I do not know when the turn came, nor why. It came somehow out of myself. People were kind enough, but no help came from anyone. Perhaps that was my own fault. Perhaps I made my surface too smooth and natural so that no one could see beneath it. Partly that, perhaps, and partly it was, too, because people shrink from penetrating surfaces. Only those who know inescapable sorrow know what I mean.
It was in those days that I learned to distinguish between the two kinds of people in the world: those who have known inescapable sorrow and those who have not. For there are basically two kinds of sorrows: those which can be assuaged and those which cannot be. The death of parents is sad, for they cannot be replaced, but it is not inescapable sorrow. It is natural sorrow, that which one must expect in the normal course of life. The crippling of one’s body, irremediably, is an inescapable sorrow. It has to be lived with; and more than that, it has to be used for some other sort of life than that planned in health. The sorrows which can be assuaged are those which life can cover and heal. Those which cannot be assuaged are those which change life itself and in a way themselves make life. Sorrows that can die can be assuaged, but living sorrow is never assuaged. It is a stone thrown into the stream, as Browning put it, and the water must divide itself and accommodate itself, for it cannot remove the stone.
I learned at last, merely by watching faces and by listening to voices, to know when I had found someone who knew what it was to live with sorrow that could not be ended. It was surprising and sad to discover how many such persons there were and to find how often the quality I discerned came from just such a sorrow as my own. It did not comfort me, for I could not rejoice in the knowledge that others had the same burden that I had, but it made me realize that others had learned how to live with it, and so could I. I suppose that was the beginning of the turn. For the despair into which I had sunk when I realized that nothing could be done for the child and that she would live on and on had become a morass into which I could easily have sunk into uselessness. Despair so profound and absorbing poisons the whole system and destroys thought and energy.
My own natural health, too, I suppose, had something to do with it. I saw that the sun rose and set, that the seasons came and went, that my garden bloomed and that upon the streets the people passed and laughter could be heard.
At any rate, the process of accommodation began. The first step was acceptance of what was. Perhaps it was consciously taken in a day. Perhaps there was a single moment in which I actually said to myself. “This thing is unchangeable, it will not leave me, no one can help me, I must accept it.” But practically the step had to be taken many times. I slipped into the morass over and over again. The sight of a neighbor’s normal little daughter talking and doing the things my child could never do was enough to send me down. But I learned not to stay down. I came up again and learned to say, “This is my life and I have to live it.”
Having to live a life, it seemed rational as time went on to try to enjoy what I could in that life. Music was still too close to me, but there were other things I could enjoy — books, I remember, were first. Flowers, I think, came next. I began to care, mildly, about my roses. It all began, I remember, in a sort of wonder that such doings went on as they had before, and then a realization that what had happened to me had changed nothing except myself.
Yet life did not really begin again until necessity drove me to think what I ought to do about the child’s life. There were certain practical things that could and should be done. Was I to keep her with me, or should she find a home among children of her own kind? Would she be happier with me or with them? Had there been security in her life with me, I would have felt it best to keep her with me, for I did not believe that anyone could understand her as well as I did, or do for her what I could. Moreover, I had given her birth and she was my responsibility.
It was then that the solitary place in which she stood became apparent to me. The world is not shaped for the helpless. If I should die too young, what would become of her? We were living in China. The best that could be expected was that she would be taken to our country, the United States, and put into an institution. There, alone, she would have to make the adjustment of being without me and without her loving Chinese nurse and all that had meant home to her. She might not be able to make such an adjustment alone. Certainly she would not be able to understand why it had to be, and the puzzle and grief might disturb her beyond control. It came to me then that it would be best for her to make the adjustment while I lived, while I could help. She could gradually change her roots from this home in a new one, knowing that I was near and would come to see her again and again.
Upon this matter of her future security alone I made my decision. It was hastened, perhaps, by a situation peculiar to my life: that China was upset by civil wars and revolutions. I think my decision took its final shape on a certain day, of which I have written elsewhere, when a horde of communist soldiers forced Americans and other foreigners out of their homes, killed some of them and compelled the rest of us to hide for our lives. A kindly Chinese gave us the shelter of her little thatched hut, and there through that long day I faced death with all my family. But it was of my child that I thought most. If the moment of death came, I must contrive to have her killed first. I could not leave her in the hands of wild soldiers.
This situation, as I say, was peculiar, and of no moment to those for whom I write this story. But the essential question remains the same for all of us who have these children who never grow up. We have to think beyond our own lives for them.
It became apparent, too, as time went on, that my little daughter should find her own companions. The friends who came and went in my home could never be her friends. Kind and pitying as they were, they felt the child a strain upon them and they in turn were a strain upon her and upon me. It became clear indeed that I must seek and find her world and put her in it.
Again an incident, very slight in itself, crystallized my thinking. We had some American neighbors in our big Chinese community, and one of the neighbors had a little girl just the age of mine. They had gone to each other’s parties. One day, however, the other little girl, having come over to play, was prattling as little girls will, and she said, “My mamma says don’t have your poor little girl any more to my party, and so I can’t ever have her next time.”
Next time, indeed, the invitation did not come. The great separation had begun. I realized then that I must find another world for my child, one where she would not be despised and rejected, one where she could find her own level and have friends and affection, understanding and appreciation. I decided that day to find the right institution for her.
I might mention another circumstance peculiar to my situation. When I told one or two of my closest Chinese friends what I had decided upon, they were very much perturbed. Chinese do not believe in institutions. They feel that the helpless, young and old, should be cared for by the family, reasoning, and quite truly, that no stranger, however kind, can be trusted to be as kind as the family. There are no homes for the old in China, no orphanages except those started through western influence, no places for the insane or for the mentally defective. Such persons are cared for entirely at home, as long as they live. My Chinese friends therefore thought me very cruel to consider letting my child leave home. In vain I explained to them that the American family was not like theirs. The Chinese home is stable and it continues in the same house from generation to generation. All generations live under the same roof and are mutually responsible for and to one another. It is true that such a family home is ideal for the care of the helpless.