We hike single file. Leading the way, I am exhausted and moody despite the beauty of the day. I almost declined when Wally suggested a hike, but I felt a yearning to soak in this gorgeous day before autumn turns to winter. It disappears so quickly, this splendiferous glory of autumn. I know it could disappear overnight with the first passing storm.

Behind me, Joel our youngest son, walks slowly and tentatively through the leaves. He has balance issues and is afraid of tripping on a root. Wally brings up the rear. Joel’s manic chatter has subsided, and we are quiet. Our feet do the talking as we scuff across the yellow-carpeted forest floor.

I hear Joel’s footsteps quicken, and turn from my ruminations on the fleeting nature of time to see him approaching at a near run. Surprised, I stop. He grabs my hand, looks me in the eye, grins, and pulls me forward. I wait for him to drop my hand, as he always does, but instead he squeezes it and swings my arms, his grin widening at my delight. For a moment, it feels so right, his hand a perfect fit in mine. A jolt of joy shocks my body. This is what my dreams are made of, this kind of connection with my son – dreams of eye-to-eye contact, deep conversations, arm-in-arm walks through the woods.

This full-body joy is answered, almost immediately, by my mind, which says, no, don’t go there. My logical mind tells me there are no happy endings with twenty-six-year-old sons with autism. There is no happily-ever-after when they move away from home and you are left, not with “this is the way it’s supposed to be,” but with guilt, sleepless nights, and often, regret.

And yet, here we are in a dream-come-true scenario. Joel holds my hand tight, matches my gait stride for stride, steals sideways gazes, his eyes playful, a smile flitting, now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t, across his handsome face. He is perfectly beautiful, my heart sings.

Joy and sorrow play tug-of-war in my heart.

For a month Joel has been constant motion, constant chatter. He lashes out at staff with his hands, sometime his feet. He spend hour upon hour walking or running around Safe Haven Farms, the sixty-acre farms for adults with autism that we helped to establish – where he now resides. No one can stop him from walking. I worry about his feet, which are cracked and blistered. My heart breaks as his anxiety escalates and erupts into aggression. I sit through behavior meetings once a week, where the aggression is charted. Manic swings, which we thought he’d left behind for good with a gluten-dairy free diet and a change of medication, are manifesting again, keeping him awake at night. Unable to sleep, he knocks on doors of his housemates, waking them, as well. Everyone in his house on edge, waiting for behaviors to erupt, with no one sleeping soundly.

Dreams die hard. Our third son’s adulthood will never be what we expected. We think we’ve moved through depression and anger, denial and guilt into a place called acceptance when yet another transition takes place and we grieve all over again. Letting go of this son is nothing like letting his big brothers Matt and Justin go. That was the natural, normal progression of life; it was something to celebrate, knowing we did our jobs as parents, giving them roots and wings. This feels like an amputation, so deep is this son’s need, so intensive our care-giving, more than a quarter century’s worth.

Joel’s hand, still clutching mine, is warm and sweaty. I leave my doubting mind behind for a moment. Allow myself to totally inhabit this present moment. Become pure body, pure hand, pure connection.

Friends tell me I must cut the cord, not hold so tight to this beautifully whole yet broken boy-man. But this connection – this fleshly hand in mine – tells me what my gut already knows. This cord is a living cord, a cord of flesh-and-blood. Unlike an umbilical cord, this cord can never be severed. Yes, like the towering maples, beech, and sycamore along this trail, we will experience all the seasons of life. We have known green and growing times, and we will experience them again. We have lived through times of autumnal beauty that signaled the end of an era, and we will know them again. We have suffered and waited through fallow seasons where it seemed as if nothing would ever grow again, like this past year, with Joel’s move away from home, a seeming death for him, for me, for his father.

Every October I mourn the passing of autumn’s glory. Dread the dark, dank days of winter to come. Today I want to stay pure hand, hold onto this moment forever. But my heart calls me to remember that spring always follows winter. Spring, when the sap flows upward, bringing with it new life, new sweetness, new possibilities, new ways of being.

This is what is true: I am Joel’s mother. He is my son. And we are walking up a hill, hand in hand, through sunlight streaming golden through a canopy of maple, sycamore, and beech.

Nothing, unless I allow it, can rob me of this present joy.

I choose joy.

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