E. Fox was in Paris on Tuesday morning and looking through Facebook on her phone.
She was slowly waking up and getting ready for a big family day out. She came from Colorado with her kids to see some Olympic games and see more of France.
Emily stopped scrolling through her social media when she saw a post about a U.S. gymnast who has coloboma, a very rare eye disease that makes it very hard to see and changes the way the pupil looks.
Porter, her son, has a pupil in his left eye that looks like a keyhole and spills into a ring of bright green. He’s also pretty much blind in that eye.
On the night before, Nedoroscik’s tough-as-nails pommel horse routine won hearts and gave the US its first men’s gymnastics team medal since 2008. During the performance, Nedoroscik took off his thick, black-rimmed glasses. He told reporters afterward that his coloboma makes him depend on touch instead of sight when he’s on the apparatus.
Emily put the show on her phone so her son could watch it.
“I like to share things with Porter that make him feel good and inspire him. It helps him know that he’s not alone in the world.”
Emily told him, “He’s seven.” “When you’re seven, being different isn’t that cool.”
The family set out to explore for the day. Since they hadn’t seen it yet, the Eiffel Tower was the first thing they planned to do. As they watched, the TODAY Show crew worked, and soon Al Roker was leading Emily’s family onto the set. During the last part of Tuesday’s show, Porter and his sister Brinkley hung out right next to Savannah Guthrie and Hoda Kotb.
A worker at NBC told the family that the U.S. men’s gymnastics team was just around the corner, making the rounds with the media after winning their first team medal in 16 years. It was almost time to leave to watch the water polo at the Paris Aquatic Center. Emily said in passing that her son’s eye problem is the same as one of the gymnasts’. Now, isn’t that cool? The intern was last seen.
A few minutes later, she came back with Stephen Nedoroscik. He walked right up to Porter and knelt down next to him to look into his eyes. Porter met someone else with the same problem for the first time in his life.
Spencer told his mother, “Mom, I thought I was the only one with coloboma.”
“I tell him all the time that other people have it.” There are pictures I showed him. But when you’re young, you think you’re the only one until you meet someone else.
The 7-year-old knew all of a sudden that he wasn’t different. Not when he was with his new friend, the Olympic star.
Porter likes soccer and basketball these days. They talked about Porter’s best sports and posed for pictures. Stephen left Porter with one word before being snatched away for his next game.
“Don’t forget that you can do anything,” Stephen told him. Emily thought back. “[Colonoma] will never stop you.'”
It wasn’t long before that message clicked. Porter was making a list of all the sports he would one day play on the biggest stages in the world by the end of the day.
Ethan told his mother, “Mom, I feel like I can go to the Olympics now.”
“I wish I were like him.”
