Good Friends

We celebrated grandson Hayes’ 7th birthday last weekend at a local park. Kudos, City of Franklin, for maintaining such a wonderful, family oriented playground with so much to do in Pinkerton Park.

My daughter and I decorated the gazebo and made sure the sugar industry remains well supported with all of the confectionary treats we laid out.

So many young boys with parents showed up. As the day progressed, I clearly noticed commonality: they like each other, they like sweets and treats, their energy goes a long way and most importantly at least to me, they each quite obviously like Hayes and enjoy his companionship although he may not be able to run alongside them for any significant distance or period of time. Many thanks to you boys and to your parents for enabling such authentically heartfelt camaraderie.

I wonder if we adults could figure out a way to reintroduce to our lives’ culture the exuberance and loyalty of young boys raised correctly who absolutely will not abandon a cohort who they know, and he inwardly knows, will never be able to keep up physically because of DMD?

Frankly, who cares? The fact of the matter was that the celebratory event was a success on a Saturday that will be remembered by many for a very long time.

Keeping up is a vague term. Hayes was with his good friends and his friends were with Hayes for that entire three hours of joy. And the parents along with my daughter never ran out of things to share with each other as the boys laughed, ate, and played together. 

While lab researchers and clinicians try to figure out a cure to Duchenne, especially now that the entire genome mapping project is complete, we can count on good friendships laced with laughter and joy to mitigate the pain of progression of such a horrible disease.  Let’s keep laughing, together!

Joyfully yours,

Papa in Franklin