The Kid and Little Brother were baptised as babies. (This is because we believe in baptism not as a ticket into heaven/result of a personal decision but as the fulfilment of a promise; I’ll skip the unending controversy over this issue because I suspect a lack of interest among my readers.) TK’s sprinkling was delayed several weeks because, the night before that Sunday, he came down with a fever that led us to the emergency room and a penile catheter, among other disturbances. It wasn’t the first, or last, time he’s made us wait for something totally worth it.
LB’s baptism was on-schedule and uneventful other than the divine import of it all. For my part, I remember being baptised as a young teen, wearing a white robe (creepy) and stepping into a cold pool. I felt terror, along with the suspicion that this had not been sufficiently explained to me.
I experience those feelings still, often. Every day, probably. Which makes me wonder whether there aren’t thousands of tiny baptisms throughout our lives, separating the before from the after, the born from the reborn.
When TK was about two, we were at his speech therapist’s office waiting for her to collect him for their appointment, and he was running around the room smiling, and another mom asked me if he was autistic. This was pre-diagnosis. It was pre- a lot of things, and I told her–defensively, I imagine–that no, he was not. Now I am post- that particular defensiveness. I am post-giving a shit about a label and post-seeing it as an albatross around his (and my) neck. I am post-terrified (most days) about what other people think.
I’ve been washed in the water of things I thought could end me, and survived.
Fast forward about seven years, and add a supreme amount of self-awareness into TK’s repertoire, and you have the two of us at bedtime. He asks me why he was to repeat himself all the time when no one else does. He asks why speech has to be “his thing” and why his brother doesn’t seem to have a thing. He tells me he hates his speech.
My heart breaks, and then I remember what I learned from nearly-but-not drowning: that the people who ask him to repeat himself really care about what he has to say. That everyone has a thing, even if it hasn’t shown up yet. That I treasure all the moments his speech and its ensuing therapy visits have given us together that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.
He falls asleep somewhat at peace, somewhat unsettled still. Don’t we all.
A few days later, his school (years 2-6) has a cross-country event and don’t you know that he is not here for it. So I meet him there, along with a few other parents, though I turn out to be the only one who runs/walks alongside her kid–and the only one who is cheered for alongside her kid. I am still a member of The Society of I Didn’t Sign Up for This, but now that card sits in my wallet alongside the one for The Fellowship of All Out of Fucks, and when one of the dads monitoring the race (that we end in second-to-last place) jokingly asks if I need a coffee, I tell him I’d prefer a wine, and it turns out to be the best morning I’ve had in awhile.
On a family dog walk a few days later, a woman stops us and tells TK how great he did in the race. Turns out she’s the grandmother of one of the boys in his class. And as she praises him, I feel LB tug on my arm. “Introduce me,” he stage-whispers, so I do, and he follows up with how many goals he scored at soccer last week–a number he tripled at practice a few days later–and I am washed in the water, overcome by the waves, of two people who need to be seen in their own ways, on their own terms. The differences can be minimal, or stark, but they are always beautiful.
Because while LB scored those goals, his big brother asked one of the dads of the kids on the team why he had such a nice suit and haircut that made him look like a millionaire. He was basically running an improv show on the sideline, which is usually LB’s thing, but he was busy soccer rocker-ing. And I’m standing on the sideline, my view split between two boys, a little unsettled and a little at peace, exhausted and buffeted by the waves that keep somehow both knocking us down and lifting us up.