Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

“I’ve heard it described the following way by parents of these kids,” the speaker began, his voice amplifying through the microphone and across the assembly room of dentists, and I sat there next to a friend from residency and considered how, when I had booked this course online, there had been no diagnosis yet, just the fact that these kids fall within my realm of professional specialty. And how, now, there is The Kid and all that’s going on with him and that I might be one of the people he’s talking about–the parents of these kids. And I listened.

“It’s like if, all your life, you had wanted to travel to Italy. You’ve dreamed about it, you’ve researched it, you’ve looked at pictures and read books. And finally the time comes when you’re able to make the trip. You book your tickets and plan your itinerary down to the smallest detail. You climb aboard the plane and endure a flight that’s smooth but for your impatience to land already. And when you do, and you’re exiting the plane expecting to  see Rome, the flight attendant wishes you farewell with ‘Welcome to Holland.’

“You protest. You’re supposed to be in Italy! You never signed up for Holland, and you explain this to the attendant, but nothing can be done: you’re stuck in Holland. While you try to book a flight to Italy, you receive pictures from all your friends who are there. And you finally realize that you are not going to Italy, but that if you don’t let that go then you will miss all the beauty that Holland has to offer.”

Greetings from Holland, y’all.

I’ve threatened so many times to drive away: in the heat of battle, when I felt as though the tantrums and the newborn cries and the dinner preparations and the floor- and butt-wiping were all falling on me (they weren’t). I’ve hissed it in the middle of the night, when one woke up and then the other, that I would just get in the car and leave, I swear, though I never did. Until the morning that I did. And as I went over the schedule with the nanny one last time (of a dozen times) and passed out kisses one last time (of a hundred times) and pushed the gear into reverse and drove away from my home and my kids, there was not so much a feeling of freedom as there were tears. Ugly tears, and lots of them. The whole way (and one missed turn) to work.

But there comes a moment when there are just enough tears to wash the eyes clean, to clear the vision and sharpen it, and when that happened I looked out the windshield and realized I was headed east. And on that highway in the early morning, the sun rose to greet me, accompanied by every hue of the rainbow: grace putting on a show yet again. Giving me something else to look at. I was reminded one more time (of countless times) that I’m not alone; that I’m remembered; that I’m beloved. 

I don’t know why that always surprises me.

The next week, I circled the parking deck ten times until I found a place, an hour late to the conference where I would hear about Holland, and as I rushed to grab all my necessary gear (ticket for entry, map of the complex, Kindle with potty-training book, magazine) and removed the cabbage from my bra, I glanced up. (It’s always up!) And from that eyesore of a parking deck in downtown Atlanta I beheld a beautiful view: lush green, buildings and homes and roads snaking all around, one of which would lead me home in a few hours. And I was surprised–to see beauty from there.

We carry the diagnosis around with us for insurance and access-to-therapy purposes, even though it doesn’t quite fit into any of the bags I use, and I read the doctor’s report and it was representative of my son in a way similar to how the Titanic was unsinkable. In a way that, when I finished it, had me yelling out for The Husband and ruing the money we had spent (thanks for the Amex points, I guess?) and reciting the litany of inaccuracies I saw. But we email the report and carry the diagnosis to the meetings and the evaluations and the screenings and appointments. And I’ve gotten used to the exclamations uttered in surprise: “I’m not seeing a lot of evidence for that–just look at his eye contact, and the way he interacts with you! And you said he does what with his brother?” Or, “He knew his letters and numbers when?” Or, “He’s really catching on to this–I think we’ve moved way beyond where I thought he was.”

And they’re all surprised, which could be kind of insulting, the low expectations and all, but really? I love it. I love how he’s just one big surprise after another. I love it. But also, it’s hard.

We were outside the other night, Little Brother sleeping in the monitor beside me as I sat on the porch swing and watched TH and TK wrestle in the front yard. The grass is lush green and the buds are popping out on the trees and the shoots are poking through the earth. “I always forget about them–how many there are. That they keep coming back,” TH says, and I know what’s coming because I do the same. “It’s like a surprise every year.”

It feels like we’re in a place now where the light breaks through in spurts. I told my friend about it, the one who knows marriage and two kids and weaning and sarcasm and Jesus like I do, and she listened as I said that I don’t know if it’s hormones leveling off, or the waiting for him to speak, or the uncertainty of trying to find a school and a place for him next year while wondering about all the other years beyond that? If it’s all that plus my own erratic sleep and TK’s recent cold that’s kept him up and, you know, life? If it’s circumstantial and passing, or substantial and ominous? If it needs riding out or counseling or medication? All these possibilities followed by question marks. And she talked about joy, about how when it goes missing then it’s time to set about recovering it, because here’s the thing: it’s ours to have.

I think about how some things have always been harder for me, and she knows it too, and I think TK is there even now: the living inside our own heads, the awkwardness around others, the feeling of being different. And out there in the yard, when TH mentions everything that was just waiting to pop back out, reliable and true, I say that I wish we could see what it looks like down there in the earth–all that life just waiting to erupt.

Then I realize that we can. It’s where we are.

So I don’t know if the occasional sadness is circumstantial, your honor, or more, but I do know this: that there is a place, deep down in the soil, where life’s first seeds get their start. Where the rain can pound mercilessly, painfully, and also be nourishment. Where believing is the same thing is knowing. And that this is where life, where glory, is: not in the light and easy shuffling of feet through the sunshine but in the dank brown of earth, in the three-days-dark tomb, in the moment just before the sun rises when every color shows up, sprayed across a waiting sky by a grace that isn’t afraid of the dark.