I know the world can turn in different ways
Most of the time, we’re simply hanging on
And under the signs of how we all behave
We might find the place that we belong

We’re gearing up for a trip back to the States, and it doesn’t feel right.

What a strange thing for me to think, let alone say, when this date on the calendar might as well have been a life raft in a stormy sea as we were preparing to move. The bright sure spot in an ocean of coming uncertainty. And so soon! And so soon. I anticipate the negative, as I always am adept at doing, and its possibility hangs over my head, drenches me in anxiety, keeps me awake.

Not to be negative.

There are, of course, all the benefits of this trip–time with family and friends chief among them–but they’re wrapped in the difficulties that come along with it: nearly forty hours on planes with small children (TWO OF WHOM ARE OURS), jet lag and sleep deprivation, The Kid’s yearly MRI under sedation the morning after the evening we land. These are certainties. Then there are the shadows that lurk around them: setbacks in adjustment, confusion over home, a prolonged feeling of displacement, of not feeling fully at home in either place. The shadows get me the most, because this is where so much of my personality lies and is at home itself: not in the sunny patches of easy social interaction and making-the-best-of-it self-help theology, but in the dark spots where grace always shows up but where I get the time wrong and arrive early, waiting for it.

And there’s the added complication: we’re making a home here.

Oh my God, what a few months it’s been. What a couple of weeks it’s been: Little Brother spouting out waterfalls of words, narrating life for us, padding into our room every morning in his footie pyjamas and giggling, jumping up and down as though he can’t believe this wonderful life into which he’s been dropped. Talking of changing nappies and cuppa tea and performances of ABC songs for everyone who will listen, making himself known to parents and schoolchildren and daycare staff and coffee shop owners and endearing himself to them all. And TK? Well, let me breathe a second.

Last week, one of the other mums asked me about the scar on his neck. He’s just gotten a haircut and the barber went a little shorter than I prefer, which of course turned out to be a gift, because now that scar is showing, and it is a gateway to our story–another point of entry for people to love him. The little redhead who is like The Niece, Australia Edition, she came up and mentioned it and showed me her own scar from a fall several years back. And it hit me: scars reveal sameness.

Last Friday we traveled en masse with the rest of TK’s class to a house across the street from the school, and as per usual, I arrived to the dark spot of my mind early: TK ventured inside to explore as per his usual, and my anxiety followed me inside after him, likely overflowing onto him, damn that shit, and I led him back outside over his protests as I worried for the millionth time about how he would “go” as they say here–how he would interact, if he would. And within seconds, the dark was flooded with light and his classmate had come outside with heaps of cars from his room: “Here, James. I brought you cars.” And I nearly cried with relief. As if that wasn’t enough–as if grace hadn’t made itself known with that fireworks display–the mum of the house appeared by my side with a bottle of champagne and passed me a glass, and we proceeded to stay thirty minutes longer than the allotted party time. LB playing inside with cars and kids and occasionally breaking into a dance as per his usual; TK moving from his cars to–are you there, Stephanie? It’s me, GOD–the trampoline with half his class, as is per not his usual. And I stood, glass in hand and various women beside me, engaging in conversation and hearing about how well James reads and how much the kids love him. And in this social setting, I glowed. So not per usual.

Then on Sunday, we went to a cookout at the house of an acquaintance and found ourselves surrounded by three other stories on the spectrum, like-mindedness and battle wounds on full display, and just like that we knew and were known. We ended the day on the beach with them all, wine in hands and children playing in various states of challenge and gift around us, as a cruise ship floated by, the sun set to golden glory, the waves lapped at our feet, and the gifts were almost too much.

“It’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” one mum said of her son’s diagnosis, and proceeded to tell me about the people it had brought into their life, the priorities it had reshaped, the adjustments it had allotted. There are moments when I could say something similar and moments when such a thought makes me run in the opposite direction and I know it’s okay if I live most days somewhere in between, the shadow and the light dancing around each other to create the most beautiful sunsets.

But there are days…there are days when the light undeniably blasts through and I have to throw my hands up in surrender to the greatness of it all that I never could have imagined.

TK running around church and the town centre, approaching strangers with a grin that invites them toward him, leading LB into his path so that they are the most miraculous pair, forcing our lives beyond their small margins and into the orbit of others. His confidence is growing and palpable: he is reading, and adding, and greeting, and growing, and oh how he is talking, and all of it glows in endless invitation, dropping us into a life full of wonder. He is comfortable here. And it shows.

And so we will head to one home, and then back to another, two autumns in less than a year with a summer and spring sprinkled in, and what is that if not a gift? Among the difficulties and the scars, so many gifts. Yesterday I drove TK home from the therapy centre, and he told me about a booboo to his finger–a battle wound. I mentioned healing, and threw in Jesus for good measure because we’re working on getting him up to Santa status at least, and he queried from the backseat: “What’s Jesus doing right now?”

“The dishes, probably,” I almost said, but decided to wait until he gets sarcasm a bit more, and finally settled on, “He’s taking care of you and loving you.” TK thought for a minute, then pointed at me. “That’s him!” he declared, grinning. “Mummy, you’re turning into Jesus!” And in a moment of pure joyful shock that never would have happened were it not for the way his beautiful brain works, I let the gift open right there in my lap: a grace that allows my son to see past the flaws and the anxiety and the mess and right into what grace and Easter and redemption and love are doing: changing my heart and me into more. Showing up with champagne and cars and unspeakable beauty.

Now, God help us on that flight.

“Is that James?” I heard the stage-whisper behind me. “The one who…” the voice trailed off, or I stopped listening, or both, because I didn’t want to feel the impact of what would come next, even out of a child’s mouth. The one who…has autism? The one who…talks funny? The one who…is different?

I’ve heard it all before. I don’t need to hear it again, and I certainly don’t want to feel the barrage of emotions that come afterward: the fear over his future, the guilt over his past, the anxiety over his present. But I’ve promised myself I’d make space for all the feelings, all the grief and pain and joy, because…well, therapists recommend it. So there’s that. But I also know from experience that anything else is just a lie. And I did that long enough. Like, for almost thirty years. Living in a space of denial isn’t living it all, it’s just putting a pretty filter on things and not knowing who you are. So I waited until we got home, and we bathed the boys and put them to bed, and then I climbed into bed and felt it. Then The Husband climbed into bed and I told him about it. And a funny thing happened.

