I was ten years old and at that moment I felt I do not live at eleven clock.
I could not breathe. I was in the middle of a full-blown asthma attack. My chest was so dark and heavy as the night, around my grandparents' house in the woods in northern Michigan. The usual tone of the Little Manistee River, singing through the window and the call of the nightjars had to calm my shallow breaths.
My grandfather, Otto, we asked who never anything other than"Papa," slipped the wool-lined slippers he wore at night. He had to be changed even by his blue pajama top. He pulled his thick coat of wool, wool hat, big man leather gloves, boots and snow.
My grandmother never be anything but "Gaga", unless it was from Dad in this case it was always "Mother" or "Hon", turned the stove and put the kettle on a cold white steel burner. Recently I would inhale the steam with a towel over his head.Gaga poured a cup of tea or "tay," as she said, her own grandmother from Ireland, it said.
I buried my face in his mantle as the camel kept my mother. Normally, all the family was not here, but it was Christmas vacation for my sister (not for home-schooled me) that without wheezing in the bedroom and slept with a black bedside lamp with a foot of the deer.
My father threw a shawl over her head. "I'm going, Otto. You do not have to do."
"She's mycurly-top. "Dad looked at my father and my father nodded.
"Someone has to stay here with Kate." Gaga gave my mother the tea.
The smell of the water made me cough even more difficult than I managed to take a drink.
"Are we to the hospital?" My mother was worried.
"They were fine when you know it and you were little." My grandmother tsked. "Driving the car always works."
"It is not even breathe." My mother still looked worried. She helped me drink more tea. "Drinkeven more, my darling. Until the wheezing is gone. "
Wheezing. The reason why I thought my mother, who was formerly a teacher, kept me at home to teach myself. Wheezing. It was a curse, as in The Hobbit.
As always, when I could not breathe, or at any other time, I distracted myself from myself, tell stories. I was cursing a little girl in the woods and had to go on a journey so that the curse could be removed, but I had to drink any tea. It was a magic potion. These werethe woods up north, or Upinorth as we called it. That even sounded like a fairy tale kingdom. And I was deep in the woods, like Bilbo Baggins trying to find his way out.
My Gaga was the wise old ageless woman who helped. My mother was the beautiful queen. My Papa and my dad were my knights, my heroes.
My Papa lifted me up in his arms.
“I’m her dad.”
“But I’m her grandfather.”
And the head knight, I thought. I couldn’t decide if my dad or my Papa was King Arthur. Of course, that one of them might be meant Sir Gawain. A noble knight.
In the cold air out of my Angel Wing patterns against the night. My father wrapped a scarf around my face. I was not really breathe the winter night air. The low nightjars, "exclaims the great horned owl hooted overhead faded somewhere.
My dad was an owl, because that's what his initials are written. OWL. Knights of the owls. My breath is stifled my giggles. With asthma, I could notto laugh.
My mother has settled into the back seat of my grandfather's brown Cadillac. It was hard to keep track of my childhood fantasy when I cough problems.
The car drove off and the heat of the oven slowly flooded the back seat. My grandfather threatens maneuvered the car through the dense trees. He told me all their names: Betula, for birch, white birch, oak, maple, ash, and the brave soldier, the pine tree. The mushrooms: morels, mushroom. The berries:Blueberries, blackberries, and the hard red berries, ate like an apple Snow White.
My mother put her arm around me. I could not bear to be touched. I moved away. She turned her face to the window. She looked tired. I turned around, as far as the seat belt would make me and snuggled next to her.
"Are you better, darling?"
I looked out the car window.
"Sweetie?"
"It sounds better." My father gave me a cup of water. I drank andwatched as we drove through the land of my grandparents, the great resolution gravel road through the trees. Somewhere back in the woods the river sang its melody beckoning asked when I come and play, even if only on the feet first on a silver snow saucer down the snow-covered bench in front of the cottage my grandparents foil.
The headlights of the car lit up and I saw movement.
In the street. Faint, graceful, mysterious, like the unicorns I have read.
"Stop the car." My voice soundedback to me.
"Why?" My grandfather is not absorbed in the task of driving on snow.
"I see a deer."
My grandfather moved the car into park.
Then I saw the deer. A deer? A Buck? And a little deer. A deer. Not the colorful Bambi-type deer but the ones like in the illustrations on the history of my great-grandmother on Swiftfoot Liebold, had written a young deer.
I breathed deeply and fully at this moment. My lungs cleared. Itugging at my dad's hat.
"You see it, Dad?"
"Yes, madam, I see them."
My mother embraced me like the deer slowly their way across the street.
The ride back to the hut was blurred. I was busy with my own breath, and I clear my grandfather, my knight, for what he did for me, the princess of the country Upinorth.
I felt a little embarrassed, because my mother and father also helped, and my Gaga.
When we in the safeKitchen, drinking tea with me, I thanked everyone. My father yawned and went to bed. My mother went to check on Kate.
I smiled my Gaga and dad. King and Queen of Upinorth. "Thanks."
"That's for grandparents," says Papa.
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