Chapter 9 - A New Dawn
With our future completely secure, Eli and I left Las Vegas behind. We didn't want the desert heat or the memories of the neon city anymore. We moved north, to a beautiful, quiet coastal town in Oregon, where the air was clean, thick with the scent of pine and the ocean, and entirely free of the dust of Nevada.
I bought a beautiful, historic two-story house overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It had a massive wraparound porch, a modern kitchen, and a huge backyard filled with ancient trees where Eli could play safely.
I set up my own independent graphic design studio in a sun-drenched loft on the second floor. I no longer had to work to survive; I worked because I loved it. My designs became popular within the community, and soon I was helping local small businesses, libraries, and charities build their brands.
Eli thrived in the coastal air. His asthma, which had been exacerbated by the dry, dusty desert air, dramatically improved. I enrolled him in a wonderful local school that specialized in supportive speech development. With the best therapists money could buy—and more importantly, with a life free of stress, fear, and the toxic judgment of his grandparents—his speech blossomed.
One Saturday afternoon, about a year after our move, I was sitting on the back porch, watching Eli run through the grass with a golden retriever puppy we had adopted. He was laughing, his cheeks flushed with healthy color, holding his old dinosaur blanket like a cape behind him.
He tripped over a tree root, fell into the soft grass, and sat up, laughing.
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"Mom! Look!" he shouted across the yard, his voice clear, strong, and completely devoid of the stutter that used to frustrate him so much. "I’m flying!"
I smiled, a deep, profound sense of peace settling into my soul. "You are flying, sweetie," I called back. "Keep going."
