Uncertainty

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything

by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests

be made known to God.  And the peace of God,

which surpasses all understanding, will guard

your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Philippians 4:6-7

August sat in the black molded rubber of a baby swing, his deep brown eyes searching the sky as if he intended to find the source of the breeze that moved his hair.  I stood before him, pushing him gently.  I could hear Evelyn screaming as she ran wildly over the wood chips blanketing the ground, her father chasing her slowly across the playground.  Her little legs pump like pistons, her arms move quickly back and forth urging her forward.   It was a perfect evening to burn off some energy at the park.

Gus looks at me but once, and the moment is gone as quickly as it has arrived.  I chased him as he swung away from me, kept my face close to his as I ran backward when the pendulum swung back.  I could see all five of his teeth as he smiled, our wrinkled-up eyes full of joy and laughter meeting for a second as he let out an airy giggle.  Then he resumed his stoic expression and focused on the trees behind me, or the sound of a motorcycle on the street.  He glanced casually at the figures playing tennis, and then turned his face to the ground and watched the carpet of wood chips as it seemed to move beneath him.

I imagine what the world looks like from his perspective, and I'm instantly transported to the back of a cab in an unfamiliar city on a stormy night.  It's a series of fractionated lights and shapes reflected through a maze of wind-driven, jagged lines of water, a shimmering and dazzling convoluted mess of concrete and glass.  Lightning strikes somewhere and for an instant, the world is illuminated and I can see the definitions of the skyline, but the image soon fades again from a city to a collection of buildings and signs and lamp posts.  Like a tree isn't really a tree, but a series of twigs and leaves being jostled by the unseen fingers of a soft spring breeze.

Maybe that's why he only looks at me when the lightning strikes, I think to myself.  He wants to see his mother, not a pattern of shapes.

Jon-Michael says I'm pessimistic, that I'm negative.  He stays positive.  He sees the light fading on Gus' infantile social maturity, like his issues are settling beyond the horizon just a little slower than expected and his star soon will shine.  I'm standing on the other side of the world, watching an ominous glow peeking over the horizon, showing only a fraction of its full light as it inches toward morning.  The words echo in my head, told to me by the man who evaluated my son for early intervention:  Social/emotional developmental delays, communication difficulties.  They stretch like the rays of a sun, radiating from something much bigger.

I always described Gus as sensitive, shy.  Strong and silent.  Curious.  Words that are warm and heartfelt, descriptions of a personality that has revealed itself to me every day of his life.  I'm greeted now with clinical, cold phrases meant to categorize and stereotype the boy I love, determined through a short morning session of scrutinizing his every movement.  The boy who cries my tears, who reaches for me in moments of fear or discomfort.  The boy whose arms wrap around my legs as I cook dinner, whose fingers eagerly grab from me his afternoon Colby jack cheese snack.  My son who falls asleep every night in my arms as we sing hymns and rock slowly.  With or without a label intended to define my child, he will always be the same Gus who holds my heart in his capable hands.

Yae, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of developmental delays, I shall fear no diagnosis.