Things Danny taught me:
Maier, Francis X.
THINGS DANNY TAUGHT ME FRANCIS X. MAIER A FATHER'S STORY He stood there, dignified, in his polyester...
...12: 26 March 1993 Commonweal...
...he'd handle it...
...him away to intensive care...
...lousness writers seem to perfect, that this "Danny thing" would Sure it was inconvenient, and yes, the future would get a dras- be the source of so much good material...
...It was a surprise...
...helplessness and failure But instead I just watched...
...He forgave the sick to health, disregarded the sex of the Furies when expelling them front minds...
...There's having a son or a daughter in whom you're never disappointed...
...I had my hands full with my You discover a lot about yourself...
...not oblivious to the river of traffic around him, to enough to be conclusive, but enough to spark shallow words the forced smiles and brief, uneasy glances from of reassurance and advice for a second opinion...
...and they took had a job...
...he does well, this time, we'd get it right...
...The problem, I have learned from Danny, Down's syndrome children are becoming extinct...
...The pilumguaranteed it...
...Solitude may be stronger than embraces...
...passersby...
...every time I've sat down to write about him, an arctic silence Secretly too, even more than my wife, I just wasn't ready to let has settled into my head...
...He has ventured into a world mality which begins to eliminate 'otherness' in the name of its that doesn't see him, and in his own way, he is succeeding in own self-image" is profoundly evil, and that "[words like pro- it...
...Three things he had one focus only in this case, the Laurel Canyon bus to happened in rapid succession: They suctioned the liquid from McDonald's...
...As each time we have, with mixed cries...
...Danny's just amniocentesis...
...We had been out of the baby business there's been a mistake...
...was wrapped like a scroll and dispatched to our liberated selves, the gods...
...school...
...And while they are prone to a wide variety of of sick and handicapped children filled with far harder sto- physical ailments, nearly all are treatable...
...You stop thinking like that...
...His people's oldest wisdom...
...Love, too, his new universal, so far ahead of you it has died for you before you meet it, may seem colder than the favors of gods who are our poems, good and had...
...but also an absolute clarity that you can hanmore, not from Down's people, not since Danny...
...What was the point...
...where quiet, heroic love is an or- children, with love and care, can live happy, productive, surdinary affair, and you learn from it...
...So does the family...
...For the two years since his birth, erans, more experienced and relaxed, and more financially stable...
...We got the standard, "so-you-can't-sue- tally handicapped...
...If lie is risen, all are children of a most high real God or something even stranger called by that name who knew to come and be punished for the world...
...We were maneuvered into it by priests and by the man himself...
...and even, most humiliating of all, a for nine years...
...They aren't afraid...
...If he has now risen, as our infiltrators gibber, he has outdone Orpheus...
...We were in the ob-gyn's I also know that we've been given a gift...
...choice,] while they're supposed to embody liberalism, are re- I look at him, I watch him, I pray for the eyes to really see ally the worst and most terrifying kind of conservatism...
...Well, he is...
...You learn to stop melodraI remember the exact moment when I knew, with my heart matizing...
...But I knew, and so did the doctor...
...But there never was a bad baby...
...That meant a schedule and responsibilities...
...Inventor of the mustard tree, he mourned one death, perhaps all...
...And in its place comes this wonderful, unconditional love, now aborted before they can be born...
...And yet the news was like a wonderful fresh wind...
...All those mistakes with the first three- timate, too demanding, too funny, too eager to play...
...Our marriage reliable, and the test itself could hurt the baby...
...You adjust...
...To ask it of us...
...To have knowledge of right, after that, is to he in the wrong...
...He is too inthe idea of babies go...
...unwritten except on his body, like anyone's...
...To complete his poem...
...someone with courage...
...It was never an option...
...are a part of that now...
...anger at God...
...anyway, that things had gone south...
...not fit conveniently into a prefabbed holding pen for the menWe knew the risks...
...more than a decade...
...Even after the first, I know that this is doable...
...Thus he has done the impossible to show us it is there...
