Now all the teachers' eyes are glued to my brave little boy who has managed to walk all the way over to the table and is slowly sitting, first on the armrest, and then finally on the chair. His eyes are closed, but he opens them to take a big strong bite of his cookie. We smile victoriously, and I stop my tears from welling up. We still have a long way to go, and if I let myself really cry, I would not be able to stop for weeks. And my weeks belong to my son, for now. All the professionals think this is a meaningful development, and they are surprised that he was so successful so quickly. Even though a part of me still thinks it's crazy to celebrate these baby steps, I celebrate. The cynic in me argues that I'm sitting here celebrating something that every other 3-year-old in the country, including the other special needs kids in my son's class, can do without a second thought. But the better me argues back that everyone, throughout the course of life, has challenges; hopefully my son is getting his out of the way early.

Sometimes I'm genuinely surprised that we manage to maintain our level of optimism, especially considering our expectations at the start. I used to think my son would develop speech in his first 6 months of therapy. I used to fantasize about the first time he'd say "mommy" and how I would cry with happiness. I used to think that once he made one baby step, others would quickly follow and that in no time at all, he would be caught up to his peers. I used to think that mild autism was mild. I had to learn, alongside my husband, about the unprecedented amounts of patience and persistence. I had to learn that you don't get that "mommy" moment, because first he learns to say the "ma" sound without the meaning and he only ever says it when you prompt him, never on his own, and even if he does say it, once or twice, it isn't something you're sure he means and it isn't something he can repeat. Eventually, you adjust your expectations. And you do get a modified version of "mommy" moments, like when you see him hug his stuffed elephant for the first time, or hold up his arms to be a tree in yoga class, or get himself to the snack table. You witness these tiny shifts in the landscape of his mind that make a tiny part of you stop worrying. You don't get a lot of them: maybe two or three a month if you're lucky. And if you're really lucky, when you add them all up, they equal the little boy you thought you gave birth to.

School is dismissed, and we go home to our overcrowded apartment. Like everyone else in New York City, we don't have enough space, but these days what our one-bedroom-plus-den cannot accommodate are the huge conflicting emotions that barge in and make themselves at home. We are constantly hopeful and terrified, mostly in that order. We are hopeful that our son will be one of the success stories: that our pediatric neurologist will one day soon tell us that he is off the autistic spectrum; that when he is fifteen, his girlfriend's jaw will drop when we tell her about these events in his distant infancy. But we are also terrified of parents with older autistic children who claim that recovery is a myth, and of therapists who tell us point blank that our son's challenges are here to stay.