It wasn’t like the times before.

This time, I didn’t grasp at hope like a blind woman looking for light. This time, I thought it and said it: how it hurt, how it sucks, but also: what has changed. How far he’s come. How–and not that long ago, this may have been wishful thinking, but on this night it was real–how there’s a growing part of me that is so inexpressibly thankful he’s not like other kids. Because it means the differences are adding up to something you can’t filter out, and it’s beautiful.

And I know, in saying all this, that it’s a description and reflection of the corner we’ve turned. Lately he’s been asking so many questions, and the memories that pop up on my phone aren’t just reminders to me, but offerings to him: here you are before your x-ray two years ago, last year. Here you are in the hospital after they fixed your neck. Look at that hat you had to wear! He asks about the surgery, which broken bone it fixed. He sees his own tilted head, and watching him as he takes it in, I almost can’t catch my breath: it’s like watching the sun rise. He asks about the body parts he sees in his book: the skull and the brain, the bones and muscle, the kidneys and bladder and intestines, and as he provides a brief recap of the way I’ve told him the digestive system works, I think back to a year ago, when he was just stringing three words together; how a year before that, when there wasn’t a sound. He asks about feelings, what they mean, and tells me about his day at school: who got in trouble (or “told off,” here) and was sent to reflection time. He mentions his classmates by name. He is seeing them, and knowing them.

And they are knowing him.

On Monday, the school handyman walked over to me with a box in his hands. Inside it was a model Chevrolet, still screwed into its stand, white and blue paint gleaming. “I’ve got more at home. I’ll bring them,” he said. The other kids gathered around, exclaiming. The next day, the girl named after a flower brought a sack of cars herself. “They were at my granny’s,” she said. “I knew James would like them.” On the way home that morning, H’s mom told me that they want to have him over for a playdate, and that they need to have popcorn and chocolate chip cookies because “those are James’s favourite.” That afternoon, his teacher told me that the other kids fight over who gets to walk with him to the playground. I emailed the mother of the boy in his class who’s looked out for him from day one, and when I saw her husband the next day he told me that she’d cried before she emailed me back to arrange a playdate.

Meanwhile, Little Brother sits in the waiting room with me at the therapy centre and approaches strangers who exclaim over his cuteness and teach him Chinese. His language is like an avalanche, building every day. He tells me when he’s sad or mad or happy, casually tosses out over lunch that “I love you, Mommy.” He tells me the feelings that I struggle to define to The Kid. We are parenting two different people. I am two different moms. It wasn’t what I planned. It’s hard as shit sometimes. It’s also pretty fantastic.

When the little redhead, one of two of them (three if you count me), comes out to me on the bench for reading, she tells me that the kid I sent to find her thought she wasn’t there. Like she was invisible or something. Oh girl, I think. I know THAT one. And I consider the threads that run through all of us, that make us more alike than different. How an email can make one mother cry while sending it, and another while reading it, for the same reason: this complicated, raw, pulsing love that tears us apart while it holds us together because it all comes from the same ultimate love: the one that has designs on all of us, weaving our stories together in ways we never expected or would have chosen. Never would I have wanted this to be the way TK would become so beloved. Never will I be the same because it is.

This love that is present perfect tense even as nothing is perfect but it, that transforms executions into coronations and death into life, that forces us past the first layer of ourselves and others, so that no matter how many times we relive it, each time is like the first. But different. But the same.

This love that is sitting with me as one of the other moms sees TK’s new car and tells him: “What a lucky boy you are!” And the me who would have bitterly laughed not long ago, internally reviewing all the scans and doctor visits and surgeries and therapies, she scampers off to a different space as I inhabit this one: this one where he is quite a lucky boy. This one where James? Oh, he’s the one who…has a brother who always asks after him, who won’t calm down until he knows he’s okay, who embraces him and gazes at him with wonder. He’s the one who…loves cars. And everyone knows it.

I pick him up at 3 on Tuesdays and Fridays.

But only on those days. So far. That is when school ends, after all. But every other day, I pop into the office and sign him out with the same reason–therapy–even though that’s not the whole story. Sure, most days we actually do have therapy, but that’s not the sum of it. The reason I’m there at 1:40 instead of 3–the reason I get to peek into the window and watch him finishing lunch and am rewarded a secret smile, often with Little Brother barreling in ahead of me–is because after his first day, his teacher suggested that maybe we ease him into this, his kindergarten year in a mainstream school. I nodded, sadness sharing space with relief, because even with our early pickup, even with this “special” arrangement, we’re still so much further along than we were before we got here. We’re still in such a different class than we would be back in the States. This 5…it’s still our 10. And when we started, it was every day at 1:40. Now it’s just three of them.

So the journey continues, our non-linear progressions still progress. Still a story unfurling.

Last weekend we went to the local amusement park and purchased our annual passes and revisited all the spots we saw for the first time a few weeks ago. The growth in familiarity might have contributed to The Kid’s bravery, but it wasn’t the sum of it. He approached the ride with me–the one we didn’t get to try last time–and pulled me along. He waited slightly more patiently than last time. And this time, we climbed into the seat together. This time they pulled the safety bar down and we spun around the track, glee across both of our faces, and he checked the crowd to make sure his dad and brother were watching. That there were witnesses. And as soon as we pulled to a stop, he yanked my arm. “I want to go again!” he shouted. He would do it all over again, all the ups and downs, the terror and the joy. What bravery.

Would I?

These are the moments that mothers share with each other when they’ve dug deep in, when they’ve built trust and shared glances and laughs and tears, when they’ve huddled closely over drinks or phones and told each other the darkest things they’ve thought: that sometimes they dream of running away. All the best mothers I know have admitted it. Because–and here’s the thing–all the best mothers I know, know they’re not up to it. Because “it”–this raising of young hearts and minds–it’s a big fucking deal. And the best mothers I know, who are also the best people I know, know that they are not the best mothers. They’re just the ones called to the job who keep showing up. And some days, this must be enough. Because sometimes it’s all there is. So we show up at each other’s hard days, on each other’s last miles, and we bring water and wine and words, and we talk and listen and know that we’re in this together. And that some days we want to quit.

