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This morning I woke my son early, interrupting our sleepy Saturday routine to deliver him to his high school placement exam. Over an ambitiously balanced breakfast neither of us mentioned the test. It sat between us, an unarguable fact; one step in a path predetermined by impersonal policies to place each child in an academic environment boasting a climate of challenge that might mold students for futures whose success is gauged by graphs of accomplishment.

For my part, I believe tests to be largely subjective measurements of individual mastery void of an ability to capture the character of the student in neatly shaded circles. Still, I respect that this experience is part of a system within which we participate and so I encourage best efforts without weighing my children’s worth in sterile scores intended to measure ability and predict potential. Both children are directed to greet each challenge with a fearlessness to try and a willingness to fail in an effort to succeed. It is with this understanding that my son moved through his morning, mindful of the test and eager to be finished.

The restless waiting that punctuated the time between breakfast and our departure was a medley of directionless busyness. My son resisted the temptation to sneak beneath the still mussed covers of his bed, instead perusing the pile of bedside books for a title to accompany him to his test. Setting aside my half-hearted efforts to tidy the mess of our morning meal I skimmed my son’s book selection from over his shoulder inviting a casual conversation about the subject, his hero, Stephen Hawking.

In our last moments before leaving the house my son directed me to a dog-eared video interview,  elaborating on text with technology, eagerly highlighting the following words of wisdom:

“One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away.”  – Stephen Hawking

I marveled at the reverence with which my son hung on each counsel, his eyes tender and his presence still. A peaceful consciousness was with him when we parted ways and it sat between us later as we lingered over lunch. It followed us as we squandered an hour of a perfect autumn day looping lazily around a local lake and it was with him still as he gathered a friend into our day, their voices drifting to my ear as I finally tackled the task of tidying the kitchen for the evening meal.

These three truths centered our day and gifted me a beautiful memory; my son’s compass more telling than the scores that map a future we cannot yet see for the stars.

I sometimes wish I could gift you the experience of visiting our past, allowing you to shadow old experiences which have created challenges that accompany us into new relationships. I would show you the five-year old version of my son, teary eyed and determined, his hand beneath my own as we shaped each letter together during endless hours of homework. Conscious of his ability, I willed him to perform a volume of work that weighted his backpack with repetitious exercises in busy work and suffocated his evenings from learning.

I was determined then to prove to my son and his teachers that he was different, but not less than; capable rather than exceptional. In years to come I would look back on these elementary school evenings with remorse, seeing the slow diminishment of joy in the absence of a more natural exploration of his environment. The little boy who raced towards school room doors began retreating into independent interests for the satisfaction of learning. Books and ideas littered his silence, replacing questions. Where he once admired teachers for their wisdom he began to resent the restraints of rote exercises in recycled knowledge.

Notebooks and loose leaf pages riddled with ideas and images replaced listening. Restlessness for concepts long mastered between pages of science themed periodicals and volumes of reference books challenged the value of classroom tasks. The school day became a place of frustration and disconnect; unengaged with school work he was equally misplaced among peers. Here I failed as well.

Empty refrains of they don’t understand, be patient, things will get easier fell on deaf ears as my promises failed to come to fruition. Rarely did children understand. Instead I worked with therapists to prepare my son to learn the language of his peers’ behaviors, determined to nurture relationships that were unbalanced by ignorance. We learned to hold tightly to those we could trust and to guard ourselves against unkindness.

This little boy is no longer so little, but he carries the sadness and frustration of old disappointments among curiosity and hope into each new school day. Beneath his resistance to try is an eagerness to be inspired, his fear of unkindness lies just beneath his wish for friendship. He is waiting for reassurance that the space of his school day is safe to set aside his shield of disinterest and distraction. His loyalty and passion are promises based on trust, first earned but forever true. The young man before you, capable and exceptional, in spirit and in mind.

An expected goodbye offered a moment of hope this morning. A new school year waits just around the corner and the change I have come to anticipate has created reassurance in place of anxious anticipation.

This morning I received a lovely letter of goodbye from my son’s school aide. After months of shared struggles and success, he is moving on to a new experience. Where previously I might have taken comfort in a familiar face, I am happily more at ease with the unknown. Uncertainty feels familiar, not knowing holds both promise and potential. A new opportunity to grow.

We are starting from scratch and in doing so we set aside bad habits for new goals. Old mistakes will linger only in our memories and previous accomplishments will become irrelevant as we look forward, setting new expectations. The blank space of endless potential and the unmarred newness of this moment invites colorful dreams, hope in new forms.

In the earliest stages of our daughter’s presence, when the idea of a second child was bundled with eager expectations for the mystery of a life newly formed, my husband and I promised to steal moments from our routines to be present with each child, individually. Careful not to disrupt the experience of parenting our son and mindfully pledging to share our time equally with someone new. Over the years we have found creative ways to borrow time alone with our children. Some days we invite them into an activity, other days we insist on their company.

This weekend my husband and daughter embarked on a camping trip with friends, leaving my son and I to rattle around the quiet. No longer easily distracted by my activities, my son is now old enough to hold expectations for more independent interests. Rather than forcibly shuffle him out the door under the pretense of preformed plans I decided to stagger through uncertainty setting my hopes for little more than time away from distractions. As a newly official teenager with an ever-present appetite, I decided to appeal to my son’s taste buds.

