by Kristen -

Hopefully

Years ago, a friend of mine and her husband took their young son for surgery to correct a pectus excavatum, or “concave sternum.”  The condition wasn’t life threatening, but was noticeable and would likely worsen as he aged, interfering with sports or other physical activity.  He was about seven years old at the time.

The surgery involved a thin, steel rod — a knife, really — being inserted from the side of the chest, and pushed carefully behind the sternum to “pop” it out into place.  It was considered a routine procedure.

Sooner than expected, the surgeon appeared in the waiting room where my friend sat anxiously with her husband.

“We have a problem,” the doctor reported grimly.  The steel rod had accidentally nicked their son’s heart.  He was bleeding internally.

“But we think we can fix this,” the surgeon went on, and began explaining the correction they would attempt.

Stunned, my friend’s husband interrupted.  “Wait.  Wait.  Did I hear you correctly?  Did you say you think you can fix this?”

The surgeon looked him in the eye and somberly replied.  “Yes.  We think we can.”

*****

I used to say that the difference between my experience with my daughter and that of my son was that while I understood that any calamity could befall my daughter — she could get hit by a bus tomorrow — there remained a reasonable expectation that that would not happen.  It has never been so with Daniel.  Autism swept “reasonable” out of our lives.  Yet for years I sought reassurance that his life would, eventually, turn out ok, would merge onto a normal path, even, if you can imagine, that he’d be the miracle child who overcame the disorder.

I thought I’d reached a point of acceptance that such assurances are not to be, even believing I could live without them, that I’d adjusted to the constant ebb and flow of his life.  I realize now that I haven’t reached that place after all.

Several months ago my son’s group home manager, Kristen, regretfully informed me that Daniel could no longer be safely cared for at his current residence, the home we’ve loved, where he’s seemed to flourish for two and a half years.  They felt they had no choice but to give the obligatory “30-day notice” that a new placement for our son was necessary.

This shouldn’t have come as the blow it did.  There had been incidents, serious ones, during the last few months.  In February, Daniel’s beverage obsession drove him to drink windshield wiper fluid he’d spotted in a neighbor’s garage.  He spent three days in the hospital undergoing dialysis to flush the toxin from his system.  Just weeks later, he eloped to another neighbor’s house, barged through their front door, and began guzzling from a gallon of milk in their refrigerator.

I knew about these episodes, even recognized uneasily that they were escalating.  Despite his challenges, however, we’ve been happy with the overall quality of his life, the attention he receives, grateful for the opportunities he’s had to experience at least some of the larger world.  He enjoys a unique, hard-won bond with his primary caregiver.  It’s been the best place Daniel has lived for years.

Yet in retrospect I wonder if I’d been intentionally blind, unable to face the inevitable consequences of behaviors we’ve struggled for years to understand, desperate for a break from the relentless worry of parenting a severely autistic child.  Distracted, too, by the demands of running for re-election for my job as township clerk, perhaps I could handle only so much stress at a time.  Was the campaign my excuse to shut my eyes, for a few precious months, to the chronic challenges autism presents, even as my subconscious warned of a crisis, the culmination of fears I’ve harbored for his lifetime?

Kristen described an alternative they had in mind, a “one-on-one” placement ten minutes from his current home.  The new house would be equipped with an electromagnetic locking system to prevent elopements, a feature unavailable in his current home, designated as an unlocked facility.  His care team would transfer with him, lessening the impact of the move.

Everyone, she told me, agreed that this arrangement is what Daniel needs, for his own safety and that of others: his case supervisor at the managed care organization we work with to oversee his residential needs, their behaviorist, their nurse.  Everyone except the contract department, which controls the flow of funding.  They rejected it as too expensive, and directed the MCO to look elsewhere, to find another agency, another Adult Family Home, otherwise known as a group home, capable of managing Daniel.

