You Would Do Anything

Authors

Kevin Coates, Dominican University of CaliforniaFollow

Abstract

You are driving on the interstate, and your daughter says, “Look, Mommy! A polar bear!”

You are not so far gone that you think it really can be a polar bear, but you can not in that split second think of much else that it could be.

“A polar bear?” you say, stalling.

“Polar bear, polar bear, what do you hear?” she says.

You remember vaguely that those are the lines of a book you read to her at night. You don’t know what the polar bear hears. What do polar bears hear? You imagine white noise, winds filled with tiny particles, the breath of fish.

“Go to sleep,” you say, more like a wish than a directive.

You are doing your best to navigate the tunnel vision of the road and the place where the yellow lines – or are they white? – merge and become impassable. You can only see so far.