After three children — Monica, thirteen; Elisabetta, twelve; Francesco, two — all of them full of life, Beatrice was born, different from the rest. The doctor told us: "She's mongoloid."
Her fragility demanded all the time I could give her, but time was never something I had much of.
I live in the country, and there's work all day long: milking cows, tending calves, rabbits, chickens, maintaining the vegetable garden. When I go out to work the fields — beets, potatoes, hay, harvest — I take Beatrice along in her carriage, with everything she needs for her toilette packed inside.
Because I'm so absorbed with her, it's often my husband who prepares the meals.
For fifteen years I lived I don't know how, with no schedule, eating whenever, keeping the house poorly. Leave her alone for a minute and Beatrice turns everything upside down. I pay for a moment of absence, one instant of inattention, with an emptied cupboard, broken dishes, the coffee maker smashed, the sugar bowl in pieces, the bucket overturned, sheets and blankets from her bed scattered across the room. She has an eagle eye for the moments when I'm occupied, and she rushes straight for my scarves. I've bought so many, but when I need to go out, I can't find a single one — and if I do, it looks like a rag. But you have to live by what is essential, for what is essential. This thought comes back to me often during the day and helps me not to lose my temper or grow angry.
Since I have little time for cleaning and Beatrice makes chaos of everything, I'm ashamed of my house.
One day a fire nearly destroyed it all. Oil in the pan caught flame. The fire took a cupboard, then the ceiling. I ran to get Beatrice out of her room. My husband came running, and we managed to put out the fire before the firefighters arrived. The things were old anyway, so what the insurance gave us wasn't enough to rebuild the inside properly. So we're embarrassed to have neighbors over.
Then the neighbors want me to take Beatrice to a healer. But I don't believe in that. It's one more barrier between us and the neighborhood, and between us and my own family too.
They often use the word defect, and I can't bear it. Beatrice is different from the others, that's true, but she's my daughter just like the rest.
Do you want to know how Beatrice lives? She wants to do what I do. She spends hours in front of the calves, moving the straw around. Then she's at peace, without constraints. She comes back filthy but happy. She likes to go on the tractor with her brother too, but he takes her only a few times because he wants more freedom to work.
When we're at the table, she eats so slowly, never finishes. But if we have to go out by car afterward, then she eats lightning fast.
She's passionate about television — she loves children's programs especially, and classical music. She recognizes all the actors. She's always the last to turn it off. She falls asleep very late, sometimes at two in the morning, and sometimes she doesn't sleep all night, just laughs. She always leaves the lamp on. The neighbors say: "Don't you ever go to bed? The light was on at this hour or that!"
Now Beatrice spends one week a month at her older sister's house, and gets along well with her sister's husband and their two children. They're three and six. She does well there, acts differently than she does at home. Maybe I let her too free to do whatever she wants.
When life becomes this hard, when I feel utterly exhausted, when I really can't go on anymore, I see Mary at the foot of the cross as they nailed Jesus. Can I complain?
I don't know if Beatrice is one of those "difficult" mongoloids — apparently some are; or if it's because I wasn't strict enough, or maybe both things at once. When life becomes this hard, when I feel utterly exhausted, when I really can't go on anymore, I see Mary at the foot of the cross as they nailed Jesus. Can I complain?This trial has been made bearable by what I learned in Catholic Action when I was young, and by studying a bit of music. What comforts me most is my husband's infinite kindness and his big working hands. And my other three children forced me to keep living, to go dancing with my daughters when they were young, to follow them. I understand now that Francesco had little in his childhood. I found something he wrote: "My sister lived because my mother was entirely for her." So he grew up too fast, became a man before his time, without enough attention from his mother. And I haven't even told you about all the paperwork on top of the ordinary work — trips to the town hall and the doctor. Why do we never have visits from social services? (I almost never see anyone): if they came here they could explain what we need to do. We get lost among all those forms.
We need help in the house. But how do we pay for it on such a tight budget?
The lack of money is a grave difficulty when you have a child like Beatrice. Yet being helped, talking about our problems, would help us; but no neighbor or family member will accept it.
Beatrice receives about the equivalent of 250,000 lire a month. The mayor says it's enough. But he doesn't know that someone must always be with her. And the result is that I don't go out anymore, because when I take her somewhere, people say she disturbs the normal ones. They say: "The handicapped cost us quite a bit!" You hear this in our countryside. You have to reach the point of not hearing it anymore; of living with nature, which despite wind and rain shows us flowers and grain, corn sprouting and this sun.
Many things around us seem ruined, but Beatrice has given our whole family — including our in-laws and grandchildren — a richness of love.
When life becomes this hard, when I feel utterly exhausted, when I really can't go on anymore, I see Mary at the foot of the cross as they nailed Jesus. Can I complain? I'm not there yet! I see the sister of little Saint Thérèse staying calm in the midst of the bombardments of Lisieux. This helps me fall asleep at night.
I'm not equipped to write an article, because I only finished elementary school and it hurts to stir all this up. But if it means helping other families in the same fight, I'll find the strength.
(From Ombres et Lumière, no. 50)