A New Perspective

Every morning, Ryan gets up, heads downstairs and turns on NHL Network. He watches classic games, documentaries, last night’s highlights. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s hockey. Yesterday, on September 11, Ryan got up, headed downstairs, and turned on … the morning news. We didn’t ask him to. We didn’t tell him to. He […]

A Favorite Football Team

“Hey Ryan, want to watch this baseball game with me?” I knew the answer before I posed the question. Ryan only likes hockey. Well, he loves hockey. He’s obsessed with hockey. Which, in his mind, means there’s no room to enjoy any other sport. Still, I keep trying. We had one glorious afternoon at a […]

I Wish I Had a Different Brain

“I WISH I HAD A DIFFERENT BRAIN!” “I HATE MY BRAIN!” That was Ryan on Sunday afternoon, mid-meltdown. Something was wrong with the hockey standings he was typing. This is a regular occurrence. His carefully crafted document formatting gets messed up. He forgets to save a document. His numbers don’t add up. Whatever the reason, […]

A Championship Season

Champions! In his first three seasons playing street hockey in our town league, Ryan’s teams won a combined three games. Last night, his team won the championship, coming from behind in the third period of the final game to take home the trophy. It may be only a town rec league with three teams and […]

(Another) Coach Who Gets It

One of the real bright spots of our summer so far has been Ryan’s participation in our town street hockey league. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, we had “the talk” with his coach before the season about Ryan’s diagnosis and challenges. He offered to meet at a coffee shop before the first […]