Elias, tomorrow you will complete the 4th grade, surrounded by typical kids, ten like you, but oh so different.
And not.
Every one of us bears inexplicable challenges. Some visible to the eye, others hidden behind masks of normalcy.
As your school counselor, I know some of the students' secrets and in many ways you have it pretty good.
Your own room, a full fridge, a closet full of clothes.
Structure, boundaries, space.
And parents who love you just right.
I remember walking down the hall once with a sullen angry boy, damaged by abuse and neglect, you happened to be walking past with your unique gait, your canes, your eyes that rarely connect with mine. The boy didn't know you were my son and he said, "I feel sorry for him."
And I wanted to say: Don't. He has so much more than you. More than you can imagine. More than your heart knows.
Instead I just asked him, "Why?"
"Look at him."
Sometimes people only see your disabilities.
But one of the many things I love about you, is you never focus on them. You never complain about your eyesight or your muscle control. You laugh when you fall. And you get up again.
And you get up again.
And you get up again.
"I need a change," you announce when your pull-up is soiled, and if kids snicker, and I'm sure they do, you don't flinch. You don't seem to care what others think of you and that my boy is the space between lines, or outside and above them, the freedom to be exactly who you are.
What if all of us were born with this gift?
Without the ability to compare and despair. To just be ourselves. To screw the in-crowd. To forget about the word should. To just walk freely in our own bones.
What if...
Instead our lives are often filled with longing, to be more like some image of ourselves impossible to fulfill; we live within the stories others wrote for us or on the tails of false expectations.
We inhale the hidden rules of what it means to be a boy or girl and forget to breath out our own songs.
But Elias, not you.
And sure there are times when I wish you joined the parade of so called normalcy, but today, I just feel so honored to know you and call you my son.
Happy last day of school Bud.
