I also knew that the way forward wasn’t any less complicated, but no one ever promised me less complication. If anything, it’s always going to become more complicated. Better but more. Better and more. –R. Eric Thomas, Here For It

Three years ago, my brother-friend was in Sydney from New York and we decided the timing was perfect to celebrate with Thanksgiving at my house. He brought a friend and I invited some, and we got to work on the food: he did everything, and I did the turkey–my first. It was a breast (that’s what she said). And it was good.

The evening ended in kid tears and an explosion of red wine from my mouth in my bathroom that rendered it worthy of crime-scene status, but overall it was a success. So now, three years later and in a home we own, I thought it would be a good idea to have a couple of friends over and try again. I even set my sights higher (when I couldn’t find a turkey breast at the grocery store) and decided to go whole-hog or, in this case, whole-turkey. I bought the bird and brought it home for a practice run on Saturday.

It did NOT GO WELL. Both of the boys were gagging as I reached inside “the hole” looking for all the crap that’s supposed to be in there, and trying to tie the bitch’s legs together and push the wings underneath it was a comedy of errors that was not funny at all. Finally, I shoved the thing into the oven. After a couple of hours, I found that somebody lied on the packaging because when The Husband cut into it, that bird was. not. done.

All the while, the soundtrack for this endeavour was a party in the backyard of our neighbours’ house (a small, under-20-in-attendance affair because we’re actually trying to not get Covid here) celebrating the daughter’s impending graduation. I saw the twinkle lights and heard the music and I felt a deep, seething hatred for all of it. For all of those young people with their lives and choices ahead of them. For their dearth of responsibilities and their long, untrodden pathways. All while I kept checking on a nasty turkey that would not cook as my children screamed at me to make them stop looking at it and the dog pissed in the corner.

Enjoy it for now, fuckers, I thought as I wiped urine off the floor and shoved a thermometer in some poultry tit.

We threw the turkey out. After drowning my sorrows in a few glasses of red (a theme) and Pride and Prejudice, I slept fitfully among nightmares of turkey. The next morning I panic-texted an American friend, who told me to just order a roasted chicken from a nearby place, and I breathed again. Then I ruefully cleaned toilets as Christmas music played in the background, Mariah attempting to cheer me out of my suburban ennui, this dead-end existence of those whose every dream has come true.

Seriously. They have. I’ve got the husband, the house, the two boys and the dog. We can walk five minutes to the beach. The Long Orange Nightmare is almost over. Life is good! It is also, well, still life.

And there is a lot of life here. There is the turkey breast I ended up finding and cooking last night that smelled and tastes amazing–and there’s the roasting pan I have to clean after. There are the swims I get to have in the ocean every week–and the shoulder pain I’m staving off with physiotherapy. There’s the gloriously unique view of the world from the spectrum–and the resistance to change that comes with it. There’s the moment with the dance teacher before school when she tells me how much joy The Kid brings to her class–and there’s the moment enfolded in it, when Little Brother says hi to her, with a look on his face that is desperate to be acknowledged too (he was).

There was the scarcity of the loaves and fishes to start with, and the twelve extra baskets left over after, and I know I would have been the one wondering why Mr. “Son of God” couldn’t have estimated more accurately because WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH ALL THIS EXTRA FISH WHEN THERE ARE NO BINS ANYWHERE NEARBY?

There is so much. Ugh. There is so much. Wow.

long live our avoidance
of the quadrillion probabilities
of our non-existence

i am not who i was
i am not going to be who i was going to be
you changed all that

you are not who you were
you are not going to be who you were going to be
i changed all that

what is, is… and cannot at the same time, not be.
what was, was… and cannot,
not have been. so you see my love

we are us
we are us now and we shall never have been
not us.

who are we going to be?
we are going to be who we never would have been
without each other.

–Joseph Pintauro

Last night, the four of us–excuse me, the five of us–walked to the park around the corner from our house, as we’ve been doing nearly nightly since we got the dog. It’s a rectangular space between two rows of houses, with grass on either side and a small playground in the middle. The boys (all three of them) love to dart past the two massive jacarandas marking the space’s unofficial entrance and toward the park, beating us there every time. So far, we’ve had this area to ourselves, but last night a group of kids from two families were there with one parent each.

