Thursday, February 12, 2004

LIFE OF BRIAN 4: He is relinquished After seeing my newborn brother asleep in his bassinet, Gram and I entered my mother's hospital room, all smiles and exclamations. "Oh, he's so beautiful!" I kept gushing. Mom sat glumly in her white hospital bed. She wouldn't look at us. Finally, in a bitter tone, she blurted, "Does he look like a mongie?" and started to cry. The doctor had left her moments before, having given her the news. Her words went through me like a knife. The only name I knew for Down's was "Mongoloid." (I've since learned that Down syndrome infants often exhibit an otherworldly beauty their families describe as "angelic.") The infertile couple had called off the adoption, but bringing the baby home, evidently, was out of the question. Gram had worked in the 1930s and '40s at a state hospital in Iowa and had cared for hundreds of brain-damaged and developmentally disabled patients. Mom had grown up observing "mongies" in that zoo-like milieu. Neither of them understood how reflective these guys are of their circumstances. To my mother and grandmother, a Mongoloid was a horror. Period. In honor of his father, the boxer, my mother named my brother Brian ("strength") Neil ("champion"), and then she relinquished him to the State of California. She had never even seen him. I hadn't shared her childhood experiences, and I didn't understand her reaction to my brother's condition. But I had to respect my mother's decision. Having myself been blessed (or afflicted) with romantic tendencies that being 15 only aggravated, all I could think as we left the hospital was, "Someday I'll find you. I promise." 10:44:19 AM    say something if you feel like it []

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