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There are those who think you deserve it. Someone who meant well told me the story of the young seminarian: he was about to be ordained as a priest when he met a girl and fell hopelessly in love with her. He left the seminary and got married. They had a child, and he was handicapped. It served them right.

There are those who say that having a handicapped child isn’t a chance occurrence. “It’s your father’s fault …”

Last night I dreamed I met my father in a bistro, and introduced him to my children. He never met them, he died before they were born.

“Hey, Dad, look.”

“Who are they?”

“They’re your grandchildren, what do you think?”

“Not great.”

“It’s your fault.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s the absinthe. You know what they say, if the parents drink …”

He turned his back on me and ordered another absinthe.

There are those who say, “I would have smothered him at birth, like a cat.” They don’t have any imagination. You can tell they’ve never smothered a cat.

First of all, when a child is born, unless he has a physical deformity, you can’t necessarily tell if he’s handicapped. When my children were babies they were very like other babies. They couldn’t feed themselves, like them; couldn’t speak, like them; couldn’t walk, like them; they sometimes smiled, especially Thomas. Mathieu smiled less …

When you have a handicapped child, you don’t find out straightaway. It’s like a surprise.

There are also those who say, “A handicapped child is a gift from God.” And they don’t mean it as a joke. It’s rarely people who have handicapped children themselves.

When you’re given this gift you feel like telling God, “Oh! you shouldn’t have …”

When Thomas was born he was given a beautiful gift: a silver set of a tumbler, a bowl, and a baby’s spoon. There are little embossed scallop shells on the spoon handle and around the rim of the bowl. He was given them by his godfather, the chief executive of a bank, who was one of our closest friends.

When Thomas grew, and his handicap very soon became obvious, he never had another present from his godfather.

If he’d been normal, I’m sure he would have gone on to have a lovely pen with a golden nib, then a tennis racket, a camera … But, because he didn’t fit in, he was no longer entitled to anything. You can’t really blame his godfather, it’s a normal reaction. He must have thought, “Mother nature hasn’t given him much, there’s no reason why I should.” The child wouldn’t have known what to do with them, anyway.

I’ve still got that bowl, I use it as an ashtray. Thomas and Mathieu don’t smoke, though; they wouldn’t know how to, they’re on drugs instead.

We give them tranquilizers to keep them quiet.

The father of a handicapped child is supposed to look gloomy. He has to bear his cross with a mask of pain. No way can he wear a red nose to get a laugh. He’s lost the right to laugh, that would be the height of bad taste. If he has two handicapped children, the whole problem is multiplied by two; he has to look twice as unhappy, it’s just good manners.

My manners have often let me down. I remember one time asking for an appointment with the head consultant at the special school Mathieu and Thomas attended. I confided my concerns to him: I sometimes wondered whether Thomas and Mathieu were completely normal …

He didn’t think it was funny.

He was right, it wasn’t funny. He didn’t realize it was the only way I could think of to keep my head above water.

Like Cyrano de Bergerac who decided to make fun of his own nose, I make fun of my own children. It’s my privilege as their father.

As the father of two handicapped children I was invited to take part in a television program to give a firsthand account.

I talked about my children, underlining the fact that they often made me laugh with the stupid things they did, and saying we shouldn’t deprive handicapped children of the luxury of making us laugh.

When a child splatters his chocolate pudding all over his face, everyone laughs; if it’s a handicapped child no one