Run to the table.
When The Husband and I headed to The Kid’s school last Friday for an IEP meeting, I had prepped with prayer and Xanax. Thirty years later, school meetings still unnerve me, and I’ve had enough diarrhea lately, thanks. At stake during this meeting was the plan for TK next year: specifically, if he would be moved to the inclusion pre-K class (16 mainstream kids, 6 special needs) or kept in his present class to complete pre-K there (12 special needs kids). As I do, I had tied my hope to one thing: moving to the inclusion class. For God’s sake, the child can count to one hundred and read six-word sentences. HE EVEN LOVES THE HAMILTON SOUNDTRACK. So what if he still shits his pants? Four months ago he wasn’t saying a word. Surely that had to count for something. Besides, we have the summer to bootcamp potty-train and lose my sanity.
I sensed my familiar longing for approval, for a specific outcome, radiating from me as we took the elevator to the second floor, and I hated it. How long before I grow out of this nonsense? I thought. I felt the truth echo within my heart, a loving Probably never, sweetheart–that’s why we have grace. I tried to stop reducing a two-hour convocation on my son to one outcome, but my efforts have never been what I’d refer to as “sufficient,” you know? So I sat down between TH and TK’s teacher and listened.
Within minutes it became clear that TK would be in his same class next year. Goddamnit, I thought. Did his teacher not even WATCH the ten-minute video I sent her of him reading? I caught a sideways glance at TH, begging him silently to speak when I knew I couldn’t without releasing an ugly cry. He asked questions and we listened some more. I asked a question, coupled with a sob: would this hold him back from entering kindergarten on time, if he’s ready? I was assured it wouldn’t, contrary to what I’d thought. The situation seemed less shattering. I calmed down a bit. My heart still ached, but I was beginning to see the upside of this. For one? More help with potty-training. You know, in case I go insane this summer and wave a white flag.
And there were other things, once I took my eyes off a singular result long enough to see them: the fact that last year, two months after a diagnosis, we were sitting in a room at a school he wouldn’t attend, a strange-and-never-to-be-known environment, with three people who had met him once and would soon disappear from our lives. They handed us sheets of paper that reduced him to a (laughably inaccurate) composite; they were describing a child I didn’t even know. Which piqued a fear in the back of my mind: did I know him? Would I ever? Now, a year later, that child runs through the school doors, grinning and shouting, “MAMA!” We have conversations. He answers my questions (when he listens. MEN.). He tells jokes (his version of them; we’ll be working on his material). He asks for things. USING WORDS. And yes: I know him. And so do his teachers–the same ones he’ll have next year. This year, those teachers described him and it wasn’t a composite; it was a kid. The Kid. A kid who didn’t sound like a stranger; in fact, he sounded a lot like me when I was a kid. Which, despite some obvious issues, gave me hope because…yeah, I’ve done all right. If hiding his toys so he can get to them before everyone else is an “area for improvement” on official paperwork, I can live with that. Because it sounds pretty damn resourceful to me.
I thought about it later, this tendency of mine to reduce everything to one point, to hang all my hope on a single thing, one box checked off. And I realized that what it really comes down to is the thought in the back of my mind that this shouldn’t be happening to us. He should be playing in the backyard, not stuck in therapy. I should be in the backyard with him (or at a bar, whatever), not sitting in an elementary school conference room staring at a list of goals. This is what it has all come down to in doctor’s offices and hospital rooms and in countless moments for which I knew I wasn’t sufficient: we shouldn’t be here.
I left out one thing. And it happens to be everything.
Last Sunday at church, we brought the kids back to the service from their classrooms for communion. We do it occasionally, to get them used to situations where more is expected of them. Without fail I am drenched in sweat afterward, but it feels important so we do it. This week, The Kid was especially vocal in the back with me while we waited for the call to the table. I tried to tell him to keep it down, but commands like that have lost a bit of their importance ever since he started talking after FOUR YEARS OF SILENCE. When he began inching his way up the aisle toward the front, I followed behind him a few feet, not entirely concerned. He’s never been one to push the limit too far; he’s too cautious for that.
Or not?
Apparently all his therapy is injecting some serious confidence into him, because before I knew it, he was at the front of the room, his elbows resting on the communion table as our pastor prepared the elements. I was frozen for a moment, there a few rows ahead of TH and Little Brother, where I had found a resting spot beside a friend in my quest to observe without hovering. A vision of the future flashed before my eyes: TK ripping the tablecloth from the table, wine spilling everywhere. I sprang forward and grabbed him, pulled him back with me. My friend whispered in my ear, “Well, they always do tell us to run to the table.”
And just like that, the moment was transformed. Friends smiling, our pastor placing his hand on TK’s head, receiving the bread and the wine, surrounded by people who know us and our story. There was a time I would have been horrified, embarrassed at the attention. No longer. I felt grateful. I felt grace, the grace of being exactly where we’re meant to be. These moments somehow both one thing and everything.