I’m passionately smashing every expectation.

We’re sitting in another classroom, with another teacher and another therapist, on another morning. It all feels very familiar.

And yet not. Because we’re in another country, on another continent, in another hemisphere, in another season. And then another thing happens.

It’s only good news.

These meetings, which have been occurring in conference rooms and classrooms and waiting rooms and exam rooms around the world now, have led to this place, this school overlooking a harbour filled with boats. The sunshine creeping in through the window and the sound of children playing outside while my own alternate their own playing with trips over to see us, their parents, sitting on tiny chairs at an undersized table, two people who love them more than they can imagine, talking to two people who love them too.

This is the same, but it’s totally different.

She pulls out James’s papers, a thin sheaf with his picture on the front–his mug shot, I joke to him, and I feel the freedom to joke, to laugh, because we’re not here to recognise red flags or discuss warning signs. We’re here to check in. We’re here to, I’m beginning to feel, celebrate.

There’s news of all the expectations he’s smashed this year, of all the goals he’s already met that need to be adjusted already. And as I hear each one, I feel it fall on my heart because I know the challenge each one is: the muscle weakness that must be overcome, the noise that must be filtered out, the sensory input that must be recognised. None of this has come easily to him, and this boy of mine playing with his brother ten feet (3 metres) away, I see him clearly for the first and millionth time. He is home.

We take turns talking about what we’ve witnessed from him: the unprompted and lingering hug he gave a classmate at the shops this weekend (overcoming social anxiety); the handwriting that’s taking off (smashing wrist weakness); the joy at the school’s fireworks night (filtering through all the stimuli). We’re all grinning, all saying how proud we are of him. And his teacher, she explains her side: “He was an unknown. All the other kids coming in, we had a chance to meet them, but he was an unknown.”

He’s not unknown now.

Everywhere we go, we hear his name. Our names. I run into friends at the park where I sit on a bench with Little Brother, and he and his buddy take off for the slide while I talk mum-to-mum. I lead The Kid across the street toward the schoolyard and older kids and their parents greet him by name.

And yeah, there are the tough revisits: the meltdown in ALDI that echoes my months-ago one in IKEA; four-letter words both; but his with the added difficulties that render him unable to cope and me, unable to deal, and by the time the three of us are sitting on his bedroom floor, LB patting his back and climbing on me, we’ve all been crying, but we are together. And we are understanding each other a bit more every day. A few minutes later I’m making dinner (peanut butter sandwiches, thank you very much; this day has been a bitch) and realise that I can manage his behaviour–manage him–or know him. Dammit. The first one would have been so much easier.

His teacher mentioned the transition program they’ll have in place to move him up next year, and one of my deepest fears is then addressed: he WILL be moving, and not only that but they assure us he’ll have some core friends in place around him. HE HAS CORE FRIENDS. And I think back to a year ago, when I was decimated by his staying put in the same class, fearful for his future. To nine months ago, when I dissolved into tears leaving a local private school here in Sydney because they were so unwelcoming. All the while, we were headed here. Were being ushered, loved all the way here. Through tears and frustration, failure and heartbreak, landing at home together.

I take LB to get his hair cut at the barbershop on a Friday morning, and he fights it, crying the whole time from my lap. Later that day, we return. Revisit. It’s the same place, but it’s different: TK sitting in the chair by himself, laughing at the process. He used to scream. I hear “Midnight Train to Georgia” from the radio, and I just laugh. Home and home. God, we’re so home, all the time.

And on Saturday night, after an afternoon of successful swimming and inflated-slide climbing that takes my breath away in the best way, we head to the fireworks show. On the way I imagine bombings, of course, because that’s my brain doing its ridiculous work, but instead we sit on a blanket. I place headphones on his ears while The Husband has to cart LB away, who can’t take the noise. A friend (I HAVE CORE FRIENDS) comes to sit beside me and I pour her a glass of champagne and we laugh as TK beams with joy, literally bouncing with it, beside us. This place isn’t perfect (their milk containers could be sturdier, for instance–the one I dropped this morning exploded a gallon of dairy goodness all over the kitchen. But then I told another mum about it and she described it as one of those, “Oh, for FUCK’S SAKE!” moments and all was well). I know there will be rough spots, difficulties. There already have been. It’s called life.

But right now, as grace keeps bringing us back to the same spots to admire the different views, it’s also called home.