No more blurred lines

We’ve finally got it. After six years of fear, and four years of pushing for it, it was quite innocuous when it came.

I was preoccupied, sitting on a bus in heavy traffic trying to get to a meeting about which I felt very anxious. It was hardly uppermost on my mind. A withheld number on the telephone and a tentative query from a man’s voice that I’d never heard before. “Good afternoon. Are you the mother of Jonah?”

“Yes,” I responded, equally tentatively, expecting more bad news of one sort or another.

“I’m from the children’s mental health service and we wanted to talk to you about Jonah’s recent assessments. His caseworker has been on long term sick leave, so I’m sorry for the delay.”

It has been months.

I breathed in. “Jonah’s assessment shows that he meets the diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s. Would you like to continue with further testing to assess his ongoing needs?”

In a heartbeat, the myriad challenges I have faced bringing up my sweet, angry, difficult and brilliant nearly eight year old had been confirmed by a professional. I am not a bad mother. The grey area between geeky maleness and abnormal rigidity had been hurdled, and he was now, to some extent under the state’s protection. And I, to some extent, am absolved.

It changes nothing, although it will lend weight to our case for continued additional support to his outstanding maths potential. Jonah will remain the same, despite this outcome, but while my heart bled just a little at the confirmation of long term fears, the soaring sense of vindication was enough to take me to my meeting with wings under my feet, and state my case with abject resolve in my own beliefs.

Today, we are packing up. On Friday, with every luck, we will move and the seven and a half years that have marked out Jonah’s life since we first moved into the duplex, two weeks before i gave birth on the top floor at 10 am on a Friday morning, will be over, with their petty and grand trials and tribulations. We move on to bigger and better things, but also worse. Tom and I have been tested beyond repair to many extents, but yet our care and considerations for each other and our family continues undaunted, although we spend less and less time in each other’s claustrophobic company.

The challenges of moving bring out the best in Tom, with his great capacity for practicality, and me, with my demons and stress and illogimoting, only need concern myself with the frivolities and ensure the transition for the children is as smooth as it can be.

The school holidays begin on Thursday, the day before we move, and it feels right, that all is resolved and we can move in peace, away from the village that has increasingly been taken over by revelers, with festival season in full swing, and gentrified beyond our price point, we have finally, happily, outgrown.