out there for some restoration. On Christmas Eve, faced with the prospect of down time and holiday time, of swarming memories and failed expectations and nothing in the world to distract from it, we finally took them up on their offer of escape.

The drive itself was a punch in the gut of our pain. Memories of the cross-country trip, our last moments of innocence, our brazen misunderstanding of the idea that pregnancy leads to children you can raise, our triumphant march across the country that ended in tragedy, poked us uncomfortably in the ribs like Archer and Pedro's feet.

We talked and we cried and we watched the storm blot out everything in the world but us, and the moment directly in front of us. And we slowed down, way down, and we inched, we crawled, forward.

Mammoth. What a funny name for a town. Pictures of enormous, shaggy, elephantine beasts everywhere, including the key chain we'd borrowed from my sister-in-law. And the mountain, the mammoth mountain that was the main attraction, looming in the background, making everyone and everything feel small.

Mammoth: the task ahead of us, of allowing this year to end without our children being here. As if we could stop it, but still. The screaming out enormity of our rage: how could you? How could you, universe, with your beauty and your mountains, and your holidays about miracles and your new year fresh starts, how could you betray us like this? And expect us to go on, no less?! Talk about brazenness.

Somehow the idea of a new year has ripped our wounds wide open. And we grieve again, as if we were right back at the beginning. Last night I dreamt their birth again, that desperately unhappy pushing with no relief at the end. And I woke up and wondered if we will ever be whole again.

At the base of Mammoth, surrounded by the calmly warm sky and the sparkling crisp snow, I cracked open, and the torrents of my feelings poured out and I surrendered, once again, to that which is more Mammoth than me.

But I haven't mentioned the snowshoeing! Strapping large metal claws onto your feet that make you instantly awkward on the roads planned out by man, but instantly mobile and free in the snowy wilderness. We strapped ourselves in, committed to the journey and tramped over hill over dale, for miles, in the quiet with nothing but the crunch of us marking out a new path, and the heavy swooshing of trees dropping their snowy loads on our heads. And here's the thing about snowshoes: you can only move forward in them. Try backing up, and you end up on your ass.