Hide & Seek

I laugh quietly
as I remember the time
when I hid you
in a basket full of clean laundry
while playing hide and seek
with you and a group of other kids.
It was your turn to hide
and I always tried
to find the most ingenuous hiding spots
that kept kids searching and searching,
sometimes,
until they gave up.

All the kids knew
that I was really good
at hide and seek.
Cousins, schoolmates, neighbors,
they all wanted to play
and I helped hide each one of them
when it was their turn to hide.
I loved how some of the most simple
and obvious places were often
the best hiding places
and we always laughed
when the kids would say
“Why didn’t I think of that?”

Another time I hid you under my pillow.
Literally!
I had one of those long pillows
that stretched across the bed
and I always fixed the bedspread
in such a way that I covered that long pillow
and there was no reason to suspect
anyone could be hiding there.
The kids looked everywhere
and by everywhere, I mean
EVERYWHERE
even in the drawers because from me,
they expected anything
and felt nothing
was impossible.

Hide and seek
had that kind of magic for you kids.
-the magic of childhood
and the magic of me
getting to live those moments through you
able-bodied versions
of your disabled parents
for whom a game of hide and seek
was harder because we couldn’t hide
our wheelchairs
and most good hiding spots
were not made for kids like us.

I think that’s why
when I became a mother
I had so much fun
with the able-bodidness of you, kids
I walked through you
and ran through you
and played with you, knowing,
I could hide you in places
where my crip body could have never fit.
I become inventor and creator
and artist
just in a simple game
of hide
and seek.
I go back in time
and become a kid again.
-the able-bodied kid
I never was.