We began at a restaurant of his choosing. Less than a bribe and more than a concession, I wanted to meet him in a place of happy anticipation. Watching him inhale his favorite milkshake while we waited on our food I was smitten with the man-child who balanced awkwardly in his seat while draining his beverage with the sloppy, unbridled enthusiasm reminiscent of a toddler who once stuffed his order of french toast into his cheeks too eager to chew. Between bites of burger I realized I was watching my son eat pickles, onions, lettuce, and tomato without second guessing the ingredients between meat and bun. As a toddler he ate everything, but over the years stubborn expressions of self have created food boundaries that were as predictable as inexplicable. It’s funny how in motherhood something as simple as a shift in food can stir memories. I’m quite certain my son wasn’t remembering french toast as he contentedly consumed his meal, unaware I was traveling through time between bites.

Preparing to leave the restaurant I was still smiling at his loopy gait, the way he throws himself forward unaware of his surroundings, when he abruptly changed gears and pushed himself eagerly into the entryway door, holding it open for a parade of strangers. A young family entered the restaurant, the father manipulating a bulky stroller into the foyer. As an older couple made their way past my son the young father looked at me silently mouthing the word “yours” while pointing a questioning hand toward the door. As I nodded he flipped his hand into a subtle thumbs up.

This one small sign was the equivalent of silent applause for what no stranger could have realized was a special recognition. My son doesn’t always notice the people around him. His words and mannerisms can create moments of frustration among adults and peers who do not understand this child, who by all outward appearances is unexceptional, struggles to translate the world around him. The effort it takes for my son to step out of himself and juggle the multiple signals around him is exhausting at best. Only I knew that he had gone from studying the pattern of the floor, leaping from planks of wood to avoid the cracks, determined to reach a shelving structure littered with playful distractions for waiting guests his borrowed book in tow – to recognizing a need on the other side of the door. Breaking from his own momentum was more than etiquette, it was an exercise in effort that extended beyond what I could communicate in hand signals.

My husband and daughter will return today with stories of time with friends outdoors. They will settle dirty gear and smoke laced laundry as evidence of their campfire adventures to tidy for another day, but I am holding a special place in our sharing for my son’s intangible memento of our time together. A symbolic acknowledgment that he’s listening and trying, even when we are too distracted by our daily routines to see our son’s progress. Sometimes we have to spend a moment away from our expectations to allow ourselves to see something new, all the while remembering the old.

I have spent years mapping expectations, measuring growth, anticipating need, and responding to crisis. I do this quietly, without pause. Then, without warning, a moment unplanned interrupts my anticipations, disrupting expectations and creating progress.

Over the past year my son’s demonstrations of teenage moodiness and boisterous exercises in self-expression have invited disharmony into previously peaceful family moments. Defensiveness like rungs on a ladder leave us toppling into anger and injury. Accidents of ignorance without intent to harm.

Deep sighs, eyes that pull to the sky between lids half closed, and gangly limbs arranged in lazy, dismissive postures. I read the lines of his movement without hearing the hurt beneath them.

Most days I chase behavior with lessons, attempting to create consciousness. I mirror my son’s behavior, echo his words, question the path of his choice hoping to guide him towards awareness. Last night in an effort to shift my own perspective, I became the student.

Crying and yelling my son tossed his frustration recklessly while speaking intentionally. I studied the frustrated child unraveling in front of me, setting aside my need to comfort or control, and holding tightly to the words my son chose.

Anger was sadness hiding from hurt. An absence of effort was a recognition of failure under the weight of impossible standards.

I echoed my son’s words offering validation before acknowledging the boundary he had trespassed. Without judgment or consequence I listened.

All the moments I planned for, this messy moment had created hope. The ugliest pieces of our harm were merely reflections of emotions seeking compassion, inviting us to see one another’s needs. Progress unplanned.

For those rare friends who have followed me among my thoughts, there is an unfortunate pattern of peer centered heartache that accompanies my son’s experiences as a student. Invisible handicaps create false expectations of sameness and unfair intolerance for differences. I try to navigate this space patiently, guiding my son into awareness of his differences and tolerance for other’s ignorance. Some days are easier than others.

Today should have been a happy day. We gathered as a family in the early morning light to welcome my son’s birthday, a calendar milestone, over cake and cards. Knowing my husband had to leave town for work it was important that we marked this moment collectively before scattering into the day to our own agendas. I agreed to steal a moment from the day to share lunch with my son, just the two of us.

I spent part of my morning distracted by the happy busyness of reading with my daughter’s classmates. The quiet joy was punctuated by an unexpected fire drill and I marveled at the choreographed calmness of the elementary aged children not yet aware my peacefulness would be jarred by the silent alarms that sound in our hearts.

At noon I felt the trouble before I could see it. My son was guarded, eyes breaking contact; arms moving mechanically, jutting at the sides like he was pushing at the air around him. He moved with intention away from school, breathing only once we were alone, outside the building. In sentences, broken and rambling fluidly among tears he gave me his heartache whole. I gathered pieces of the harm into a linear thought, extracting connections with questions and trying to lend comfort.

Then, with the wisdom that so often makes me a student of my son’s character, he said: I don’t understand. People say that when I am 30 these kids will respect and admire me for all the things that make me different. So why don’t they like me now if they will later?  If there’s nothing wrong with me, what is the difference? 

I wanted to say that children mature into adults who learn to appreciate diversity through experience, but I have sung similar refrains of hope and encouragement in elementary school expecting middle school would be better. Time has not made children more accepting, instead we have become exhausted by the tiny injustices, old harms, that accompany us into new experiences.

Rather than explain away misbehavior as predictable, common place, or normal adolescent error I am starting to ask for special treatment. Themes of misconduct, consistent and intentional, dare not be explained away as a phase or rite of passage. Unacceptable norms demand exceptional moments of nonconformity.

Tonight I am redirecting our discontent into a celebration of the wise soul who sees the world for how it should be, not limiting himself by the standards of others. Marveling at the gift of conscious living his life has given me.