Time continues ticking down to Ben’s return to Illinois, even if we don’t yet know where he will end up. We are working-working-working anxiously on it, having meeting upon meeting with service providers, people connected to service providers, families getting services from service providers, experts who know all about service providers, people working on becoming service providers… as you might guess, “service provider” is the most significant term in our lives right now.

In fact, today’s our 29th wedding anniversary, which we’ll be “celebrating” by having dinner and consulting with people in the Service Provider world. At least we really like them.

Ben has eleven days to go until he is released from the shackles of cast-hood, and considering how he gets around with it, he’ll think he’s flying without it, at that point a full two months after his surgery.

Stephanie, our favorite bartender, has just left “our” Cleveland joint that we hit in the evenings for dinner and alcohol after our days with Ben. No doubt her leaving is fate helping us with our pending Ohio separation (fate is always so friendly).

We don’t know Ben’s degree of understanding what’s coming. We talk with him a lot about moving back to Illinois, seeing Mom and Dad more often and his brother and his aunts and uncles and cousins, and the long, long drive he’ll get coming back. He seems happy when we talk about it. I just don’t think he really knows what’s coming. I’m afraid that 10 minutes after arriving, he’ll be ready to “go back to MBA.” When he left Wisconsin’s Oconomowoc Developmental Training Center four years ago, Cleveland-bound, he went straight from the front door to the car. We tried to get him to understand, to say good-bye to the people he’d been with for five years, but – nothing. Away we went, his former staff never (so far) to be seen by Ben again. We don’t know if this will be different, though it won’t be the first time he’s done this, so he might understand a bit. But really, would that be better or worse for him? Always more questions than answers.

This weekend was a nice one, though it started rough, with Ben going from giddily happy when we picked him up Saturday morning to a temporary bad mood in the car, directed my way. It was all because we screwed up in not realizing we were getting to Half Price Books 11 minutes before opening, which we tried to resolve by me going with Ben to get gas for the car as Karen stayed and waited for the book store to open. Ah well. At least Ben apologized profusely afterwords. Not just, “I’m sorry,” but “I’m very sorry.” I hope he really was.

And he, or that good ol’ fate, or both, managed to convince me that maybe he just might be. The next day, Sunday, we went to Target for some stuff not long before visit’s end, and Ben and I went to the book section. He looked at a bunch, and then handed me his choice.

Spot Loves His Daddy.

And how often have you gotten teary in Target?