Letting Go

Our son Jack just finished his first year in a college program.

Today you will help him pack up and move home. You opted to do this on your own. 

I sit at my desk with a cup of coffee. I think of you alone in the car, driving on the flat highway flanked by green, a pack of gum on the seat and your phone hooked up to the charger. Your command center, we call it.

I wonder what you think.

Was it a success?

The expensive program with the promises of progress.

The year of independence with a lot of support. 

Time and time again, your tender heart was tested. Every fear you harbored came true.

More than once, the world misunderstood our complicated son.

Social mishaps.

Online predators. 

As long as I live, I will never forget that night. I’d already gone to bed. You woke me, phone in hand. Jack was screaming on the other end. Then the police officer came on and delivered the details in a soothing voice. 

Two men.

An abandoned warehouse. 

An ATM card that wouldn’t work.

A stolen wallet discarded on the pavement.

The next day, Jack didn’t want us to come. He asked us to stay home. He wanted to handle it on his own. 

I wonder if you think you failed him. 

This boy who held your hand even as his height eclipsed your own, taken advantage of by someone he met online. 

The boy you cradled as an infant and chased as a toddler. 

In middle school, you taught him about the solar system. Carefully, you hung miniature planets from the ceiling in his room. They glowed in the dark.

This year, you did the very hardest work a father could do. You rooted from the sidelines.

You tied your dreams to a tireless cloud. Then, from the ground, you chased it across the sky.

We often say the world is not made for kids like Jack—kids who jump and stim. Kids who suffer from crushing anxiety and an absence of invitations to birthday parties.

What if it’s not made for us either? The parents who watch other kids pass ours by like cars at a racetrack. 

Who drive through town and feel a small sting when we see boys bouncing basketballs with ease, girls clustered together giggling.

That could have been our sons, our daughters, had autism not forever altered the course of our dreams.

It’s not made for us. Still, we mutate. We evolve. We celebrate the triumph of others while we nurse our own brokenness. We make new dreams. This is our reality. 

I take one last sip of my coffee. As I look at the clock, I realize you’ve probably arrived by now. The same brick building where we unloaded the car last July, our feet dancing around puddles from an early morning rain.

We carried in pillows, blankets, and a brand-new comforter.

After we folded t-shirts into drawers and ate a picnic lunch of cheeseburgers and pasta salad, we drove out of the parking lot and left all that was meaningful behind in the shape of a boy.

At my desk, I picture you turning off the car and putting your sunglasses into the case. Packs of gum returned to the center console. The phone taken from the charger.

In a moment, you’ll step out into the heat, the sun. You’ll scan the sidewalk and look toward the door, where your tall son stands waiting.

You walk to him. You’ll step inside and grip his shoulder, pulling him in for a hug. Your arms around him, you’ll think of all we lost and all we’ve gained in the span of a year. For a moment, time is frozen. 

You. This boy. 

I know your heart without words, without conversation.

You will pack it all up again. The pillows. The blankets and the comfort. Once the car is full, you will both climb in and begin to drive.

Together, through backroads and green hills, you will make your way back home.

Tender father, forgive yourself. 

You did not fail him.

You held his hand when he needed you.

You let go when he was ready.