I watched my (human) boys as they reacted to this new blood in their unique ways: Little Brother, arms crossed, circled the boy who looked about his age, staring him up and down before finally asking him–in the modulated, deeper voice he uses when he’s trying to meet/impress someone new–if he wanted to play tip. The Kid stuck close to me but warmed up gradually, eventually joining the game, his characteristic sign of excitement on display: mouth to hand, and continuous laughter.

And I watched the other kids. In particular, I saw one girl staring at TK, studying him as I, always, fruitlessly, wondered what was on her mind. I wondered if she was appraising him as different or just noticing him as a person. Then I watched as her face broke out into a grin. This is, commonly, the effect he has on people: expressions of warmth. But you never know. And I reside so often in that space of not knowing, of waiting for reactions to the slight differences that play into making him, him. Into making me, me.

When the other kids had to leave, mine reacted each in their own way again. LB waved, saying, “Goodbye! If I see you again I’ll be very happy!” And TK turned to me, saying, “They were so much fun!”

And our canine companion? He sniffed around the whole area, occasionally chasing sticks and trying to jump up on kids.

They each have their own way, and part of the trickiness of parenting is making space for them to be who they’re made to be while also helping them navigate the world without working against themselves. So I’m left wondering if I should work on getting TK not to do the hand-to-mouth thing, because it looks a bit different but we all have things we do to help calm ourselves down: you bite your nails, I pick my nose, etc. And I try to figure out how to preserve LB’s accessibility and desire for company while teaching him to stand up for himself in a crowd.

Generally, though, I feel we don’t make enough room for the different and unique. For what shines about each of us before we reassess it as something that needs to be dulled down to conformity.

Kevin the Dog has a short tail with a hairless patch on it. The breeder sent us photos of this anomaly before we brought him home, which we showed to the vet to make sure we weren’t being scammed, and now we field questions about it by answering that he was just born with it: “it’s his thing.” LB often talks about the “ear surgery” (tubes) he had, equating it to the spinal surgery TK endured, as being “his thing.” And recently, TK asked me to take a photo of the scar on his neck because he wanted to see up-close what it looked like. His thing.

And the other day, they both ran out of the school gate at pick-up bursting with the news that one of their friends had just been diagnosed with colour-blindness. For a moment I considered a parallel universe where they hadn’t been raised with an understanding of how what is different can be damn glorious, where this development was “weird,” then I reverted back to reality, in which we were all saying how cool it is that he sees colours in his own way and can tell us about it.

The Aussies say with regularity a phrase that Americans don’t use as much: “if it suits.” It goes beyond whether you like or want something and into the realm of whether it fits. And I’m finding, thanks to my children and our home here and grace, that all sorts of things suit me that I never expected or considered.

This morning, I swam in the warming ocean as the wind whipped the water from its original calm state. I started to feel like a seal floundering to find purchase on a rock, whipped about myself, then for a few minutes something clicked and I was moving with the water, not against it, hearing the strains of mermaid music in my head, like I was made for this.

I should know, after all these years inside my own mind. I should know that a week of rose-smelling and gratitude moments and cozy joy would be followed by this week. This week of anger, of ruing my own station in life, of walking across the Harbour Bridge and wondering what a fall from that height would feel like.

Do not be alarmed: these are just the ramblings of a mind that deals in extremes (in case you’re new here or just prone to panicking. What’s that like?). My highs are high and my lows are low, and Lexapro helps even them out but that still only gets them within several standard deviations of normal (a word I’m growing convinced does not need to exist due to lack of evidence).

Last week, I dropped the boys off at the gate one morning and stayed, as I always do, to creepily watch them through the trees. They ran off to their classes, as they always do, then ran back out and met in the middle of the playground: The Kid in his baseball cap with the neck-protecting fabric panel, Little Brother with his flouncy cap because he lost the baseball cap earlier this year and I Just Can’t Even. I watched as they cased the joint, walking around and looking for their friends and talking, and the sight of the two of them together like that–brothers on an ordinary day, sharing life–washed over me in a flood of joy. I remembered when they were babies, I imagined them as adults, I thought about how lucky (#blessed) they are to have each other and we, them. And I floated away.

Later that week, LB grabbed a blanket, sat on the couch, and requested for us all to join him. And we did, for a solid five minutes–a bit of a record considering there are two anxious types among us–and even the dog joined on the floor beneath us, and as I felt their warmth around me and the safe harbour that is our family, I felt overcome again with joy.

Then this week happened.

