I began dreading my son Max’s college-application proc­ess even before his senior year began last fall. I didn’t want to hear the stories about his ultracompetitive peers or come into contact with their crazed überparents. I wasn’t looking forward to the endless essays, the almost-missed deadlines. But mostly I just felt an amorphous sadness. It’s not that he wasn’t ready to go; it was as if there were something more that I needed to do or say before I could let him.

The feeling that there was more I ought to do for him is very old. A true middle child, Max has always been quietly self-sufficient, not one to make waves in an already complicated family. His older brother, Nat, is severely autistic. His younger brother, Ben, is fiery and intense. Sandwiched between such demanding siblings, Max learned to be unobtrusive and pleasant. Even as a baby, contentment and equanimity was his way. He always seemed to know how to take care of himself — like the time he tumbled down a flight of stairs but then quickly looked up and smiled reassuringly at me as if to say, No problem, Mommy, before crawling away. “No problem” is ever Max’s refrain. But still I worry about him. In a dark corner of my heart, I have always feared that he couldn’t possibly be O.K., because how could he be, with a family like ours?

Over the years I’ve wanted to help Max with so many things, particularly with Nat, to explain it all to him, to take away his pain, as if that were possible. I’ve talked and talked and talked to him, because that is what I do, how I cope. Usually he replies with polite quiet. And more recently, as normal teenage remove and senior-year pressure have kicked in, it has become even harder to know what might really be going on inside his head. I didn’t even realize that he was almost finished writing his college-application essays until he mentioned this in passing one morning when we were driving to school.

“I figured I’d write about Nat,” Max said, as we turned the corner from our driveway. He spoke so matter-of-factly that he might as well have been telling me he needed new socks.