“Why did God put me in KB?” The Kid asks me sleepily as we lie on his bed. Another question he knows the answer to, this one concerning the class he’s in at school. I may be spiritual, but I don’t like to overspiritualize things, as the shits and f-bombs in my writing will attest. This avoidance is likely a product of my geographical origins, the result of growing up in a platitude-heavy section of the Bible Belt, in which God’s name was invoked for everything from racism to football games. But years away from that buckle of the Belt, and an immersion course (called Life) in grace have shown me, undeniably in my case, that there’s a hand greater than mine writing this story. And I’ve told as much to The Kid and Little Brother, citing everything from the sunrise to boo-boos, beauty and healing, Atlanta and Sydney, and now, KB and TK’s place in it. His place here. He’s reminding me that he’s always listened; he’s also showing me his, and our, need for a context, a narrative in which to find ourselves that allows for a place prepared on our behalf. A place where his teacher had written the words on his report: “James is a gift to our class.”

So I throw it back to him: “Why do you think?”

And he echoes the answer I gave him about one hundred questions ago, the answer revealing itself to be true every day, in our every interaction: “Because he knew there would be friends for me there.” And he drifts off to sleep.

It’s the same story that LB knows as we claim our seats on the Sunday ferry and he belts it to all the passengers: “My God is so BIG, so strong and so mighty, there’s nothing my God cannot do. THAT. IS. TRUE!” They’ll grapple with faith on their own throughout life, of this I’m sure, but they’ll have this when they enter that fray, this awareness of something, someone greater than themselves, who may now be the stuff of Sunday school and colouring books but is also author of sunsets, and them.

And how could it be any other way? When TK emerges from the classroom one afternoon, he’s telling me about the loud noises, explaining something I can’t understand, and his therapist expounds: that there was a story read, and the kids got excited and started providing background sound effects, and it startled and upset TK so that he began to cry. And immediately, the kids encircled him, arms around his shoulders, one telling the other to be more quiet, one grabbing a tissue for him and planting herself beside him protectively. And when I looked for an opportunity to find her mom to tell her how much it meant, that opportunity never seemed to come, until it did. One morning when LB and I were late to the gym because of a preschool tour, and we almost didn’t go because it felt like Too Much, but he urged me and I caved, an empty treadmill and an hour alone urging me too. And there she was, walking right past me, her first trip back after a long illness that she opened up about right there beside me, and we talked about our kids and began to know each other.

So how could it be any other way? How could it, when we arrive to school a few minutes closer to the opening bell than usual and I see them, this community of which we are now a part, and we are welcomed into it, kids running up to TK and moms greeting me? Our village, minus us until we are there.

This is all well and good in sun-dappled moments at drop-off, but then there are the ones when the village has retreated to their own homes and so have we, and everything feels stolen from me, and I am just angry. The empty spot in TK’s mouth revealed itself after a frenetic lunch out the other day, and the tooth was gone but no one knew where. In that milestone moment, I pulled him and LB up beside me and showed them the video of Peppa and the Tooth Fairy, but inside I raged. So many milestones missed or delayed, and this one too, this moment where I should have been able to take the tooth and hide it under his pillow, then transfer it to some safe spot to keep forever, a bit creepily maybe but still–the first tooth lost! And these challenges, this God-forsaken spectrum, robbing me of that as the tooth sits on the floor of some restaurant or within his stomach, no one knows, and I just wanted to hit something. It was Too Much. It was Too Much when we went to the mall the next day and he fought us between stores for another lift ride, and then the next day when we went on a God-forsaken “COMMUNITY OUTING” with his head therapist and the entire population of our suburb seemed to watch as he melted down for the lift again and all I wanted was a drink. Or an escape hatch in the floor. Or…another story? Not this one, with these challenges, with two kids clinging to me and sobbing and an audience beholding it and me, entirely unappreciative and unfit and with two more hours ahead at the therapy centre.

TOO. MUCH.

I read it here a few hours later, how we high-reactives tend to hold our torsos in tension–it’s a hallmark, how cute–and I remembered the two anaesthesiologists who commented on the tightness of my spinal cord, and the difficulty of the needle penetrating it for the epidurals, and it hits me: I have literally been trying to hold it together my whole life. It took two kids to puncture that, to break through.

After therapy is over, the three of us climb into the car and drive home in the dark. That’s when I remember the groceries I bought with them six hours earlier, sitting there in the trunk melting and going rancid, and it’s Too Much. I text a friend group and tell them so, and they counter back with truth. I text The Husband that I feel like a failure ALL THE TIME, and he writes back with a different version of the story. Then I cry, which makes me realise I haven’t done that in a while, which is really too bad because salt water, it is healing. Letting go, it’s healing. And the release opens me up to see it: that I am often so bad at this, this story of ours, but that’s okay, because it’s not just me here. And it’s not just our village. Through the cracks there is room, and I can breathe again, and I tell the boys the best part of the story: how they’re made to be just the way they are. God-forsaken? Hardly. We are having our own debrief here in the dark after the hour-long one back at the centre, post COMMUNITY OUTING, and this one? It’s less well-lit, and less organised, but it’s so much better. It is music on the radio that I downloaded just in time to hear the words my soul needed to breathe again, and at the mention of our story’s author, LB pipes up from the backseat with the part he knows–“God takes care of me”–echoing the part TK knows, the part I know, even when it’s all Too Much, even when I’m trying to be in moments that don’t exist instead of this one, where the author continues to write.