I’m thinking about looking into my diet, and hormones, but really? I think this is just me. Forty-three years and therapy tell me so. I feel all the things, deeply, and this can seem like a curse which, when grace is involved, turns into the same thing as a blessing. Cut to me gritting my teeth through parenting and coming off the Harbour Bridge by foot…barely.

But then, cut back to spending an hour of Election Day on the beach, walking and swimming in the sun. To chance encounters with like-minded friends on the path outside school and the ensuing laughs. To finally getting this in the mail the day before the election because coincidences are God’s way of remaining anonymous. To, in a year nearly devoid of celebrations, a weekend with three of them for Halloween (even though LB hijacked one of them into a birthday celebration for himself).

I ride all of these like the waves they are to my super-sensitive heart, which often leaves me more windblown and exhausted than the next guy. But would I trade it?

There are people who can’t even cry over shit that deserves to be cried over because of their distance from their own feelings. As I put it to a friend–so profoundly I thought (joke’s on her; I stole it from my therapist)–I really that believe that most people’s inability to grieve well causes so many of society’s problems. People aren’t comfortable in that uncertain space, that tension between knowing and not knowing, that proximity to depth of emotion that renders us fully aware of our lack of control. I’m trying to teach the kids, and myself, that this is where life and grace show up the most.

That hiding your emotion doesn’t make you more brave, but less human. And also, less protected. And more vulnerable. Which makes me hope, and believe, that someone beyond me is keeping us all safe.

So I’m writing this on Election Day, before we know what’s going to happen, from that tension blown up a thousand times and turned up a hundred degrees. I write it from my children’s childhoods, before we know “how they’re going to turn out” and “if they end up happy” and what all that will look like. I write it from the month before Christmas, when we’re looking for someone to show up and save us from this mess and that someone shows up as a crying baby?!

Whether you believe that last part or not, you have to admit it would make a pretty good twist. And I’m all about twist endings that actually turn out to be beginnings.

I feel like I’ve been writing protectively lately.

What I mean is that, when the central theme of one’s writing, of one’s life, is one thing–which, for me, is grace–it can be easy to slip into autopilot: packaging and repackaging the story tidily and on-point, without delving deeper into the darker parts of the chapters. Of myself.

I mean, I write for a website called Mockingbird, so named because that’s what we do: tell and retell the message of grace, over and over. So…it’s kind of my (ugh) brand? When I fall into rote retelling, though, it’s not because of the limitations of the message, but of the messenger.

Which is not to say that I’ve written anything untrue or not from-the-heart. Just that there are deeper levels to my heart, and that I’ve fallen lately into keeping them shrouded in secrecy. Most people do this–it’s human nature. Most people don’t, after all, have a blog where they (over)share every detail of their lives. But I do, because it bursts within me if I don’t, and because writing is my therapy and oxygen, and because stories are my life, and I know that shame only needs a lack of light to grow–so when I’m not sharing, or at least examining those dark spots, there can be hell to pay.

All of this has a point, and it is this: on Saturday I told The Kid that he was embarrassing me.

It was a rough morning, and for two people struggling with anxiety, it was even rougher. TK is navigating a year of changes, of unpredictability. We all are, but his year has been particularly discombobulating, and he grasps for control wherever he can (he comes by that honestly). And “wherever he can” usually means in the places and ways that pierce my own sensitivities: in moans and groans, in shouts and demands, in public and private, in rule-making and gauntlet-throwing.

On this particular morning, we had a full day in front of us: tennis lesson and two birthday parties. The second one was Little Brother’s, which ended up being cancelled due to weather and shape-shifted into something different but still existent. The first was a waterslide park party for a friend.

He did not want to go to tennis or the waterpark. And he made this clear with a shitty attitude compounded by brain differences that often make it feel impossible for me to understand what, exactly, he is experiencing. So I walk into these moments feelings underprepared and unequipped, which is really how we walk into every moment but we’re usually able to gird and fool ourselves into thinking otherwise.

But on this day, just like he was feeling All the Stuff, I was too, and my fuse was…nonexistent. After a tennis lesson filled with great shots but incessant moans, we came home and put on his swimmers, each step punctuated with wails of not wanting to go. But we had committed, and these were friends–his and mine–and it felt like a battle that was important to choose.

Which meant that, ten minutes before the party started, he and I were in tears on the floor and I was telling The Husband that I couldn’t do this anymore, not for one more second, that it was all too hard, and TK asked why he had to go with me, and I told him that he could not be negative like this in front of his friend or it would hurt her feelings and embarrass me.

