I remember the days just after The Kid’s diagnosis, when the world felt shadowy and uncertain, and I would analyse everything he did as a predictor of his future–typically, per my brand, with grim foreshadowing. Glass-half-empty on steroids. I had been dealt a death blow, as my old pastor and friend would say: a death blow to my own plans, my own certitude, my version of who TK would be. But I’d forgotten the most important things about death blows: they are dealt by grace, and they are followed by resurrection.

So what ended up dying, really, were those former plans. The version of TK without challenges, without the need for therapy. (He was never meant to exist in the first place, you see, because then he wouldn’t be, well…him.) My need to conduct polls to determine my next action, to garner approval for my own survival. All of that died. Thank God.

And what came to life? Oh, just everything is all.

You know what never would have happened if I’d been granted my plan? This past weekend, that’s what. So let me tell you about that.

A year ago, TK’s school therapist asked him to be the page boy in her wedding and walk down the aisle ahead of her. He said yes. Cut to us nearly a year later, a few weeks ago, TK begrudgingly trying on his wedding attire to make sure it fit. The Husband and I were deigning to interrupt a Roblox game to achieve this task. As soon as TK was fully robed and I snapped a photo, he made his displeasure abundantly clear.

“Take this fucking thing off me.”

TH and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. Did he just…?

“What did you just say?” I asked TK.

“I said, take this fucking thing off me.”

It was a real that’s what I thought you said, dad-in-A Christmas-Story, “oh fudge,” tire-changing moment, and TH’s and my wide eyes switched to barely-concealed laughter, because…you know, shit happens. And our family knows the difference between what we call “home words” and the other kind, and to his credit, TK hasn’t dropped the F-bomb to anyone outside our family. Plus, I grew up with a heavy emphasis on avoiding “bad words,” the four-letter kind, while racial aspersions were lobbed around with abandon, so my standard on this is different from that of many.

All of which is to say, I found it mildly troubling and mostly hilarious, but that’s not the point. The point here is the story I’m telling. Which leads to this past weekend.

True to their brands, TK did not want to practise his wedding walk, while Little Brother was an all-too-eager undesignated understudy, running around the backyard rehearsal site with performative glee. It was looking grim. The bride told me that she would do whatever he was comfortable with, and if it didn’t happen, that was fine. We all went our separate ways and I was pretty certain the next day–at least, TK’s part in it–would be a total shitshow.

That’s what I get for thinking.

After protesting his boutonnière then angrily accepting it, and a speech we made to him about how special this role was, TK was folded into the bridal party and I waited off to the side, anxious as hell. LB, for his part, refused to walk away from the bridal party, having harboured (it appeared) secret ambitions to be called upon to perform at the last minute. And that’s what he got for thinking, too. Because soon, TK and his toy plane were walking in step with the bride’s sister to the awwws of the crowd. He was grinning and I was sobbing.

I have to call it perfect.

Not because it was, mind you. The prep work was unpromising, the lead-in painful, every moment up to it fraught in trepidation. But the moment itself? Beautiful. Which is so on-brand: for grace, and for him.

A few days later, I stuck around after drop-off to watch the kindy kids’ Medieval Day parade. In a typical year, parents would be allowed on school grounds to watch it, but this year has been anything but typical (which is actually on-brand for our family, so we’re sort of used to it?). So I hung around like a creeper and gazed through the trees as the kids marched, and soon I spotted mine: LB in all his knight regalia, dancing so hard to the medieval music that he was practically breakdancing around the pitch. So on-brand. So perfect.

I’ve been listening to this podcast lately (five stars, highly recommend) and the episode linked was with the conductor of the LA Philharmonic. He talked about how conducting is really about making your own interpretation of the music set before you, and how he appreciates all the mishaps that turn into “perfect mistakes.” I wouldn’t dare to call anyone in my life either perfect or a mistake, but there is something to this idea: the beauty that shows up in the unplanned and uncertain and unasked for. The singular way a child walks down the aisle or dances across a playground, because they’re already exactly who and where and how they’re meant to be.