Happy to Be Alive

Between yesterday and today I was born somewhere in the world but no one had thought that it would happen just over six months in! Was it perhaps by chance or some strange fate or a simple error in the Creator's reckoning? But no one answered such questions. Yet there I was, all curled up, a premature newborn pushed ahead of time beyond the final threshold into the world. When I was two years old the verdict came: I was paralyzed. I would never walk. Though I was an exceptional case, they welcomed me with love anyway and — like an echo of the brutal blow — they received faith from the Lord as a gift. My father, a many-sided craftsman, built me an alien machine with an unlikely and strange appearance, that glided on spinning mechanisms; with it he would go for walks with me. My mother gave her soul and body to teach me to read and to write. My brothers and sisters — do I need to say it? — never turned me away. From the depths of their hearts, they always loved me. Wherever I went, I always found patient people, affectionate people, kindness and devotion. "Why does she stay in there, mommy?" the little ones ask, puzzled to see me sitting in my wheeled contraption. And I..., I smile at them, because from the depths of my heart I am very happy. It is not easy to explain the mystery of a presence, a magnificent trust, the fruit of great hope. It is a gift from Heaven, it is deep joy that has always been my portion just as my disability has been. I remember telling myself when I was a child: "If I believe with all my strength, a miracle must surely happen." But since then, nothing ever has. Somewhere in the world between yesterday and today I was born but no one had thought that I would be this way. My life was not by chance nor by strange fate: I know it, and I have my own idea. My life witnesses that love is free; it proves above all that the word happiness can rhyme with disability, without conflict or clouds, because, after all, I say again, in my life everything has gone as if on roller skates.

(translated from the French by Paolo Bertolini)