All week Benjamin told me that he did not want to attend the Halloween party put on for life skills kids at his old school. That was fine. He is eighteen now. But yesterday the first words out of his mouth expressed a change of heart. 

"I do want to go."

Later that afternoon we were chatting about the event with his therapist when he leaped up and headed upstairs. He swaggered down a few minutes later in a pair of jeans, boots, a plaid shirt, cowboy hat, and the Woody vest I made him when he was ten. It was snug. 

We laughed, and I invited his therapist to pull the retractable cord on the back of his vest. When she did, he smiled broadly. 

"Reach for the sky."

For a child whose thyroid is purely decorative, I am thrilled to see that the vest no longer fits. Ben takes a hormone supplement each day, called levothyroxine, which reminds his body to grow. Not that he is getting any taller than the five nine he has already achieved, but the internal changes keep him vibrant.  

John and I went out for lunch with a couple we love. They talked about the idea of marriage having within it a series a marriages, that mark the evolution of their relationship. It affirms the idea that a marriage is not created in a day, any more than an oak tree is.

But they do, in small increments, allow us to reach for the sky. 

"A seedling does not grow up into a mature tree in a single day. First there is a seed, then a root, then a shoot, which develops into a trunk; then branches come out of that and develop leaves and finally flowers and fruit. Wheat and barley do not spring up ready for harvest in a single day. A home is not built in a single day. We do not become full grown in a single day; reaching wisdom takes us even longer. The church is not established let alone perfected in a single day. We will make no progress toward a goal unless we first make a start."

True Christianity 586, Emanuel Swedenborg