First Grade.

I remember Alex's first day of preschool, back in the days before he was diagnosed with anything other than a lazy mother who couldn't control him. I dropped him off at the local Montessori school and went to the grocery store, and it felt so weird without him. It was so quiet! I pushed the cart along, feeling sort of like I did when my parents finally got in the car and drove away, leaving me alone in my dorm room the day before I started college.

I wasn't stressed from having to keep his hands off everything, I didn't have to worry about an explosive diaper incident, there wasn't any chance of him suddenly sprinting across the grocery store, forcing my 7-months-pregnant self to haul ass after him.

I felt like I was getting away with something, and I enjoyed it for about 2 hours, until I'd convinced myself that without me, in a room surrounded by strangers who were unaware of how self-destructive he could be, he was going to die. In fact, he was probably dead already, and wasn't I the Worst Mother in the World for enjoying the ability to grocery shop in peace and quiet?


I started chronicling our lives here six months after Alex got kicked out of that Montessori school.
I've documented every high point, quite a few low points, and the quiet moments of life that make up the glue that holds a family together, and I still feel like I've missed it, that these four years have just disappeared and that little boy who was with me on that dark, humiliating day at that Montessori school, sitting quietly coloring while the teacher's aide, Miss Terri, openly smirked at me and said "Byeeeeeeeeeeeee" as she twirled around and walked away from us - that little boy is gone, gone like he never existed. In his place is somebody else entirely, who studies Tae Kwon Do and is on a soccer team and is reading at a third-grade level. Third grade! Are you kidding me? I didn't believe it when his teachers told us that, but I tested him myself and it's true. This year he's starting science classes, and at the Parent's Open House I learned their curriculum:


1.) Frogs

2.) Butterflies

3.) Ants

4.) Rocks

5.) The Weather

He took his first test ever last week, on the life cycle of a frog, and made an A+.

His teacher, who looks like she's twelve, says he is the best student in class and takes learning very seriously.

Next week he's starting after school painting classes, because he wants to be an artist. His drawings, once feverish scraws of black energy, are now better than mine were at that age. In fact, if you put one of my drawings and one of his side by side, they're pretty close in skill. He drew a watermelon yesterday from memory, cut in half, with green and white swirled rind and a juicy red middle. Black spots for seeds.


At Christopher's birthday party last Saturday, he sat next to Orange's son Ben, a child he's known since the Montessori days but never seemed to really notice before, despite countless social interactions, and it was like he rubbed his eyes and saw him for the first time. And they carried on some crazy bullshit conversation about something or other, but it was a real conversation with give and take, and when it was Alex's turn to give, it was relevant to what Ben had said.

He's gone all day now, almost every day, making his way down the path to becoming a man, and despite the challenges of his disability he is succeeding so well I wish Miss Terri could see us now so I could tell her to eat shit.


He's playing soccer right now as I write this. Practice is over, but he and his dad usually stay until around 7:00, kicking the ball around. And tomorrow he'll get up, shrug on his black backpack again and head off to school.


And my god, the house is so quiet now. It's so quiet.