“I feel like…I’m in the wrong place.”

Last week I parked the car and headed toward an elementary school for which we are not zoned, toward a meeting which was not listed in any of the child-rearing books I read. I had not prayed over this from the glider in The Kid’s nursery or written it on any wish lists. But on this gray morning, I was buzzed through the entrance, where I slapped a Visitor sticker to my chest and headed down the hall toward TK’s classroom, a classroom he shares with five other students and three teachers. A classroom designed for kids with special needs (now there’s a phrase I didn’t plan on).

TK’s teacher went through his pre-set goals with me, and I remembered them from the May meeting that The Husband and I had…shall we say, endured? The one that occurred after multiple evaluations, demands placed upon him that he balked at, misunderstanding engendered as I watched and felt helpless. “We don’t belong here!” I wanted to scream. “You don’t get him!”

He has crushed every last one of his goals, by the way. In case you were wondering. IN CASE ANYONE WANTS TO KNOW.

She ended the meeting I hadn’t called for with this, as tears sprung to my eyes: “And I don’t mind telling you: he is the sweetest boy in my class.” The goals and the data and the charts–relics from my own childhood, measures of worth–faded into the background, replaced with this new information, and one of his other teachers popped her head in. When she saw me, she added: “James is so wonderful. He is truly such a kind, kind little boy.”

I left the school I wasn’t zoned for with my eyes welling over and a grin on my face.

How do we reconcile the twin and not-as-mutually-exclusive-as-I-thought truths of “I didn’t plan this” and “this is exactly where we were meant to be”? How do we make peace with the discomfort of being settled into a purpose we didn’t bargain for?

The night before, I had finally, for the first time after seven months, attended our church’s monthly women’s group. New social settings unnerve me from top to bottom, and I approach them sweaty-palmed, graceful as a giraffe in high heels, but shorter, and slightly more awkward. I navigate rooms full of people as though I’m standing in quicksand, content to sink rather than engage in small talk, just knowing that everyone can see through me to the insecurities that reside at my core.

A friend sat beside me. A story was told that felt like it could be mine. It turned out that the sinking ship was a life raft.

There are these occurrences that land us where we never thought we’d be: pregnancy tests, diagnoses, personal failures, news reports. And I’ve been the expert at railing against them, at saying “NO” to everything that wasn’t inscribed in my planner, to discomfort.

I almost didn’t go to the small group in New York City that led directly to The Husband. At least, that’s how I remember it. But would grace have really let me miss it? I almost didn’t write, didn’t send, the post that led to a new community, which led to a new church. Or didn’t I? Didn’t grace take me by the hand when I didn’t even feel its clasp, walking me right to my new name?

The dad in our carpool line bears the battle scars, and I can see them, this shell-shocked look of bewilderment and defeat, that “how did this happen to us?” refusal to believe. I know that look. I battle it daily. And when we talked, and I told him our same struggles, I could see him relax. He asked what I’d read about it–“the prognosis? With apraxia? Do they ever talk?”–and I quoted, reassured, hedged, and just shared. A story that was his too. At the end, he said that we should all get a glass of wine–he, and I, and TH, and his wife, who had told me about the horse therapy. And it sounded damn good.

Mary Karr writes about the elements of memoir, of story, that matter to a reader. She calls it “your life between ass-whippings.” And I feel as though I’ve got plenty to say about that. Then I wonder whether the ass-whippings will turn out to be surgeries that saved my life, moments when I woke up on the operating table during the procedure and complained about the doctor’s technique as he sliced off the cancer that would have killed me.

So there’s that.

And this report from TK’s teachers? That he’s the kindest and sweetest? I think about how these descriptors weren’t on my list either, how they were pushed over for qualities like “well-behaved,” and how I will never stop being chased by grace to go ahead and put down the Law already. How he is becoming exactly who he is meant to be, despite and along with me.

“I feel like I’m in the wrong place,” she said, and the three of us definitely didn’t fit in: our sense of humor borders on–okay, delves deep into–not-family-friendly territory; the wine wasn’t flowing fast enough; we were supposed to work in groups. With people we didn’t know. This mystery dinner event was turning into more liability than fun. When a perfectly friendly-looking girl saw the pink-colored paper at my place setting and informed me our group would be working on our song after Act 2, I nodded and smiled politely until she walked away, then looked at the two of them. “We have to get out of here.”

There are moments when you have to stay to find your place, and moments when you have to leave. I think we usually know which it is, even before we’re ready to admit it. On this night, we grabbed our coats and ran to a bar that served the three of us, where we talked late into the night, telling the stories we already knew anyway that had gotten us right where we belonged: here.