Have you ever gone to sleep with the winds yowling, and the torrents of rain clacking against the panes like an ensemble of tap shoes? My mind usually jumps between worrying about car windows, and deck chairs, the basement flooding and those looming oaks swaying above the roof. Then if the ruckus subsides at midnight, I wake up to sunshine and silence. Well, not silence, because the birds are rejoicing. But the storm is over. 

That happened at our house. 

Benjamin has been wailing out in distress for awhile now. Neighbors could hear it, even people driving up our road. The kid has some pipes when he gets going. We have dragged him to doctors, therapists, and behavior specialists. But the angst continued. 

Last month the psychiatrist monitoring his medications chose something new. 

"It might take a couple of weeks to kick in, and he made be, well agitated."

The part about a fortnight and being edgy gave us pause. But John, who has a surprisingly long rope, was nearing the end of it. One morning he decided. 

"We are going to start it. None of the other oils and wrist buzzies and meds while we see if it makes a difference." It was a relief to have him take a stand, seeing as I could barely hold my own weight.  

I have been keeping notes every day since April about Ben's moods, and our efforts to help him. That made it possible for me to rely on something besides my erratic memory. Stress makes it hard to access your frontal lobe. 

Hence I can say with conviction that we were visited by a miracle. Benjamin has been smiling. Laughing. Telling jokes. Like the one about the three humped camel. Who was pregnant. 

I have wept with joy. 

John is more hesitant than me to close the book and consider our family healed. But I take my blessings in any size. Benjamin's recent upheavals rise and fall in a span of minutes as opposed to the hours we have endured thus far. It can still blow through like a squall, sudden and fierce at forty knots.

Thank you to all of the people who have prayed, listened, cared, ached and forgiven us while we stumbled. John did the math and told me that the pill in question has one billionth of the body mass of our sweet son. 

That is pretty tiny. It echoes claims around the impact of butterfly wings flapping in Brazil, and pebbles dropped in a pond up in New England. 

One in a billion. Somehow that suggests that our efforts, infinitesimal as they might seem, can bring an aching heart back from the brink.