Proving Ground

Cesare spent many years of his young life incapacitated by medications, hospitalizations and isolation.  His social growth lagged considerably behind his physical or even intellectual growth. As it is, he often prefers to relate to a screen instead of peers.  Although if peers came knocking, he'd jump at the chance.  But they don't.

We've been quite simply saved by two families that have surrounded ours all the years of our children's lives.  We spent Memorial Day with them and when the evening was over I was left with enormous gratitude.  Our friends' children have been quasi brothers and sister to Cesare and Griffin.  Zoe, now 22, has been extraordinarily generous to Cesare.  Many years ago, at their family's annual Easter Egg hunt, instead of hunting for the candy that Cesare could not have since he was on the (failed) ketogenic diet, she set up a special system for him in which he could cash in his candy for something special.  Zoe was only 11 at the time and came up with this quite on her own.  Aaron, Isaac, Jonah and Eli never shied away from Ces when he seized or turned away when we had to change a pic line at a gathering.  Isaac wanted to know more about Cesare's surgeries and made Cesare feel important when he saw him during the time that Ces endured six months with no skull over his right temporal lobe due to a post surgical bone infection.  (Isaac is pre-med now).  His quasi brothers never made him feel different.

Ces and his bubble tea.

Yesterday our friends, all of whom have perfected asian cooking, brought bubble tea to the party.  To drink bubble tea is a treat, to shoot the bubbles is sport!  To see them all together, chasing each other down, blowing the sticky tapioca balls through their hefty straws like blow darts made me smile- wide.

The wind up.

Cesare, Aaron and surrogate parents

Ces and brother Griffin

Griff and Jonah

Years, and years and years of dumpling dinners at Alan and Miriam's and everything-else-dinners at Janice and Dan's have made Cesare comfortable in other people's homes.  He has come to expect a fun time with no stigma, and no awkwardness.  It's as if our friends' homes are and have always been Cesare's proving ground.  It is where he tries out conversation and jokes.  It is where he has, over the years, found acceptance and brother and sisterly teasing.  It is where other parents snuggle in to the couch with him to explore his ideas about science or fart jokes.

Ces may have a bumpy road moving on in to the whole wide world as an adult.  But he could not have had a better, safer or more loving start.