“We want to keep Daniel with us,” Kristen told me.  “His behaviors are difficult, and we don’t want him to end up in Southern.”  She was referring to a multi-bed facility in southern Wisconsin, the kind of sprawling institution that’s the stuff of nightmares for parents like me.

I should have known these words were coming, words I told myself again and again to prepare for.

But I wasn’t prepared.  I wasn’t ready to learn that yet another living situation had failed, that his behavior was more than even this capable staff could handle, that we needed to start again.

I wasn’t ready to hear the word “institution” in relation to my son.

*****

That night I had to attend a campaign function featuring a national political figure, and set aside my panic over Daniel to interact with nearly a hundred jovial attendees.  I don’t know how I did it, but it must have been effective; my emotional shut-down carried through the weekend.  I didn’t — simply couldn’t — talk to anyone, not my closest friend or even my daughter, unable to face questions for which I had no answers, or probe a situation that left me breathless.  Holding the knot of fear and despair inside my chest was easier than facing it, than acknowledging again the powerlessness I’ve so often experienced in the course of Daniel’s life.

My husband understood this.  When I came home from work the following Tuesday he was on the phone, speaking to the supervisor of the managed care agency, trying to gather information on what came next, how we could fight the denial of the alternative our agency had offered.  He was told emphatically that the proposed home was not an option, but that the MCO would begin a search for another placement for our son.

“Hopefully,” she added, “it will be an Adult Family Home.”

“What does that mean?” I asked frantically when Andy hung up the phone.  “What does she mean, ‘hopefully’ an Adult Family Home?  As opposed to what?”

He didn’t need to answer.  I already knew.

*****

I’ve spent weeks reflecting on why that word crushed me as it did, why it evoked the opposite of its intention, that of encouragement, optimism, possibility.  I remember the desolation that washed over me, the certainty that no matter the outcome of this latest challenge, this particular piece of shitty, that there would be more to come; that after all these years nothing has become easier, we are still battling a war we can’t win.  We are still only at hopefully.

And hopefully isn’t enough where your child is concerned, yet that’s what we’ve been working with for years.  Now my longstanding fear that we’d lose my beautiful, bright and loving son to an institution was an actual possibility.  The shadowy menace held in the dark of my heart had taken shape, ready and waiting.

Autism is years of hopefullys, of fervent, desperate prayers that the next situation, or therapy, or medication, will make a difference, only to face again the inescapable truth that the disorder is lifelong.  “Hopefully” had turned on me, and I hid in my insulated bubble of mute fear for weeks as the situation unfolded, paralyzed, unable to write, or even discuss it with family or friends.

It had beaten me.  I was done.

Except we don’t get to be done when we’re parents.

*****

To explain the bureaucracy involved in the resolution of this crisis would take pages, and this blog is too long already.  Suffice it to say that things got worse before they got better.  The neighbors whose house Daniel had busted into back in March had called the police, and eventually the local newspaper.  Articles were published calling my son’s actions a “home invasion,” which left the occupant “traumatized.”  Readers commented online, including one who opined that people “like that” should not be allowed in the community but in institutions where they belong.

For several weeks it appeared that the only agency willing to accept our notorious son was a brand-new outfit in Fond du Lac, two hours further north, operating just one home, a dim, cramped, duplexed house with no fenced yard and owners comfortable with “restraint” when necessary.

It took two agonizing months, but in the end we got what we wanted.  Andy tells me that I played it perfectly, breaking from my paralysis precisely when necessary to move the process toward our goal.  I don’t know if that’s true, or if we were just lucky.  The owner of our current agency reduced the service rate originally proposed, leaving the contract department no excuse to deny his placement in the alternative house.  Daniel moved to his new, secure home a few days ago.  He seems comfortable there, happy.

On that first awful night of Kristen’s call, Daniel’s father Jeff told me to hang in there.  “Things always work out for Dan Man,” he reminded me.  I don’t have such trust in a larger plan right now, unable to forget the fundamental truth that things didn’t work out so well for Daniel, that his life was royally screwed before he ever had a chance.  I tell myself that I won’t be duped again.