I regret that choice of words so deeply. I know how close embarrassment and shame lie on the feelings spectrum, and if there’s one thing I want to spare my kids–to teach them to spare themselves–it’s unwarranted shame; walking through the world as though they have to apologise for being themselves. I lived with that setup for way too long and I am not looking to bequeath it to them, not now or ever.

Somehow we managed to get into the car, and on the way I breathed, and told him, in calmer and more measured tones, why we were doing this and how we would do it. How we would do it together. He wasn’t hearing any of it. The behemoth of the awaiting social interaction hung too heavily.

We arrived at the waterpark and stood outside, in view of the party, for one final conversation. We negotiated and compromised. We summarised. Two of the dads came out because they are kind and wanted to help. We all went in.

Over the next forty-five minutes–because I am a person who leaves parties early and now I have a kid who does too and this is okay–I talked to park employees and we figured out a way for TK to go up to the slide with me and go down it with an employee. Twice. I got a picture. He got a party bag. And in that bag was the coolest, most perfect-for-him toy: a clear bouncy ball filled with sparkles, bubbles, a rocket, and the moon. He was elated. I learned how to unclench and breathe deeply again.

“You can do hard things,” I told him, and for good measure I revised my earlier comments. “You don’t embarrass me, you make me so proud.” I said this so many times he rolled his eyes. And smiled.

There’s all this exhaustion that comes with avoiding shame by pretending. TK has no time for that nonsense, but I seem to have all the time in the world, showing my worst self to my family and pulling it together so that I meet school drop-off and pickup with a warm smile and a few jokes even though I was seething seconds earlier. Shame is a place to visit, and then get the hell out of: it reveals to me the wrong thing I’ve been holding too tightly–my pride, my appearance–and what I can get instead if I let it go. A sparkly toy, a day with my boy, a story to tell and retell, and a smile–and grace–that never gets old.

We’re one of a kind, no category

Too many years lost in his story

We’re free to take our crowning glory

The last live performance I saw before the lockdown in March–the last time I ventured through the doors of the Opera House–was with two friends for the show Six. I had little to no expectations, having read no reviews of the show from London or New York; I just knew that if Philippa Gregory and Hilary Mantel had not managed to quench my appetite for Tudor drama over their thousands of pages, that I’d sure as hell be able to sit still for an hour to watch a musical starring the half-dozen ex-wives.

I did, glass of champagne in hand and friends by my side, and the story and show have endured well past that night, thanks to the soundtrack’s inclusion on Amazon music and its accompaniment to many of my runs since March. I listened to the women’s anthems on repeat so often that it took awhile for me to finally get to the finale: a rousing revisionist history that celebrated the women’s spirits and all they could–maybe should–have been.

It made me cry, the what-if, could-have-been of it all, the unfairness of six women’s stories being lost in one man’s. It made me think of how often I’ve defined my life, myself, by others, polling for opinions rather than sitting still and listening to my own inner spirit; looking for a role or title to bestow the meaning I crave; waiting for a relationship to fulfill me or a project to bring me to life.

Now I know what is true: that there is a grace big enough, loving enough, to write us not as footnotes to someone else’s story or as a hesitating, ellipsis-laden, brief mention in time, but to write a story for each of us, all of these individual circles growing outward and bumping into others, sometimes coalescing, defined by all this becoming that contributes to the greater picture. And each of us needs space for that becoming.

It’s not lost on me that two of the central relationships of my life–my connection to each of my kids–is meant to free them of a need to be defined by me or our family; that we are their home now, and their launching pad eventually, and then, God willing, their lives will include but grow beyond us. That it’s my job to teach them not to need me one day as much as they do today.

In that vein, I toured a high school last week and imagined them there. I imagined legs even longer than they are now, histories more detailed, stories bigger, independence greater. I sat in an office with a registrar and engaged in that lifelong battle I’ve had with self-consciousness, and caught myself wondering if I was behaving appropriately, asking the right questions, if my face had the look that fit the conversation.

Which is so exhausting. Trust me.

So instead, I told myself to stop all that and just listen and be, and let this unfold. Then the next day, when we ventured back to church for the first time in months and the boys (well, one of them–the introvert) didn’t want me to leave, and I wondered whether it would be appropriate for me to be the only parent who stayed and what would the teachers think and–oh, just fuck it I thought, and sat next to them before gradually distancing myself and eventually moving to the next room, an unlit sanctuary of aloneness, where I just sat and thought and was, and gave it all the space to unfold. And it was the most peaceful hour I’ve had in awhile. Or at least since we’ve gotten the dog.