...there will be wars about religion as there never were about the death-ignoring Olympians...
...before he reversed it...
...but not retic overhaul...
...He was alone, and he needed to concentrate...
...it always had...
...uniform, I look his way...
...He was certainly dead...
...And I am too ignorant and not far enough me-later" briefing from the obstetrician on birth defects in older along the road to offer any advice, other than to recount the exwomen, but both of us had been active on the abortion issue for perience of my own family...
...He his lungs...
...Three years ago, I would have looked away, just as tradictory, that make you ashamed and exalted at the same time: the other people nearby on the street were doing now...
...If death is now the birth-gate into things unsayahle in language of death's era...
...But we were also excited...
...who went alive to the Shades...
...The results would be un- here, he's part of our normal routine...
...I held him as my wife baptized him...
...His message...
...I find that I can't look away any- without a bottom...
...Whole philosophies will he devised for their brief snubbing...
...dle this...
...It's then, with the baby out of your arms and the big emptiHe was eighteen or so, short black hair slightly askew, with the ness just beginning, that your heart is most like a vacuum, and thick body and unfinished facial features so common to Down's into the space comes a rush of feelings that are hot and consyndrome...
...fear about the future...
...You enter a community parents erately retarded...
...THINGS DANNY TAUGHT ME FRANCIS X. MAIER A FATHER'S STORY He stood there, dignified, in his polyester fast- a statistical relationship between bone-structure abnormalities, food uniform, earnestly waiting for the bus and particularly in the upper arm, and Down's syndrome...
...1 LES MURRAY The Say-but-the-Word Centurion Attempts a Summary That numinous healer who preached Saturnalia and paradox has died a slave's death...
...and curse by him...
...Ninety percent of Down's children are only mildly to modIt's a kind of redemption...
...they know what the imperfect look and So whenever I pass that young Down's man in his McDonald's think and feel like...
...But regained excels kept, he taught...
...I assumed, with the calown job...
...Danny's brothers and sister prisingly independent lives...
...many of the expectations that in parents turn tragic, we're safe Commonweal 26 March 1993: 11 from...
...Most are is not with his humanity, but with mine...
...you get tired of your own bathos...
...Stopped at the light, I watched him through my windshield...
...After all, we were vet- motely in the way I expected...
...And he never speculated...
...of him...
...Divine bastard, soul-usurer, giros-frightener, he is out to monopolize hatred...
...In fact, most Down's ries than Down's syndrome...
...Half of his worship will he grinding his face in the dirt then lifting it up to beg, in private...
...or hey, maybe nant...
...We had three older kids...
...There is a person I also know, as my novelist friend says, that a "supposed nor- there...
...It hasn't been easy, but it hasn't slight hint of trouble turned up in a blood test, we declined an been a cross either...
...Better to leave has the same love and strengths, and also the same faultlines, it in God's hands...
...an unburdening from the hunger for perfection...
...him=for my own sake...
...Suann was teaching full time and going to grad wheedling pride that whispers: Maybe I can use this...
...Death came through the sight of law...
...Danny will not be used...
...an urgency to protect the baby and his mother, to someMy wife and I were both forty-one when she became preg- how make the cup pass by cutting a deal with God...
...The low will rule...
...A friend, Chicago office, and on the ultrasound screen, as the baby swam serene- novelist Patrick Creevy (Lake Shore Drive), the brother of one ly in the womb, the doctor measured the fetus's arm once, then Down's person and father of a Down's daughter, puts it this again, and then a third and fourth time...
...Two weeks later, Danny was born by emergency C-section, In a world of multiple urgencies and lives racing at 50 mghz, blue, limp, underweight, lungs filled with fluid...
...which, in his own way, he did...
...Suann, smiling, devoured way: "The best thing [about a mentally handicapped child] is the baby with her eyes...
...I'll tell you why...
...It seems we are to be the poem and live the impossible...
...you're absolutely out of the business of disappointment.- So FRANCIS X. MAIER is the editor of the National Catholic Register...
Vol. 120 • March 1993 • No. 6
