Saying it up front kind of puts into question though, doesn’t it? Sows a little doubt maybe?

This is a story about home. It could be about your home or a friends home, but only you could write that post, or your friend. This is about scratches in the hardwood floors of a house in eastern Massachusetts, in a mysterious spiral pattern. It’s about a patch of wallpaper* where a younger you practiced writing your name. It’s about the front step and the proper angle of attack on the pile of snow from shoveling the walk. It’s about the tree you climbed high enough to look down on your two story house, before you learned your multiplication tables – and thus calculate the number of bones you could break if the potential energy became another kind of energy.

It’s about a plaster patch in the back of a closet, about the size of child’s foot. Or the industrial grade swingset in the backyard that may out live you. Or the broken cement roof tiles you’d swear would handle the force of a football, kicked from 25 carefully measured yards away.

It’s about projects large and small, like the new floors installed in the living room and all the bedrooms – and the back pain that came with it, free of charge. Or the small work of tinfoil art crafted to deflect the light of a fixture directly in front of a television. Or the pictures you hung in the family room, in places picked by the previous owners – no matter how well it fit your arrangement of stuff. It’s about the odd mirror you hung in an odd corner, the one your mother gave you shortly after you were married, before she lost her mind.

It’s about all the little memories hiding in all the little nooks, corners or cracks.

It’s about the feeling you get when you first think about leaving them all behind, to move to another place where memories are waiting to be made.

- – -

* Ten or fifteen years after we moved, my sisters visited the old neighborhood and asked to have a look around the old house. The current owners (at the time) showed them a room almost completely free of wallpaper, save for a small square hidden by a dresser, where someone had practiced writing their name many years ago.

I didn’t find what I wanted.

So I went to Lowes. I picked up a couple faucets and a drain snake/auger. I would’ve picked up a stronger stomach too, but they were on back order. The faucets went in without too much trouble, but the shower drain was more of a challenge. It wasn’t a technical challenge. It was a holding my cookies as I pulled the goo out of the drain kind of challenge. I was completely unprepared for its makeup and consistency. If you don’t think you can stomach a description, please read no further.

I was expecting soupy. You know, something having a relatively high water content. Instead, it was more like a renewable resource for road repair. It was thick, black and greasy, held together by a matted matrix of hair. I was expecting the hair, but black tar? Then there was the smell. Should I tell you about the smell? Could I tell you about the smell? Could I possibly put it into words? It kind of smelled the way I’d imagine a sewer would smell – if I’d ever smelled a sewer. Crawling around in a sewer is one experience I’ve thus far been denied.

Poor me.

This was worse. It was like I’d bathed in it, the smell surrounding me in a swirl of moldy, rotting filth.

Whatever the remains of our seemingly harmless showers became, it took ten minutes to wash off my hands. Two applications of Tilex and scrubbing would not remove it completely from the shower floor. When I say it was a God awful mess, I mean it like no other mess I’ve encountered, and remember – I have two kids.

This weekend I’m going to clear out the sink in the kids’ bathroom.

Pray for me.

That’s right, I’m such a lousy father I didn’t know when school started.

Well, today I’m feeling charitable. I like to think I’m just forgetful. Forgetful parents aren’t necessarily lousy, are they?

Anyhoo, I’m of a mind to see this as a great step forward for Beth. Not that her father didn’t know, but that I wasn’t worrying about it coming. Dreading is actually a better word.

You see, when most parents are rejoicing in school’s return, I’ve always dreaded it. School was a time of suffering for Beth, and I suffered with her. Asperger’s made Beth different, and school kids eat different for lunch. Of course, this was before we knew Beth had Asperger’s. For a couple years we just thought she was eccentric. We thought it came in the package with a high IQ. It took a while for us to realize how different. She was our only child, and she was cursed with shy parents (me anyway). I don’t do well with people myself, so I lacked another point of reference.

Then we went through years of therapists, doctor’s of varying specialties, and finally a psychiatrist or two.

It wasn’t until someone got us in to see the department head of psychiatry at the children’s hospital in St Pete, a year and a half ago, that we learned a form of autism was the likely candidate. It wasn’t until we lucked into a study with the local university that we saw any therapy that made a difference. It wasn’t until the psychiatrist recommended a small, private school we’d never heard of, which had success with high functioning autism kids, that Beth found respite from the bully squads of public school.

She was among her own, and she was as happy as I’ve ever seen her.

The neighborhood kids can be no better than the ones from school. Their parents seem to worry Beth’s quirks will rub off on their kids, so they don’t let her inside to play. It’s only at school that she’s among friends.