Because it turns out that, sometimes, the neediest person I know is me, and sometimes what she really needs to hear is that she doesn’t have to do contortions to fit into what other people might think is “right” but that she can spread out–she can take up space in this world that teaches so many of us, especially women, that we should be more compact, more agreeable. We each need that space to grow, to fail, to become. To let the story unfold alongside everyone else’s.

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.

“You’re Black,” The Kid said to the woman behind the cash register at Target last week, pointing in her direction and looking at me for confirmation. “They’re not nice to you in America.”

She smiled warmly as I died a little inside, and told him, “They’re not always nice to me here, either.”

My children are growing up with an awareness of issues that I never possessed at their age. One night when we turned on the news, coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests (ignited by the murder of George Floyd) led to questions that still persist. And just last week, I turned on the debate only to hear the kids ask, “Why are they so mean to each other?”

There is one road that avoids these conversations; that sees them as detours to rush past. Celebrities who write books on how to entertain that include admonishments like “don’t talk about politics at the table with family.” Friends who go on social media to bemoan political posts because they’d rather see photos of dinner. Be positive may as well be the Eleventh Commandment in some circles; it could be argued that Hitler himself was a fan of the idea.

In other words? Bitch, I’ll pass.

If you want to talk about hard stuff, come sit by me. If you want to talk about fearful stuff, come sit by me. If you want to talk about unfair stuff, come sit by me. I’ll likely be there with my kids, clumsily but honestly having those conversations already.

Because I’m tired. I’m tired of a dearth of self-reflection, an absence of curiosity, an unwillingness to venture from the known and comfortable to the new and challenging. I’m tired of that response to inequality that jumps to consternation rather than introspection. I’m tired of an over-reliance on memes when therapy is available. Hard, but available. I’m tired of people not doing the work.

I should be empathetic; I went for years without doing the work. Reading and watching and listening to only people who agreed with me. Maintaining relationships with only people who looked like me or lived near me. Then I got my ass kicked to New York, then Australia, and grace does not provide round-trip tickets, so predictability fell by the wayside and safety could no longer be found in my own plans.

If the Me that is reflected in some of my Facebook memories found out that I’d be voting for a Democrat for president one day, she would fly into a tailspin. And you know what? I love that.

I love that grace has not seen fit to leave me on the well-worn path that I already knew and could navigate without help. I love that grace has sent me all over the spectrum (neurologically, politically, geographically, every other way) rather than leaving me in one spot to grow old and die there. I love that, though my student loans keep me from totally giving up on a career that I would never choose a second time around, I was driven to my true passion–and to the people and website who indulge it and support it and even publish it–because I was fired from a job.

I love that our story is messy and ongoing and real and that it’s full of twists I didn’t see coming, that I raged about at the time and now see as utter beauty. And I love that my kids get to see that and know there is more than one way to live a life, there is more than one skin colour that matters, there is more than one history of a nation, there is more than one party on the ballot, and there are countless paths to take–but all of them, my dears, lead straight home.

i am will/ and i have a dog named kevin he is so cute and tommrrw is my birthday

and I’m turning 6 and I’m watching oddbods and it is so fun and funny

and james is playing roblox on his iPad

–Will, the day before his 6th birthday, in a guest intro for the blog

When I was about to start my pediatric dental residency, I decided it was time for me to get a dog.

I was horribly wrong.

The eighteen hours I had Max the beagle pup were painful for both of us. I did no prep work on how to train a dog, what toys to buy him, etc. I just knew that I was single and seemed to be staying that way, and I wanted someone to love–someone to take the edge off the loneliness I felt. So I picked up my puppy and brought him home, and the next morning at 8 am I called the breeder and said, through guttural sobs, that I was bringing him back.

Fast forward seventeen years, and a lot has changed: I live in Sydney, Australia, not Birmingham, Alabama. I’m no longer single, but married with two boys. And we just got a lab puppy named Kevin whom we are not taking back, even though he won’t stop biting everything in sight, and this morning he shat the floor and a pillow rolled over and through it and spread it around like butter on a pancake and one of my kids threw up.’

And somehow, this is actually the life I always dreamed of.

But prior to this morning’s shitstorm, prior to the two kids being pulled from my abdomen and the beach wedding, were a couple of occurrences that changed the game for me so much that I can’t seem to stop doing them:

I got help, and I changed my address.