But some days…oh. Some days.

Last night, TK was asking me more. Asking me about everything, like he’s been doing lately, and over a fifteen-minute conversation (THE BOY WASN’T SPEAKING A WORD FIFTEEN MONTHS AGO), it came out that someone in his class had gotten into a fight with another kid and the first kid had gotten in trouble and sent to the office. And the fact that he told me this? Okay, the fact that he gave me enough information for me to surmise this? This is what miracles are, people. He asked, and I answered, and I asked, and he answered, and piece by piece we unraveled the mystery together. And after the litany of questions and answers and not a small amount of frustration on my part over what it takes to communicate sometimes, this fleeting thought happened:

Maybe I’m actually made for this.

This dual life, this grief and joy and upheaval and peace and these questions and answers and these traffic-laden trips to therapy with shits in the backseat and apologies afterward (mine) and moments on the couch talking about other kids having to go to reflection time, and he and I finally, FINALLY speaking the same language? Maybe the arduous moments and the easy ones and the ugly and beautiful fit me better than I even know. Maybe the fact that it took over four years for him to say what LB says so easily now–“I love you, Mommy”–is what makes it matter so much more to hear from both of them. Maybe the trust we’ve built together that has brought them to saying it is what makes everything matter. The sum of it held in those words which are so much more than just those words.

Because our grief and joy and upheaval and peace and questions and answers are so much heartier and thicker and heavier than they would have been were it not for those dark and digging moments. Those backseat shits.

And in church on Sunday, as I sit by myself in the pew while TH takes them to kids’ church, the light is streaming through an upper window and right onto my lap, where the words are printed on a sheet of paper. I think about how TK is so sensitive to light, how it’s good he’s across the way, how he’s right where he should be. Because this light, it’s nearly blinding me, hitting me like it is. This light that feels like it’s making the words so hard to see, even while it’s exactly the thing that’s making me see them.

It’s not often one has an existential crisis in the checkout lane of a Swedish furniture store in the suburbs of Sydney–I think–but it happened to me, and very recently. In the twenty minutes (that felt like an eternity) that I spent behind the cart holding my two young children and a mountain of decorative crap, I came to question every #blessed gift and decision that got me to this exact point in the universe: to this store, to this country, to these children, to this marriage, to this God.

How’s that for a Saturday afternoon?

Read the rest over at Mockingbird!

I know, honey, and you’re so good at trying.

I am a goal-oriented person. This is, of course, a #humblebrag, because who doesn’t want to sound like they have plans and achieve them? But what I’m saying is that I’m a goal-oriented person to my detriment. As in, take a harmless or even positive thing and twist it into a nightmare. Because here’s a funny story: I’m a goal-oriented person, then I had kids and they shat all over the goals I had for them and myself. They just showed up, pooped everywhere (literally and figuratively), and shredded my carefully-curated lists with their tiny hands, then did a dance of triumph during which they knocked over the remainder of my plans and dreams, and left the room laughing.

That may not have actually happened. But sometimes it feels like it did. Like it does. And it is one of the most awful and wonderful things to ever happen to me.

Left to my own devices (which I am NOT, #grace), I treat life as a project. And I include “people” in “life.” I treat my family as a project. I treat an across-the-world move as a project. I treat making dinner as a project. I treat my children as a project. I had so many plans for them, y’all. And none of them included a spectrum diagnosis, or potty-training at age five, or being hit in the face by the little one because he thinks it’s funny. My children, before I had them, were the most well-behaved little angels (robots) you’d ever seen, and didn’t complicate my life a bit! In fact, they put away all the dishes after dinner! They certainly never attacked each other in the shopping cart at the IKEA checkout until I nearly had a panic attack/aneurysm.

I’m rolling with the punches, though, you know? When life knocks me down, I get back up. When the going gets tough, I get going.

Except…not. I’m tired. I’m living in a foreign country ten thousand miles from everything we know. I battle anxiety and depression. My older son faces his own challenges, and my younger son…is two. Often terribly so. Some days, the goals I used to have feel more like the punchline to a mean joke and the only realistic goal is to make it to bed without drop-kicking anyone. So they’re changing, those goals. And so am I. And not, I repeat, NOT, by trying harder.

I’ve been trying to get The Kid off his sippy cup for years. He is even less a fan of change than I am, so all my efforts were to no avail: letting him shop with me for a new cup (I want that one! SO I CAN NEVER USE IT), picking out cups with his favourite characters splashed all over them, hiding his sippy. Then, a week ago Sunday, he dropped his cup on the ground by Mosman Bay. In slow motion, I saw it bounce on the sidewalk then arc through the air and land in the water. I turned to The Husband, panic in my eyes. “His cup!” I yelled. “HIS CUP!”

TH kind of shrugged, threw his hands up. I mean, the cup was ten feet below us and bobbing away. Nothing could be done–which is exactly when most important things happen (and maybe should be the name of my memoirs). By that evening, TK was drinking out of a grown-up water bottle, and not due for a second to all my efforts. Later that week, he informed me one morning that he did not want to wear a pull-up to school. He hasn’t worn one during the day since. Has he pissed his pants since then? You betcha. Has he shat them? Um, does a bear do so in the woods? But much like Pat and Tiffany in the closing moments of Silver Linings Playbook, I will take what everyone else (including my pre-kid self) calls a “5” and look at it as a 10, because This Is Us/Progress, and it is a triumph. Just like the forty-five minutes of Moana that we made it through at the theatre a couple of weekends ago. Or the moment last week, when TK and Little Brother and I were walking down Spit Road to TK’s school and his classmate’s mom slowed their car down so we could greet each other, then outside his classroom she told me about how her son spends time in the mornings picking out toys to bring to school, turning them over in his hand and murmuring, “I bet James would like this one.” There’s the girl at his table who spontaneously hugged him goodbye yesterday. There’s the boy in the other kindergarten class who also has a shadow therapist and whose mom I ran into the other day, and we shared their nearly identical histories with each other. There is the self-labeled “Team James” group of therapists who really see him, who love him.

