Antonio is 24, with a round, pleasant face. For as long as I've known him, he's seemed to do everything passively. Tell him his shoe is untied, and he'll stick out his foot, waiting for you to tie it. When his mother brings his jacket, he extends his arm to be dressed. When there's dancing, he lets himself be pulled along. When there's work, he barely glances at it and can hardly grip the objects. Often when you speak to him, he doesn't answer—or he plays dumb. He likes listening to music, or letting others play. All this passivity swings my feelings toward him between tenderness and exasperation.
It's true that when Tea puts a puppet in his hands and begins a puppet dialogue with her own, Antonio comes alive a little. He even speaks. But Antonio—what keeps you from being more active? From acting, from saying "I do"?
The other day, when the workshop ended, we were all busy putting away chairs, materials, projects—everything—before tea at five and playtime. I saw Antonio holding a sponge. I saw him cleaning the big, filthy table (we'd been working with clay). Who asked him to? I don't know. But he cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, with energy and persistence. When we'd all finished, someone, amazed at his work, suggested applause. It erupted from every hand with real enthusiasm. So here was this exasperating Antonio, dear to everyone.
We went to sit in another corner of the room for tea. But after a while I turned around and saw him back at work with energy, still cleaning—instead of coming for tea and biscuits. And Antonio loves food!
Antonio, what drives you—you, the "lazy" one, the passive one—to work so hard? Maybe it was the success? The applause gave you real satisfaction. I don't think I'm wrong. You, like all of us, have a deep need—though you might not know it, and we often forget it ourselves—to have a role, to be truly central to something, to be recognized, to be able to say, even if you never speak it aloud: "I cleaned the table!"
- N.S., 1993
We must never lose sight of the fact that this young person is young, that this man is a man, and that, even if he is "missing something," he carries with him 15, 20, 35 years of lived life—all the maturity and experience that entails. He may not know how to say it, often can't even show it. But in our dialogue, in how we act toward him, we must speak to his actual age. We must not treat him as a big child.
Anne Yvonne Bouts, 1993