Children as Revelation(s)

We recently took an overseas trip with our two younger kids. It's not the first time we've gone overseas with our kids, but it is the first time we've gone only as a foursome. So many things could have gone wrong, as they always can when parents travel with children. And we're always primed for some extra complication when we travel with our autistic son. But I don't think I've ever come back from a vacation and said, as I did of this one: "It was perfect."

Yes, the weather gods cooperated beautifully. The plane flights going and coming home were smooth and on time. We met up with family from Paris (we were in Amsterdam) and everyone got along. But it was the way my own kids were that blew me away.

We arrived at our hotel/apartment and Noah discovered favorite hats--from the New England Aquarium and the Museum of Natural History--hadn't made it off the plane. He was upset. But that passed, quite quickly. Then his DVD player broke. A year or two ago, that would have ruined everything. It wasn't the fact that we had an Ipad to substitute that made things ok; it was that Noah accepted that disappointment and in fact took it upon himself to throw the broken player in the trash. In my book, that's about as close to a miracle as things get.

Ariel worked tirelessly to engage her French-speaking cousins. She walked and walked, whereas at home, a short walk into town prompts excuses and whining. But it was her interactions with Noah--and his with her--that blew me away. He asked her to be in photos with him. Out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant, he literally mimicked her when she picked up her water glass to drink. He asked to sit next to her on a canal boat ride. To say my cup overfloweth would be to radically understate my joy.

Some parents measure parenting success by trophies, by how many prizes their kids win, by the schools they get into, by their test scores. I measure success by how my disabled son and his siblings interact, by the ways they squabble--or don't--and above all, by the ways they find to love and show love for one another. Lifting a water glass in synch, reaching an arm around a sibling for a photo op, squeezing side by side on a boat--all might seem trivial to parents who set the bar in another place. To me, those things light me up inside like nothing else on this earth. And I know, for every other day that I do or will feel like a failure, that at the core of what I've done as a parent, there's some pretty awesome success.