There are the moments when LB hits me and I want to scream, to hide under the bed, to engage in a vengeful game of “Why are you hitting yourself?” with him, then I realise that I have enough air in my lungs to take a breath, and enough sanity left in the tank to see what’s going on, and I give him the attention he so desperately aches for, and we are both changed by it.

It’s not every time, but it’s getting to be more of them. And none of it is what I had planned. That’s what makes it a gift: I didn’t earn it.

I’ve been drinking too much lately. I cut myself some slack after we moved because I needed to. There were little wars on all fronts and survival was the endgame. But now we’re all calming down and, you know, air in my lungs and sanity in my tank and all, and I can finally look around and really see: see the answered prayers, the grace on all fronts that’s actually fighting the wars, that is bigger than they are. And I can see how I’ve allowed wine to go from a gift to a form of replacement therapy. My glasses were getting bigger and more frequent, and the bottles were taking fewer nights to disappear. My problem isn’t a physical dependence; it’s an unwillingness to stop overindulging. We went out on Saturday night and before we left, I was already dreading my Sunday hangover as if it was something unavoidable. I haven’t been enjoying wine, I’ve been using it. And I don’t want to turn it from a gift into oxygen; I don’t want to twist something meant to be beautiful into something ugly; I don’t want it to become an object of resentment for me or my kids. I don’t want it to “get me through the day” any more than I want caffeine to be the only reason I stay awake, or Likes on Facebook to be my touchstone of self-worth.

Grace does not demand that I make arbitrary, sweeping changes that don’t hold true to how I’m made; it shows up in my life less as the humanly-skewed ideas behind accountability partners and altar calls and more as someone sitting beside me, saying “Me too.” Its kindness is what changes me rather than my own self-will could, or a demand for publicly-advertised Service for the Kingdom ever would. Grace is quiet. It doesn’t lead to me smashing all my good (average) wine into the rubbish bin in some misdirected and loud attempt to earn my way back into its…well, good graces. Here is what grace does: it provides reasons to mourn and celebrate together, with or without wine. It shatters my old goals and gives me a new reality. When it denies, it does so to make room for greater gifts. And it fills the space that, until recently, I was demanding wine fill, and softens the edges that I was trying to get wine to soften, and it pours me a smaller glass than the night before so that I can really taste it this time. Then it leads me to the couch on our deck while TH chases TK and LB, their shrieks no longer keeping me from a bottle but now showing up as bigger and more beautiful than it, while the sun sets here and rises ten thousand miles away, and both places are home. Cups always overflowing.

“How else but through a broken heart…”

We have a new rug.

This shouldn’t be as momentous as it feels. After all, a rug was not ever the root of my problems. A rug doesn’t cause or cure depression. But a smelly rug that haunts every entrance into your home, that mocks you every time you sit on the couch, that grows stronger through every storm and bout of stifling humidity…well, that’s not nothing. And it’s not pretty. And I have always been funny about smells. So, finally, I texted The Husband last week: “WE HAVE TO GET RID OF THIS STANK RUG.” He agreed, if only because he was sick of hearing about it. So on Saturday, we got a new rug and immediately brought it to its new home, where it sits now, not smelling a bit. My rose-scented diffusers finally have their time to shine, and all feels right with the world.

I mean…ish. Because this was an example of a problem with a solution. Something that could be fixed.

But things have been going better, generally. The cupcake and wine spending has slightly dipped, and that’s always a highly-correlated indicator of well-being around here. (Chocolate spending has gone up, but that’s because Easter candy is on display and who can just walk right by that?! I DON’T HAVE A HEART OF STONE, PEOPLE.) The Kid and Little Brother are thriving in their respective school environments: LB dominates the playground and morning tea when it’s anything bread-based, and TK…I mean, that guy. A brief pause for that.

We got a standard report from the school on his progress, and dude is killing it. Once again, points for the Australian school system, which works with parents and welcomes collaboration in the form of shadow therapists so that TK and kids like him have the chance to learn alongside their mainstreamed peers, because that guy? Is smart. So we’ve got some plumbing issues; sue him. The last time I shat my own pants wasn’t too long ago, truth be told. But he churns out his worksheets all, “Duh. Which words start with D? I can do this in my sleep.” He brings his reading books home and flies through them, grin on his face. He plays “shop” at recess alongside the other kids and hands out “change.” He’s finding his place, is the thing. And the report, it told us that he’s mastering fluency of language, which just over a year ago would have propelled me to the moon and back. Now it’s part of our daily lives, these words spilling from him, Aussie ones sprinkled unexpectedly in, like last week when he told me, “Mum. MUM! You’re just giving me a little cuddle.”

It doesn’t cure depression. Apparently, that’s not how brain chemistry works? But it ain’t nothing.

I sat at an outdoor cafe a couple of weeks ago with a new friend, someone who has two sons as well, one of whom is similar to TK. And we commiserated over the guilt, the constant questions we ask ourselves, the medical histories and the doctors and diagnoses. We talked about their weaknesses and strengths, and how hard it was sometimes to tell the difference. How some of the things we may be trying to “fix”–the very fact that we’re geared to target and correct–may need to remain. May make them who they are, who they’re meant to be.

I don’t know what the answers are. What I do know is that so many of the things that make TK different are the same things that draw others to him, make them embrace him, make him feel safe to them. The other mums in his class have told their kids to look out for him–I suspected this before and now know it as fact–using words like shy. The kindness here is quiet yet present, subtle and not asking to be noticed or given anything in return. It has been a gift, a fresh breeze blowing through each day, each morning drop-off where we are met with smiles and welcomes, and it’s enough to make this introvert show up a few minutes early to enjoy it all.

Something real is happening here.

It’s the expectations that kill us. Our vision of how it should be, and our subsequent efforts to twist and squeeze everything into that always-smaller vision than what is actually planned–ordained. I went to a counsellor last week (THAT’S HOW YOU SPELL IT HERE, GET OFF MY BACK, MY COMPUTER IS AUSTRALIAN NOW) and after I told her my story she remarked that I looked pretty held-together for someone with my reported struggles. Maybe it was a compliment? It felt like she was asking to be slapped. I’ll give it another try next week, maybe show up with shitty pants and raccoon eyes and no bra. But really…what is a depressed person supposed to look like? What is a smart kid supposed to look like? What is learning and socialising and becoming supposed to look like?

