{"id":514,"date":"2008-05-27T06:31:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-27T06:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog2\/2008\/05\/being-okay\/"},"modified":"2008-05-27T06:31:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-27T06:31:00","slug":"being-okay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/being-okay\/","title":{"rendered":"Being Okay"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is time.<\/span>
–Rafiqi, from The Lion King<\/span><\/p>\n

Nat’s IEP this morning. Oh, God. The goals this time are to be not only what he does during the school day, but what he does in the Residences<\/span>. I am also bringing a document regarding the guardianship. It is the formal disclosure to Nat about what is going on. In essence, a neutral person must read to him the plan for our guardianship. I think his teacher could do this, being a dear and sensitive person. “A lot going on!” as my mother would say.<\/p>\n

I am afraid I am going to be very emotional, either during or after this meeting. I have so many feelings about it: eagerness to formulate really good goals; nervousness about the un-anticipated, the surprises; relief to get this discussion going; and of course, such bittersweet pangs. But I also feel like I’ll be okay.<\/p>\n

While I was riding my favorite bike ride on Sunday, the song Melissa<\/span> came onto my shuffle (I ride with one ear bud in and sing while I ride). Melissa,<\/span> by the Allmans — that powerful brotherly duo before the peach truck ended Dwayne’s life — is the song that I most connect to Nat. It is the song that was on my Labor Tape, which Laura and I made together as part of my birth plan for Baby #1. Of course we never used the Labor Tape, but I played it a lot in my car while waiting for that baby of mine to arrive. I didn’t know I was having a boy, even though he had shown himself to me in a dream. I was always reluctant to read the signs, way back then, to trust my intuition. Anyway, I thought that if it was a girl, I would name her Melissa. I was so eager to have this baby, and I would express this impatience to my Grandma, who would always say, “In a gutte shu (?) (It will happen when the time is right).”<\/p>\n

The beautiful opening strummed chords of Melissa<\/span> came on, and I did not push the button to skip it, as I often do these days when I want to stay pumped. Instead I plunged into the treacle; I got sucked into the sweetness of sadness indulged and wallowed while the endorphins and adrenaline worked against this and kept me going. I listened to the words and let all those powerful feelings descend. “Crossroads — will you ever let him go?” And it came to me that we really do have to let our children go, as people are always telling me. It’s like we are given these beautiful souls to take care of for a brief time (that seems endless when they’re young) and we nourish them and learn from them, and they from us, and then they go on their way. <\/p>\n

So I suddenly felt like, yes, it is okay to let Nat go. It is time.<\/span> To let him move out, even though that is not necessarily his plan right now, and give him the opportunity to grow and learn among others. To live his own life apart from me. And then, to come back and visit and reconnect in new and unknown ways.<\/p>\n

As I always tell Ben, when he is scared to try something new that I know will help him: It will be okay. <\/span> This is what I knew, at last, as I pedaled home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is time.–Rafiqi, from The Lion King Nat’s IEP this morning. Oh, God. The goals this time are to be not only what he does during the school day, but what he does in the Residences. I am also bringing a document regarding the guardianship. It is the formal disclosure to Nat about what is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pSTth-8i","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/susansenator.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}