There are days where I feel like everything I say or write should be followed by an asterisk.

I tend to forget that the way I see the world, especially in regards to how I see everything surrounding my son, is slightly off from the expected center. The mainstream world is going one way and here we are, off the sidewalk by several feet but making our way along just dandy. I forget that people don’t always see how the scenery is over by us.

That’s when anxiety takes over.

You see, forgetting this can lead to misunderstandings. When I comment that J has eaten so many foods in one day, it does not mean what you might think. It means that rather than eating only cereal and drinking his milk as usual, he ate three other different items off his very limited menu as well. He might have even had a sip or three of water. This for him constitutes having had a bunch of different foods where as the rest of us might think that was just breakfast.

That’s our life. Everything has an asterisk, warning that for those unwise in our ways it may require further explanation. The more I write in this post, the more I realize how oddly at peace I am with this fact. The asterisks are for people to gain knowledge they lack otherwise if they so choose. If not, they buzz merrily along. It’s nothing lost on our side.

The perspective that life with J has given me is, quite simply, astounding. He placed me in a position where if I did not open my eyes and start seeing the world from where he stood both of our lives would be terrible. Painful. Miserable. It wasn’t by force that he did so, it was by need, and a need that was so easy to answer once found and understood.

I like being in his world.*

————————-

An update on 4 Paws dog brother Gabriel, who was desperately ill in a local veterinary hospital: He’s gone home to Texas! He continues treatment there but is home with his veteran and his family. The hope is that soon enough he’s fully back to service life, something that I bet both dog and person are very eager for.

————————-

*= Just put it there because reasons. Also, I just finally learned to spell “asterisk” correctly.