This is the story of a miracle.

Let me begin my telling you about my son. He is 17. Last June, at the end of his junior year, he made the choice to move from Botetourt County, Virginia, where he had lived all his life, to Vermont to live with me. He left behind his friends who had been his friends since kindergarten. He left behind a school and groups he had been a part of all of his life. It was a hard decision, but one he felt like he had to make for his own emotional safety.

If you can remember being 17, you can imagine how hard that was. You can probably understand the magnitude of change. And you can imagine how this past year has been a year of discovery.

I have been through this before. My daughter had made the same decision 5 years earlier, and so I knew something of the sadness he would feel, and of the discoveries about himself and this new world, and living with me, instead of his mother (a pretty big adjustment in itself.) that would part of his life. I could do some things to help it along, but in the end, the discovery is theirs. It would be his to find and create and adjust to his new world.

And so, after a lifetime in one place, with one group of friends and family, he had to discover and find his own way.

He had done so admirably. He has built a circle of friends, one in particular who he has become close to, without losing touch with his dearest friends in Virginia. He has built relationships with people up here – with people in the area, with the people at our church, with the woman I love, with the circle of creative friends that surround me. His grades are better than they have been in many, many years. Though he spent the last semester in an on-line school, he has become involved in the local high school as well, working with their theater, with music groups, with other groups. He is known. He is liked. He is respected. Heck, he even went to the fall dance with the Homecoming Queen.

Yes, I am proud of him. Just as I was proud of my daughter who came before him, as she too, overcame the loss and sadness and anger at having to leave Virginia for something as basic as emotional safety, and built a life that launched her into college and beyond in a field she loved, where she learned and became an award-winning leader at her university.

Of course I am proud. Which when you think about it, because they did the work. I just provided a safe place for them to be who they are. And that is part of what I’ve seen in my son over the past 8 months – his recapturing who he was, and discovering the potential of who he can be. But today, I got a different kind of joy. Something a lot of parents don’t ever get to experience.

But today, I got a different kind of joy. Something a lot of parents don’t ever get to experience.

My son is color blind. The blue-green kind. Color blindness is a benign kind of deficit. You can and most people do live just fine with it, and except now and then for a oddly put together outfit, most of us never know they are color blind.

And so it was for my son. I knew it. I didn’t think about it much. In his case, I didn’t even have to worry about the oddly put together outfit, because he had an app to help him pick out his clothes. He never complained.

Not long ago, one of his friends had sent him a link to some new glasses that correct color blindness, and in time, retrain the eyes so you can see color. A neat idea, but expensive and a low priority.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

We were at an art show of Rachel Barlow’s watercolors. Rachel is a friend of ours, and  wonderful watercolor artist with a joy in her art that few manage to capture. James and I often go to galleries and museums together. It’s one of our shared joys. While we were there, James stopped at this painting, and asked me about “this monochrome painting”

And of course, it is anything but monochrome. it is rich with delicate colors that capture that magical moment of budding spring.

And that’s when it hit me. How much he was missing. How much he had missed. How, as much as he loved art, he had missed it. I have to confess, a deep sadness flowed over me. I thought about how I glory in the colors of my life. How I wallow in them, drink them in, savor them. And he saw… Well, he saw red. The rest was a vague, dull, almost monochrome with a hint of color world.

“We’re buying the glasses.” I said.

He tells me that he saw that sadness as I felt it in the gallery, but he will never understand it’s depth until  or if he becomes a parent. We want everything for our kids. And while no life it all good, and while he had suffered a great deal of loss over the last year, this was different. This was a basic, deep joy, and as I stood there, all I could think about was scene after scene in my life and the colors…. none of which he had seen.

The glasses arrived today. We stopped in the post office to get them. I practically held my breath as he tore into the tape and opened the box. There was anticipation, and fear. The reason for the anticipation was obvious. The fear came because the glasses only work for 80% of the people who are blue-green color blind.

He pulled them out. He took a deep breath. He put them on.

And a huge smile erupted on his face.

They worked.  The morning has been a morning of wonder. Of discovery. The sky, in it’s vibrant blueness is a wonder to him. As we drove through the countryside, he pointed to… everything. Grass is green. The periwinkle house. The blue sign. All of it new. It’s like the moment when, in The Wizard of Oz, the film went from black and white to color, except it’s the entire world.

It has been a great morning, watching his wonder and his joy. Watching his discovery. It has brought to my mind every discovery in my life, and how they changed how I saw the world. Love. Faith. Talents. People. The discoveries and my joy in them washed over me. My joy for him washed over me. Even for me, I felt like I was seeing color for the first time as I tried to imagine the world without it.

If we are lucky, we get to bring a lot of joys to our children. But rarely do we get to change how they see…. everything. That’s a crazy, amazing, joyful gift.

So if you see two people in Vermont this spring, as flowers bud and grass emerges from its brown carpet, who seem a little over the top in their appreciation of the color season, one of them a 60-year-old man, and the other one a 17-year-old boy with glasses. it’s just us.

Rediscovering wonder.

Be well. Travel wisely,

Tom