The first, in the form of counselling/therapy, can be seen by naysayers as dwelling on the past. The second can be seen as running away. But for me, a decidedly (previously) un-brave rule-following careful and cautious planner, they are the bravest things imaginable.

Of course, I had to be pushed into both.

The circumstances of seeking therapy hinged on an ultimatum I’d issued God regarding my single status; I didn’t think he’d call my bluff. The circumstances of leaving home the first time–for New York–were pure desperation. The second–this time Australia–God, again, called my bluff. Since each of these compellings-disguised-as-choices, I’ve had the opportunity to repeat them on a smaller scale in myriad life moments: stepping away from what is comfortable and familiar, and recognising that I need help–and asking for it.

All of which has led me to a place of deeper safety, of being truly known, of walking unafraid. I’ve had the option throughout my life of scrambling to preserve a fragile but appealing narrative, or falling apart to make way for a truer one. The first half of my life I chose the former.

That no longer works for me.

Which is why I spend a lot more time now than I did then on the over- and over-ness of life: on being up close and personal with all the feelings,;with anger and grief and frustration and anxiety, and with elation and joy and victory and awe. It’s why having a dog will last longer this time around and be even more fraught, more exhausting (and much messier). It’s why there is more conflict, more forgiveness, more truth. Why friendships are deeper and rawer and get to the real stuff much sooner (or go nowhere fast).

It’s why, in between my own check-ins with a therapist, I sit in the waiting room while my son sees his; and it’s why I’m not afraid of what will come out of those sessions, be it now or when he’s my age, because making space for truth is never inconvenient or regrettable.

The other night I was lying beside him as he fell asleep. He was angry that he’d missed free time at school to go to one of those sessions, and he would. not. shut. up. about. it.

Finally, after a few moments of blessed silence, something even better:

“I just love you,” he said. “But there are things that are important to you, and things that are important to me, and when my important things don’t happen, I get upset.”

I lay there in the darkness, stunned by the boy who couldn’t speak at four but now says more than I ever imagined.

There was a time when I would have stayed in my anger; there was a time when he would have stayed in his. Now, because of a grace that is stronger than that anger or either of us, we each inch forward, over and over again.

I remember the days just after The Kid’s diagnosis, when the world felt shadowy and uncertain, and I would analyse everything he did as a predictor of his future–typically, per my brand, with grim foreshadowing. Glass-half-empty on steroids. I had been dealt a death blow, as my old pastor and friend would say: a death blow to my own plans, my own certitude, my version of who TK would be. But I’d forgotten the most important things about death blows: they are dealt by grace, and they are followed by resurrection.

So what ended up dying, really, were those former plans. The version of TK without challenges, without the need for therapy. (He was never meant to exist in the first place, you see, because then he wouldn’t be, well…him.) My need to conduct polls to determine my next action, to garner approval for my own survival. All of that died. Thank God.

And what came to life? Oh, just everything is all.

You know what never would have happened if I’d been granted my plan? This past weekend, that’s what. So let me tell you about that.

A year ago, TK’s school therapist asked him to be the page boy in her wedding and walk down the aisle ahead of her. He said yes. Cut to us nearly a year later, a few weeks ago, TK begrudgingly trying on his wedding attire to make sure it fit. The Husband and I were deigning to interrupt a Roblox game to achieve this task. As soon as TK was fully robed and I snapped a photo, he made his displeasure abundantly clear.

“Take this fucking thing off me.”

TH and I looked at each other, wide-eyed. Did he just…?

“What did you just say?” I asked TK.

“I said, take this fucking thing off me.”

It was a real that’s what I thought you said, dad-in-A Christmas-Story, “oh fudge,” tire-changing moment, and TH’s and my wide eyes switched to barely-concealed laughter, because…you know, shit happens. And our family knows the difference between what we call “home words” and the other kind, and to his credit, TK hasn’t dropped the F-bomb to anyone outside our family. Plus, I grew up with a heavy emphasis on avoiding “bad words,” the four-letter kind, while racial aspersions were lobbed around with abandon, so my standard on this is different from that of many.

All of which is to say, I found it mildly troubling and mostly hilarious, but that’s not the point. The point here is the story I’m telling. Which leads to this past weekend.

