time to celebrate a birthday, a few of them actually. april rocks, i like to say, and the season has already begun. the first was a-d, a foster child who turned nine on the second. she had lots of cake and a big splash especially at school, but it was already pretty much over by tonight with but a few scraps of cake left sitting around.

the second however was CBN, who turned twenty-one, and this i felt was due a huge celebration if only internally, in my mind, where i've been waiting years for him to just become an adult and gain some independence. we rented him a car to go down to quincy to pick up his friends, but he appeared to be having so much fun with friends here in town that he might not even make it down there. no problem, or at least, not a problem with us. there were a bunch of kids here, all older teens, and we got them a pizza and an ice cream cake, but they ate the pizza only and left the cake. the remarkable thing was that they all got along. it was calm and there was no anger about unmet expectations or some kid being treated differently from some other. mind you, there is some anger about that issue in general, but it being his birthday, everyone was being pretty nice.

and the heck of it is, we never found out whether he was still going to quincy. if he left immediately after he left here, he'd get back around midnight which is already too late for me and which bothers me like any car full of black kids might bother a bored policeman on a tuesday night in rural illinois. but i'm sure he knows this and will drive carefully if he does anything at all. and he'll have friends with him who will surely keep him awake.

here's my surprise: i'm writing a book about it. how we treated a special kid, how we reacted to his dmdd, how it broke apart our family but still somehow we managed. i'm not sure if i can actually show this book to everyone, or whether one should make such things public, but it sure feels good writing it. it's like i've been waiting all along to tell my story. and also, it's my way of celebrating. i'm not going off to drink a bottle, or smoke a joint, but i'm coming up here enjoying my victory spilling it out like i'm doing here. let the world know how proud i am that he's twenty-one, and neither of us is dead or in jail.

last thing i did, is to take that little piece of cake and eat it. the ice cream cake - that stays untouched, waiting for him to come back, tonight or tomorrow. the girls' cake, i can have that, because that's what dads do.

it was a cold, grim day, windy, about freezing, reminded me of the day we went up to get him, in chicago, when he was born twenty-one years ago. april can be right cold in illinois and it was then as it was today. another son and i saw a baseball game that april and that was cold too. when the family went to pick him up it was later, like two weeks later, but it was cold, windy, gray, seemed actually kind of hostile. we bundled the baby up and kept him warm on the long trip. carbondale unlike galesburg is about six from chicago (galesburg being only three) so we may have taken two days. he was tiny.

today, he's somewhat adrift, trying to come to terms with disability. i think he could still do something with his life, and probably will, but even at twenty-one isn't ready. at least he's staying out of trouble. and has friends. and is still alive, and not in jail.