...winds of change...

We've all heard it said countless times before…

"The more things change, the more they remain the same"

I wonder to whom the credit belongs for those wise words?

The typical frame of reference seems to be generational.

The elderly referring to history's repetition. The adults scoffing at youths' imagined uniqueness.

The parent observing the ebb and flow of a child's growth and stagnation...

10 years ago, the diagnosis was new.

And it rocked my world.

Shook the very foundation.

In that moment of emotional fragility it felt as though someone had taken all the pieces of my puzzle-life and thrown them into the wind.  In that moment I was broken.  In that moment I thought everything had changed.

The funny thing about moments like those are the way in which they can seemingly last an eternity.  It's as though the rest of the world around you slows to a crawl and fades away.  Your breathing halts...your pulse quiets... 

But your brain incomprehensibly speeds up.

Lightning fast.

Jumping from one train of thought to the next as it searches out correlations and answers and strategies…as it searches for the solution.

It's as though, in that moment when everything else slows and stops, your mind is actually able to work at its full potential.  

I've told the story…our story…so many times it's as though I switch on the auto-pilot.  The sunny, fun, innocent moment before the phone rang. The darkness that clouded my vision. Sliding down the wall, gripping the phone. The voice coming through a tunnel...

And the spark of clarity that followed in time...when I realized he was unchanged. 

A diagnosis. A name for a way of being. A framework in which symptoms fit.  An explanation for the ebbs and flows.

But not a change. Oh no, not a change at all. 

You see, the change had already happened.

Not to him.

But to me.

And not in that moment.

But long before.

The change had happened the moment I became a mother.  That very moment.  When everything in my life expanded to make room. When my limits dissolved. When I became more patient and more sympathetic and more understanding and more empathetic then I had been.  

When I wanted to get to know him.

So by the time that phone call came, there was nothing left to change.  I already knew him. His quirks. His obsessions.  His inabilities.  His limitations.  His loves.  

Tidying it all up and packaging it with the bow, presenting it as a diagnosis…didn't change a thing about him.  

And what it's taken me till now to realize, is that it didn't change anything about me either. 

Up until now, when I shared this story…our story…I always believed that it was the defining moment for me.  That it was this supercharged catalyst that altered my course and made me who I am.  

And I was wrong.

Oh, so very wrong!

That moment didn't bring about change. That moment brought about fulfillment. Fulfillment of who I had chosen to become. Fulfillment of my promise.

It didn't alter my course. It didn't upset the balance. And now, over a decade later, I can acknowledge that it didn't even change my life.  Because from the moment I became a mother...his mother...I had been growing into this anyway. 

There are no certainties. There are no absolutes. There are no unbreakable promises. 

Parenting isn't some roll of the dice in which you are either lucky or not.  A typical child. A special needs child.  No guarantees. No hard and fast set of rules.

I am the mother I am, because I am a mother.  Not because I have a special needs child.  Not because things did not go according to plan.  Not because of some defining moment in his life.

No.

I am the mother I am, because I am a mother. His mother. 

It's a chain reaction...motherhood.  That spark sets it off. He grows, and therefore I grow. I grow, and therefore he does. He learns and our world expands. I try and our world deepens. 

So you see.

"The more things change, the more they remain the same"

He's newly 12 now...barely begun in this year...  Taller than ever before.  I'm nervously observant of his height.  Worried for the day when he is taller than I.  Worried for "the change" that might bring.  The signs of early adolescence are showing themselves.  Every day he's becoming a bit more himself.  Looking at his face across the dinner table, I can see the fast forward into the future. I can see previews of the man he's becoming.  And the hopefulness and pride is all twisted together with grief and loss as he leaves boyhood behind. 

Change is in the wind.  Adolescence knocks at the door.  He will change.  There's nothing to be done. No stopping time. No holding on past the limit.

He will change.

And I will have to change as well.

I will have to change into the mother who lets go...

Terrifying.

Acknowledging the necessity for change is terrifying. 

Allowing for change is terrifying.

Where is my future self, to tell me every little thing will be okay? Where is she now, that she can look back with hindsight and say that what I am afraid of now will prove itself in time to also have been, not change, but simply growth-fulfillment…

If only it could last. If only these precious moments could expand into eternities of their own.  If only it could all stay the same.  

If only the wind would change…