...here for the highs and the lows and the highschool...

We waited for the bus to arrive this morning, on this first day of a new school year.

We waited, and walked, and talked.

I'd forgotten our tradition, you see. The one where I read to him from "The Hardy Boys".  We've been inching our way through the series since kindergarten, a chapter or so per day as we pace back and forth in the heat of early fall ~ the crisp cool of autumn ~ the thin, breath-stealing chill of winter ~ and so on.  Some days we're running late and I barely get in a sentence before the bus squeals to a stop.  Others it's a chapter and then some, words rushing by as my watch ticks off the minutes and we wonder if the driver forgot us.

I'll remember tomorrow, no doubt. I've already laid a fresh new book out next to the door, so I can't miss it.  Now I just have to figure out where I "cleaned up and organized" away our bookmarks to, and I'll be good to go!

At any rate, this morning I forgot.  So instead of reading and listening, we walked in an ever-widening circle, talking our way through his first-day jitters and all the empty platitudes of encouragement that I could only hope he wouldn't actually need to rely on but put breath and sound to anyway.  He let me ramble on about all the new coming his way today, interrupting to redirect the conversation to his latest design ideas.   I interrupted right back, steering us into the "call me...email me...google hangout me" if anything goes wrong.   

I looked up at him in the middle of our conversation. Looked all the way up...all 6'4" from my 5'8" vantage and thought to myself "what a marvel it is to have raised up this young man who I look up to!" and I must have smiled at the thought because he asked me why I was smiling. 

I said this:

"Because I have been the lucky one."

I.  Have been.  The lucky one.

I, alone...have been the wingwoman ~ the ride along ~ the plus one ~ the teammate ~ the encourager ~ the consoler ~ the counsel giver ~ the rage receiver ~ the advocate ~ the single solitary only parent.  

The mother.

The lucky one.

Here through the lows, and here for the highs.  Here for the jeers and tears and hugs.  Here for the meltdowns that left scars on my shins.  Here for the 3am sleepwalking and the night terrors that fed my insomnia.  Here for the homework headaches and the teacher tribulations.   The sensory calamities, the volume catastrophes and the sleepless nights.  Here for every single hug and every single smile and every single laugh...every honest, gut-jiggling, jaw-cracking laugh.  Here for the parenting.  Here for the motherhood.  The one lucky enough to be here.

I've been here all along.

I haven't missed a thing.

He starts high school today. 

And I am overjoyed and heartbroken, in awe and nerve-wracked....I am all those things that all we mothers are on the first days of every new chapter.  I am full of memory, of everything that's come before.

I will spend my day missing him, trying to distract myself with work. I will wonder if he's found a familiar face or a quiet space.  I'll be preoccupied by concerns and worries and nerves.  I'll miss him.

And he?

He will be himself. Wholly himself, just as he always is.  As his autism frees him up to be.  Brave and bold.  Secure in his sense of self.  Determined to use all the strategies he's learned to cope with the noise and the crowd and the pace and the newness of it all.

He will be overwhelmed, but he won't let it show.  He will be curious, but keep his questions silent.  He will squeeze himself down into a small version of himself and try to blend in, unseen and unnoticed.  He will shut down and shut out and shut off.  He will cope, to the best of his ability. 

And when he comes home, I will be here, as I always am...smile on face, arms wide open...

And he will wait until the bus pulls round the corner and we are far beyond the sightline of the other kids  to rush into those arms and tell me, as he has every day of every year..."I missed you."

~Leanna