Oh boy, Rukai.
I guess you're not a child anymore. Tomorrow is 13.
How?
I know, because Life.
Because.
If I didn't already know you were on the cusp of 'teen', I'd know it for your fire lately - sometimes incandescent - as you crackle and pop with every imaginable colour that can burn. You are beyond any question whatsoever my son, and lately you seem hell bent on reminding me of this, every minute of every day - you know, just like every other 13 year old on the planet.
That it came on while we were lost is difficult to choke back.
Were it not for the lack of being able to communicate with each other properly, maybe it wouldn't be such a challenge. To put the most positive spin on it, my boy, you are keeping me creative. But a brain needs rest too, and this is the one thing I have not got in your constant presence. How unfortunate it chose to rise in this week of weeks.
Life does love to punch me in the face with lessons, so herewith the latest I guess.
At precisely 2:39 pm tomorrow, it will have been 13 years to the minute that I first saw you outside of me.
I've said it before but it's staggering how well I can still picture how pissed off you were, and rightly so. Fists clenched in fury, frowning for all you were worth. It was bloody cold in that operating theatre. Got colder when they all started frowning across the room at me, those 'soft signs' they took such glee in pointing out making me harden at them already. Since that minute, I've spent so many years fighting FOR you, but it seems lately I've started fighting YOU.
Just typing that has physically hurt me. As for what it's done to my head and heart, it's a far darker shade of emotion than 'always happy' (my arse).
You were and always will be perfect. Perfectly imperfect, as are we all. So different and so alike to everyone else walking about on this crazy and chaotic planet. I still seethe when someone 'others' you and I will never stop - because quite frankly, you are enough, my son.
In fact you are MORE than enough, literally. 47 beats 46. The end.
These days the bulk of the othering comes in the form of the lowest of expectations - that look of sheer horror when I'm telling you off in public, those looks that say 'you cannot shout at an infant like that' wholly ignoring your height and the fact you're built like a fucking linebacker. They see you, and for whatever reason in their stereotype-obsessed, little noggins, they see a tot.
I'm afraid a tot, you're not.
So you get a piece of my arse when you've crossed the line and pissed me off, just like any of your 13 year old chronological peers will get from their own parents. Worth mentioning that I say 'chronological' because life itself others you regardless, and we all know that your peers from years ago have left you in search of diplomas and degrees, of six figure income dreams and that all-encompassing white picket fence with its two point four children.
Your current peers are not all of your age, but you certainly click with them now. And connection beats age difference, the end. Again.
Your future may be light years 'quieter' than those chronological peers, yet it's so much louder. Because you, my dear, remain a force to be reckoned with. You light up rooms, you make instant friends, you force smiles out of the most hardened people I've ever seen not want to engage with you until you shoot them one look that says 'I know what you're thinking, but you're wrong.' God help them if they hear one laugh. That belter. That auditory injection of vitality and joy and energy. And suddenly they smile, look at me, back at you, sometimes shake their head at their abject foolishness, and go on with their life. But I know they will never forget that moment.
I just know this. Others will understand.
I could see your inherent ferocity back in that hospital, and despite how positively sedate and angelic you were, those fists are what I remember most sharply so long since. You've hidden it well since, but I am no fool and I can clearly see it coming. I'm ready for that battle, young son, but also ready to help you soothe that savage beast and become the amazing young man I know you'll be.
Because you're my son, and there will be no other outcome.
You are stubborn as the day is long, 4749 of them to be precise. I'm afraid you are the spit of your grandfather. He was a right pain in the arse too, and I loved him like no one else did, because he always championed me so hard in so many ways, despite firm failings in others.
We all have them.
My latest firm failing is that my patience has been severely damaged since we took that great leap of faith last June. Not only has four months on the move de-stabilised our home and our routine, but it's damaged US, proper. The extended forced proximity was just too much, and so much time together has made me unable to tolerate what I'd got used to. I've not yet felt settled in our new home and I can't figure out why - it's like my guts are on fire every single day. And every time I feel like I fail you again, I only burn hotter.
Today, your behaviour went over a cliff and I took all your favourite things away, bar those ping pong balls - that lifeline that kept us afloat so many years in that pink prison. I thought to take them off you too, but it would have felt like removing the tightrope you've so long balanced on, before we left that place and started trying to settle into this one.
The past couple of days, I've seen you storming your way into adulthood, one minute attempting to assert your own boundaries and demands, and the next giggling like a toddler from the top of the stairs, delighting at the almighty waterfall of ping pong balls you've just dumped down, chased by the tubs you've flung after them. I barely flinch anymore at the racket in your presence, but it forever destroys my ability to focus. Now, a stolen glance left from my current perch spies the chaos still strewn about the corridor as you snore away on the sofa.
So here I type.
No toys, no stimulus, nothing to do but sleep. Maybe I'll take those bloody hamsters away more often.
Bottom line is, things can get awfully complicated in 410,313,600 seconds. Most of the time I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Other than loving you, sometimes badly, I haven't actually got a clue. I try, and life remains trying.
Today, hand on heart, I genuinely didn't like you one tiny bit. But I always love the bloody marrow of you. How odd, this yin-yang of emotion. If there is one positive in all this, it's the fact that you make me understand other things much more clearly.
All that difficulty to start this day, no toys this evening but those balls, and still you apologised a million times trying to get the hamster and music and plastic back. I held firm and sent you away with the balls. If I am to shape you, I will shape you correctly.
And then I heard you giggle and felt like a monster.
And then you heard me crying and you came straight down to comfort me.
Oh no! Oh no!
Mama sad!
Oh no!
Those clearly expressed words, clearly defining a clear moment of clearly recognised emotion.
And you'd have been 'the one who may not speak'.
Dear doctor, fuck off.
As we near that annual celebration of you, it occurs to me that in the midst of our life tumult, I've stopped shouting and stomping so much to demand that the world let you in, because we are in SEN school and our world DOES welcome you in. That base and grounding of welcome has settled my rage to that end markedly, to a place where I now take you out in public and simply EXPECT people to treat you with respect because those most closely around you already do. If only the rest of the world could pull its arrogant head out of its arse now.
I am clever enough to know that one day the school bubble will burst and we will go back to the rest of the world. My wish for you is to have made enough safe connections in the interim to retain happiness in your life. I want you to have the joy you had as a child and that which I will fight like no other to find again for you as we begin our new life together in this still scratchy and strange place.
It's HOME but it's still a mirage.
My pride in you has no limit, Rukai, even when you're an insolent little shit like this morning. Perhaps, ESPECIALLY when you're an insolent little shit like this morning because I know I'm raising a warrior.
I'm proud to have brought you into this world.
You have come so far.
You have indeed proven those arrogant, stupid, doctors wrong, just like I said you would.
You are my son. You are my world.
Tomorrow you are 13.
LFG.