So you see, the school year isn’t just good for Beth – it’s a blessing.

So I think I get a pass for forgetting the first day of school. Now it’s just another day.

- – -

Protestant boy meets good Catholic girl: it’s a classic story repeated through the ages.

Or not, exactly.

Cheryl and I went to church regularly growing up and as young adults, but she went to The Church, while I was raised Lutheran. It was the subject of a serious discussion early in our relationship. I think we both felt we were in it for the long haul, and it was a talk that needed having sooner rather than later. We learned we had similar thoughts about God and religion, and in the end Cheryl left to spend the years with me out in the Protestant wilderness.

Three years ago our blissful time in the wilderness started to come apart, and it was my fault.

It’s been three years since leukemia and I became acquainted. It marked the beginning of the end of my regular church going days, but it wasn’t the only reason. At first it was because my oncologist said I had to stay away from groups of people, after chemotherapy beat the stuffing out of my immune system. No people meant no church. Then it was momentum. Cheryl eventually pushed back, dragging me back for a little while, but then depression struck. I haven’t been back (much) since.

Even though the rest of us weren’t going on Sundays, Beth kept going to confirmation classes.

She’s stubborn that way.

Adam started going to pre-k a year ago at the Catholic School/Church where my in-laws attend Mass. Since I wasn’t going to church, Cheryl decided she’d start going to Mass with her parents. For a list of reasons I don’t have the energy to slog through right now, we decided Adam should stay at the Catholic school beyond pre-k. Then Cheryl joined The Church. She’d been going anyway, and membership came with a tuition discount.

Now she is once again… wait for it… a Catholic in good standing. She’s back in the fold with the One True Church (TM).

We kid because we love.

I like to think of myself as an enlightened guy, but you’ve probably already deduced I’ve got my prejudices like everyone else (though some are bigger or more grotesque than others). I’m not proud to admit it, but Cheryl’s return to The Church is part of the reason I haven’t been back.

The idea of splitting up the family along religious lines on Sundays seems wrong… and yet… I don’t want to go to a Catholic Mass. Some folks think it’s because I don’t understand Catholicism, but it’s really because I do. I grew up Lutheran/Protestant, which probably predisposes me to anti-Catholic bias, but I’m almost sure it’s more than that. I know the Lutheran Church has its problems too, but there are core principles of Catholicism I can’t accept, principles I’m reminded of every time I go to Mass.

Although I’m far from a biblical scholar, I studied various religions in school, under people who didn’t have an axe to grind or a product to sell. I’ve sat through my share of Catholic services. I was even married in one. It’s not a problem born of a lack of familiarity. There are many Catholics in the world who are wonderful people – people I’d be proud to worship with: like my wife, my in-laws, and my son’s old babysitter (who’s become a dear friend of the family). I try to respect their beliefs. I suspect there are more bad Protestants in the world than Catholics. Still, I don’t want to go. I won’t. I haven’t.

Before I get carried away, I have to say this wasn’t the biggest reason I stopped going to church. I hadn’t been going for a year or more before we reached this point, so it wasn’t exactly a grand stand on religious principles.

For a while we went through an awkward religious transition. Cheryl took the kids to Mass on Sundays, taking care of their weekly worship obligation, while I stayed home. Then on Wednesday nights we would ferry Beth over to the Lutheran Church for confirmation class. Cheryl tried taking her to the Catholic version, but she didn’t like it.

When Beth had a crisis of faith the working hypothesis was: it’s my fault too. Can you see a pattern developing? Beth’s a smart kid. We thought she saw me skipping church and figured dear ‘ole dad had gone atheist. If dad didn’t believe in God, one of the adults forcing her to go to church all these years, what was she supposed to believe?

It turns out we overestimated my influence (in my opinion). She’d been harboring doubts for a while.

One Sunday not so long ago, Beth went up to the priest after Mass and asked, “how can you accept what we learn from science and still believe in God?” It was a great question, but the poor priest wasn’t prepared to be ambushed by a twelve year old right after Mass. One thing I can say for Beth, she’s not afraid to ask the tough questions. I think she gets it from Asperger’s. She doesn’t get it from me.

Later, she approached our old pastor at the Lutheran Church after confirmation class and told him she didn’t think she believed in God anymore. Afterwards, he told us he didn’t think it was a good idea for her to come back. That stung, but he did give a reason – or try to. He said if she was going to continue going to Mass, it would be too confusing for her to continue taking confirmation classes at a Lutheran Church. I called bullshit, though admittedly I called it from a position of weakness. Beth’s a smart girl. Set aside a few sacraments, saints, the Pope, the attention given to Mary, the roles of women in worship, the rhythm method, and celibate priests, and it’s practically the same religion, right?

