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With Friends Like These
What a man with Down Syndrome taught me about being human.
He’s standing by the keyboard, nervous, wearing a new vest and pressed white shirt. The room is festooned with streamers and balloons stamped with ‘Happy 30th’. Guests are filing in wearing their Sunday best, carrying boxes of all shapes and sizes. He’s about 4-foot-something, Italian, with Down syndrome, and today is his birthday party.
At the centre where I work, he’d been asking me about it all week.
“Cher-ie…” he would say slowly with an Italian ‘r’ roll. “You come to my par-ty?” I would reassure him that yes, I was definitely coming, and no, that guy he doesn’t like at the centre is definitely not coming.
There are heaps of Italian families there, leaving my co-workers and I in the English-speaking minority. The food and drink start to flow and we eat too many cannolis and watch him by the piano, waiting.
“So many people with disabilities are seen by their parents and families only as a tragedy. They are surrounded by sad faces, sometimes full of pity, sometimes tears…” Jean Vanier
A week earlier, I had seen my newest nephew, Max, on Skype for the first time. My sister is living in London with her husband and first born. As I looked at Max’s squishy pixelated face, I felt…
