By Katie Blackburn
@katiemblackburn

At Target, our first stop of the day, me and my three littlest—two toddlers and a baby—make our way through shiny aisles in the semi-truck sized cart Target so lovingly designed for big families like ours. I stop for protein bars, individually packaged popcorn for lunchboxes, a quick peruse of the active wear that is my uniform most days. The toddlers are lovely and pleasant for the first fifteen minutes, but I sense their patience waning as I make my way to the grocery section for sparkling water. I grab two small cartons of Goldfish and let them each open one on their own (something they demand these days), which gives me another ten minutes to get out of the store incident-free.

I pull the cart up to our van and tell my littles how proud I am of them. “You all were so good in the store. Thank you for being great listeners!” The toddlers both smile with orange crackers still in their teeth, the baby kicks his little feet in response to my own big smile at him, and we hop in the car for the next stop before picking up Cannon, my 7-year-old, from therapy, where he works hard everyday learning how to navigate life with autism.  

I look down at the clock on the dashboard: 10:00 a.m. We have just over an hour left to kill  before Cannon’s pick-up, and I remember there is a new park downtown, one with a huge slide and dinosaur fossils and climbing walls, conveniently located less than a mile from Cannon’s therapy. I’ve never been there before, but I’ve heard how big and fun it is, and with the beautiful late summer weather showing off for us, I can think of nothing better to do for the next hour. 

“Do you guys want to go to the park?” I turn and ask with an octave of high excitement in my voice. 

“Yeah! Park! I come, I come!” Beckett yells in response, while Ava nods her head and flashes another orange cracker smile.

“Ok. Let’s go, team,” I say back. 

Within minutes of arriving, Beckett is off and running and acting much bigger and older than he really is. He climbs to the top of the enclosed three-story slide all by himself, and I can hear his voice squealing with glee as he soars down the tube. He gets off at the bottom and runs right back to repeat the adventure. Ava attempts to make her way up the long and winding stairs to the top but gets halfway before her bravery gives way, then walks back down to the safety of the merry-go-round on the ground.  

The baby, Bray, sits behind me in his red umbrella stroller, the one I bought for five dollars at a garage sale eight years ago and has given me a silly amount of pride in my frugality. He’s got his right foot in his hands and his pacifier in his mouth, but flashes me a smile without losing it every time I get his attention to make sure he’s having fun watching. His paci smiles are my favorite. 

It’s a gorgeous 75° outside, which means the park is busy, and lots of other kids are running around. I push the stroller from one side of the park to the other, keeping a pulse on where each of the toddlers are and making sure Beckett is not feeling too big for his britches and trying anything crazy, like bouldering the rock wall. And every time I spot them, they are smiling, having a blast as they run free. 

I pull out my phone to check how much longer we have until we have to get Cannon and see we have fifteen minutes until we have to leave.

And I notice something else, too. It’s 11:00 a.m. on a Wednesday morning, and I realize it’s gone. It’s been missing all morning.

The anxiety of special needs did not come to the park with me. 

I have been a mother for nine years, and I’ve put in my share of park time all over our city: pushing swings, helping little feet find the next step on the ladder, rescuing kids from the top of climbing structures when they realized they were too scared to climb back down to the bottom. But today is the first time I’ve had my three big kids in school, and it’s just me and the three littles. My shoulders are loose. My mind has not been racing through possibilities, thinking of contingency plans, worried about what bad thing could happen. We are just here, just playing. I’m watching and helping when they need me, and it all feels so… normal. 

The difference in me is subtle, and, if it’s possible, enormous, too. I brought three little kids to Target, then to a brand new, busy park, and other than the normal vigilance of a mother, I didn’t worry. I never once thought, I wonder if I can do this? 

I am 100 pounds lighter, not thinking about the past seven years of what-if’s and questions and scenarios we’d like to never repeat again. Will he run away? What is he hitting his head on? Can he wait in line without pushing? He didn’t leave the park, did he?

I am so used to living with the anxiety of autism, so accustomed to doing everything it takes to keep going in spite of it, I almost didn't realize how heavy the burden was until it was gone for a few hours.

I could barely remember what it was like to go shopping with kids who will not jump out of the cart to run away from me in the store. I did not know what it felt like to go to a park without feeling on edge the whole time. But today, I do. For the first time in what has felt like an eternity, for a few hours a week when my son is in the care of someone else, I’m not a special needs mom. Just a mom.

I don’t often categorize those two differently. Most of the time, I see all of my life as one complicated yet cohesive story of mothering unique kids with unique needs. This child needs one thing, this child needs another, and that’s it. Even my typical kids who don’t have a disability, they are still unique, still different from one another. Parenting did not come with a formula or a one-size-fits-all approach for any of them.

For seven years, I have fought back against the sadness of raising a child who struggles with so many things by telling myself that he is exactly who God intended him to be (and he is), that I am equipped to be his mother in any circumstance (and I am), that the hardest days build the most resilience (they do), and that we can do this work because God saw fit to give it to us (and we can). 

But today, without even thinking about it, I didn’t tell myself those things. I didn’t have to. I just spent the morning with my three youngest kids, and the eggshells I am always walking on, the fear of the unknown, the edge of panic feeling that’s usually there, none of it came with me. 

I am endlessly thankful for my special son. He has taught me more than anyone or anything I’ve ever been through. I could not begin to name how much richer I feel because he is in my life. But with that richness has also come a level of hard I never thought I would have to reach and the presence of a near constant worry I never thought I would have to live with. I hold both. I think honesty demands that I hold both, because both are absolutely, without qualification, true. He’s the best thing I could have imagined happening to me. And I also wait with anticipation for the day when God makes all things new.

For now, I don’t make too much of all this. I just name it, and that helps; allowing myself to feel gratitude for a normal morning of running errands, killing time, smiling at the little grins filled with Goldfish crackers, and playing at the park—a breath of fresh air when I didn’t realize how long I had been holding it. 

Photo by Lottie Caiella.