And what actually waited for me at that diner sent my understanding not down but up, so far up that I could barely take it in, because the truth was not that my son was less than I had thought but that he was immeasurably more, more selfless, more brave, more loving than I had known a child could be.

I had spent an entire drive preparing to have my heart broken by what my son had become, and instead my heart was about to be broken by what he was, which was better than I had ever dared to imagine.

It is a strange thing to be so thoroughly wrong about your own child in the very best possible direction, to have feared a monster and found, instead, a hero the size of a seventh-grader, standing in a kitchen with grease on his face.

Chapter 16 — The Scattered Backpack