Susan Senator

Four years ago, almost to the day, here is what I wrote about Nat and his life. Amazing. How much has changed…

Monday, June 9, 2008

Leaving

I was folding napkins for dinner. In the middle of smiling at Joyful House Stompies, I stopped dead in my tracks. My brow pulled inward and my throat swelled, and there it was, grief out of nowhere. I watched Nat running back and forth, stimming, talking so loudly in his own language, and I suddenly felt leveled by what was to come. He was going to live at his school. It was really going to happen. The thing that I once feared so much, come to life. I had promised, when he was eleven, that I would never send him away. Anything that happened, our family would deal with it. We would just broaden our arms to hold it up.

So — my arms are tired. I find I cannot carry this much. I am opening them up, and letting him go. Our family is no longer bigger than our challenge, the way families with little kids are in control. We are beyond control. Nat and Max are breaking off, discreet lands of their own. We are bigger, and also smaller than we have ever been.

It is upon us now. I once feared this eventuality so much that I ran from it — for the first three years of Nat’s life. That thing — once the doctor at Mass General said the word, “Autism,” — was kind of a gray, shadowy essence that I could keep at bay. I did not have to see it. I did not know what shape it would take, but I could be optimistic. I could still say, “All bets are off. You never know.”

I was sad tonight because now there is one big thing I do know. He’s leaving.