A Momma’s Heartfelt Thank You

If you live in our community and catch a sight of us in public, you will see a young man hopping through the store, a cool looking device sitting in the shopping cart and a woman telling “hoppy” to come along. Some people stare. Some people smile. Some people are pretending not to stare.It’s okay, really. He’s happy and I’m happy and that’s all the matters. We generally go through the stores without conversation with anyone else and that’s just fine with me. We do tend to live in just the space between us, where I understand him and he understands me.Except there is one place in the community where Kreed’s hopping, dimple grin and sounds are a welcome sight and they greet him with cheers and shout his name and immediately start his order- often times before I even open the door. Reminds me a little of Kreed’s very own Cheers place.

They are some of the most wonderful group of people and they don’t even know it. To have Kreed go somewhere  and not be treated different- except maybe with more kindness and grace than he has ever experienced before.

For that, I will be forever grateful to:

They have enriched Kreed’s life more than they will ever realize. For respecting him and liking him and making sure each time he walks into Five Guys, that it’s an experience full of love for him.

People don’t often realize the impact they can make on someone’s life. For Kreed, they have made him into a Five Guys fan for life and we frequent the restaurant at least 4-5 times a week and helped him learn skills he had been unwilling to do before. And they have given him something he gets nowhere else- for this boy to feel such love from virtual strangers merely by being himself.

To those that love Kreed and live with him every day, that kind of impact is immeasurable. They have opened up his world in a social way that had not been possible before. He became interested in money so that he could go to five guys more, which in turn led to him learning to do chores around the house to earn such money. He learned to use a huge part of his AAC device by going to Five Guys- he learned to ask for the food he wanted, to ask for “more water or fries or peanuts” when he ran out, and to tell me his feelings while he was there (happy and excited). I can’t begin to tell you the amount of language Kreed has learned because of Five Guys. But more than that, the people at Five Guys.

But the staff at Dana Park truly love seeing Kreed and look forward to his visits. For Kreed to feel that kind of love from a place is amazing and I will never ever forget the way they have touched Kreed’s life in this moment of time.

In a world where we hear about bully’s and violence…there are still corners of this world where kindness rules. To the staff at the Dana Park Five Guys, you all have my love and respect and thanks for being such a bright light in Kreed’s World.