TEXT  he Letter"A"(I)

　　I was born in the Rotunda Hospital,on June 5th,1932.
　　Mine was a difficult birth,I am told.Both mother and son almost died.
　　A whole army of relations queued up outside the hospital until
　　until the small hours of the morning,
　　waiting for news and praying anxiously that it would be good.
　　It was Mother who first saw that there was something wrong with me.
　　I was about four months old at the time.
　　She noticed that my head fell backwards whenever she tried to feed me.
　　She attempted to correct this by placing her hand on the back of my neck to keep it steady
　　But when she took it away,back it would drop again.
　　That was the first warning sign.
　　Then she became aware of other defects as I got older.
　　She saw that my hands were clenched nearly all of the time;
　　my jaws would either lock together tightly,
　　or they would suddenly become limp and fall loose.
　　At six months I could not sit up without having a mountain of pillows around me
　　At twelve months it was the same.
　　Very worried by this,Mother told my father her fears,
　　and they decided to seek medical advice without any further delay.
　　I was a little over a year old when they began to take me to hospitals and clinics
　　convinced that there was something definitely wrong with me.
　　Almost every doctor who saw and examined me
　　said that I was a very interesting but also a hopeless case.
　　Many told Mother very gently
　　that I was mentally defective and would remain so.
　　That was a hard blow to a young mother
　　who had already reared five healthy children.
　　The doctors were sure of themselves
　　and assured her that nothing could be done for me.
　　She refused to accept this truth,
　　the inevitable truth as it then seemed that I was beyond cure,
　　beyond saving,even beyond hope.
　　She had nothing in the world to go by,
　　not a scrap of evidence to support her conviction that,
　　though my body was crippled,my mind was not.
　　Finding that the doctors could not help in any way
　　besides telling her to foget I was a human creature
　　and to regard me as just something to be fed
　　and washed and then put away again,
　　Mother decided there and then to take matters into her own hands.
　　I was her child,and therefore part of the family.
　　No matter how dull and incapable I might grow up to be,
　　she was determined to treat me the same as the others.
　　That was a big decision as far as my future life was concerned.
　　But it wasn't easy for
　　her because now the relatives and friends told her that I should be taken kindly
　　sympathetically,but not seriously.
　　"For your own sake,"they told her,"
　　don't look to this boy as you would to the others;
　　it would only break your heart in the end."
　　Luckily for me,Mother and Father held out against the lot of them.
　　But Mother wasn't content just to say that I was not an idiot
　　she set out to prove it,not because of any rigid sense of duty,but out of love
　　That is why she was so successful.
　　Four years rolled by and I was now five,
　　and still as helpless as a newly born baby.
　　While my father was out at bricklaying,
　　earning the bread and butter for us,Mother was slowly,
　　patiently pulling down the wall,
　　brick by brick,that seemed to stand between me and the other children,
　　slowly,patiently penetrating beyond the thick curtain that hung over my mind
　　separating it from theirs.
　　It was hard,heartbreaking work,
　　for often all she got from me in return was a vaguc smile
　　and perhaps a faint gurgle.
　　I could not speak or even mumble,

　　nor could I sit up on my own without support,let alone walk.
　　But I wasn't inert or motionless.
　　I seemed to be all movement,wild,stiff,
　　snakelike movement that never left me,except in sleep.
　　My fingers twisted and twitched continually,
　　my arms moved backwards and would often shoot out suddenly this way and that
　　and my head fell sideways.
　　I was a queer crooked little fellow.
　　Mother tells me how one day she had been sitting with me for hours,
　　showing me pictures and telling me the names of
　　the different animals and flowers that were in them,
　　trying without success to get me to repeat them.
　　This had gone on for hours while she talked and laughed with me.
　　Then at the end of it she leaned over me and said gently into my ear:
　　"Did you like it,Chris?
　　Did you like the bears and the monkeys and all the lovely flowers?
　　Nod your head for yes,like a good boy."
　　But I could make no sign that I had understood her.
　　Her face was bent over mine hopefully.
　　Suddenly,my queer hand
　　reached up and grasped one of the dark curls that fell about her neck.
　　Gently she loosened the clenched fingers,
　　though some dark hairs were still clutched between them.
　　Then she turned away from my curious stare and left the room,crying.
　　The door closed behind her.
　　It all seemed hopeless.
　　It looked as though my relatives were right that I was an idiot and beyond help
　　They now spoke of putting me in a home for idiots.
　　"Never!"said my mother almost fiercely,when this was suggested to her.
　　"I know my boy isnot an idiot;it is his body that is crippled,not his mind.
　　I'm sure of that."