My sister sent me this story about 5-year-old nephew, Aleister in email today, and it was so sweet and kind that I got all teary and just had to share:

"I had an incredibly fun day flying across the country with Aleister today, if you can believe that spending your day on airplanes and in airports could be fun.

"But seriously, on our return from Indiana, Aleister and I caught a 6:00am flight out of Indianapolis and arrived in Houston at 7:15 in the morning for a three hour layover. Lucky for us there was a kid's play area right next to where we got off the plane and so, having hours to kill, I didn't mind obliging Aleister with some play time. I settled into the comfy couches lining the play area and noticed there was one other kid there with his mom. The kid happened to have Down's Syndrome and was a little bigger than Aleister. He was twirling these long socks around and shouting very loudly with mostly incomprehensible words. Of course, Aleister didn't give it much thought and proceeded to climb around and begin playing. I tried to catch the mom's eye to give the usual "mom to mom, gee kids have so much energy, eh?" smile thing, but I couldn't catch her eye. When I looked over at the mom she just had this extremely uncomfortable look on her face, she was standing with her arms crossed, brow furrowed, and kept making faces at her kid as though she was extremely embarrassed by him. I felt for her cause although this kid's behavior didn't really make either Aleister or I bat an eyelash, I can't imagine what she must have gone through that would have created this uncomfortableness for her in regards to her kid.

"So, I sat there and read my book sipping coffee and Aleister played and then a really really cool thing happened. Aleister asks the kid if he wants to play. The boy didn't really make full comprehensible sentences, but he seemed open to the exchange. So, Aleister starts running to the top of this little toy bridge thing and then jumping off the other side and saying, 'do like this! do like this!' I try my best to not appear nervous, but the truth is I am a little worried Aleister might embarrass the mom further because I have no idea what the kid's capabilities are. But then I am pleasantly surprised as the kid also begins to follow Aleister around and does everything he does. He drops those long socks, starts smiling and saying 'wheee!' and before you know it the two boys are 'flying' the play area with arms outstretched and taking turns climbing things. Even better is the other boy turns out to be a bit of a comic and makes a show of climbing up things and pretending to fall down and him and Aleister have me in hysterical laughter. The other mother seems to relax. She is now smiling and laughing in wonderment. Her other, teenage son comes over smiling and sits down next to his mom and I hear her say to him, 'this is incredible! Jimmy never plays with anybody!'

"At one point, Jimmy picks up one of his long socks again and starts swinging it around. Aleister asks him, 'Can I play with the other one?'

"'Oh I don't think so, honey' the mother chimes in 'those are like security blankets to him. Nobody else is allowed to touch them.'

"Much to our surprise, the boy, Jimmy, not only hands Aleister the sock, but leans over and gives him a manly wrestling type of hug.

"Now, Aleister of course is a very kind hearted special magical kid, and my first intention in writing this email was to extoll his unique virtues as such. But the even more amazing thing that I have come to realize in composing this story is that, most children would have done exactly the same thing.

"This is the beautiful magic that we all start out with, the gift we're all given: The ability to see a potential friend in anyone and to bring out the best in others just by asking them to join us in some fun.

"Needless to say, it was a very beautiful beginning to my day and yet one more of the millions of moments that I feel so blessed to be Aleister's mother."