My kids, man. My kids.

Not since The Husband’s sock-strewing antics has any one person, let alone two of them, instigated such opposing feelings within me: tenderness and rage, love and frustration, peace and anger. And oh how they, in their doubled need, in my own need to teach them and prepare them for the world–a need that turns into an obligation that turns into a weight that turns into anxiety–surpass socks thrown on the floor and send me into another realm entirely, a realm populated by cuddles and shouts, apologies and forgiveness, cynicism and hope, and all the other opposing yet connected feelings they bring.

This morning, the rain pounded outside as I settled The Kid into his classroom, Little Brother having pushed me out the door of his own school. TK had already secured my promise that I would remain until the bell for him, and I looked over his shoulder as he sat among his classmates and their magnet building sets. I saw him holding two of the magnets, puzzling over their inability to connect, and we all started talking about polarity and repulsion and attraction and in light of raising children doesn’t it all feel a bit ON THE NOSE, the way the pushing and pulling can happen among the same pieces?

I woke up with them this morning and they regaled me with stories as they are apt to do when I am exhausted and they are wired, and today’s tale was about the saltwater crocodile.

“Did you know that the babies come out of eggs?” LB asked, his face pressed right against mine. “And that the crocodile puts the eggs in its MOUTH?”

“Yeah,” TK jumped in. “It’s to move them around and keep them safe. That’s how he holds them.”

Now I’m not going to do the research to find out if this is true–though they know more about animals than I do, so it probably is–and I’m reasonably certain that if any crocodile is doing this, it’s the MOTHER, can I get an amen? But once again, and nearly with the sunrise, I was reminded of the double-sided magnets that my children are, that we are to each other: piercing and protecting, teaching and tiring, critique and mercy.

“That’s how he holds them,” he said, and I thought about that egg nestled safely atop the crocodile’s tongue, in between teeth that would end its life before it began, how it would look without knowledge of the situation: a vicious animal taking an egg in its mouth not for destroying, but for rescuing; Jonah and the whale, the object of danger actually being the object of deliverance.

When TK was first diagnosed on the spectrum, I received an outpouring of responses, mostly intended for comfort. But I like to read between lines whether there’s any fine print there or not, and I quickly assessed that many people’s reaction to the news had more to do with themselves than with us. “It’s hard, but you must be relieved to have an answer” (Now you can stop living in denial and accept the subjective assessment of a professional who doesn’t know your child at all and let that be your peace from now on). Others seemed to take more comfort than I did in having a label for him–which had been my fear all along, actually–that people would see the label and not him. I think their palpable and over-verbalised sense of relief was and is indicative of most people’s need to fit the world and its contents into categories so they can be easily managed. I tried to handle their “help” graciously, talking shit about them only behind their backs or on a blog; secretly seething every time someone tagged me in another mother fucking post about autism as though I didn’t already have enough reading material on my hands, thank you, and next time could you just email me that privately rather than making a public show of assistance that feels more about your needs than mine?

At first I was afraid the diagnosis would change us. Then I realised I was afraid–for good reason–that it would change the way people treated us.

Because it did…but not always for the worse. There were–are–also the people who didn’t try to help or fix but just saw–and didn’t see the diagnosis, but saw through it. To The Kid himself.

I have a couple of friends here like that. One was over recently and we were talking about TK’s history and diagnosis. She was essentially questioning it and the whole idea of the spectrum–its one-word conflation of way too many different types and profiles–in the way that I did in the early days of this journey.

It was wonderful.

“James gives me more eye contact than a lot of kids their age,” she told me, then cited a number of other things about him that are perfectly typical. And while it doesn’t erase the label or perhaps even the need for it, it reminds me that the label is so insufficient to describe TK. And that there are always people who will see him, and LB, and all of us, beyond how the world would summarise us for its own ease.

“It doesn’t matter where you’ve been, as long as it was deep,” wrote Ric Ocasek of The Cars, who died Sunday. I don’t know what our life together is and has been if not deep–and wide, and long, and extending in every other direction, often seemingly opposing ones that somehow land us back in the same place: being seen, and held. So many dangerous-looking saviours, grace with a million faces, delivering us from where we were to where we were meant to be, and holding us the whole way.