This was to be the day. I’ve been thinking about it all week, and today I was going to post a disclosure—a confession. It would have read something like this:

We’re not making progress, at least not that I perceive. We got off to an explosive start: Martin zoomed from restlessness to sleep, from lethargy to energy, from drifting to engagement, from low muscle tone to standard body-type. Then, late in summer, the advances dwindled, and Martin backslid in attention and language.

It’s almost winter now, and I’m wondering if we’ll get back on track and whether the burden of an ASD recovery journey really makes sense. I’m even ready to admit that, had I felt this way in August, I would not have started blogging. It’s too difficult, exposing your own aspirations and vulnerabilities on-line (even if anonymously) when the very subject you’re blogging has beaten you into the gutter. Back in August, when I wrote my first post, we weren’t chugging along like we once had been, but it just felt like we’d pulled into a rest stop on the recovery highway. A check of the map, maybe a snack, and we’d be back on our way.

But then the ignition refused to turn. Two or three months later, the biomedical car remains stalled, and Triple-A has not shown. I’m stuck.

 That’s approximately the ode to frustration I had in mind to post.

By now, if I’ve set this up properly, you’re asking why I say what “was to be.” Why am I quoting the ode to frustration, instead of posting it directly?

The answer is that Martin climbed out of bed this morning and said, “Hello, Mommy.” When I plopped into the chair in his room and asked if he’d like to sit on me, he responded, “Sit on you,” getting the preposition correct if not the idiom. He asked to use the potty and did his business without clawing at his legs, which he’s been scratching raw from yeast itch. When I helped him get dressed, he put his arms into his sleeves and then—instead of letting the shirt stay bunch around his chest, as usual—he tugged the hem down over his belly, looking like any neurotypical three-year-old getting dressed. He glanced down with each step as we descended the stairs to the kitchen. He ate his waffle with a fork. When I asked if he wanted more, he said, “I want more waffle.”

It was a good morning.

True, it was just one good morning, and later this afternoon Martin got spacier.

As it turns out, for now, one good morning was enough. I decided not to let my icky desperation take the starring role in today’s post.

Still, I had to reveal what I’d thought about writing. That’s my commitment to honesty here.

This morning I thought I heard the engine try to turn. I can’t wait for tomorrow. We may leave this rest stop yet.