He was born on a handful of nines. Four of a kind. September 9, 1999. Another one of those single-digit dates won’t come around until 2/2/22. Just one of a number of things that makes him special.

“And his smile will light a candle that will burn in your heart,” is part of a song I wrote for Chandler shortly after his birth. It’s so true. I watch hearts ignite around him all the time. It can happen with perfect strangers. Something about him that pulls love out of people. You just can’t help loving Chandler.

At the same time, he’s very much his own man. He appeases no one and will not accommodate you. I used to not like this about him, and even though I still don’t, I’m learning to admire it anyway. I often misconstrue it as disobedience and push against it, which never does any good. All of this turns into a swagger when he walks, and he’s had that swagger since he took his first step.

He’s a natural athlete whose body will do whatever he tells it to do making him a strong competitor in just about anything he wants to do physically. I understand from my daughter who took him surfing yesterday that he got inside a perfect barrel and came out the other end, something unheard of for the number of hours he has put in surfing.

And today, 9/9/11, he is all of 12 and heading out to do some pretty impossible things. I watch him swagger toward the bus stop with his bus pass dangling off the back of his backpack and something aches inside of me. It’s his first year in a regular school. His basic reading and writing skills are way behind where they should be for someone his age and I know how cruel this world can be. Thanks mostly to his mother, he has a high level of self-confidence in spite of his disability, but I worry about someone with no care or sensitivity, or simply someone not taking the time to know what we know about Chandler, casually crushing him.

Which makes me think what father or mother couldn’t write something like I have written here about their own kids, and yet people don’t come with a little disclaimer attached to their backpack like a bus pass for us to read so we know how to be sensitive to their strengths and weaknesses. Which leads me to this final thought for all of us on Chandler’s birthday which is very important: Everybody does come with a card attached – a personal history of what has gone into making them who they are so far – and you and I, with no immediate access to that card need to assume it’s there and not pre-judge anyone. And maybe, with the right care and sensitivity, we might just get the honor of reading their card which usually changes our picture considerably and makes us glad we got close enough to see them for who they really are.