A crack formed in my nice, comfortable bias, and my objections to going to church crossed further over the religion line.

I’ve since had several Science v God talks with Beth. I’ve shared a few of the reasons why I stopped going to church. I’ve reassured her I DO believe in God (over and over), but I’m forced to admit actions speak louder than words.

I wonder if she believes me. I wonder if she senses I’m holding something back. I wonder how she’s been affected by my debates with the in-laws over religion, and specifically over Catholicism.

Sometimes I haven’t been very nice.
Sometimes I’ve been an ass.
Sometimes my wife has told me to stuff it.

It seems like a long time ago, but there was a time when I thought of myself as an optimist. I might not have always carried myself that way, and others might not have seen me that way, but I saw it. More importantly, I felt it. In between bouts of major depression – which weren’t that often, I generally thought things would work out. I didn’t have any reason not to. I was an upper-middle class white kid who didn’t have to work a day in his life, until he graduated from college. I did mow lawns in the neighborhood so I could buy a motorcycle suitable for tearing up the abandoned orange groves. I had a stable home life. I did well in school. Things did generally work out for me.

Over the last few years a few things seemed to pile up on top of each other. My mother’s horrifying fall into mental oblivion and institutionalization, my dance with cancer, my longer than expected tug of war with depression, the long road to finally finding a diagnosis for Beth, the headaches that bothered me for a while, the sleep disorder that has defied treatment, that keeps me perpetually tired, and the icing: cancer’s return – all have tested my optimism. Mostly, I’ve failed – under circumstances better people would shake off with relative ease.

My failure isn’t complete though. I haven’t lost my capacity to enjoy myself. When I’ve temporarily crawled out of depression’s grasp, I’ve regained enthusiasm. My sense of humor, such as it is, returns. Still, I always feel a little darker, and of all places I feel it acutely in church. It goes beyond Catholicism v Protestantism. No matter where I go, church goers seem to toss around certain platitudes and reassurances with no more thought than throwing beads at a Mardi Gras parade, but with feigned enthusiasm and absent genuine concern. It’s like everyone reads from the same script, and even they’re bored with it. It’s like fingernails on the chalkboard of my soul.

“You just have to have faith.”
“It’s all part of God’s plan.”
“We’re all praying for you.”

It all sounds rote.

I do believe in God. In some way, I think he/she/it cares what happens to me – though I’m not sure I understand the relationship. Does God’s love mean what we think it does?

I do not believe God is going to swoop down and cure me because I’ve prayed the best, the hardest, or had the purest faith. God may have a plan, but I’m not sure this is ALL part it. (I think it’s more of a rough outline.)

I’ve been asked if I pray. I do, but not the way others do. I don’t see prayer as a shopping list. I don’t go in expecting miracles. I believe they’ve happened over time, but rarely. If you could just dial one up with a prayer wouldn’t it dilute the brand? No, I see prayer as more mundane – if speaking to your creator can be considered mundane. Prayer for me is more meditative. I ask for things, but often they’re things I have the capacity to do for myself. I ask for strength to cope with the challenges life brings. I ask for the opportunity to make a small difference in someone’s life. I ask that someone might be there when someone else finds a need.

I see the power of prayer suggested by others as a kind of faith trap. What happens when you ask and you don’t receive?

I’m not looking for a faith healing. When I offer my prayers to others, I’m not handing out empty reassurances that all of life’s challenges are a small cog in the machine of “greater good.” I’m praying that people, myself included, will do the right thing. I’m praying because I believe in God, but I have trouble believing in people.

You may not believe me, but I do. I believe in many of the teachings of the religion of my childhood (from what I remember – I am not a Lutheran in good standing). However, I sit in church looking around and I fear many of the messages preached won’t survive their passage through the doors. When I look at my family and friends near me, I feel warmth in my heart. But when I look around, I imagine town hall meetings in churches much like mine, over-run by Tea Party crazy. I see people with hate in their hearts, and hateful things spewing from their mouths with the spittle of fanaticism. That’s when the darkness settles in, when church stops being a celebration and starts pulling me down depression’s hole. I know it’s petty. I know it’s ungrateful. I know it’s cynical. I know I’m more than a touch hypocritical. After all, I’m judging – in many (if not most) cases unfairly.

