Love has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement; for nothing can be sole or whole that has not been rent. –W.B. Yeats

I’m sitting beside a bucket that, in the very recent past, was almost certainly stuffed with horse shit. Since emptied but not cleaned, its surface now buzzes with flies. And the smell. Oh, God, the smell. Every time the wind blows I gag a little.

But it’s worth it.

Because I’m also sitting in the autumn sun, the kind that toasts shoulders, which are covered by a light pullover to keep out the cool. I’m alternately reading Anne Lamott and watching The Kid as he and his horse, Ladybug, circle the ring while three women encircle them. One of them, his therapist, walks over to me.

“I see what you mean about the IEP,” she begins, and I remember our initial email exchange, when she asked if he had one and I haltingly admitted that he did, but if she wanted to see it I needed to explain some things first. Provide a preamble to that shitty constitution, the report written by a psychologist who showed up an hour and a half late, rushed and sweaty, and conducted an evaluation that was interrupted by a fire drill, which resulted in him being carted away from us twice and taken into unfamiliar territory to be tested. But yeah, let’s allow THAT to be the summary of who he is, of his abilities. Not that I’m bitter or anything.

“His comprehension is amazing,” she continues, and it’s hard to sit still, to not break into a fountain dance, at this full-circle journey that has taken place so many times now: I explain him, the other person indulges my clearly delusional maternal report with smiles and nods while doubting everything I say, a few sessions go by, and that same person looks at me differently. Looks at him differently. Knows him. It’s getting to be a repetitive trip, but I’ll take it every time.

“He definitely has sensory processing issues,” she goes on. “But I don’t see autism. I don’t even see developmental delays. He’s progressing so rapidly–he gets everything,” she says, and I feel a certain hope threaten to lift me away like a balloon even as I pray to remain grounded in my real hope, in whatever grace has for us, whether it’s that outcome or another, that diagnosis or its absence. Because he is three, and we have time for the answers to unfurl, even though I tap my foot impatiently every day. The story, though–it deserves time for each page to turn, each word to be told.

Still, we both skip to the car.

And who would have ever guessed that this would be one of our places, that these would be our people? The ones hosing the horses down, mucking out stalls, and bringing kittens to my son while he and I both squirm because eww, cats. Who would have guessed that a teacher would be telling me about how he’s approaching more of the sensory tables except the rice one–he does NOT like the rice one–and that I’d glow with joy over how he’s met his goals, how well he takes turns? I would have expected him to wait his turn, I would have asked you, “What goals?” I would have carried around my sense of entitlement along with the Wet Ones and water bottle in my bag, because I had a plan and dammit, it better unfold on time.

I meet my friend in the lobby of the children’s hospital, where I’ve come to pick up a copy of one of TK’s scans to mail out to California because why wouldn’t our neurosurgeon be there, thousands of miles away? We sit by the coffee stand and her baby is upstairs and it all just really sucks sometimes, how we weren’t even asked if we wanted to join this club, our names added to the list without our permission. Kids roll by in wagons like the one TK rode in almost two years ago, IV attached, and I want to throw up a little at this pain. “They keep trying to act like this is a happy place. It’s not a happy place.” My exhaustion and frustration and ambivalence about this place mirrored back, and I think about the cost of calling a spade a spade, of being able to cut through bullshit, of not suffering veneers, and it is high–but it binds us together. It makes us members of another club, of the one she’s a member of when I go for my every-five-months appointment over washing and drying, how a first anniversary is coming up and turns out marriage can be effing hard, who knew?! It’s the club that meets in his school lobby, the site of tears and victory any given day. It’s the club in the comments section, which can be a dumping site or–this just in–a bench where we all sit together. It’s the club of a Wednesday afternoon small-group email chain that reflects a larger (but still small) community who, when I talk to a couple of its leaders about how I’d like for TK to be up there with us during LB’s baptism even though it might turn into a bit of a scene, meet me with only understanding. With “You know us. You’re one of us.” And like CS Lewis wrote, we all look around and say, “What! You too? I thought that no one but myself…” This identification is so costly, it may even be worth it.

For someone without all the answers, I look around and see that I have a few: that everything sad will become untrue. That this can’t be anything but love. And that this is a hell of a way to find our people–but finding them we are.

It’s amazing, what you can see when you really look. It’s amazing that I know that because he, TK, has partnered with grace to teach me to really see: me, the one who famously forgets every detail but for the headline, and now I find myself pointing things out to him even when I’m alone in the car. Seeing the details. And Little Brother, he sees too, as I hold him and he grasps with his tiny fingers my necklace–the one with three circles on it, each bearing the letter with which their names begin: TH, TK, and LB’s first initial, hanging on my neck, just above my heart. My people.

I ran the risk of being intimate with my brokenness/I was given a gift of hope and a thousand finger prints on the surfaces of who I am