I suspect some of my depression, in addition to the brain chemistry, is fuelled by my own expectations: the thought that I should feel further along at this point, that things should seem more like home. When, wonderfully, home is happening all around us, even when someone honks at my driving skills or I have to pay for parking because I forgot my receipt and really THE SIGNS SHOULD BE BIGGER THAT TELL YOU THAT.

Maybe we should give each other and ourselves a fucking break, man.

I was reading this old story the other day, and to be honest it left me a little pissed off that Thomas was thereafter described as Doubting. All the other guys got a nearly immediate appearance; he had to wait eight days. Eight days. But in those eight days, despite doubts, he stayed. He stayed, despite the doubts and brokenness and uncertainty. And when the moment came, it wasn’t with a curse. It was with grace. With a different and deeper experience than all the rest had. He not only saw, he felt. And all because of the thing we regard negatively. It ended up being the gateway to the gift.

Little Brother is spilling out words too, so conversant that it boggles my mind to keep up with him, chirping away in the backseat. He has his own place at TK’s school, standing on the steps of the classroom and performing a rendition of the ABC song that contains more than a few mispronunciations. The books say you should re-pronounce the words for them correctly. Okay, sure, maybe. But sometimes I just laugh while everyone else applauds and he grins, and later when we’re alone I’ll say them with him, the words “wrong” for now but somehow even more wonderfully…right.

There has been some…concern. Which I expected; you can’t write a whole post about how depressed you are without the people who care, and about whom you care, checking up in one way or another.

But there have also been improvements. And, maybe more importantly, there has been communication. Identification. Messages sent along invisible wires, appearing as voices and words, saying–as CS Lewis knew they would–“What! You too?” Which is the whole point, isn’t it? Our seeing each other, finally. Finding our way home together, even as we are led there with each step.

Let’s just be honest: the heat hasn’t fucking helped. You want to get down to brass tacks and that’s where you start. I mean, who wouldn’t be down, at least a bit, walking around in drenched underwear? Showing up with a perpetual sheen on the upper lip? These are not good looks on the best of days. But this is life in the bottom hemisphere in February…so I am told. (I am also told that this has been one of the hottest summers on record. BETTER BE.) But there’s been a lifting of that lately, in between rain storms, and the effect is palpable. For me, weather is a trigger, I suppose. Most focus on the dull grey of winter and its biting cold, and yeah–that can suck. But summer, in its sneaky, sunny way, can be just as painful for a contrarian like myself. And I have never found an anti-perspirant that lives up to its name. So there’s the practical side of it.

There are also the cloudier, murkier, more complicated and insidious territories of hormones, emotion, post-pregnancy and post-relocation life. Of…well, life, period. Which always seems to be changing, whether your address is or not. You would think that this would make me press in, voluntarily and desperately, into what never changes. Which is actually a Who. Into the unfailing grace offered there. But I forget. I always, always forget.

Grace doesn’t. It never leaves, even when I do.

There are some, by the way–and I don’t know, maybe you’re one of them? If so, welcome, and hope you don’t mind the profanity; it’s a permanent part of the decor–who are politely frightened by such extremes of emotion. Who would rather avoid that drama altogether. And there are days when I would, too. Those days would best be filed under the heading “Denial,” because on those days I try to pretend I have it all together and things are easier or better than they are. But here’s the thing, which I can say as I’m now seeing glimmers of light around and ahead: I kind of like being this way. (Remind me of this the next time things go pear-shaped. So…tomorrow. Depression and anxiety are so annoyingly non-linear.) I don’t know how well I would wear evenness anyway. I like that I see bruises in sunsets, that the colour spectrum is vivid and piercing for me. I like that I feel things deeply, even when they hurt. I like that walking around with open wounds is making me more aware of others’, and making me a safe space for them to talk about it. I like the particular brand of community that is built among those who used to feel alone. I like living with my whole heart.

But damn, is it hard. And I have to say “I’m sorry” a lot, which I hate.

I like that my weaknesses are also my strengths, like two sides of a coin that is never enough on its own, but always sends me back to grace. That presses me into it. Which is what I and one of mine were talking about over email, I think, recently: how I feel like I’m being pressed uncomfortably down into that never-changing love that won’t let me escape it, no matter how many hatches I try to locate. I first felt it on the track of my old gym back in Atlanta: a nearly-physical sense of pressure upon me, and the recognition of it matching that pressure I feel on my hands every week when I open them to receive the blessing, after the bread and wine. And now, she wrote about how our children teach us about grace, and how this season is making way for another one. I thought about that, and about what I’d told her about feeling pressed into love, and how depression–that word–it sounds like the opposite of press. About how it all, though, is delivering me deeper into the pressed love that never lets up.

I don’t know. I’m still working on that one.

Anyway, there’s this: we already know The Kid could read, but now he’s showing other people, at school, and every night he demands to read the bedtime story, so that Goodnight Moon is now recited to us, TH and I looking at each other over two smaller heads and it is always a balm, no matter the day. There is the way Little Brother tries to read now too, how he’s recognising some words, how he wants to be like his brother. There’s the way TK loves babies, how it connects us to people everywhere, from his schoolyard and his classmates’ little siblings to the strangers on the ferry, and our playdate this week is with a girl in the class whose two-year-old little sister asks after him.

There’s the haircut and colour I got on Friday that, not for nothing, helped me feel lighter in more ways than one. There is grace in salons–don’t you ever doubt it. There are the cooler evenings on the beach with picnic dinners not on the sand with the birds (WE’RE LEARNING!) but on the grass in the shade of a tree, and the walks along the water after. There is the chair from IKEA, a piece of redemption from an awful afternoon of tantrums and humiliation, and now that TH put it together it sits in our bedroom and whenever I plop down on it, two little bodies always end up beside me. There are the little things that help sew you back up after the little things that started to undo you.

There was the moment at the salon when a motorcade full of sirens drove by, helicopters overhead, and they said Netanyahu was in town, and I thought about how one of the hardest things about being here is the feeling of disconnection. And here history is happening outside the window–I LOVE HISTORY!–heads all turned right, and I realise: I am not disconnected. I am just connected differently.