I’m not proud of myself, but there it is.

Beth wanted to tell me about an “inappropriate” incident, but I asked her not to while Adam was in the car. Beth, not so easily deterred, went on anyway.

Now before I go on, I need to explain that Adam has been immune to the ‘spelling what you don’t want him to hear’ trick for more than a year.

The little stinker hadn’t started pre-k and he was already reading.

So Beth had to adapt her strategy. She told me about her time in the pool, and the boys who were saying embarrassing things about her and her classmates. Scandalous things.

For middle school, that is.

“Dad, they were saying the ‘S’ word for ‘hot,’ if you know what I mean.”

I knew what she meant.

Without any hesitation, Adam chimed in, “you mean ‘sweaty’ – that’s the ‘S’ word for hot.”

Beth – “no it’s not Adam.”
Adam – “yes it is, sweaty starts with an S.”
Me – “For your own sake, just drop it Beth.”
Adam – “sweaty!”
Beth – “Adam…”
Adam – “sssssssweaty!”

Me – laughing like I hadn’t laughed in a good while.

But here’s something you may not know about me. There are times I like my old stuff better than newer alternatives. I’ve been carrying around the same umbrella since college. The material that’s exposed when it’s folded is so uniformly dirty it looks like part of the design when it’s open. I’ve carried only one bag to work, slung over my shoulder, it’s weathered leather exterior originally a graduation gift for Cheryl, which she eventually decided she didn’t need. So it’s filled another. I like to think of it as a reflection of myself: a little beaten up, but still solid and unbroken.

And then there’s my bike, an old aluminum framed model aptly branded: Trek. I know folks have older rides, but it seems inconceivable I’ve had it this long… twenty years and thousands of miles. I only wish I had the opportunity to bring it with me to more places. As it is, it’s brought me more peace and wonder than any thing I’ve owned. What little travel I’ve done, I’ve often had my bike with me. I’ve been up and down parts of both coasts of Florida, past long stretches of mangroves bursting at the seams with life – enclosing small inlets of calm, the sky so blue reflected on it’s surface, that even the simple contrast of two colors: blue and green, make you want to stop and hold your breath, lest the noise disturb something so peaceful – so right. The hypnotic whir of chain and gear, of rubber on road, accompanied me on the deserted sunrise roads of island parks and nature preserves, past the infant like dunes of the Gulf coast, seas of oats dancing together in the wind nearly obscuring another, more vast sea beyond.

I’ve explored some of the little history we have on the southeastern coast, my bike making me feel like a sponge dripping full with the essence of a place. I’ve squeezed through the tight spaces of places like St Augustine, imagining long dead Spaniards building the coquina structures that stand today, much as they did more than 400 years ago. I rode the pre-Katrina streets of New Orleans, from the sometimes unpleasant smells of the old town, atop the levies overlooking downtown, to the sometimes bone jarring streets of the garden district, looping down around Audubon Park and its hardwood canopy filtering the glow of the departing sun.

When my mind drifts from chores or monotonous tasks at work, it often takes me back to my bike, but to places yet to be experienced on two wheels. I imagine exploring the country roads of my ancestors, places like central Pennsylvania, northern Vermont, and the small towns of Massachusetts near the New Hampshire border. I imagine a slow pedal along the far northeastern coast, where the Gulf Stream no longer warms the waters, and cool wind catches a naturalized southerner unprepared blowing inland. I imagine just getting on and going, finding towns as I arrive, not knowing the names until my wheels cross the borders marked by signs.

Maybe I’m a sentimental fool, but I can’t imagine replacing these things. They’ve come to feel like appendages, no more replaceable than a hand or a leg.

Or a heart.

Last week we said goodbye to my in-laws. They’re doing something I haven’t done since the leukemia diagnosis, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous.

They’re taking a vacation.

The kind where you go someplace.

What’s worse, they’re going to New England – my first home, making stops in New Hampshire and Maine. Then they’re going to Canada, specifically Montreal.

I wanna go.

Most people would be satisfied with a self-pity party, but I’m the type to throw myself a parade. Poor me, I can’t go on vacation while the nation grapples with crippling unemployment.

Before we said goodbye we all went out to dinner to celebrate Beth’s birthday early (since they’ll be gone for the real thing). Due to a series of events I won’t bore you with, I ended up meeting everyone there… and driving myself home. It was on this drive, thinking about the vacation I wasn’t taking, that I took a few back roads I hadn’t seen in a while. I passed the hill I rode my skateboard down as a kid, on a dare. I passed a relatively new subdivision of homes. I saw a flat wasteland of tasteless, identical snout-houses, and a conspicuous lack of shade. Instead, not so many years ago I saw dense woods, often with a friend around, tempting our childhood eyes and imaginations, but thwarted by chain link, dark shadows, and countless warnings: “NO TRESPASSING!”

