Together we stand

Oct. 12, 2009

Well, today was the walk that I wrote about a few weeks back. Who would have predicted that it would drop almost 30 degrees over that two-week span? (I know, typical Ohio weather.) Today’s walk was for autism, a diagnosis (one of the few it seems) not directly attached to Nathan. Still, with cousins on the spectrum we wanted to show our support for the cause.

Through the creation site, I’ve become reacquainted with someone I hadn’t seen since I graduated from high school. Autism has touched their family, and being able to share stories and talk with others fighting many of the same battles seems to bring a peace to my heart. There’s always room for one more (or one more family) in one’s circle of friends.

As my wife, son and I headed down to OSU, we faced the initial dilemma of meeting our group amongst thousands of people. Cell phones, text messages and scouting out the resource center brought our group together, but taking a step back and watching the multitude of others walking by, it led me to thinking what a great problem this is. The greater the masses, the greater awareness, and greater the army to fight these battles so many of us face.

At the beginning of the day, the three from my household knew we’d be walking as 14 meeting with our family and friends. Quickly we’d see the numbers grow even more. A teacher from Nathan’s school, a friend from our church, staff from Children’s Hospital, our new swimming instructor and her OSU Adaptive Rec team were all there as well.

Nathan is our little rock star. It seems as though everyone who sees or meets him, never forgets his face and smile. It’s hard to go to events without someone, who has met Nathan from some other event, class, therapy, you-name-it. He loves the attention, and we enjoy learning how many people he’s touched in such early lifetime. We’ve had friends (longer than Nathan’s four years) say they didn’t recognize us until they saw Nathan.

I’d like to try something new this week. At the bottom of this page, there’s the Comments form. The name and e-mail is still optional, but in the comments/thoughts, let us know where you’re writing from. Feel free to leave any other comments about the posting or site as well. Hopefully, I’ll have a listfrom all across the country to share in a future posting.

While I’m on the topic of the website and interactivity, I’d like to thank all of the people who continue to come back and keep up to date with the site and the great progress especially over the last year for Nathan. I have to admit I’ve been a web stats junkie, but I’ve been excited that in the seven weeks this site has been up, we’ve had 646 visitors and well over 3,000 page hits to the site. (I also know that the stats spike with new videos and slide shows, so new ones will be posted soon I promise.)

I’m also excited to announce that through the website, we’ve connected with our first PMG family. If the PMG stats are true about there being around 1,000 cases in the US, we only have to find the 998 more.

As our circle of friends grows, so does the faith/love in our hearts, hope for the future, and knowledge of how many others are on our side. We will continue on in our fight and help all of those we can with theirs as well. Thanks for reading another week.

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