Family Stories

Am off to visit the cemetery where my grandfather, Yeh Yeh, great-grandmother, Bak Bak, great aunt, another great grandmother, a very good friend of the family, and many other great relatives are, and then out to lunch in Chinatown with cousins, aunts, uncles and (hopefully, if she’s up to it), my grandmother, Ngin Ngin, who’s 104. It’s always good to be with family—today’s St. Petersburg Times describes the bond between 12-year-old twins, Anthony and Ryan Moran. Ryan is autistic and Anthony is his constant companion:

Most of the time it’s good having a twin, Anthony insists. You always have someone to talk to, even if the other person can’t really talk back.

Ryan understands everything. “Only sometimes he doesn’t care what you’re saying, so he walks away.” And he can speak “when he wants to,” Anthony said. “One time when we were in the bathtub he said the whole pledge to the flag.”

Ryan will catch a ball, but he won’t throw it back. He’ll rebound your basketball but won’t shoot it. In Little League Challenger baseball, he’ll run the bases — but only if Anthony runs with him. “He’s always thinking about other things, so he can’t concentrate,” Anthony said. “It must be weird to be in his world.”

“Weird” maybe, but these are two brothers who are very clearly connected, however much one speaks and one is not able to.

A sad sad story from New York—7-year-old Chelsea Maldonado fell from a fifth-story window of her parents’ Bronx apartment on Christmas Eve, the New York Daily News reports—-reminds me of what I’m grateful for. Chelsea was autistic, blind in one eye, and bound to a wheelchair. Thinking of her family, and many families—-the Morans in Florida and many many more—-hope you’re all warm and safe and together today.