A few weeks ago, though, Andy and I drove by the new house, which I’d toured but Andy hadn’t yet seen.  It’s a tidy, light-filled home with a swing in the backyard.  I can picture Daniel there, swaying gently as he blows his bubbles, shaded by the maple tree behind him, his aide Brittany by his side.

On our way back to the highway we passed a park where Daniel and I had shared a picnic two years ago, and without thinking I exclaimed, “Look!  That’s where we came that first summer!”  I laughed with exuberance. “Maybe, when things settle down, we can go there again…”

Hope remains resilient.  Or so it seems.

 

My friends’ son survived the accident on the operating table, and is now a handsome, heathy 27-year-old.

by Kristen -

Denny’s: A Love Story

Denny's

Several years ago, the former pastor of the church I worked for sent me an email a few days before Christmas, and we exchanged brief updates on our lives and plans for the holidays.

Chris and his family were going skiing in Michigan the week before New Year’s; I reported that Daniel would be home for the day on Christmas Eve, and we had our own big plans: dining at Denny’s, his favorite restaurant.

Apparently our upcoming yuletide celebration sparked an idea for the Christmas Eve sermon Chris was pondering for the new church he’d founded in Chicago. He hoped to illustrate the Magi’s likely bewilderment upon finding the humble manger, when they had anticipated grander surroundings befitting an infant king. He wondered if my feelings about going to Denny’s for Christmas perhaps echoed those muted expectations.

As it happened, I’d just learned that a letter I’d sent to the Chicago Tribune would be published on the 26th, and I sent Chris a copy of the text. In it, I described my adjustment to simpler holiday traditions, the gradual lessening of expectations as autism changed our lives.

Chris’s sermon was well-received, he told me later, my story of Christmas at Denny’s the hook he’d been seeking to hold his message together.

For years when he lived with us, visits to Denny’s were a high point for my son. We loved it too, as the franchise near our home was never too crowded to find a booth in which to ensconce Daniel while he waited, impatiently, for the meal he always ordered.

I remember in particular a Saturday evening shortly after Daniel’s twelfth birthday. His sister Natalie had her own life by then, rarely stuck with her parents on a weekend except under the most dismal of social circumstances. So it was just the three of us, Daniel anchored between Andy and me in a spacious, semi-circular booth, his eyes glued to the swing door that led to the kitchen across the dining room. Despite his elation at being there, he remained watchful: the food had not yet arrived.

A paper kid’s placemat lay in front him, on which he sporadically scribbled, when prompted, with the worn crayons provided by management to keep children occupied until their meals were served.

There was no distracting Daniel, though. Repeated assurances that his food would come soon didn’t cut it. I sensed him trying to relax, to trust us and his own previous experience, that his coveted “Sampler Platter” with a side of fries was forthcoming. Yet every minute or so he’d ask again for his food, tapping the laminated menu for emphasis.

“Frah? Cheh? Chica?”

And at last the Sampler Platter appeared, a heaping, monochromatic mound of fried mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers and onion rings, augmented by a plate of French fries. As it emerged from the kitchen he sat straight in his seat, his gaze riveted on the server’s progress toward our table, reaching for a fry before she had set the plate in front of him.

In moments his mood changed as he let his guard down at last. Only then could he truly enjoy the experience, smiling and chuckling while plowing through each delicious, deep-fried morsel, gulping his soda between bites.

That night seems like a lifetime ago, when hope still glimmered for at least a semblance of the normal life we dreamed of for our son. We’d recently begun tentative exploration of the scant, unappealing choices offered by our state for adults with disabilities, advised by transition specialists that it was never too early to begin preparing for this possibility.

