My book: A fight for life
Free Book Online: A Fight for Life - Chapter Two (part 1)
Friday, April 27, 2012
CHAPTER
2 (Part 1)
First
Impressions
Our
car traveled along dark empty roads. Through the few flashes of light
provided by the fast moving street lights outside, I could get a
glimpse of my brother Pedro on the back seat. I searched in vain for
positive attributes in that body, almost dead, anguishing by my side,
as Pedro seemed to be trying to express a pain that was beyond my
capacity of sympathizing.
At
the front seat, I imagine now that my parents' thoughts spoke a
speechless dialogue to each other. They were probably astonished,
filled with doubts and negative perspectives. Were they wondering if
they had taken the right path? Maybe now the burden seemed to be much
heavier than when they first took that decision. Maybe the challenge
now looked clearly beyond their scope.
At
that time, I didn’t understand exactly the full meaning of
everything that was happening. I was a small six years old child,
just starting first grade. I probably thought it was just one more of
my parents' many adventures, like all the others they went through
when they were younger. A mix of hippie organic way of life,
idealistic ideals and magical beliefs. They had done so many wild
things!
I
was still confused about this whole new situation. I knew my new
brother wasn’t just one more doll bought at the toy store, a modern
version of it, capable of real crying and peeing. He wasn't either
one more baby born to my mom at the hospital, that arrived to be
added to our family. The only explanation that my mind could conceive
was of a stranger, with an unknown name, that came inside a huge bird
shape machine called airplane.
All
I could feel for him in that first moment was pity. Nothing else. No
flame of love or deep felling popped inside my chest. I didn’t see
the event as a gift or the beginning of a new life experience for my
family. Such complexity was too far from my vocabulary. The best
comparison in my view was with the rescue of a street dog: hungry,
sick and abandoned. How different could this be?
I
probably imagined the future that awaited us as something like that
first night: dark, cold and scary, totally uncertain. It was like
traveling on a road blocked by dense fog where it is impossible to
know what lays one foot ahead. I might have felt unable to visualize
the future welcoming my family, but I knew that at least we were all
together. Actually, we were quite squeezed inside the small car in
movement. Thankfully, the trip came to an end.
We
crossed the gates to enter the apartment development where we lived,
separating it from the violence of the streets in the big city.
Inside, you could see a few modest apartment buildings and in one of
them was the little apartment we called home. A few square feet where
I spent two years of my life, and from where I got the first memories
that weren't washed away from my mind as time went by. Those were the
first visual images my brain kept.
The
apartment had a kitchen which was just big enough to accommodate a
stove, a sink and a refrigerator, besides a small table placed
against the wall. At the end of this corridor we called kitchen there
was a washing machine fitted in a few square feet space we called
laundry.
My
daily routine after arriving from school included snacking a raw
carrot from a bowl in the kitchen and walking towards the living
room, which was the coziest place in our apartment. A center rug
warmed our feet and the cross stitch pictures hanging on the walls
were samples of my mom’s bread winning. She helped my father pay
the bills at the end of the month cross stitching baby patterns for a
store. That way, she could take care of us, keep up with the house
and still make some money.
After
crossing the living room, I would walk into one of the two bedrooms
that opened to the corridor. I would leave my backpack on top of one
of the two beds, as I shared the bedroom with my younger brother
Lucas. He was too young to go to school, so he played alone when I
was out, because we had no video games at that time. We had to
imagine out our plays. One of them was playing school. We imagined to
be in a classroom and I was the teacher, and Lucas the student.
Everything I would learn at school in the morning, I would teach him
when I got home.
I
was a tough teacher! If he didn’t obey me, I would hit him. After
all, I was still bigger than him at that time; I was six and he was
only four. Even though I didn’t followed pedagogic tactics, the
method worked and he learned how to read by the time he was four
years old. He was the best student that I ever had, my first student.
The second would be the new brother we picked up that night at the
airport.
Walking
towards the apartment building, we were approaching our first hands
on experience,
after so many days spent dreaming, imagining and worrying. Hanging in
the air there was still an idealistic illusion, a special blend of
love, courage and braveness. It was much like in the old movies,
where everything smells like fresh baked bread, brewed coffee and
newly mowed lawn, where stories have no insuperable difficulties, but
capable heroes, no fear, just courage. How convenient if everything's
coming up roses! But with the roses came also the thorns.
Thorns
look harmless and unable to cause pain, as long as we keep a distance
from them. However, when we touch its extremities with our
fingertips, we feel the potential they have to hurt and expose the
blood that once traveled secure inside its compartments. And so it
was as the first thorns were touched that night.
The
first touch resulted in great pain. The second, a little bit less.
From then on, my parents got used to the painful sensation for their
own sake. The first ones came in the form of endless coughing and
constant vomiting. Their hands, ears and noses became calloused.
Those were quite thick thorns to handle!
My
new brother was the gift we received that night. My parents asked
Maria to bring him, and she did just that. He didn’t come with an
instruction manual, six months of warranty, or technical assistance.
