“Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow.” -- Alice Mackenzie Swaim

Michael is crawling.

He started doing a version of crawling around the fifteen month mark and just recently, as we get closer and closer to the sixteen month age, he started * really * crawling. And now he’s a demon on all fours, scooting around the kitchen and dining room when released from the stifling confines of a high chair, finding shreds of dried out cheese under chairs that are too tempting to leave behind and chasing his new favorite toy….a plastic bottle of apple juice. Nothing thrills that child more when he’s making trails on his hands and knees that a bottle or two of apple juice, rolling around, taunting and teasing him.

Except for maybe a drinking cup. He can play with that for a long time, too.

And just yesterday, he ventured out of the kitchen and dining room and into the hallway. He babbled to himself the whole way. He took breaks to inspect the things he found along the way and even tried to take a shoe from next to the door with him before he decided it got in the way and threw it across the room, shouting, “OH NO! NO!” as he did it.

And then he reached the promised land.

His sister’s bedroom.

The floor covered in tiny, enticing toys. Books scattered as far as the eye can see. Dolls peeking out from under things. Blankets strewn about, pillows cast aside. Clothes sticking out of drawers and abandoned on the floor after a fashion change of heart. To me, it looks like a really bad mess. To Michael, however, it looked like the greatest place on Earth. Fuck Disney Land! This room had it going on!

So, you can imagine his rage when I plucked him up and out of that room and closed the door. He’s still pretty pissed off with me, to be honest.

He has also learned how to pull himself up into a standing position. This came a bit after the fifteen month mark, but I’m sure that it had everything to do with mastering the half crawl. For Michael, it’s all about getting that left leg and foot to do what it should. To do what his little brain is telling it. That’s more than half the battle for him….

So, now when he’s in his play pen, he pulls himself up to standing so that he can better see Grover as the waiter who never gets anything right (anyone else remember those skits? I forgot how funny they are…) on Play With Me Sesame and so that he can keep tabs on his sisters as they dance around the living room to the tune, “Fabulous” sung by the so annoying you want to smack her, Sharpay from High School Musical. He also pulls himself up on chairs when he’s crawling around and yes, he’s even started stomping the right foot a bit when he’s standing in one spot.

Michael reaching these milestones is not any more special than when my girls reached them, nor is it any more special than when all of your children learned to crawl or pull themselves up. But it is a different kind of special.

Michael would never have learned how to do these things if he didn’t have the intervention that he does. If it weren’t for the exercises and the stretches, the positions and the movements and the constant, constant monitoring, he might never have crawled or stood up on his own. For Michael, these things don’t happen naturally, as they do in most children and as they certainly happened in my first two. For Michael, these are learned skills. We can never say, “oh it will come” when it comes to Michael. Quite simply because it won’t. We say, instead, “he’ll get it. Just a bit more time. He’ll get it” and with that, we practice and practice and practice.

So watching Michael crawl or stand up gives me a different feeling of special. Because I know in a way that I had never known before, what goes into acquiring those skills. I know how much work went into each of them, just as I knew how much work went into teaching him to use his left hand and arm. If we had never done any of that…well, he might not have ever been able to grasp with that hand. And those muscles would have become completely useless. “Use it or lose it”, as they say.

And I know, despite what anyone might say, that the little squirt is proud. He glances up at me sometimes while he’s tooling around on the floor as if to say, “Look Ma! It worked! It finally worked!”

And every time he pulls himself up in the crib or the playpen or holding onto a kitchen chair, his face breaks out in a grin to end all grins that seems to scream, “Aw yeah! Got it! Finally!”

Michael has shown me more courage in his short time here on Earth that I had learned in the twenty seven years that preceded him.

Growth and learning are painful experiences. It’s only after we acquire the skill that we are able to look back and see the experience as growth at all. While we’re in the thick of it, however, it just fucking sucks.

Ten months ago, I was swimming in a world of fear and weakness, feeling powerless to change it at all. While I couldn’t exactly put my finger on what was * wrong * , I most certainly knew that something just wasn’t quite right. And one night, after a gruelling trip to CHEO (formally known as the children’s hospital in Big City), full of information I was completely unprepared to hear, I stood at the edge of my breezeway and cried. I was alone. Everyone I had turned to for the support that they had promised had fallen away, turned to dust, dissipated before my very eyes.

I was alone and getting ready to climb a mountain I hadn’t seen coming, terrified of losing my footing along the way.

I was alone.

I stood there, that night, listening to the crickets and grasshoppers, confused by the warm weather and Indian Summer we were having. I stood there, sweat pooling under my breasts (wink for you, Mary!), hair sticking to my forehead and head throbbing because of the heat. Because of something else. I stood there, scared of exploding. Scared of not being enough. Scared of what laid ahead.

Scared of going it alone.

I looked out over the yard, to the corn field and beyond. Beyond to the forest behind our house, to the house peeking out through a break in the trees, to whatever lay within the depths of green. And I prayed. I thought back to what I had learned from the SECRET. I drew on my knowledge of angels. I let them stroke my forehead and I said, out loud, “I just want someone who gets it.”

And just like that, calm filled my chest where jagged rocks had only minutes ago resided.

A day or two later, a guy named turftoe331 appeared on my recent visitors list on Blogster.

And I had no idea what I was headed for. If someone had told me…if someone had told us…we would have laughed. We would have laughed to mask the fear.

Since that day, I have shared more with Don than I have ever shared with another human being. Things I had long ago buried and left for dead. Shit so scary, it would make you recoil and gasp. The kind of fucked up shit we see in movies and then wonder who could have come up with such a thing. Stomach turning shit. Nobody has ever wanted to hear it.

Over the past ten months, I have often felt as though I’ve reached my limit. I have shared enough. I have shared too much. And I’ve actually said, “I think you know it all, now!” dozens of times. And I’ve often believed the lie.

I look back, now, at our first “real” meeting in January. How I was sure that this was honest as honest could be. And I look back now with new eyes. And I’m proud of how we’ve changed and developed and grown. Together. I’m proud of both of us for having the courage to keep moving forward. Because January’s honesty was nothing compared to June’s.

Last night, Don let a huge wall crumble to the ground. Last night, Don shared with me something that had never been shared before. It wasn’t easy. Growth never is. That’s why they’re called “growing pains” not “growing tickles”.

And I’m proud of him. More proud of him this morning than I think I’ve ever been before. Now we stand on ground zero. With nothing to lose, and everything to gain. With nowhere to go but up. Together.

And it’s now that I think Michael might be able to give Don one of those looks.

A look that says,

“See? You got it! It worked!”

My two favorite boys…

Both of them with more courage than I could ever hope to hold.

Both of them with more to teach me than I could ever have imagined.

And I am grateful