Forever Child

Two weeks ago, I dropped my youngest child off for his freshman year in college.

That seems like an unremarkable statement, as thousands of other parents did the same exhilarating and heart-wrenching thing as well.

It was a very intense, two-and-a-half-year journey to get him there. My son Zach is twice disabled and gifted, so the range and type of schools we looked at were diverse and lengthy.

I am fortunate that we got some wonderful road trips together out of the experience: great food, and even better conversations.

I had my children late, and I had been warned by those who’d gone before me that the final goodbye on move-in day is not always what you think it will be.

Quite true. We had three.

We tried to say our official goodbye in his dorm room, but one of his roommates walked in on us mid-hug, and we both looked at each other and said we’d try again after convocation.

We had been warned that after the President of the college and other faculty spoke, we would have five minutes before we had to part ways.

We found each other afterwards, and with abundant sunshine finally smiling down upon us, we had our bear hug with a few tears, with my son saying he couldn’t be too sad because he’d see me every few weeks (not quite true despite the college’s relative proximity to our home, but I wasn’t going to argue with him). We reluctantly let go, then I looked at my Fitbit and laughed.

We still had half an hour.

Once I ascertained he’d meet his cohort at the library, I suggested we walk over together, refill water bottles, and make it official there.

In what seemed like the quickest half hour ever, it was finally time.

At the exit, I said, “When we walk through those doors, you go right, I go left, and you start college.”

One more fierce hug later, and the door closed behind me.

As I said “bye”, he turned around and gave me a smile that validated eighteen years of parenting.

Eighteen years, beginning with watching my toddler lose all his words, a year of skills, and the spark in his soul, over three haunting weeks.

Eighteen years of challenges, triumphs, heartbreak, and elation as his father and I guided him to adulthood, with a cast of dozens in the wings.

Eighteen years of never, ever taking a shortcut, no matter how tired and cranky his parents were.

Eighteen years of balancing his mild autism against the needs of his brother’s profound autism.

Eighteen years, many spent not daring to believe he could ever reach this level of independence.

It was a smile filled with excitement.

A smile exuding confidence.

A smile replete with hope.

It was so quick that if I hadn’t looked as I strode down those stairs and turned my head to take in one last glimpse, I would have missed the moment of a lifetime.

A moment I wished I could have shared with my stricken, devastated soul seventeen years ago.

As I made my way to the President’s house for a “somewhat happy hour” (I’d been told the appetizers were usually wonderful), I thought this as well.

I had just dropped off my youngest son at college and watched him sit down next to a pretty girl and start talking. Mom forgotten.

As we all hope it will be.

The truth is, I should be “done”.

My husband and I should be planning a modest vacation that fits in with our college tuition costs. I should be contemplating at least a day or two of total flotation in my pool.

But I wasn’t, because the next day I would be picking up my twenty-two-year-old profoundly autistic forever child from sleepaway camp.

I use “forever child” loosely because to me, somehow, that implies we will be around for him forever.

And with my husband’s increasingly challenging Alzheimer’s, and my worn-out body approaching six decades, we won’t.

Even when Justin moves to our residence, I will never truly have an empty nest.

As I walked down the uneven cobblestones to the President’s lovely manse, and hoped there’d be some sugar available, I knew my emotions and reality would be different than many of the parents at the reception.

Some were toasting their significant others.

Some were crying on a trusted shoulder.

Some just looked exhausted.

And it hit me.

This was one more event where my community’s bubble separates us from the majority of others’ life experiences.

We parents of profoundly disabled children, we are never done.

Not until our last breath.