But in 2004 nothing yet had been etched in stone; we were several years from the bleak December day we moved Daniel to residential care. He was still young, adaptable, impressionable. Dramatic, life-altering change was still possible, with maturity, continued therapy, the eleventh-hour intercession of God. It was possible.

Wasn’t it?

I still see him that night, his anxious face reflecting concern carried, unspoken, for a lifetime; that his simple request, finally discerned among so many unarticulated, misunderstood desires, would yet be denied him.

And once the food came, his worry allayed, he relished his modest treat, a meal of his choosing, oblivious to the world beyond the walls of the restaurant: the world of sports and video games, of roughhousing with peers or movies with fledgling boys whose voices were changing, a world of first, tentative contact with girls, a world of moving forward.

Is this what life holds for my son, I thought, the bright spot of his days eating at Denny’s with his parents on a Saturday night? This isn’t forever; it simply can’t be. This can’t be what God has in mind for my son, my beautiful, bright child. There must be more for him one day…

I didn’t realize that one day even Denny’s would be out of reach, that the disorder that limited his focus to a platter of fried food would render even that pleasure unattainable.

It’s been a year and a half since we took Daniel into a restaurant, even a fast food venue. Past incidents of upset and aggression haunt me. I don’t care if he hurts me; I’ve survived that before. I fear him hurting another, an unsuspecting stranger, standing in the way of the obsessions that seem to drive him now where food and beverage are concerned.

The team at his group home have taken him into eateries for over a year, McDonalds, Panera, Olive Garden. We’ve joined them there, amazed and encouraged by Daniel’s demonstration of acceptable behavior when monitored by professional caregivers. His case manager hasn’t encouraged us to try this ourselves, however, cautioning that Daniel must learn new patterns, breaking rituals and expectations formed over years of parent-child interaction.

Yet increasingly these last few months, I knew we needed to try. Andy and I chose mid-morning last Friday to give it a go.

We stopped at a Denny’s a few miles from Daniel’s group home before picking him up, finding it more crowded than the one back home. A few booths were unoccupied, however, and I asked the manager to hold one for 20 minutes until we returned with our autistic son. He didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic, but a booth remained vacant when we returned. Flanking him on either side, Andy’s finger hooked in Daniel’s belt loop, we walked quickly through the parking lot and into the waiting booth.

We must have looked odd, hustling our 6’1’’ son through the restaurant. Andy suggested I relax just a bit, that we needn’t behave like prison wardens escorting a convict to his cell. My heart pounded, though, the tension I intended to conceal thrumming off me in waves, the limitless calamities Denny’s held in store streaming like ticker tape through my mind.

Our booth ran parallel to the galley where orders were dispensed and the soda fountains were housed. Daniel craned his neck to get a better view, and I flashed on the image of him leaping over the partition, a maneuver of which he is entirely capable.

“I can’t believe it’s come to this,” I remarked mournfully, once we’d settled, a sticker book replacing the kid’s placemat on the table now. Andy remained calm, though, despite my anxiety, despite Daniel’s repeated demands for pop and restless gestures toward the kitchen. He covered my hand reassuringly. “Relax, hon. We’re doing fine.”

And then the beloved Sampler Platter arrived, complete with a side of fries. And Daniel relaxed, just as he used to do, wolfing down his food in customary fashion before we could change our minds. By the end of the meal he was beaming, giggling, encouraging our tickles, just as he did as a boy.

It was a tense outing. But it was a beginning, a return to a pleasure once enjoyed.

My son’s life now bears little resemblance to the life once hoped for, yet I recognize that those hopes, those expectations, were my own. I wish more than anything that I knew what Daniel hopes for, what dreams he holds dear, what experience he longs for.

Yet he remembers Denny’s. It holds meaning for reasons I may never fully understand. But he still loves it there.

Would he have been just as happy with his caregiver by his side? Maybe.

