I then began discreetly writing notes on the door of his bedroom.
“Proud of you.”
“You’re doing better than you think, honey.”
“You don’t have to talk. I see you anyway.”
“There’s no one else like you.”
For a while, they stayed untouched. I’d find them curled at the edges, the tape starting to yellow. But I left them up anyway.
Then one morning, I found a sticky note on my bedside table.
“Thanks for seeing me. Even when I didn’t say anything. You’re the best, Mom.”
I sat on the edge of my bed and held that note like it was something sacred.
A month in, Mason stood in the kitchen one afternoon, backpack slung over one shoulder.
“Hey, Mom? Would it be okay if I stayed after school for robotics club?”
I froze, mid-stir, the sauce bubbling quietly on the stove.
“Yeah,” I said, careful not to sound too excited. “Of course. That sounds great.”
“I think I want to start building stuff again.”
And I smiled because I knew exactly what that meant.
“Go, honey,” I said. “I’ll make some garlic bread and we can pop it in the oven when you get back.”
After two weeks, he brought home a model bridge constructed out of hot glue and popsicle sticks. As soon as he took it up, it fell apart.
After a moment of staring at the devastation, he burst out laughing. I laughed so hard.
“That’s okay,” he concluded. “I’ll build another one.”
I wanted to freeze that moment, for heaven’s sake. Fill a bottle. Put it in a frame. I wished that this moment would never end. Since that boy was mine.
The one who used to build LEGO cities and dream out loud about being an engineer. The one who’d been buried under silence, shame, and survival.
And now he was finding his way back.
In May, I got an email from his teacher. End-of-year assembly.
“You’ll want to be there,” she wrote.
They called his name and my hands started shaking.
“Most Resilient Student!”
He approached the stage without haste or embarrassment. He was proud and tall. He stopped, looked around, and grinned.
Sitting quietly in the back seat with tears in their eyes, one hand raised toward Eddie and the other toward me.
Everything we had been unable to express was conveyed by that single gesture. Together, we were in this. Restoring.
Eddie continues to call. Occasionally, it’s brief—just a “How was school?” maybe “You still into that robot stuff, son?”
Sometimes they talk about movies they used to watch together. Sometimes there are awkward silences. But Mason always picks up.
It’s not perfect. But it’s something.
I find little notes he writes to himself taped to the wall above his desk.
Things like:
