I am used to listening to his sounds from my bed in the dark at 3:00am. But to hear “surprise!” unbidden at that hour is both a shock and a revelation. And a profound truth. His life embodies surprise. The wonder that we should both be here to share this moment!
Each of us is born with multiple tiny genetic errors. My son’s glitch just happens to fall in an essential developmental pathway, all but destroying his ability to speak, swallow, grow and develop. Until this gene was discovered in his blood in 2004, doctors believed that humans could not survive an alteration in that particular pathway. Yet here he is, along with about 100 others worldwide, waking at 3:00am bursting with laughter. Surprise!