I think he remembers, though, that this experience, this treat, is part of our life, together.

by Kristen -

Camels in Wisconsin

Kids at Botanic Garden

My close and very wise friend Marla reminds me sometimes that, as parents, we are only ever as happy as our least happy child.

Which is problematic when a) you’re as co-dependent as I am, and b) children are a never-ending source of angst all around.

Oh, they are the wellspring of all that is most beautiful in our lives, as well.  I’m acutely aware of how fortunate I am to be a mother; I can’t imagine who I’d be without my children.  And therein lies the rub.

My equilibrium — because I’m old enough to know that “happiness” isn’t really the goal after all — is irrevocably tied to that of my children’s, as it is for most of the parents I know.

Aside from the advocacy role I’ve assumed on my son’s behalf, I don’t think I’m an overbearing parent; I’ve allowed them room to mature and explore, in different ways, while remaining close and involved in their lives, even as they’ve grown up and away.

My peace of mind, though, is dependent on their lives being steady, on track, on being good.  I’ve never learned that trick we are told to embrace as our children reach adulthood, that letting go thing I’ve heard about.  I wonder how many parents really have.

Instead, I ride each wave, every turbulent passage of my kids’ lives, feeling the ebb and flow of their experiences as deeply as my own.

There are times, though, when I wish I could disengage, when I imagine what a relief it would be to do so.

Often since my son’s move early this year I’ve considered our relationship, and my aspirations for him, the goals modified, adjusted or abandoned over time.  His diagnosis 21 years ago was the beginning of the end of almost every dream I had, back when his future seemed as boundless as my love for him.

No divine flash of acceptance acclimated me to the very different life in store for him than that which I’d mapped out so cleverly in my mind.  Submission occurred over years, covert moments of resignation so subtle I often didn’t even recognize their import, the setting aside of one dream, and yielding to another.

He’s living one of those altered dreams now, in a group home tailored and responsive to his unique needs.  His behaviors are accommodated, worked on, proactively addressed.  He is experiencing a fuller world than I’d dared hope for just a year ago.

Why, then, is it yet so difficult to view his life now as the fulfillment of at least one dream I’ve held on to, a circumstance realized after years of uncertainty and despair?

A few weeks ago I received a photo of Daniel taken at the Racine County Fair, which he attended with one of his specially trained aides.  Teeming with crowds and tempting distractions, it was an outing I wouldn’t have dared navigate on my own.

But there he was, engaged and laughing in the summer sun, sitting atop a camel.

He was clutching a boxy, harness-like contraption designed, apparently, to facilitate balance on the camel’s hump, giggling, it seemed, at the absurdity of his position, but enjoying it just the same.

My quirky, unpredictable son was riding a camel.

Laughing out loud in delight, I quickly composed a reply to Daniel’s case manager, who’d sent us the photo.

“Of all the dreams I’ve had for Daniel through the years, riding a camel was never one of them.  Seeing this picture, though, I can’t imagine why not!”

I recognized in that moment how bound I am to my old ideas of how life ought to be for my son, for both my children; what will bring them fulfillment, comfort, or — dare I say it? — happiness.  I understood, too, that so many of my dreams for both of them are my ideals, and mine alone, shaped through years of my own experience and regret, my own longings and missed opportunities.  The finely crafted hopes and dreams I have for my children may, in reality, bear little likeness to their own ideals at all.

How liberating this moment should have been.  How freeing to discern that my children, now adults, can — in fact, must — take the reins themselves, albeit in very different ways, weighing the worth of their experiences by their own standards, their own views on the meaning of “happiness.”  I really could let go at last.

Naturally, it didn’t work quite that way for me.  Lifetime habits are not so easily cast aside.  From my camel epiphany emerged a prickly, peevish reaction that I’ve struggled for weeks to articulate, a sullen acknowledgment of how desperately I would like events to proceed, just once, precisely the way I want them to.

Now that would be liberating.

