Mid-afternoon Saturday, branches of our family convened in an auditorium to watch The Niece, age three, perform in her first dance recital. We sat in our row of nine, The Kid wedged between me and The Husband as we stuffed crackers into his mouth and willed him to last through a few numbers. The Niece was scheduled onstage for the second and second-to-last songs, and she–along with the rest of the young girls–did not disappoint. iPhones and iPads hovered in the air over the audience to catch it all: tiny feet and arms flailing around in vague imitations of their just-offstage teacher; bun-clad, hair-sprayed heads bobbing left to right, each girl watching her neighbor for confirmation; one girl skidding halfway across the stage to the gasp! of the audience before matter-of-factly jumping back up and joining her circle of peers.

It was a beautiful mess.

Then this morning, I took TK to the first session of a summer music class. This is part of my assimilation plan, getting him back into society after a few months away. Not a big fan of society myself, and all-too-aware of TK’s aversion to sitting still and participating in groupthink, I was slightly dreading the event.

Well. It lived up to my expectations.

In the span of forty-five minutes, I attempted to corral TK into my lap about fifty times; he wandered the room constantly, weaving in and out of other parent-kid pairs; he tried to take off his pants once; he pulled his shirt over his head twice; he pushed the teacher away from the CD player once in an effort to break into the cabinet; he stole one kid’s dancing scarf; and he cried twice (once when I made him sit still for fifteen seconds and later, when I put away his instrument). He participated in about two of a dozen songs (by participate I mean he either zoned out long enough to sit down and appear interested or rocked back and forth on his behind in rhythm to the music), a decent ratio if I’m being realistic, but overshadowed by the Grand Finale: his screams piercing my eardrums as I carried him to the car under one arm like a sack of potatoes while hissing, “Stop it. Stop it NOW,” in his ear.

Not a good look for us.

Once we had cooled down, thanks to air conditioning and time, I turned to my boy in the backseat. I was walking that razor edge between laughing and crying that usually ends with tearful, maniacal-sounding emissions. I wondered for the thousandth time how a recovering rule-follower like me ended up with the child who refuses to participate in circle time, who follows the beat of his own drummer when I’ve taken the trouble to purchase the socially-approved drum set and sign him up for professional lessons.

I thought about how much more comfortable I was in the judgment seat back when I would look at people like me and assess their shortcomings without knowing anything about their story. More comfortable–but it was a delusion. Now, smack dab in the center of reality, I come home from a music class with one of the boys I love most in the world and just want to bury my head in a bottle of wine.

I ask myself what is just of his personality and what should be weeded out; how to balance giving him the freedom to be who he is with helping him become the person he’s meant to be. I’m sure these are questions all parents ask themselves: in their beds during sleepless nights, over dinner tables with their spouses, after conferences with teachers, once the MRI has come back, in tired and tearful moments of loneliness over a steering wheel. I just never knew how much emotional weight the questions would carry with them–how the moments of exhausted frustration would blend with the running current of wild love to create a combustion of throat-thickening despair and tortured ambivalence.

Then gain, maybe I’m overreacting. It was just a damn music class.

One of TK’s latest favorite activities, besides disrupting music classes, is stopping at each step on the way down our staircase and turning around, examining it, and sitting down to enjoy the view. This either (a) gives me time to check my email; or (b) drives me completely insane. The length of time it takes me to ascend or descend a stairway has grown by a factor of toddler to the infinity. And then we’ll go outside to partake in another of his favorite activities, swinging in the hammock. I push him–his majesty prefers to enjoy the space alone, thank you–and watch the breeze ruffle his hair as a smile plays about his lips. These repetitive, early movements–ballet tumbles, grabbing fingers, stopping on stairways–I want to hurry past them to the moments of mastery and ease, the time of do-it-yourself while Mom enjoys a cold one on the deck. And as I peeled out of the music school parking lot today, the whys that had been plaguing me seconds before transformed into…if not answers, then something other than questions. Ideas about the beauty of being in transit, of not having arrived, about the scenery along the way. But deeper than the cliched phrases of needlepointed pillows, there was the consideration that these moments with him that I struggle between wanting to allow and correct–they are also meant to shape me. Maybe I was ousted from the judgment seat to do some of my best work, which is not really work at all, but living. And watching.

And waiting for the mystery to unfold while pushing a boy in a hammock as the breeze ruffles both our hair.