Fourth of July

On the fourth of July, my father was married. His new bride was exceptionally different from my mother, which only made it easier for me. If she had been just like my mom, it would have been like he was trying to replace her in his life. Instead, he was starting a new chapter in his story. And so was I.

The previous week, I'd been told that my son's autism diagnosis had been wrong. He was started on anti-convulsants for epilepsy, and showed almost immediate improvement. He had a follow-up appointment scheduled for the end of July, and I couldn't wait to show his teachers at the elementary school. The guidance counselor, the autism support teacher, the school psychologist, his classroom teacher, his therapist. They'd all evaluated him in March. They'd all said that Jacob was making improvements, but that he'd need another year of Kindergarten. Nobody, myself included, wanted to put him into the first grade before he was ready. At the time, he wasn't even six years old. He couldn't always express himself, with frustration leading to frequent behavior problems and temper tantrums. It was the terrible twos, but it had been this way for the last four years.

Now, with just a week of the medication, he was expressing himself in ways I had never thought possible. He was sounding out words and learning to read. He was suddenly co-ordinated enough to walk toe-to-heel on a curb, to consistently run without tripping, to climb a tree. He was acting like a normal six-year-old. He even listened quietly in church, and could safely walk about ten feet in front of me on the sidewalk, stopping at each corner and waiting for me to catch up. That wouldn't have been possible a month ago. He signed up for a summer reading group at the library and I could drop him off and pick him up. We once got kicked out of our local public library because the kids were being too noisy. The "new Jacob" amazed me daily.

And so it was quite happily that I took all three kids to Wal-mart two days before my father's wedding, to buy Jacob some new dress clothes for the celebration. Jane and Tony didn't need the dress clothes; they already had some. But Jacob had just had a growth spurt, and with all of the mental growth he'd experienced lately, I hadn't noticed that his shirts didn't fit him anymore. The nearest Wal-mart is roughly 45 minutes from our town. Although I like to shop locally, and buy from larger chains as little as possible, our town doesn't have everything. Our one clothing store had just gone out of business a few months before. We do have a Dollar General, and they do sell clothing, but they didn't have children's dress clothes that July.

Plus, I had to buy my dad's wedding gift. Technically, I made it, but I had to buy the packaging. And that was something that required a specialty store. I had to go to Staples.