How horribly self-centered, and how very common: We all want what we want when we want it.  But, oh, to have respite from the worry, the chronic concern over their welfare, their progress, their lives, which mean more to me than my own.  And I’m capable of convincing myself that this would be possible if they’d just follow those paths familiar and comfortable to me, if their lives, so vulnerable and fragile, so critical to my own, played out within the safety of my own comfort zone.

Screw the road less traveled.  I want my children traveling roads I’ve walked for them for years, if only in my dreams, whether they are roads of their choosing or not.

Oh, I know where this tantrum comes from, this petulant demand for a guarantee.  I’ve had enough of uncharted terrain, of stumbling along dark roads, praying for a lucid, benevolent end.  I want convention, the known, even if it’s known only in my fantasy.  How much safer than the fathomless range of possibility, all manner of depravity and disappointment, of suffering and loss the world may casually throw their way.

I want to let my guard down, to sink into the shelter of the way things were supposed to be.

And this is the crux of it, what it’s taken me the nine months since Daniel’s move to accept: that I expected his new life to be different than it’s turned out to be.  I thought I’d relax now that he is in competent, professional hands, and in many ways I have. But this transition has new complications, as well, fresh heartbreaks to adjust to, more painful because I didn’t see them coming. His life is better, infinitely better than it was, but not precisely as I’d hoped it would be.

The better part doesn’t include me.  And being a better part of his life again is precisely what I’ve been dreaming of for years.

Fortunately, I don’t often act on this selfishness.  I am living with the ache of feeling like an outsider when I visit my son, knowing I’ll never be the center of his world again.  I concede that, at least for now, his behavior deteriorates when I am with him, that our relationship is a trigger for the issues we are trying to curb.  I’m trying my best to accept that his need for me is diminishing, and that is how it should be, even though it feels like a loss I simply can’t bear.

I support with all my heart decisions I once could not have imagined my daughter making on her own, finding her way with confidence and grace.  I applaud her independence, knowing each new decision takes her a step further from the protective embrace of my influence.  I believe she knows that I’ll be behind her no matter what choices she makes, if she fails or succeeds; that she can always run back to me even as she’s pulling away; that I will be her champion for the rest of my days.

Weeks of agitation later, I understand that I’m here again, in another stage of letting go; it caught me unaware, as it’s done so many times before.  These periods have taught me, though, that any new experience surrounding my children can feel threatening, their lives in relation to mine in the balance, as I struggle to find my own place, my equilibrium, again.

My desire to hide, to look away from the bright new paths they may follow almost overwhelms me at times.  Who knows the distance those paths may carry them?  It is simply too painful to contemplate.

But holding them back would be more painful still.

by Kristen -

Stolen Summer

Lost summer

When she was 11 years old my daughter Natalie was an extra in a movie.  A friend of ours landed her the roll of “church-goer” in a scene filmed at the Catholic parish just a mile from our home, when he served as assistant director for “Stolen Summer,” first winner of the Project Greenlight film competition launched by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon in 2000.  Parts of the movie were shot here in Deerfield, hometown to the contest winner, writer/director Pete Jones.

As you can imagine, she was thrilled, delighted with the glossy photo of the film’s co-star, Bonnie Hunt, who’d kindly scrawled next to her signature, “It was great working with you, Natalie!”

I ran into Pete Jones at Starbucks recently, and the title of his movie has been in my mind ever since.  As the summer of 2014 passed into fall, I had the sense that it, too, had been stolen, or perhaps more accurately, simply lost.

It’s been nine months since my son’s move to an adult family home, the transition we planned for and agonized over for years.  I realize now how much hope I’d pinned to this move, how dearly I wanted it to mark a turning point in Daniel’s life, to be the moment when the rest of his life, his real life, began.

For months I’ve been holding my breath, my own life on pause, waiting for the transformation to unfold.

I knew enough to give it time, to allow him to settle, to adjust to the life-change this move would entail.  And he did adjust; he adjusted rather beautifully, falling into the routines of the new household, agreeable if distant companionship with his housemates, and affectionate, nurturing bonds with his caregivers.

