“Reflections”

We drove through the evening air, boys quiet in the back seat as the song played a second and then a third time. We’d gone out to get them milkshakes because ice cream is Nathanaël’s reward for successfully using the potty. And as we drove I looked at the July light fading slowly from the sky, thinking about my tiniest boy and how big he is now, how capable, how determined and smart and funny – how proud I am of him and how blessed to have been given the gift of his life to enrich my own. I love how he communicates with us. The way he locks on to certain words and repeats them until they make him giggle, their sounds gone funny when heard over and over. The different ways he cries : hurt, angry, frustrated, heartbroken, sad. The way he squinches up his face when he can’t cry for real but still wants a hug for comfort.

And how his parents, too, can and must push ourselves and exercise the determination to become more capacious inside. To keep working on things other people find simple. To pronounce words over and over again until they appear to lose their meaning – sometimes words like “no,” “stop.” Sometimes words like “hurt?” or “sorry” or “happy.” Every day is a series of hours in which we teach and sustain and get frustrated with and love more than we thought was possible – and it’s because Nathanaël is “different” from other children, and because Nathanaël is *not* different from them, because he is just wholly and purely, honestly himself. “There is no deceit in him.” It was the reason we chose his name, the only disciple (from ill-reputed Nazareth) whom Jesus complimented. We knew from his first heart-shaped ultrasound that he was unique and wonderful. We didn’t know how he would quietly slide into every DNA strand, the weave of the fabric itself that makes up our life, and stand there beside us, inside us, holding on and working his way so deeply into our hearts that we can’t imagine our lives without him anymore. Because he is our child, and because he’s himself and that’s who he is. He charms hearts.

So I listened to Lea Salonga lamenting her difference that would represent such hardship for her family, and wondering how to be her own honest self, inside and out, and the kind of courage it takes to live as that person, to clothe herself in that skin all the time. And I heard Nathanaël in those words. “When will my reflection show who I am inside?” More, I heard him hearing himself in those words. I pictured my tiny baby whose vocal muscles were so hypotonic he couldn’t cry when he woke up at night hungry, so he wiggled in his little bassinet and made a special noise to wake me up to nurse him and give him a snuggle and a fresh diaper.

Every day he learns more and teaches me. And every day I watch him try to express some anger or hurt and cry because the words won’t come. But the words *are* coming, and words are not the only mirror. They’re just easiest for other people.

I listened and watched Nathanaël out of the corner of my eye, his face rapt and concentrating, hearing himself reflected in this music imagined for a seventh-century hero from the other side of the world. It broke my heart, and then through the fragments surged gratitude. I pictured Hua Mulan herself, hearing herself reflected in a song, maybe for the first time – the reality of her *selfness* not a secret or a lonely thing, but an expression of solidarity, a voice of strength and courage – and I felt profoundly thankful. Absurdly, maybe (I mean, it was Disney), but deeply and very personally and real-ly grateful.

I will never not be heartbroken for the heart-hurts of my babies. But my role, my job, is to seek the greater truth beyond the hurt. To see each stumbling block as a dot in the way my children’s lives are written, each scrape or scab or scar from each misadventure with concrete or tree bark (or sibling) as one small line in their individual maps of the world. Tracing the journey of a whole life means getting them back to their feet after a stumble, helping them focus on the greater picture beyond any one immediate setback. It means providing them with the tools to reassemble anything the world breaks.

So, my little Nathanaël, my miracle warrior, my brave and earnest boy, I wish this for you : that you may always find yourself in song. That you may know yourself so thoroughly, and know how treasured you are so unshakeably, that you don’t even need whatever the mirror projects.

We drive through the gathering darkness as the gold storm-drenched sun slips down beyond the horizon. “Again,” pipes your tired little voice from the back seat. And so I press the back arrow, and Lea Salonga’s melancholy ninth soars around and between us, filling the car, filling the night. You finish your milkshake. I hold your hand when we pull into the driveway and walk into the house. Your four little fingers press warmly, trustingly, into my palm. I see you, love. I see you.