Grounding
Lin Lentine
My daughter’s case worker sits with her by the old bathtub where we will plant our strawberries, explaining how to breathe. Cady is six, and rips fistfuls of grass from the ground around her.
Take a breath with each of your senses, the case worker says.
Count it down: five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
What if I don’t have anything to taste, Cady wonders.
Imagine your favorite taste in the world, she replies.
Breathe.
One.
My daughter picks the new wild violets in the backyard, bringing individual flowers to my face to see the colors. Dark purple, light purple, white with purple streaks down the center, pure white.
Two.
Her eyes are hazel. Deep forest green speckled with golden sunlight. When she laughs, her face scrunches up with so much joy that they disappear.
Three.
I braid her honey-brown hair in the morning and tie it with a bright green scrunchie. It matches her shorts. She picks out a lilac shirt and tells me she looks like a flower today.
Four.
Cady draws a picture during her zoom class. A unicorn, all black, stenciled in thick crayon. She says it is a nightmare unicorn. She says her brain likes dark things, sometimes.
Five.
Together we create a calm space in her room, in the corner, next to the dresser. I put her round, pink pillow on the floor there. She hangs a drawing of a rainbow.
Breathe.
One.
When I get a package in the mail, we share the bubble wrap. I run my fingers across the smooth bumps and methodically snap them, while she crackles the plastic in both fists with madcap impulsivity.
Two.
I smooth a soft blanket over her at bedtime and tuck it under her feet. The other side of the blanket is fluffy and white, but she prefers the pink velvet against her skin.
Three.
A lockbox arrives from the case worker’s office. I put every cold knife from our kitchen inside and close the sharply cornered lid. The key is heavy as I push it into the lock.
Four.
Our hands in the damp soil, churning it up, making room for searching roots. Place the delicate thing and cover it, to protect the parts that are growing.
Breathe.
One.
Birds trilling, invisible in the still-bare trees by our house, chattering about the newness of spring, reassuring each other.
Two.
She says, Sometimes my brain just gets upset, and I have bad dreams, and I feel like I’m not safe.
Three.
Snow piles against us for three weeks. We go out on the first warm day, sick of inside voices, and decide to have a good yell. We turn our faces upward and scream, and Cady’s voice is the one that echoes.
Breathe.
One.
She brings the outdoors in with her: the sharp scent of mud on her boots, the violets wilting in a jar on her desk, the salty sweat dampening her braid after running back and forth between the porch and the big tree.
Two.
When we water the tender leaves and runners taking root in the old bathtub, they become fragrant, sweet and sharp. The tallest plant is just starting to bloom.
Breathe.
The strawberries we will harvest, as I imagine them: startlingly red against the leaves, firm, bursting with sweet juice on our tongues as we eat them warm from the stem, our toes in the dirt, messy and alive.