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Shall I write it in a letter?
Shall I try to get it down?
Oh, you fill my head with pieces
Of a song I can’t get out

Can I be close to you?
–The Paper Kites, “Bloom”

That song was the one playing when The Kid walked down the aisle for his therapist/friend’s wedding last month, and every time I hear it I am brought to tears by the beauty of the music and the moment. At the same time, I’m struck by the profundity of how who he is got us to that moment–how we never would have arrived there any other way–and that now this means we’re all humming along to this tune: Little Brother in the backseat singing “Can I be close to you?” and telling me it’s his favourite part.

Speaking of LB, his summer soccer season starts today, and considering he loved it so much last term, it was a no-brainer to sign him up again. Less of a no-brainer was whether to sign up The Kid, who has never played soccer as up until last year his afternoons were dominated by therapy appointments. And this year, as he’s sat on the sidelines of his brother’s practices and games, I’ve thought I needed to give him the same opportunity. So when a fellow mom asked if TK would want to play with their team, I jumped at the opportunity. Without asking him.

He, however, did not jump.

“I DON’T WANT TO DO IT!” he told me every time it came up, as the first practice approached, and I negotiated with him to just watch that first training session before he formed an opinion. So, last week, we drove down to the field and he hated every minute of it, urging me to leave as I talked to a friend. After half an hour, and fresh off a visit the previous day with a friend who voiced her child’s hatred of team sports, I wondered why I was putting us through this–and we went home.

There are moments when I realise I’m trying to turn him into a kid he is not. My motives at the beginning were, I think, pure–I didn’t want him to feel excluded from something his brother enjoyed so much. But what I missed along the way was that he didn’t feel excluded because he already knows who he is, and one of the things he is? Is a kid who doesn’t want to play soccer. And that is fine. I just have to let it be.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It’s also littered with parents who decide in advance who their kids are going to be, then make every decision in accordance with that preordained narrative. My own kids have shattered the molds I made for them; why would I rob myself of that adventure, of those surprises?

I’ll tell you why, because I know from experience: it’s because that road feels safer and more predictable. The landscaping on the other road is wilder, the pathway often impeded by branches you have to swat out of the way before you can take the next step. There are more rises and falls, more twists and turns. It’s harder and it takes more energy and time. But the views? Are beyond what you could have ever predicted.

Before I had a kid whose brain worked differently, I wasn’t very accepting of different. This was because, deep down, I knew I was different too, and I didn’t like it. I wanted to blend in: to not get anxious before every social interaction, to not agonise over what I’d said after every verbal exchange; to not feel so worked up all the time. Now I know that the things that make me different are also the things that make me a writer, that make me the particular mother I am to my children and wife I am to my husband and friend I am to my friends.

This morning, LB cried on the way to school, and only because of the road I’ve been on was I able to say anything that helped him even a little. And yesterday, TK returned to me at the gate after I dropped him off, rattled to tears by a change in the day’s schedule that did not meet to his liking. We sat right there on the ground and talked about it, and I was able to meet him where he was only because of where he’s led me. Both of them, they create universes of their own, and I”m called not to force them back into the safe and predictable one that most people are comfortable with, but to expand that one to connect to theirs. This is life, and it’s love, and it’s grace.

After our ground-level meeting, I told TK goodbye and a friend who knows our story and saw the whole thing put her arm around me as we left. When I got to the car, I cried and prayed, and I felt a weight bearing down upon me. But it wasn’t a burden; it was the weight of presence. Of knowing I’m not alone, that my prayers do not go unheard, that my story–our story–is being written by loving hands. I felt that weight, and I collapsed into it, and I went forward on that road.