Where We Going, Daddy__ Life With Two Sons Unlike Any Other - Jean-Louis Fournier [22]
Or perhaps he no longer feels like going anywhere …
When I receive birth announcements I never feel like replying or congratulating the happy winners.
Of course I’m jealous. But later I’m mainly irritated, when the parents with their beatific smiles and smug admiration show me photos of their adorable child. They quote his latest amusing remarks and talk about how well he’s doing. I find them arrogant and vulgar. Like someone boasting about how his Porsche performs to the owner of a 2CV.
“He’s only four and he can already read and count …”
I’m not spared anything, they show me birthday photographs of the little darling blowing out his four candles—having counted them—with the father filming it all in the background. I have horrible thoughts then, I picture the candles setting fire to the tablecloth, the curtains, the whole house.
I’m sure your children are the most beautiful in the world and the most intelligent. And mine the ugliest and the stupidest. It’s my fault, I got them wrong.
At fifteen Thomas and Mathieu couldn’t read or write, and could barely talk.
It’s a long time since I’ve been to see Thomas. I went to see him yesterday. He spends more and more time in a wheelchair now. He finds it difficult getting around. After a while he recognized me and asked, “Where we going, Daddy?”
He’s increasingly hunched. He wanted to go for a walk outside. Our conversations are cursory and repetitive. He speaks less than he used to, but still talks to his hand.
He took us to his bedroom. It’s light and painted yellow, with Snoopy still on the bed. On the wall is an abstract painting from his early days, a sort of spider caught up in its web.
He’s moved to a different building, a small unit of a dozen residents, adults who look more like overaged children. They’re ageless, unchanging. They must have been born on a sort of February 30th …
The oldest of them smokes a pipe and sticks his tongue out at the caregivers. One of them is blind and wanders down corridors feeling his way along the walls. Some say hello to us, most ignore us. Occasionally you hear a cry, then silence, just the sound of the blind man’s slippers.
You have to step over a few residents lying on the floor in the middle of the room, gazing at the ceiling; they’re dreaming, sometimes they laugh ecstatically.
It’s not a sad place; it’s strange, sometimes beautiful. Some of them waft their limbs slowly through the air creating a sort of choreography, movements from modern dance or Kabuki theater. One twists and spins his arms around in front of his face, reminding me of Egon Schiele’s self-portraits.
At one of the tables there are a couple of partially sighted people sitting stroking each other’s hands. At another sits a resident who is almost bald with a few wisps of gray hair; it’s easy imagining him in a gray suit, he looks like an accountant, except he’s wearing a bib and keeps saying, “Poop, poop, poop …”
Everything is allowed, every eccentricity, every whim, no one is judged.
If you’re sensible and behave normally you feel almost embarrassed, you get the feeling you’re not like the others and, therefore, slightly ridiculous.
When I go there I feel like being silly just like the rest of them.
At the institute everything’s difficult, or even impossible. Getting dressed, tying shoelaces, doing up a belt, opening a zipper, holding a fork.
I watch an old child of twenty as his caregiver tries to get him to eat peas on his own. I suddenly grasp the accomplishment required to carry out the tiniest tasks in everyday life.
Occasionally there are minor victories worthy of Olympic gold medals. He has just scooped several peas onto the fork, and brought them up to his mouth without dropping them all. He’s very proud and looks up at us, beaming. I could happily play the national anthem to honor him and his coach.
The following week there is a big sporting competition at the institute, the thirteenth Interschools games, intended for the least handicapped residents. There are several disciplines: bowling, tricycle circuits, basketball, accurate