If this is the end of me, at least I have a friend with me.

God only knows what I’d be without you.

Last week we received our final delivery from the corporate furniture rental company. Aren’t those words sad-sounding? Corporate furniture rental company. So stark and barren. So lacking in warmth.

I was excited about this delivery because (a) it would mark the last time these strangers would show up at my door; and (b) a rug for our living area was arriving with them, and I was planning on it really tying the room together. The piece de resistance, if you will.

What I’m saying is that there was a lot riding on this rug.

The deliverymen left the rug, as I asked, rolled up and leaning against the wall. I admired the pattern and grew more giddy. I vacuumed and mopped the floor. I pushed the furniture aside, bad back and all, and slowly unfurled this thing of corporate furniture rental glory. I pulled the furniture back into place and stepped back to admire the effect.

The rug stinks.

I mean that literally: the rug smells bad. Not like shit–I know what that smells like. Not like a dead animal or B.O. or anything specific. Just…musty. Like an old warehouse. Which is probably exactly where it came from. And I don’t know if Febreze can solve this scent. As I wrinkled my nose in growing distaste, I noticed more. Like…that the rug could be bigger? And could lie down flatter? And could just STOP SUCKING SO MUCH?

Here is the difference between a bad day and depression: on a bad day, a bad rug makes things worse. On a depressed one, it ruins EVERYTHING FOREVER.

The walls have been closing in on me more. It reminds me of the time TH and I went to Niagara Falls and ventured into a haunted house and one of the final features was a pitch-black room that, we came to realize, had no exit. This was scarier than any ghost or minimum-wage worker in a hockey mask. This was terrifying. Claustrophobia-inducing. Panic attack-birthing. Then, I screamed. They let us out, and I ran the hell away from that den of horrors (and to the nearest bar, I imagine).

These days, the solution isn’t so simple.

The depression that reared its head in the form of anxiety back home is different in our new one. In Atlanta, I would wake up wired, running on adrenaline and cortisol, going through the motions like a well-oiled machine in a familiar environment. Here, I’ve been tired. So tired. As previously mentioned, I don’t even need Xanax to wind down at night–I fall asleep almost as soon as I hit the pillow. I feel weariness lapping at me like the waves on the nearby beach, which I visit at least by car daily and you’d think that would help. But it doesn’t keep me from falling asleep over Dr Seuss, Little Brother tapping my face and yelling “Mom-MEEEE!”, my alarm clock through the fog.

Here, depression looks like anger. It looks like an even shorter temper with the boys, and don’t get me started on TH not replacing the toilet seat the way I asked. It sounds like a raised voice and resembles a flat affect. A lot of “I don’t care” and “whatever you want.”

It looks like rebellion: thoughts of jumping on a bus (I’ve never taken the bus; wouldn’t even know the first thing about how; and yes, this pisses me off too) or hopping into a cab and heading for the airport. Except I’m so tired. And I can’t find my passport. Or TK’s water bottle that I left at his school, the thought of which wakes me up in the middle of the night. My 3 am anxiety alarm clock. And is that a possum scratching on our roof?

It looks like Valentine flowers arriving a day late and tossed, in their box, upside down by our front gate, and my inability to see their beauty because how could anyone just toss my flowers around like that and I don’t even have a vase here.

It looks like feeling stupid all the time, but especially when I drive a block on the right (wrong) side of the road this morning and the car behind me honks then passes me on the two-lane street.

It looks like everything feeling like too much and being too difficult.

But.

The other morning I walked the boys to TK’s school and, as we waited for the morning bell and line-up, I saw another mom of a kid in his class walking down the steps. My mind immediately went to an ugly place–those pants aren’t doing her figure any favors–and I looked around, wondering if anyone else noticed. I looked for camaraderie in the worst way possible, which is what a lonely person does. What an insecure person does. What a depressed person does. A minute later, she was sitting near me and a couple of the moms struck up a conversation about all the information we’ve been given and the expectations laid on us and our kids and this mom, she looked at me and said, “I mean, damn. I don’t know what the hell is going on most days!”

I wanted to kiss her. I immediately loved her. We were the same. Who cares about pants?!

So there is this: the kinship born of being in the same boat, confused and uncertain even when this has been your home for years. There is the flurry of morning activity over text and email and Voxer and Signal even as it fades away into quiet later, because that morning activity is my connection to so many who know me, who get me, who love me. Even if I wore bad pants the first time we met, they hung on. And they will hang on. They hear me and respond and there is no falseness, only deep and true connection, and if they came from somewhere then there are more like them, even here.

And there are more like them: there is the instant and forever friend, giver of the wine and “grace” bracelet, and there is sitting barefoot on a couch drinking wine and sharing life. There is the Friday night in a house full of kids and their parents, friends from another continent and life and now ten years later we are picking back up, deeper than before.

There aren’t solutions, but there are people. There is grace. There are prayers felt and understanding given and forgiveness offered. There is a counselor recommended and the possibility of increased dosage and a hair appointment made. There are runs outside and a new pool for laps. There is this messy new adventure we’ve been called into and the ensuing low tide I’ve been navigating and there is this: the moment I step outside on our balcony and think first how ungrateful I am because who could be “sad” with all this, and then I remember that depression is not the same as ingratitude. It is so much more, so much harder, so much more complicated. And grace knows this. So I look up, and the sunset is so beautiful: gold, pink, orange, and purple, and only because of the clouds are all these colors showing up. It’s like a bruise, I think. Which, when you think of it, may be something only a depressed person could see. And it’s beautiful.

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

We are now entering the portion of a monumental life change wherein everything is going well but I’m spinning out anyway.

I’m feeling the way I did a few months ago, back before I decided to finally take the plunge into low-dosage antidepressants instead of daily anxiety pills (I switched those to bedtime, tks). There was a moment–I remember it; I was sitting in the sunroom of our Atlanta home while the boys played around me and I was pondering all the shit that was going on in our lives and had been over the past few years and presently: breast cancer scare, miscarriage, 2 surgical childbirths, multiple surgeries on The Kid, one minor one for Little Brother, postpartum emotional and hormonal swings, and oh, AN IMPENDING MOVE ACROSS THE EFFING WORLD; I sat there and looked at my children and wondered why the hell I was waiting to get a little assistance if not only would it help me, but them in the process; and that is the story of my call to the doctor).

