THINGS I LEARNED FROM A DAY WITH TREVOR:

people will try something new with you, if you have the courage to ask. can you come and spend a day with us and trevor, our friend abbey asks us one day. yes we will, we reply. what will that look like, she responds. we don't know, we answer. i don't know either, she agrees. people want to discover and go to new places, if the promise is that you'll go there together and that you'll try to learn something new and beautiful about life together.what is a favourite memory of growing up with trevor, we ask in the car ride from trevor's school to home. a series of stories ensues. remember when dad would take trevor on the motorcycle? remember the time at the home hardware store when trevor was first learning to use the potty? remember, remember, remember? they were all memories to hold on to and to bring about smiles. bad times happen and will happen again, but happiness will always outweigh it. life had to be arranged in a completely different way for them, but i think because it had to be different it was lived with intention.we are at home and someone says a line from a disney movie, any disney movie. trevor finishes every sentence, every song, getting every intonation and inflection completely right. abbey's dog licks his face and he quotes an appropriate line from charlie brown. we read a book and he fills in the part of one character, a very grouchy ladybug, by memory, by heart. they wonder out loud at the mystery of life, why for some things he is beyond intelligent, and for other things he never moved beyond how a young boy would think. that his mind works in a way that no one else's does, in a way we can't even understand, and why is that, and why can't things just be easier?i tell them all the time, but i want them to actually see what amazing parents they are and always have been, abbey tells us. they might not even realize it, but abbey watches them day after day and it has made her heart grow almost too big for her chest. she would give them all the awards in the world if she could, just to show them.an email from laura, that she sent us after we've left michigan, reads:

when you were here and you asked me what my favorite memory of trevor was, i couldn't pin point one... but the other day it came to me... when trevor was first diagnosed with autism a doctor told us he would never look at us as anything more than a familiar object... and whenever he looks at me and says "mom i love you"...

my heart still melts. because i know he means it!

Laura, Tom, Abbey, Trevor... thanks for this day. Spring Lake, Michigan, November 2012.(photographed as a part of our ‘roads less traveled’ road trip from toronto to california… to read more about the idea behind the trip, read this post or this post. Please contact us for more info about having us document a day in the life of your family :) )

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A GIRL & HER DOG..