Where We Going, Daddy__ Life With Two Sons Unlike Any Other - Jean-Louis Fournier [4]
I didn’t, though. I did the right thing.
To think Mathieu was being complimented for once …
I’ll never forget the first doctor who had the courage to tell us that Mathieu was definitely abnormal. His name was Professor Fontaine, it was in Lille. He told us we should be under no illusions. Mathieu was backward, he would always be backward, either way, there was nothing we could do about it, he was handicapped, physically and mentally.
We didn’t sleep terribly well that night. I remember having nightmares.
Until then the prognoses had been vague. Mathieu was a slow developer, we had been told it was only physical, there were no mental problems.
Lots of friends and relatives tried, sometimes clumsily, to reassure us. Every time they saw him they said how amazed they were by the progress he had made. I remember one time telling them that, as far as I was concerned, I was amazed by the progress he hadn’t made. I was looking at other people’s children.
Mathieu was limp. He couldn’t hold his head up, as if his neck were made of rubber. While other people’s children sat up arrogantly to demand food, Mathieu just lay there. He was never hungry, it took the patience of an angel to feed him, and he often threw up all over the angel.
If a child being born is a miracle, then a handicapped child is an inverted miracle.
Poor Mathieu couldn’t see very clearly, he had fragile bones and in-turned feet, he soon became hunchbacked, he had thick shaggy hair, he wasn’t beautiful and, more than anything else, he was sad. It was hard to make him laugh, he kept repeating a monotonous lament of “Oh dear, Mathieu … oh dear, oh dear, Mathieu …” Sometimes he was convulsed with heartbreaking tears, as if he couldn’t bear not being able to tell us anything. We always felt he was aware of his situation. He must have thought, “If only I’d known, I wouldn’t have come.”
We would have loved to protect him from this fate bearing down on him. The worst of it was there was nothing we could do. We couldn’t even console him, or tell him we loved him just the way he was: they’d told us he was deaf.
To think that I’m the author of his days, of the dreadful days he spent here on earth, that I’m the one who brought him here, I want to ask his forgiveness.
How do you recognize an abnormal child?
He looks out of focus, distorted.
As if you were seeing him through frosted glass.
There isn’t any frosted glass.
He’ll never be right.
Life isn’t much fun for an abnormal child. It all goes wrong right from the start.
The first time he opens his eyes he sees two faces leaning over his crib looking at him, absolutely stunned. His mother and father. They’re thinking, “Did we make that?” … and they don’t look too proud.
Sometimes they yell at each other and foist the blame on each other. They trawl back through the family tree to find a great-grandfather or an alcoholic old uncle perching in its branches.
In some cases they split up.
Mathieu often makes “brmm, brmm” noises. He thinks he’s a car. The worst thing is when he does the whole twenty-four hours of Le Mans. Driving right through the night without any pit stops.
I’ve tried several times to tell him to cut the engine, without success. It’s impossible to reason with him.
I can’t get to sleep. I have to get up early tomorrow. Sometimes terrible ideas come into my head; I feel like throwing him out the window, but we’re on the ground floor, there wouldn’t be any point, we’d still hear him.
I take comfort from the fact that normal children stop their parents sleeping too.
Serves them right.
Mathieu can’t sit up. He has poor muscle tone, he’s as limp as a rag doll. How’s he going to develop? What will he be like when he’s bigger? Will he need a stake like a sapling?
I used to think he could be a mechanic. But the lying down sort. The ones who work on the undersides of cars in garages where they don’t have a hydraulic ramp.