Note that Down syndrome may be eliminated entirely due to genetic testing.
It's a very unusual thought.
When I was a day camp counselor, I had five year old campers one year.
The director didn't tell us that one of our campers had Down syndrome. This little boy's mom had his ears "clipped" and eye surgery done on him so that he would look more "normal" and cognitively he was delayed, but pretty high functioning.
I was kind of pissed at the director for not letting us now in advance.
We got through the summer.
I still have a picture of him. Anyway, I remember being sort of uncomfortable around him-Stephen was his name.
I realize now that G-d was setting the stage for me.
I have another memory of disabled people.
At another summer camp I went to, a group of mentally retarded kids were integrated for a week each summer. I remember that one of them lost control of their bowels in the lake and feces was bobbing in the water near one.
I remember the other kids screaming, horrified. I remember not feeling horrified by the feces, but by their horror.
How could they be so cruel?
I was about 12 or 13 at the time.
Again. Preparation.
Things are of course clear with 20/20 hindsight. But it seems impossible to me that those episodes could have have had such a strong impact on me-lasting a lifetime-and not be somehow tied to my own son.
Impossible.
1 comment:
I have a great deal of affection for my Down's syndrome patients. As I have commented before on this blog, I find them to be, as a whole, affectionate and trusting: as a Christian, they always remind me of Jesus' dictum that, "Unless ye be like little children, ye shall not enter the Kingdom of Heaven." The fact that we, as a society, have become so comfortable with aborting them as a "therapeutic" measure speaks badly of us; I think we shall all have to stand before God at the Judgment Day and give an account of why we let abortion in general, and the abortion of the "defective" in particular, take place untrammeled amongst us.
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