Yesterday as I was pushing Wes in a cart out of the grocery store a lady stopped me and said, “Is he Down syndrome?”

“Yes…”

She smiled big and said, “Do you know how BLESSED you are?”

I think I said something about how people often tell me that.

Turns out she had four boys, and then one girl. Her girl, the youngest, has Down syndrome. The doctors said she wouldn’t live past three, and now she’s forty. The lady called her daughter her “perfect princess.”

I forget sometimes that Wes is a little different. I rarely think about it. Today at the Buddy Walk I looked around and remembered that Wes is different when I saw all the other kids there who LOOK like Wes. It’s like I have to see him around other people with Down syndrome and then I remember that’s what he is, too.

When Wes was first born we took him to all the local events that brought together families with kids with Down syndrome. And while they were good things to attend, I always left shaken. Because I could not see how my little baby could grow up to look like the other kids I saw there. They looked so different than what I was used to. They acted a little different. And at events like that you see all varieties of the disability, some more severe than others.

I guess it’s the being different part that makes Wes a little special. And that, like the lady said in the store, is what makes us so blessed.