We sat across from each other with full mugs of hot tea on a cold morning. For only our second time to meet in person, we had much to discuss: Serial, anxiety, our kids’ neuroanatomy. We lobbed theories back and forth about whether Adnan was guilty, if preservatives could be affecting our children’s behavior, what to do when you peeked into their future and got scared. We talked about our writing–like, where to put it. It struck me later that we were trying to find places for things: for our worries, and our words. We were on common ground staring in the same direction with so much unknown staring back at us.

The time filled, and Little Brother woke up. We said goodbye.

Later, I listened to the CDs she had made, the ones with titles like “Waiting” and “Hope.” On the way to work, I took a break from celebrity interview podcasts and let my car fill with notes, the words riding atop them and piercing me:

I’m beginning to learn where to find the words to the song that emptiness sings.

I remember when The Mom gifted The Kid a Spiderman water bottle with a straw, how that pierced me too. I wavered between seeing it as a promise, a beacon of hope: one day things will be easier, cups will be lifted to lips without thought or struggle. But now? Now we talk about things like motor planning and other issues I never knew existed, and there is one cup that he uses because it is familiar and it fits, and new things are mountains to be summited. The cup remains empty. But there’s this: the tricycle that sat on a shelf in the garage now parks in the yard, where he climbs astride it and laughs. There is a horse that he rides without tears. And these are promises too, beacons of hope in moments that could have felt empty.

And now I’ve just gotten a call saying there was a mix-up with the lab and a test didn’t get run and the sample is too old so we’ll need to get more vials filled with his blood, and I’d like the number of someone I can call to scream at because a vial sits empty somewhere, waiting for part of him, but the words order and test and requisition, they are full of weariness and crying and pain and I put my head in my hands at my desk at work and just let the tears flow. Everything feels so hard, and I need to know that it’s going somewhere good. I need to believe it–believe it more–to keep going myself, and I need to have it to give to my children. I need to be full of it.

I think back to a moment in my counselor’s office so long ago, when I looked within and just felt full of anger and frustration and disappointment and, well, shit so much of the time, and how I had told him I wanted to be different. Warmer. More loving. And he talked about these things I was experiencing, that they were doing that. I hadn’t believed it.

I believe it now.

Because I have finally realized that I’m never not waiting for something, that the waiting will never cease: waiting for a husband turns into waiting for children and then the waiting really kicks in: waiting for them to sleep, waiting for them to drink from the cup, waiting for them to speak. Waiting to know that everything will be okay. And I can see, in the moments when grace changes my lenses, that in the waiting I am being filled. Against all odds, I have become more loving. Warmer. One boy climbs me like a jungle gym while I wipe the other one’s ass and I’m not screaming at the injustice–so there’s that, and that ain’t nothing. And in the pre-dawn dark of the next morning, after a night full of wake-ups and empty of sleep, I hold them both on the rocking chair and read, and their sleepy warmth fills me. I am weary, and I need coffee. But I’m not empty.

And the tune resonates in the open space to show us how emptiness sings.

She had talked about having these experiences, these words, and not knowing what to do with them, where to put them. I had wondered if maybe, sometimes, the answer could be to make a space for it all and just wait to find out where it all goes, what fits where. That it might all make sense one day. Maybe I could believe that myself?

Later in the afternoon, TK turns to me and he’s at his beloved toy parking deck, and he’s grinning. I see how he’s holding the gas pump up to the car, filling it. I showed him that weeks ago, not knowing he was even paying attention. He’s grinning at me, and I’m laughing, and that Sunday we’re waiting for communion, where we’ll “practice” him walking up front with us in rehearsal for LB’s baptism next week. I’m whispering into his ear, filling it with words of preparation, and I know he’s listening. I can tell now. His hand in mine, we walk to TH in a room full of people who are getting to really know us. In a room where we’ve found a place for ourselves. My hand is full of his as we walk to the front, and in line, TK gets antsy. He presses one arm into the backside of the children’s minister, who turns and sees TK and takes his other hand for a minute, an act of recognition that nearly knocks me over with gratitude. We get to the front where I am called by name, where my other hand is filled with the bread and the bread is dipped into and filled with the wine from the cup that is never empty.