And Time Marches On…. and This Mom Continues Learning, too.

I heard a weird scratching at the door which I thought might be the cat, though I didn’t see her get out. I watched as the door opened and Samuel stepped through, smiling.

“What are you doing home so early?” It was only 9:30 and his Japanese class at Bakersfield College lasts until 11:10 and then he usually is home a half hour after that, at least.

“Today is mid-terms,” he said, with a wider small than I am used to seeing across his eighteen-year-old usually-bored-with-his-old-mother face.
“How did it go?” I asked.

“Well,” he said. Since he was smiling even more widely, I continued the conversation.

“When will you find out how you did?”

“Tomorrow I think, probably,” he answered. He \share more, his face still bright, the shortened week thanks to the Fourth of July. He took himself and his soda and Takis chips which he bought on the way home, into his Man Cave before texting me.

“I need to rent “The Last Samarai” with Tom Cruise in it for a worksheet for class. I need to get it done soon.”

We went back and forth via text even though we were about twenty steps apart before I gave him my Amazon log-in so he could watch it on Prime.
I think he was excited to use his new debit card for a thirty-day prime trial, but he could wait and use his shiny newly-minted-adult-no-parents-allowed-goodies for another time.

This all feels wonderfully surreal.

• Wasn’t I just showing up when he was in kindergarten, barracuda mom, when the vice-principal insisted my parenting skills were obviously awful or my child wouldn’t be behaving like this?
• Wasn’t I just battling it out with educrats about whether or not he could be mainstreamed into more general ed classes?
• Didn’t he just call and convene his own IEP meeting in writing his Freshman year to make a change in his education plan?

His time at Bakersfield College for Summer School has been nothing short of remarkable, where I was able to stand as an anonymous witness. I have been a student and an employee there. I can blend in and watch him manage the administrative tasks at one time the educators “in charge” never imagined he would do successfully.

The next few months will be interesting. Now that it’s July, we are on the sixth month count-down to a brand new decade. Whoa. I hadn’t connected the dots like that until just this moment.

What are you looking forward to over the rest of this year?

Julie JordanScott is the author of the upcoming book, Dear Autism Mom, a collection of encouraging, instructing and inspiring letters to parents of children who are on the autism spectrum. Her son, Samuel, recently graduated high school and will be attending University of Nevada, Las Vegas in Fall 2019. She is a Life and Creativity Coach, a Writer, Retreat Leader and Social Media Expert who loves inspiring others into their greatness.