Well, it kept us sufficiently warned most of the time.

I turned left at a traffic light and looked in my rear-view mirror. The four-lane divided highway that used to stop at the traffic light, now wound it’s way down the hill, where more woods had succumbed to asphalt. Although I’m used to this sight (I see it twice every day), it still brings more pain. These woods were ours – all of the adventure and imagination, and none of the chain link. It was a jungle of hardwood canopy, dense hanging moss, saw palmettos, hard fought trails, and dug-in, hidden nooks to hide if on the run. There was always some reason to be on the run, those ruthless palmettos sawing at our shins with every misstep. It was a seemingly endless expanse of adventure on demand.

In the moment, this moment of negligent musing behind the wheel, this same intersection contained my parents’ neighborhood – another walled in subdivision, protected from the unknown evil of the wandering outsider’s eye. When we first moved in, the lots sold but no one built. Oddly, our upper-middle class house and a few others like it spent my childhood surrounded by well protected, abandoned sand. It was all that was left of another clearcut orange grove, ground up to feed the beast we call sprawl. Over the years this sand grew wild watermelons. For a while it grew into a small test track for my (off-road) motorcycle. It was lots of room to line up imaginary, long, game winning field goals off a kicking tee, over a swing set in my back yard. I only broke a few of the cement tiles on our roof.

Down the street, on the other side of the neighborhood, we had another natural playground – a mix of pine, gentle undergrowth, and relatively hard packed sand. It was more open, the ground more accommodating to bikes, allowing deeper expeditions further from parents’ eyes. We were on our own, or so it felt, and it was exhilarating. Then as startled kids we watched the fences go up, the trees come down, and a giant hole appear. Now it’s the county’s largest manmade, drainage detention asset, tastefully decorated with chain link.

The moment passed. In a blink, my mind shifted from the present to my childhood an back again. It was all gone. It’s been gone for a long time.

I drove down one hill, up another and I was home.

Or was I?

They say you can’t go home again, but what if you never really left?

What if home left you?

I remember first thinking in terms of Beth’s disorder “winning” during a Skype therapy session for obsessive-compulsive disorder. The therapist sought to personalize, yet disassociate the disorder from Beth in a way. She tried to objectify it – make it seem separate and distinct, to make it into something for Beth to fight. It also served to lift some of the shame from her shoulders. “This isn’t you Beth. This is OCD, and we can make it go far away. It may come back from time to time, but it’ll get easier and easier to send it away.” In the case of OCD it kind of worked, with a LOT of effort and tears. There were exercises which helped her to overcome some of the distinguishing characteristics of OCD (in her case), while not letting it define her.

Asperger’s Syndrome, in the larger context of our family, has been another animal. One of the ways I fear it’s won is the attention we’ve shifted from our wonderful son to endless therapies, doctors, and counselors with Beth, before and after diagnosis (but mostly before). You may have noticed the daily posts leading up to Beth’s thirteenth birthday – my sort of mock countdown to the end of her childhood, with a few re-posts from the early days.

It got me to thinking.

I don’t have nearly as many posts about Adam’s early years. We’re still in them so I still have time, but still – not a whole lot of Adam in here.

It’s not that Beth isn’t wonderful, or Adam hasn’t been noteworthy, but damn it all if we haven’t fallen into a tradeoff trap.

There are a number of harmless explanations just dying to dive off the tip of my tongue. Some of the magic of raising a child may seem more routine the second time around. Beth had the stage to herself for seven years, while Adam has to share it with a veteran of the theater. There are a bunch more where those came from.

They all sound like reasons, but even to my mind they sound more like excuses. Yet somehow, deprived of his share of attention, Adam has thrived. Even though I haven’t read to him as much as I would have liked, he’s been reading on his own for almost a year now – and he doesn’t start kindergarten until this Fall. He writes notes in a little notepad, sounding out the words. How many times have I heard him say, “Wait! I just want to get this down before we go!” It’s precious and hilarious.

Maybe Aspergers hasn’t won, not entirely. Maybe it’s beaten me down a little, but my little boy is a little stronger.

It surely hasn’t bested my daughter.

