Revolving Door

Your front door will become a revolving one.

Ten-twenty-thirty-forty interventionists will come into your home over a given year.

You will open the door and welcome these ten-twenty-thirty-forty strangers in to your living room.

You will be friendly.

Extra friendly.

You will be optimistic.

Extra optimistic.

You will learn as much as you can about them.

You will create jokes with them.

You want to build a community around your son.

You want these new promising strangers to love your son and family enough for them to invest years on you.

In the process, you will start liking (even loving) them.

You will start bragging about them to your friends.

You will start sharing intimate details about your life and process with them.

They will start sharing intimate details about their lives and processes with you.

You want them to hang on even though you know that the compensation doesn’t at all compensate for the bruises, scratches, and kicks to the mouth that they will endure.

You will start allowing yourself to think that they are the extended family that you’ve always wanted, or at least have been wanting since the day your son was diagnosed.

…and as it happens, as soon as THAT happens, as soon as you start adopting them into your family fold, you get THE call from their boss.

They have put in their two-weeks.

They can’t do THIS anymore.

You start to feel that your home is a training ground for temporary employees who start with big hearts, who desire to help family’s, but end up burned out and exhausted.

You feel for them.

You also feel for your son, who doesn’t have many words in his vocabulary, but still regularly calls out their names.