My Star

 I met my sister from another mister in October 2004.  We had been a part of an online support group of parents of children with autism, so I guess you could say we knew each other before we met. The occasion was a fundraising walk for autism, and a bunch of us met up at the old spectrum to participate--the farthest flung coming from New York and Maryland.

There's a picture of four of us, somewhere, me, with baby G in my arms, a spider monkey of a toddler, and K and two other women. K had purchased a colorful weighted lizard for one of her boys and walked with it slung over her shoulder. G rode in his stroller, flanked by elder and dad.  The four of us dropped K off at the train station later, and I think that was when our friendship began.

We emailed each other daily and occasionally talked on the phone. My kids were in the autism sibling study at Kennedy Krieger, younger the subject, elder, the control. When we met, G was about two years outside of his dx, and the worry of a dx that would eventually come was the other shoe I was waiting for to drop. 

K dismissed me. "G is a star," she said. 

I always wondered what that meant. But her words were always there as he grew up, even those really dark days when he retreated into himself, and I was afraid I'd never see him again.  He was a star. Stars shine. And for a while, he was dark.

How was he going to shine?

He found lots of ways. I could sit here and type out a pretty exhaustive list of the things he's done in the last 17 years or so to make good on Miss K's words. While elder worked today, we ran errands with younger, who went off a few times to do his own thing while dad and I took care of business. And inwardly, I marveled at the fact that he COULD, in fact, go off on his own and do his own thing, and it really wasn't that big a deal. 

But to me, it's a huge deal. We didn't know if we'd ever get here. And each frontier we push back brings a whole new set of challenges. Make no mistake, we still have huge swaths of ground we need to cover with both kids.

But.  The older guy just got his first post secondary degree and continues to work two jobs he's held for five years (in March and June). And I had to post the pic below because I still can't believe that happened. All things being equal, everybody has stuff they need to overcome. My older guy complains a lot about his allotment. My younger guy, on the other hand, quietly keeps pushing forward.

He'll always be my baby. And he'll always be my star.