He adjusted better than I did, in fact, unburdened by expectations honed over a dozen fretful years.  Perhaps this is one gift autism grants the people it affects as profoundly as it does my son: Daniel doesn’t realize that in the eyes of the system he is now an adult.

It took me all summer to recognize that I’ve been watching his childhood recede, and with it, the mindset when autism still seemed malleable, and open to improvement; where options and potential still shimmered with expectant possibility.  His move to the adult system, so long anticipated, now carried a more threatening measure of permanence, the grim recognition that this may be as good as it gets.

I should have seen this coming.  Rationally, I knew his behaviors wouldn’t magically disappear once he turned 22 and moved to a new living situation.  His obsessions moved with him, stubborn, baffling, hampering every new opportunity I’d allowed myself to dream would emerge at this stage of his life.  The off-grounds day program we imagined providing structure, purpose and meaning to his days was put on indefinite hold at the end of August, after repeated, disruptive episodes of beverage stealing and aggression.  Staff now provide a “home-based” program, involving scheduled chores, neighborhood walks, visits to the animal shelter: modest pursuits within the safety zone, the scope of Daniel’s tolerance.

I knew this was possible, even likely.  I hoped anyway, and clung to the nebulous but cherished future I’ve been envisioning for my son for years.

All summer I waited for it to get better, even as I understood that whatever “better” means now is light years away from what “better” used to mean, once upon a time.  For months I’ve been laden by an inertia I don’t fully understand, except the vague fear that the best days of my son’s life are behind him, the sense of possibility I’ve clung to for years now gone.

I don’t know if this is true; my fear may be a purely defensive, reflexive response to disappointment, to a diagnosis I’ve been struggling to reconcile for 20 years.  I pray that his life will evolve in ways that I can’t begin to imagine now.  But with the stakes so high — the rest of my son’s life on the line — I can’t bring myself to let go and “trust in the process,” as we are told to do.  That kind of simplistic adage has never cut it for me, not where my children are concerned.

Yet I’m no longer Daniel’s caregiver; I haven’t been for nearly seven years.  Accepting that I could not care for him nearly broke me, left me stunned, powerless to degrees I’m still discovering.  The sorrow of letting him go, the dank, potent guilt of it, keeps me from “turning it over,” from trusting that his life will unfold as it is meant to, even when that faith is the only thing left to cling to.

Instead, I spent the fleeting summer of 2014 in a cocoon of rigid, frightened watchfulness, eyes fixed on a prize I already knew wouldn’t be won.

We dreaded the shift to adult living, the ominous milestone hanging over the head of each parent of a profoundly disabled child. It took three years to secure Daniel’s placement, and when we finally had it, I was buoyed by a surge of optimism that carried me right over the edge.  The new beginning we were hoping for proved merely more of the same, a change of environment scant armament against so powerful a foe as autism.

My disillusionment crippled me all summer.  I accomplished almost nothing, focusing my impotent attention on Daniel’s progress down the same, narrow path he’s been traveling for years.  I must have been aiming higher than I realized, back in January, when he took to his new home with ease, laughing and smiling by the end of that long day when he arrived, officially, at adulthood.  It seemed like such a good omen at the time.  I feel betrayed by my reckless optimism in the face of his troubled history, by the exuberance that let me forget, just briefly, that autism is lifelong.

This summer wasn’t stolen.  It was simply lost to me.

I can let go of that now, though, and write about it, even while wrestling, still, to understand my reactions.  The journey of acceptance is lifelong, too.  I’ll be traveling this path for the rest of my life, my real life, as well.

There are summers yet to come, in my lifetime and in Daniel’s, opportunities still for discovery, for steps that may lead, one day, beyond the path he is traveling now.

This summer is gone, but Daniel is still with me.

He will always be with me.