At that time, there were plenty of entries under the list labeled Difficult. SEE ABOVE. My nerves were frayed and someone always seemed to be sitting on the last one I had left. I felt perpetually at the end of my rope where, yes, I know God’s office resides, but even he at that point was all, “Sweetheart, GET THE DRUGS. They’re a gift, see.” (Sometimes my God talks like a gangster from the 40s, sue me). There was not a day that didn’t leave me feeling overwhelmed and fretful. And we were leaving our home for another one across an ocean.

So I got the drugs. And they helped. And they didn’t take away my ability to cry, which was a big concern for me (I love crying, as previously mentioned). And all was good. I mean, as good as it can be when you’re saying goodbye to everyone you love while crying a lot, right?

And then we moved.

Our first month here was a whirlwind of newness: new house, new accents, new words, new doctor, new church, new neighborhood, new car, new therapists, new babysitters, new people. I theorize that I was running off adrenaline and balancing it with wine and that this and grace got me through those days. Ahead loomed the transition I feared most: new school. Particularly, for TK, since LB just cruises around new locales in search of his next snack. But TK…I mean, nothing has been easy for him, you know? Every step is a big one and, in the process, a triumph. But to get to the triumph…

And we did. We are now to the part where his teacher knows him and his therapist loves him and, yesterday, we ran into two of his classmates on the way to school. The first, walking beside us, said “Hi, James!” with her red curls bouncing as she reminded me of The Niece, the silver bracelet on her wrist glinting in the sun. Seconds later, a voice issued from a nearby car: “HIYA, JAMES!” TK took these greetings in stride, grinning as I prompted him to return them, and he bounced ahead of me, knowing the way as I pushed LB in the stroller. He can’t wait to go to school every day. “I want to go to BEAUTY POINT PUBLIC SCHOOL!” he announces every morning, beaming as I help him slip into his uniform. We pass teachers and staff members who greet him by name. Another mom told me she visited the class yesterday and saw what a great reader he is. There is kindness all around us. On Monday, I sat in a monthly meeting of Team James, his cadre of therapists from the center we frequent twice a week, and what initially felt like an echo of tense disciplinary sessions from my Two Worst Years Ever, AKA my residency, became a conversation populated by people who really see TK, who know him in ways big and small after a month. I realized once again how much I interpret as threat what is meant as gift. I’ve finally met some other moms (mums) from his class at school and we’ve walked the blocks home after drop-off together, pushing our second-borns and commiserating over homework and all the other shared experiences that I wasn’t sure I’d get to partake of, even as I know that our path is different–but somehow still the same. Last night we met our neighbor and he mentioned getting together for wine. We really like our church, and I have, like, three friends! I don’t take pills to get to sleep (yet). I see the Pacific Ocean daily and I even have a local lap pool. I’m writing this from the deck of our home, overlooking our pool and a harbo(u)r. Everything appears to be going…swimmingly.

So why am I having such a hard time? Once again with nerves frayed, at the end of my rope, so easily overwhelmed?

This is Life 2.0: everything replicated in a different place. I suppose there are people who land in a new existence like this and look around at the sun and beach and say, “GREAT! Let’s get started!” These are probably the same people whose kids eat only healthy foods, who craft adorable homemade Valentines for each child in the God-forsaken school, and whose marriages are perfect. To them I say, from a distance and across a chasm, “Enjoy that.” I don’t do “new” well. I don’t replicate easily. I don’t LIKE it when it’s sunny all the time. (And it’s not here. Contrary to popular belief, this is not Southern California. So there’s that, I guess.) I see shadows and cracks. I overthink. I am shit at making crafts. Also, I hate making crafts. When the wonderfully kind mums from TK’s class bid me farewell after our perfectly pleasant conversation at our respective turning points, I breathe a huge sigh of relief (but not before inviting them to come over with their kids and play in our pool, because I am COMPLICATED).

There is a part of me that resents the ways this place is becoming our home, even as I am grateful for them: the places and the people that are gaining familiarity and are embracing us as we embrace back. There is a grief coupled with the gratitude. There is loss with the gain, because it is COMPLICATED.

I went through a similar depression a few months after arriving in New York. I thought it was purely a seasonal thing at the time, but maybe it too was a bit of delayed grief, even a form of guilt: I’m doing okay in this new place, and what does that mean? Back then it was less complicated: no stroller to push around, no tiny bodies to bathe each night, no emotional underpinning times infinity to everything I did. Here, I feel the weight not just of my adjustments, but theirs. We are doing life, all the parts of life that were big steps and little, difficult and easy, struggle and triumph, all over again. How would that not take a toll?

Every time new life comes, there is a death along with it. (God, that sounds depressing.) But it’s true–don’t make me quote Semisonic again. Some people have gentler grips than I do; they let things pass through their hands more easily. I’m still learning how to let go and hold on and when to know the difference. But I’m seeing the grace in the second time around: how when LB speaks, it’s so much sweeter because of how long we had to wait for TK to. And how, when they speak to and with each other, it’s like a damn symphony (notice I said speak, not whine). How TK’s propensity to make people cheer for him only gets sweeter with repetition. How flowers delivered in Australia look just as beautiful, if not more so, in a food container than a non-existent-in-our-new-home vase. How every sunset, while different, is the same sun. How grace takes no notice of time difference or distance as it carries us through grief and joy, always to the same place: home.

It’s been a hell of a week.

Hell being the operative word. As in, hot as hell. Warmer than Satan’s armpit. More uncomfortable than a whore in church. Sweatier than Ryan Lochte at a spelling bee. And hot and I, we don’t mix. Yes, I grew up in the South. Yes, I was told that summer in Sydney is hot and humid. And I believed it…but also, I didn’t? Because what could really compare with August in Atlanta?

Sydney in February, that’s what. And it is not doing me, or my hair, any favors.

