EletiofeThe Legend of Zelda, 'Dinky,' and a Bridge to...

The Legend of Zelda, ‘Dinky,’ and a Bridge to My Daughter

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When winter made its second pandemic appearance here in Montana, I found myself pining to relive my first experience with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. To my dismay, the sequel, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, the bash-fest Nintendo released in November, didn’t scratch my itch for sweeping, soothing landscapes and low-stakes puzzle solving during a year of high-stakes reality. 

I’ve been home with toddlers for 11 months straight, my every lockdown minute a battle against darkness and chaos, replete with my own two tiny red Bokoblins perpetually swinging their Boko Clubs at my weakened defenses. I wondered daily: Are there even enough stamella shrooms in the entire gaming universe to get us through this year?

When we first hunkered down last spring, my kids were 18 months and 4 years old. I introduced my oldest to Yoshi’s Crafted World to add some variety to the quiet hours while the baby napped and I worked. She hadn’t yet spent much time with a Nintendo Switch controller, and it took her a bit to manage the buttons. 

But she’d previously tackled PBS Kids Games and Sago Mini World on an old iPad, so she wasn’t entirely new to the basics of gaming. She spent most of the summer in the back yard after that, chasing bugs and digging in the dirt until dinnertime, then settling on the couch with me or her dad to play Yoshi. She ached for her preschool classmates and friends, but as Yoshi she could forget the loneliness for a time. As Yoshi she could gobble up bad guys. As Yoshi she could fly. By August she’d beat the game at least 10 times, a few of them with zero help.

I had longed for this moment for five years, since I first learned that our unborn daughter had ventriculomegaly, a brain condition that falls on the low end of the hydrocephaly spectrum. The ventricles carrying cerebral spinal fluid to her brain were too big, potentially taking up space where her brain needed to grow. The maternal fetal specialist could only say: “I’ve seen it go either way from here. All we can do is wait for the test results and watch.”

I couldn’t plan for what our life with her would be like— outcomes ranged from round-the-clock medical care to a relatively simple brain shunt to relieve the fluid to … possibly nothing. I wondered if I’d ever get to share my love for the Zelda franchise, my very favorite games, with my kid. Would she be able to hold a controller, or develop the logic required to work through a challenging puzzle? I vowed to find a way.

Not long after the diagnosis, I became bed-ridden with hip and back problems caused by a weakening of my ligaments. I spent much of the rest of that pregnancy horizontal, the weight of the unknown slowly reorganizing my internal organs. Between biweekly ultrasounds and the long wait for amniocentesis and fetal MRI test results, I turned to my old friend, Link. 

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD, re-released on the WiiU, became my safe space. I sailed across the Great Sea, charting the waters of a flooded Hyrule as I whiled away the growing-a-person hours, trying not to worry, worry, worry.  

My daughter came early, two days after a sonogram revealed a dramatic shift since our last visit: Her ventricles had reduced to nearly normal size. Her test results had shown none of the genetic or chromosomal disorders often linked with ventriculomegaly. She had the rare fortune of a good outcome from a rough diagnosis. 

She was born eager to run and dance and wrestle, despite a slight motor delay in her legs that gives her a bit of a wobble, and she was just getting the hang of her body 16 months in when the physical limitations of my second pregnancy shut the fun down. This time around the baby didn’t have a scary diagnosis but the fault in my ligaments leveled up, forcing me into a wheelchair, which I used mostly to get out of bed or to scoot around while playing with my girl. She learned that playtime meant bringing me toys and books, or asking me to sit down for a cuddle. I had expected this complication to return, but the severity of it was a blow.

I couldn’t lift my kid into a swing or take walks with her, but as Link I could do almost anything. After I tucked her in at night, I returned to Hyrule, this time via the open-world reimagining of Zelda in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I traipsed across that vivid new country to mute the apprehension and pain. There, I could run freely through sunny meadows, climb rock faces, and easily take on massive foes when my own body could barely manage stairs. The vast landscape soothed me, and the lush storyline focused me. I hunted down shrines and detoured for every side quest, dragging it out as long as I could. I never wanted it to end. 

My son, too, came early, and I destroyed Calamity Ganon with my daughter asleep in the bed beside me and a milk-drunk infant snuggled up against my chest.

After Yoshi’s Crafted World, my daughter shifted to playing Animal Crossing while chatting over video calls with her best friend. Now they visit each other’s islands weekly, exchanging gifts of fruit and clothes and playing hide-and-seek in their museums. It’s cut back the isolation for them a little. But Animal Crossing hasn’t been a pandemic balm for me as for so many others. I have too many real-life menial chores calling me to enjoy weeding my island or building furniture for game-generated neighbors. What I’m craving is adventure, wild vistas, escape, something I can jump into for twenty minutes or two hours, if my luck prevails and I don’t have to work after the kids are asleep to make up for lost daylight. I want BOTW, but for the first time.

Around Thanksgiving, as my kid wrapped up another session of Animal Crossing with her bestie, I mentioned casually that if she wanted to ride a horse of her own, she ought to try Breath of the Wild. Without a moment’s hesitation she said, “My horse’s name will be Dinky.” 

Cue opening credits.

“Why am I in the water? Why have I been asleep? Who’s that? What does the blinking light mean? This music makes my heart happy.” 

No single other moment during our months of isolation has lifted my heart as powerfully as holding my girl on my lap while she wiggled delightedly through her first moments of freedom with Link. This child with the wait-and-see brain. The one on whose behalf I had tearfully asked the specialist, “When will we know if she’ll be able to live outside my body?”

In a way, my pregnancies prepared me for pandemic life. They taught me to shift my expectations, to pivot inward to the small joys I could find right here, in this moment, in my own little 5’4″ space. I am restrained yet again, six years after my first pregnancy, this time to my home as we wait out the coronavirus. Except now I have two very small, very loud companions bound up with me. I don’t have the same escape outlet I relied on before, it’s true, but I’ve found something better. 

On this go-around I get to share my love of Zelda with the child we weren’t sure would ever be able to hold a controller or develop gaming logic. It’s offering us one-on-one bonding time that I didn’t expect during these hard days, as well as bonus educational opportunities, from dexterity to spelling to strategic thinking. Sure, I beat most of the monsters, but she picks her own apples, cooks her own meals, and solves the puzzles herself … so far.

All I had to do was suggest she might like to try riding a horse and my kid, who still runs with difficulty and holds her fingers at odd angles, was ready to go.

We’ve found a way to connect during the baby’s naptime that is lifting both of our spirits. With Link as our guide and a spotted black-and-white Palomino named Dinky to carry us, my daughter and I are waiting out the final dark winter months of seclusion with more joy than either of us thought possible during this lonesome year. And we’re doing it together.


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