The Day I Finally Cried

By Meg Hill

I didn't cry when I learned I was the parent of a mentally handicapped child. I just sat still and didn't say anything while my husband and I were informed that two-year-old Kristi was – as we suspected – retarded.

"Go ahead and cry," the doctor advised kindly. "Helps prevent serious emotional difficulties."

Serious difficulties notwithstanding, I couldn't cry then nor during the months that followed.

When Kristi was old enough to attend school, we enrolled her in our neighborhood school's kindergarten at age seven.

It would have been comforting to cry the day I left her in that room full of self-assured, eager, alert five-year-olds. Kristi had spent hour upon hour playing by herself, but this moment, when she was the "different" child among twenty, was probably the loneliest she had ever known.

However, positive things began to happen to Kristi in her school, and to her schoolmates, too. When boasting of their own accomplishments, Kristi's classmates always took pains to praise her as well: "Kristi got all her spelling words right today." No one bothered to add that her spelling list was easier than anyone else's.

During Kristi's second year in school, she faced a very traumatic experience. The big public event of the term was a competition based on a culmination of the year's music and physical education activities. Kristi was way behind in both music and motor coordination. My husband and I dreaded the day as well.

On the day of the program, Kristi pretended to be sick. Desperately I wanted to keep her home. Why let Kristi fail in a gymnasium filled with parents, students and teachers? What a simple solution it would be just to let my child stay home. Surely missing one program couldn't matter.

But my conscience wouldn't let me off that easily. So I practically shoved a pale, reluctant Kristi onto the school bus and proceeded to be sick myself.


Just as I had forced my daughter to go to school, now I forced myself to go to the program. It seemed that it would never be time for Kristi's group to perform. When at last they did, I knew why Kristi had been worried. Her class was divided into relay teams. With her limp and slow, clumsy reactions, she would surely hold up her team.

The performance went surprisingly well, though, until it was time for the gunnysack race. Now each child had to climb into a sack from a standing position, hop to a goal line, return and climb out of the sack.

I watched Kristi standing near the end of her line of players, looking frantic.

But as Kristi's turn to participate neared, a change took place in her team. The tallest boy in the line stepped behind Kristi and placed his hands on her waist. Two other boys stood a little ahead of her.

The moment the player in front of Kristi stepped from the sack, those two boys grabbed the sack and held it open while the tall boy lifted Kristi and dropped her neatly into it. A girl in front of Kristi took her hand and supported her briefly until Kristi gained her balance. Then off she hopped, smiling and proud.

Amid the cheers of teachers, schoolmates and parents, I crept off by myself to thank God for the warm, understanding people in life who make it possible for my disabled daughter to be like her fellow human beings.

Then I finally cried.

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A Turning Point

By Adeline Perkins

Seventy years ago I was quite a small little girl, the baby of the family, with an older brother and sister. My father was very ill at the time, and my mother took in sewing of any kind so we could live.

She would sew far into the might with nothing but dim gas mantles and an old treadle sewing machine. She never complained even when the fire would be low and the food very scarce. She would sew until early hours of morning.

Things were very bad that particular winter. Then a letter came from where her sewing machine was purchased, stating that they would have to pick up her machine the next day unless payments were brought up to date.
I remember when she read the letter I became frightened; I could picture us starving to death and all sorts of things that could come to a child's mind

My mother did not appear to be worried, however, and seemed to be quite calm about the matter. I, on the other hand, cried myself to sleep, wondering what would become of our family.

Mother said God would not fail her, that he never had. I couldn't see how God was going to help us keep this old sewing machine.
The day the men were to come for our only means of support, there was knock at the kitchen door. I was frightened as a child would be, for I was sure it was those dreaded men. Instead, a nicely dressed man stood at our door with a darling baby in his arms.

He asked my mother if she was Mrs. Hill. When she said she was, he said, "I'm in trouble this morning and you have been recommended by the druggist and grocer down the street as an honest and wonderful woman.

My wife was rushed to the hospital this morning, and since we have no relatives here, and I must open my dentist office, I have nowhere to leave my baby.
Could you possibly take care of her for a few days?" He continued, "I will pay you in advance." With this he took out ten dollars and gave it to my mother.

Mother said, "Yes, yes, I will be glad to do so

and took the baby from his arms.  When the

 man left, Mother turned to me with

streaming down a face that looked as though a

light was shining on it. She said, "I knew God

would never let them take away my machine."