I am a tentative gardener. You know, the kind that spends more on seeds and hoses and soil than I ever would on the modest harvest it produces. But I welcome rain. There are a spate of wet days predicted this week and whereas last month I would have bemoaned the scarcity of sunshine, now that there are baby plants in the raised beds, I’m grateful. 

Rain brings results. 

The slender seedlings react to moisture with vigor. At least if it’s not an unending deluge. They wriggle upwards as if the droplets themselves have slapped them awake from the soporific effect of being surrounded by dirt. Who could blame them really?

Every morning when I jostle Benjamin he says the same two things. 

“It’s hard to get up.” Which is true. 

“It’s a nice, warm bed.”

I’m unsure whether he reminds me because it might be newsworthy or as an acknowledgment to himself that this will take effort. Which it does. 

This weekend our daughter gets her diploma from grad school. Her family will be there to applaud. I have a rumbling anxiety that during two hours of speeches her brother, the one with autism, will get fidgety. More than fidgety. His noises may rain on her parade. 

I would prefer it if there was no struggle. I would rather have Ben’s sunny personality shine out as he sits on a folding chair in a crowd of a thousand people. It might even be alright if he waves at her enthusiastically like he does to a girl he knows at church. It would not be a deal breaker if he raises his hand like a flag begging to be called on for a pithy comment. I could even cringe through him belting out a chorus of “The Rainbow Connection”. 

But looking over my shoulder at the mishaps of his brief life it seems obvious that it is those precise moments when we have been yanked out of our warm comfort zone that have given us reason to grow.