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I cannot believe Nicholas is turning fourteen this year. When he arrived, I had already been a mother for five years. My first son, Billy, a strong willed, inquisitive little boy had taught me many things, such as; how to survive on very little sleep, how to put toys back together after they had been meticulously taken apart, and the best ways to avoid embarrassment when your toddler talks to anyone anywhere. I did not think about the future of things or large-scale problems, that is, until Nicholas was born.

There is no agony like
bearing an untold story inside of you.
~ Maya Angelou ~

It was January and Nicholas was about three months old when I first began to get an eerie feeling in my gut that just would not go away. I couldn't put my finger on it yet but I knew there was something not quite right. The feeling in my gut grew rapidly and by his first birthday, I would ask his doctor at every visit if he noticed anything wrong but time after time, he would say things were fine. From the outside, everything looked normal. The doctor suggested that maybe I was just comparing him to his brother too much. I'd leave the office feeling guilty as if I was unfairly judging and comparing my own baby. Could I not just find joy in him? Why did I constantly compare him to every other child and why could I not shake that lingering feeling of doom?

On his second birthday our closest family members gathered at our house. Nicholas sat in his high chair, feet dangling, his thin red hair parted to the side with his beautiful blue eyes gazing solemnly. His mouth unsmiling, he seemed so overwhelmed by the excitement. His younger cousin, more enthused than he, let out a gleeful scream and Nicholas looked like he had just been assaulted and proceeded to let out a blood-curdling scream. "Maybe the seat belt in his chair is pinching him," his great grandmother suggested. "That's just his personality," said his grandpa. "I think he's just lazy." "Maybe he just doesn't like birthday parties," someone else suggested.

He did quit crying eventually but he was apathetic for the rest of the day. Everyone seemed to have an opinion but nobody suggested that something else more serious was going on. That would have been entirely too painful. The denial on my family's part and on the doctors' part only fed my self-doubts.

I soon became obsessed (an emotion that would eventually inhabit the rest of my life in some way or another.) I could not comfortably accept that my toddler preferred to

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