I’m on the edge. Not of glory, but of losing my shit. Every. Single. Day. But it’s not fair to blame just the heat. There’s also…me. And a little across-the-world move. And two boys who know just how to push each other’s buttons, and mine in the process. Also, a few spiders have been involved. And maybe a bit of lingering postnatal depression, some anxiety, and PTSD? I don’t know. I’M HOT. I’m hot, short-tempered, irritable, and glistening.

Let’s begin, shall we?

I made some notes. I make notes in my phone, because if I don’t then I forget everything: everything that’s happened, everything I want to write about, everything I need to buy at the grocery store. And as I look at my notes, I’m abashed by all the good things I listed, all the sweet moments and joyful memories. So I’ll work backward, from this morning, which was a Monday morning, which is the worst time of the week, can I get an amen? It was approaching 40 Celsius here (convert it to Fahrenheit yourself, I just can’t with it all right now) and I decided to drive The Kid and Little Brother to TK’s school, a ten-minute walk but it was 8:30 and I was already over this day. I parked along the street at a surprisingly close and open spot, which is a bit like seeing a nearly empty subway car in NYC and thinking “Score!” and being the chump that walks onto it then realizes too late, as the doors are closing, that the lone occupant of the car is likely homeless and definitely soaked in urine, and now you have not just the scent to contend with, but your nausea and also guilt over walking away at the next stop. Which you do, but still–ambivalently. Anyway, I parked the car and heaved the kids out of it and walked them (=herding cats, and YOU KNOW HOW I FEEL ABOUT CATS) to TK’s classroom. TK was dealing with Monday-morning anxiety and his therapist wasn’t there yet and he had lots of questions and LB had lots of energy and I had no Xanax (on me) and there was, as ever, my current, erstwhile, and oft-returning companion, Sense of Awkwardness. Also goes by Always the Outsider, Hey Look at Me–I’m a Weirdo!, and I Might Need a Bathroom Soon. I was trying to hold it together so TK didn’t lose it (aren’t we a cute pair) even as I was navigating this foreign land and might-as-well-be-another language. And bonus excuse-the-f%ck-out-of-me moment, but there are assemblies every Monday morning! And everyone else but me knows this! And the teachers were hustling their classes out onto the schoolyard, AKA Satan’s butthole of heat, to listen to the principal discuss being kind to and looking out for each other as I dragged LB behind me like a suitcase and TK was growing increasingly anxious over where his therapist might be and just exactly what the HELL was going on.

It crossed my mind that this is WHY we have a shadow therapist for him–one of the reasons–because were I not here, he would have been lost in the shuffle and who KNOWS where he would have ended up and WHERE THE EFF IS HIS THERAPIST and by this point, even the t-shirt and gym shorts I was wearing were like “Oh HELL no, you reek and we’re out of here.” The assembly ended THANK GOD and the kids dispersed to their classrooms and I told TK’s teacher that OF COURSE I left my phone in the car and I didn’t know where the therapist was but I’d go to the school gate and see if he was there and if not, grab my phone. I explained this to TK and he consented for me to leave but not without a look of uncertainty that broke my heart (not for the first time), and I heaved LB up on my hip like a sack of groceries as he squealed and protested: “IT’S HOT OUTSIDE! I HOT! I HOT!” and I made it to my car just in time to see the traffic cop taking a picture of the company-sponsored RAV4 (what does Equifax think we rap for?!), which was OF COURSE parked in a bus zone.

I played the ignorant American card (she’s seen our President and felt sorry for me and canceled the ticket), and TK’s therapist arrived talking of traffic, and we were all on our way. And that was my morning.

Now I’m in the waiting room at TK’s therapy center. There is light air-conditioning, I have snacks and cold water, I have time to weigh whether to increase my dosage of Lexapro, and I can breathe again. And as I do, I return to my notes. To my thoughts, from this week of new adjustments: of school starting for both boys, primarily. And there is this:

There were the two mornings last week when TK and his therapist did in-home sessions to pair with each other (a term which reminded me of Twilight and imprinting, but turns out, not the same thing), and I actually got to shower without an audience and walk out onto the balcony (dressed) and hear them downstairs, playing cars (did I mention his therapist is a dude? It’s wonderful. He actually has energy, #whatsthat) while TK laughed and laughed.

There is the comfort that both boys feel at church now, to the point that I was actually able to leave them in their kids’ class and hear a sermon and cry a bit, which is one of my favorite things to do.

There was the afternoon last week when we took LB to his preschool and TK and I got to spend some one-on-one time together, rare these days, and we walked around town and passed an elderly gentleman relying on a cane to walk. TK walked beside him and grinned up at him, and I was reminded of how much he sees that other people miss–how his heart is shaped uniquely to feel others’ “weaknesses” and “burdens” and recognize–rename–them as “special.” This boy, he sees everything, to the point that I have to slow down for him (you can imagine how well I take that at times)–he slows me down. He makes me see. It is so inconvenient, and so life-giving.

The heat, it is wearing me down. And now that the initial shock and adrenaline of moving have worn off, there is room for anxiety to enter in, space for frustration and lostness to show up and threaten to undo me. And I am so easily undone. The people here have friend sets and lunchbox intel and different foods and words for those foods and even my phone is new and doesn’t understand what I want to type (#firstworldproblems). I feel so out of place sometimes. It hurts, and I realize I have to let it–I have to take that time in the car after a near-ticket and a rough morning and let the tears flow, let the grief wash over me, because it’s not really about being in a new place, it’s about being in the old one–the one where I’m afraid I’m never going to fit in, never going to be really known.

There’s a print hanging on our wall here that reads, “I once was lost but now am found.” I found it online before we left Atlanta and had it shipped here, and it greets me when we walk in the door, and no matter the day I’ve had, I choose to believe it. Some days make that choice so hard. Others make it easy. Most days are a combination of both. But I watch it happening: the ways we are being seen, and known, slowly over time and through heat. How more faces and places are becoming familiar. How people are embracing my children, and how the way they say my name–“Mommy”–can change in an instant from needy to awe-filled, and I know it: that grace was here before we were, making this a home, and grace isn’t finished yet. I listened to it this morning, the reminder of the woman who knew the voice when it said her name–and I believe that that same voice calls things into being that aren’t there yet, even as I ache for them. I believe, but also…I don’t? Which is okay, because I know, and more than that, I am known.