He was brought to us because if he stayed where he was, he would have
died. Not that he wasn't already looking like half dead, but he was
chosen to live, to have the chance to belong to someone, to be part
of a family.
The
character that entered our lives that night, touching all of us, had
as his last given name: “of Angels”. And who could deny that?
Certainly, this was the only explanation for his survival until that
moment. The underworld which he came from was flooded with violence,
disease, hunger, prostitution, robbery, drugs and words alike. He
came from a reality that was common place in the news channel, but
not in our daily lives.
The
elevator arrived and all of us got inside the elevator trying to
squeeze in it the best we could. Pedro's coughing episodes sounded
louder in the confinement of the tiny elevator. I kept my head up as
I wanted to observe my new brother Pedro laying on my dad’s arms.
But my dad was so tall! I wondered if I would ever grow up as much as
him. Maybe someday when my feet stopped hanging from the chair and
were able to reach the floor. The elevator door opened.
As
we got inside the apartment I realized how tired I was, even though
to sleep was at the bottom of my list. My desire was to analyze
forever my new brother as everything was new about him. I wanted to
watch how my parents were going to take care, change and feed his
skinny and debilitated body and see how I could participate in at
least one of their adventures.
I
felt that Lucas was much more tired than I was, especially after so
many emotional events. Being younger, he was assimilating less about
what was going on. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to share or
even leave his kingdom as the youngest child on behalf of another
boy, who didn’t have any biological rights to the throne. The deal
included sharing his bedroom, his closet, his toys, his parents, his
sister, all their attention and who knows what else.
Maria
helped my parents giving them a few tips for Pedro's first care.
There wasn’t a whole lot to do be done in one night as the
treatment would be long. At that moment, the most important thing was
to get him fed, changed and snuggled in a comfortable bed.
Finally,
there he was, inside my bedroom, my reality and my life. I thought
that covered by the blanked he didn’t look threatening. On a quick
glance, he could have passed for a healthy, docile and captivating
child. However, lifting the covers and looking carefully, anyone
would conclude that he needed a lot of different specialized
professionals to solve all his problems.
At
the beginning, I would just stare as I didn’t feel comfortable
touching his body. He seemed to be very unpredictable as he shouted,
violently agitated his arms and used the entire body to express his
distress. Maria told us that a lot of people didn’t think twice
about confining children like him into psychiatric institutions. In
some institutions, when they became agitated, they would tie them
with thick ropes, administer tranquilizers and lock them behind heavy
doors to restrict their movements. I felt a cold wave sending a chill
down my spine.
Even
though my parents were being moved by a great deal of illusion,
inexperience and stubbornness, they were full of compassion. Even I,
still frightened, felt sorry for facing the meaning of the word
rejection expressed in a child. I didn’t know rejection as my
family always meant love, acceptance and security. I didn’t
suspect, at that time in my life, the existence of children rejected
like that, like him. Rejected by his own parents.
The
first question that popped in my parents' mind was how to better help
him. They were not health professionals. On the contrary, they didn’t
have any connection with the health care field, unless when taking us
to the doctor when we got sick. So the solution they found was to use
their common sense, the one that works together with intuition and
exists inside everyone. You might question its effectiveness but I
don’t have doubts about its functionality as I testified its
results on a daily basis.
I
also found out that Pedro lacked some unnoticed capacities, trivial
to my daily life, as I didn’t find any difficulty in executing
them. And as I got more and more acquainted with my brother’s
difficulties, I began to value the small aspects of my own life that
were insignificant before. I realized that until then I had been
taking all the privileges I had for granted.
The
celebration of a birth should be more than
a tribute to existence. It should be an honoring moment to the
functionality of each detail that we are blessed with, when we are
born with a perfect or perfectly functioning body.
Pedro
didn't get the privilege of celebrating anything else besides
existence, as he was not contemplated with a perfect or perfectly
functioning body. He had to adapt to a deflected course and fight for
his own existence. Survival also involves to be loved and cared for,
but that did not happen for him either. During his first four years
of life, care was a rare treat. Without care, his limitations imposed
by birth became even more accentuated.
I
learned from Pedro that dealing with difficulties transforms people
into creative, hopeful and stronger human beings. These are powerful
ingredients to reach any goal. I learned that just staring at the
circumstances is usually a waste of time as it does not change one
atom of its status. With Pedro my family had to close the eyes to the
visible and see the invisible, and then build an invisible dream to
find the solution to the visible.
Maria
went back to her family after having accomplished her part of the
mission. She knew that because my brother was so special, my family
would certainly be infused with enough strength, discernment and
wisdom along the way. She didn’t have to worry anymore as the worst
part of Pedro's life had ended. From now on, it would be a new
beginning. He was born again to life.
I
learned that first night that real compassion doesn’t mean dropping
an ocean of tears or shouts of desperation, but to stretch my hands
and make a difference. Even a small difference will bring tears of
happiness and shouts of victory. And the beginning of this story
happened because someone literally stretched his hand, at first just
to reach for a magazine.
Book: A fight for Life
CHAPTER 5 (Part 2) coming soon...