True to their brands, TK did not want to practise his wedding walk, while Little Brother was an all-too-eager undesignated understudy, running around the backyard rehearsal site with performative glee. It was looking grim. The bride told me that she would do whatever he was comfortable with, and if it didn’t happen, that was fine. We all went our separate ways and I was pretty certain the next day–at least, TK’s part in it–would be a total shitshow.

That’s what I get for thinking.

After protesting his boutonnière then angrily accepting it, and a speech we made to him about how special this role was, TK was folded into the bridal party and I waited off to the side, anxious as hell. LB, for his part, refused to walk away from the bridal party, having harboured (it appeared) secret ambitions to be called upon to perform at the last minute. And that’s what he got for thinking, too. Because soon, TK and his toy plane were walking in step with the bride’s sister to the awwws of the crowd. He was grinning and I was sobbing.

I have to call it perfect.

Not because it was, mind you. The prep work was unpromising, the lead-in painful, every moment up to it fraught in trepidation. But the moment itself? Beautiful. Which is so on-brand: for grace, and for him.

A few days later, I stuck around after drop-off to watch the kindy kids’ Medieval Day parade. In a typical year, parents would be allowed on school grounds to watch it, but this year has been anything but typical (which is actually on-brand for our family, so we’re sort of used to it?). So I hung around like a creeper and gazed through the trees as the kids marched, and soon I spotted mine: LB in all his knight regalia, dancing so hard to the medieval music that he was practically breakdancing around the pitch. So on-brand. So perfect.

I’ve been listening to this podcast lately (five stars, highly recommend) and the episode linked was with the conductor of the LA Philharmonic. He talked about how conducting is really about making your own interpretation of the music set before you, and how he appreciates all the mishaps that turn into “perfect mistakes.” I wouldn’t dare to call anyone in my life either perfect or a mistake, but there is something to this idea: the beauty that shows up in the unplanned and uncertain and unasked for. The singular way a child walks down the aisle or dances across a playground, because they’re already exactly who and where and how they’re meant to be.

Recently we sat down as a family and watched Black Panther, for obvious reasons. It was a rewatch for The Husband and me, and a semi-rewatch for the kids, as we had attempted a viewing with them last year but they hadn’t made it the whole way through (spoiler alert: they didn’t this time either). Despite having seen the movie before (and parts of it multiple times), I had forgotten some key elements. Or maybe just taken them for granted?

The way T’Challa’s suit absorbed the energy from impacts so that he could use it for attacks of his own? Injury transforming into strength? Yeah, that metaphor hit me square in the heart-crotch this time. One of the beautiful things about immediate family is that the amount you drive each other crazy directly correlates to the amount you know each other/are known, and what I know about the four of us is that we are all walking around with our own invisible suits akin to that of the Black Panther. And this? Is hard and wonderful.

I love that we are embedded in each other’s stories. I love that even though there are people who have known TH longer, there’s no one who knows him better than I do. And there’s no one who knows the maps of my children’s skin, or the way they look right when they wake up, like he and I do. We have done battle across two continents and hemispheres together, in hospitals and waiting rooms and IEP sessions and therapy visits. We do all of life together, on soccer fields and beaches and in front of screens and fireplaces, in homes rented and bought. We have done Christmas in hotel rooms and New Year’s Eve on planes.

We have taken impact together: through diagnoses and post-op visits, in recovery rooms and through sicknesses. What felt at the time like it was destroying us has proven to be what makes us us, these hits that turn into defining moments and even gifts. That’s what someone told me during a particularly rough period after The Kid’s diagnosis, when I didn’t know which end was up, and he spoke insane truth into that moment: You’ve been given a gift. You may not see it now, but you will.

And I do. I see how those impacts have made us stronger. How the newborn days and nights have given way to one-of-a-kind personalities and quirks and occasions for laughter. How Little Brother charms everyone he meets with his kindness and humour and unparalleled voice. How, as I sat at the beach with friends one afternoon, TK walked up to us and whispered to me, “Who is that?”, pointing to a member of our group, and when I reminded him, he turned and enveloped her in a bear hug, apropos of nothing–and of everything, because that’s who he is.

Disabilities, my ass.

And I see how other people respond to “different,” how it can knock them around a bit and play with their preformed expectations, and how there are those kindred spirits who have seen enough to know themselves and be open to the beautiful alternatives to the status quo.

How people are placed in our lives not to be fixed, but discovered. How love and grace are the ways by which this happens.

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. 

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God’s sacred feast. 

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life’s heart. 

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

–Kahlil Gibran