James Reston, Jr. has a new book out, Fragile Innocence, which is reviewed in today's Washington Post. I am working from the review here, but it rings very familiar to me: the story of a father discovering and learning to live with the many facets of a child's disability. I have been vaguely aware of Reston's books, though I have not read any of them. His prominent name (prominent, at least to long-time NYT readers) often catches my eye. Now, I have a new sort of respect for him.
It is remarkable to be reminded how many people's lives are bound up with disability. Those of us who are often feel isolated and alone, as if no one else could possibly understand what we are going through. But I could see myself in Reston's story, just as I could see it in Michael Berube's story, and Beth Kephardt's, and Martha Beck's, and so many others. Disability is more common than we realize.
The last paragraph of the review was notable for me:
Reston's book teaches something about the value, even the redemption, to be found in the lives of the severely disabled and what they bring into the lives of those who care for them. Fragile Innocence is also a page-turning read. Most of all though, it's the story of a father's discovery -- the discovery that love trumps terror, that love finds expression despite seemingly impossible circumstances. It is, in the end, the story of a father's love for his daughter.
This is the main theme of just about all of my writing about Aidan, going back to my 1998 op-ed piece in Reston's father's newspaper. It is great to see it resonate in other stories at other times. But, I can't help but point out that this theme is central to Chuang Tzu. It is the story of the useless tree! And it is captured in a passage that I find myself returning to again and again:
...So the real is originally there in things, and the sufficient is originally there in things. There is nothing that is not real, and nothing that is not sufficient.
Hence, the blade of grass and the pillar, the leper and the ravishing beauty, the noble, the sniveling, the disingenuous, the strange - in Tao they all move as one and the same. In difference is the whole; in wholeness is the broken. Once they are neither whole nor broken, all things move freely as one and the same again. (23)
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