My apologies, the quality is exceptionally poor. I forgot to recharge the batteries in our camera, so I settled for my old iPhone 3G, which was never really meant to be a video camera. It’s a pretty lousy still camera when you get down to it.

The obligatory cake shot:

Beth turns the camera on us for a change:

What does it mean to be thirteen?

Inheriting the sarcasm and smart-ass genes from her father created a teen-like aura at an early age. But I know better by now to assume I understand what the future will bring, so I do the only thing I can. I love my kid, and keep trying to find where I fit in life as it twists, turns, and whirls along – indifferent to my insecurities. I often wonder if she realizes where I fit in now – where I’ve fit in most of these last 13 years. As many parents can attest, the first child is the practice child. To say I’ve been equal parts teacher and student might be generous.

There’s one last post I’m going to share – one of the first posts of this blog, by date anyway. It appeared with a collection of short essays on my first web site (I’d written a few before I created the site) – the really rough birth of this blog.

I wish I’d saved a copy of that first little piece of HTML I’d typed – even if it was just a running list of links to text files I periodically uploaded, or a back up of that first site for that matter.

- – -

“Independence Day”

Written: 7/4/1997, originally posted sometime after Dec 1998

July 4, 1997 makes it eight years since my own independence day. It was July 4th, 1989 and I was just starting my first semester at UF. I remember sitting alone atop the Broward Hall parking garage. I remember thinking that I should be happy, that I was free on this Independence Day. In reality, I was free to be alone that night. I was free to worry about my future. I was free to have life’s unknowns weigh down on me like the weight of the universe. It was such a beautiful night, looking out across the campus from high above, the sun spectacularly lighting the evening sky. All around was such beauty, yet such turmoil resided within me.

I look back, now eight years later, and I don’t have that freedom anymore. Then I was moving away from a family. Now I’m on the brink of starting my own.

Sometimes freedom is over-rated.

- – -

I’d sprinted up the deserted Broward parking garage at the end of a cathartic, self-loathing circuit of campus on my bike.

What can I say? I was a lonely, moody kid. If there is a sense of doom and gloom now, on the day of Beth’s baptism into teen-dom, it was born of neural pathways and chemical bonds formed long ago in my head, in the memories of my own experiences growing up. My daughter’s life has already been filled with its share of social challenges, and now she’s running headlong into the odd phenomenon we refer to as adolescence.

But enough of the gloom. I’m going to do something unusual to you. I’m going wax optimistic. There’s a part of me that feels Beth is uniquely prepared for the awkward years of adolescence. Because of autism, she’s been dealing with being the awkward one in the room all her life. Though I could be naive. The combined effects of autism and adolescence could make life that much tougher. However, Beth’s made great strides this last year since she started at a new school, one that finally knows what to do with her combination of gifts and shortcomings. She’s much happier. Her anxiety doesn’t drive her to tears after school anymore. Instead of a glum, “ok,” she actually wants to talk about the specifics of a school day.

Well, sometimes.

I prefer to think that having survived the shock of an autism spectrum diagnosis and catching a break being accepted into the study at USF for OCD therapy, after spending most of her childhood stumbling around in the dark treating phantom disorders, not knowing the real problem, living some of the horrors of unnecessary medication, adolescence will be a refreshing dose of normal.

Beth’s childhood is gone. There are parts of me that morn its passing. Its innocence. Its playfulness. Although we had plenty of good moments at home over the years, as you can see by many of the last month’s worth of posts, there were many more heartaches. But there’s obviously nothing I can do about it now, and as much as I’ll miss those aspects of her childhood, I won’t miss the near constant worry that I was making a mistakes. Mistakes where there was no remedy. All those years of therapy, doctors and medication. All those years of frustration. All those years believing it was my fault. Now I know it wasn’t. Now I feel like we have a clean slate.

Part of me worries a little about the coming years. I’m a worrier by nature so there’s no way around it. Things are not perfect. No kid is. No parent is. Perfect is WAY over there and I’m WAY over here. We still fight over various things. There’s even yelling involved. She still has high functioning autism/Aspergers. I try to be patient when she has a social misstep, hoping if it doesn’t come naturally, she’ll remember the next time that folks will usually take it personally when she asks about some part of their body which is out of proportion in size with the rest of it. We still occasionally work together to beat back OCD. However, more than at any other time in her life, I feel like we know what’s going on. I ‘get’ my daughter, or as much as a father can anyway.

Stripped down to its core, here’s the take away from this post:

As Beth turns thirteen I feel like I have my daughter back.

More than any birthday, anniversary, or holiday – that’s worth celebrating.