“…this is what I learned: that the world’s otherness is antidote to confusion, that standing within this otherness–the beauty and mystery of the world, out in the fields or deep inside books–can re-dignify the worst stung heart.” –Mary Oliver

I didn’t want to like the show This is Us. The early photos bathed the characters in a gossamer glow that I know for a fact is NOT a component of real life. The first trailer left me writing the whole thing off as a melodrama that my cynical self would be better off avoiding. Then the magical word, twist, was mentioned, and I headed to the internet for spoilers, and despite my intentions, with the pilot’s biggest secret already lodged in my brain, I watched that first episode, and the one after, and every one since. I love it. There’s melodrama, sure, but there’s also a healthy dose of self-deprecation, along with the absence of pretending like what makes each character an outsider–the color of his skin, the number on her scale–is either not there or is the only thing about them. They do difference well. They do…differents well. And I know about some different. (Also, in case you’re wondering, I’m such a Randall. Quiz forthcoming.)

Last week I came across the idea of collective effervescence, which has to do with group unity conferring sacredness (and not buying the world a Coke, like I had guessed). Connectedness has been on my mind lately as The Kid is getting older and more aware of the world around him–and, wonderfully, interacting with it and its citizens more. While his growth toward people and even into simple friendships has been heartbreakingly welcome, it’s also left me heartbroken over leaving: leaving this place that is not just our home, but his, this place where he is known and embraced, where he has a place. Or, as he put it this weekend in the car, where he has something else: I was driving him to his swim lesson and telling him about all the people who love him, and after a beat of silence he responded, “James has people.” And he does–we do–these friends who are family: girls with whom I drink wine and commiserate over motherhood and special needs; sisters (both from the same and different misters) who gather at a hotel for a night away with me, at least half of which consists of either sleeping or reading silently near each other; friends who open their homes to us and our children and know our stories so well that those homes feel like an extension of our own. Kids who see something of themselves in TK and engage in endless chasing and rule-breaking games of “Duck Duck Goose” with him, who refer to him as “my James,” and people who tell me about how content Little Brother is, and how joyful. And we’re LEAVING THIS?!

Hey God, testing one-two-three: are you sure? And is this mic working? And is that a megaphone in your hand?

And so the days that began so darkly back when TK was on tables and in waiting rooms begin to gather this light around the edges until it seeps in everywhere and I begin seeing everything differently: how his anxiety can be managed, like mine, just by knowing him, our family of four sitting for lunch on a restaurant patio where LB, child of us both but especially of his father, grins easily and placidly from his seat and I watch TK take frequent “motor breaks” to circle the tables. I am learning which battles to fight and when to lay down the armor, and it helps. What helps most, maybe, is seeing myself in him, in knowing that whatever outsider status could be conferred in him will be swallowed up by a greater acceptance, the source of which also issues the plan for his life that includes redeeming all the hurt and all the pain and all the dark days. I see that the other world he inhabits is overlapping more and more with everyone else’s, and the joy I feel is aided and abetted by an acknowledgement of the beauty of his world–the things in it I never would have seen without him–and what was my fear regarding that world is being transformed into gratitude for it. Gratitude for what makes him, and each of us, different, those differences driving him to all the places and people that are for him.

Which is what I’ve been praying for with this move: that a place, and people, will be prepared for us–and us for them.

I go to his school early to pick him up and tell his teacher about our impending cross-world transfer. She tells me when I enter the room that when the intercom informed her of a visitor, TK proudly announced, “That’s James’s mom.” He hurls the door open for me and can’t stop grinning, his person finally here for him. A few minutes later, we’re walking down the hall together. We’re greeted along the way–so many people know his name! So many people know him, and soon more will–and when I turn to glance at him, he reaches for my hand and locks eyes with me, the grin deepening in his cheeks and he looking like he can’t believe his luck, to be here with me. His luck. This moment, like the one later with LB on my lap while I read to him, like so many that just keep adding up, bathed in a gossamer glow I never knew was this real.