He's there, in that building just a few blocks down the street. And I'm here alternately frantic and teary-eyed, heart pounding, arms strangely empty feeling.
I've been rushing around scrubbing and washing and rinsing and folding...blasting my iPod to drown out thoughts.
The bus never came, so he ended up on another and I had to race down to make sure he actually was there. But not go in...just stand on the step and hear the confirmation, but not see for myself.
It's the next step...I know that. And there will be many more to come and they will ache just as this does. With every growth and change he makes, I will mourn what is past. I will rejoice in the achievement and the challenges and the changes...but I will mourn. Because I know what it felt like to be his whole world.
I've felt bits and pieces of this before...when the first diagnosis was made, when we went to the first speech therapy, when we went to the special needs preschool that first day...and once, for a whole week as I dealt with the first autism spectrum diagnosis and I thought I had lost something. Now I know better...I lost nothing...rather, that which was now had a name.
I'm fidgety on the inside...my stomach is roiling and my head is dizzy and pounding and silent all at the same time. I'm so very used to days that are full up of reaction...and now there is nothing to react to. My coffee cup has no danger of being tipped over onto the carpet. My lunch will not be picked at by sticky little fingers. The clean folded laundry will remain clean and folded...there will be no tent topped with skivvies in the livingroom.
And meanwhile I wonder...do they see the miracle? Do they know he needs so much but can give them even more? Will they help him with his lunch and keep him safe? Will his feeling be hurt? Will he be hurt?
Where is the book that will teach me how to be Mami from a distance?
