From that day on, Anna and I started bombarding Tito with words and more words. When he’s had enough, he switches off the VoIP.
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Christy Brown died when he was forty-nine, after choking on a pork chop.
To go back to Tommaso Rangone: the food that proved most harmful to Christy Brown’s health was a pork chop.
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Although the New York neurologist was wrong in his prognoses — just as the “idiot” Tommaso Rangone was wrong about Pope Julius III — he completely transformed our lives.
As well as recommending that we stimulate Tito all the time, he recommended that, during the Venetian winter, we go to live somewhere hot.
According to him, a child with cerebral palsy needed to be free and unimpeded and naked all the time. A child with cerebral palsy, according to him, needed to be in touch with the sand, the earth, the water.
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In the previous image: Tito and Anna witness the arrival of the Venetian winter.
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I quote myself:
We each have our own particular talent. Mine is leaving Brazil. No one leaves Brazil as well as I do.
If leaving Brazil were painting, I would be Rembrandt.
If leaving Brazil were literature, I would be Shakespeare. From one moment to the next, I can abandon everything and leave. In a calm and orderly fashion. I have more than thirty years of practice. I have left Brazil at every possible opportunity and stayed away for long periods. And it’s always worked out well. Because I know exactly what to expect of other places. Anyone who leaves thinking that he will find something better than Brazil is in for a disappointment. I never made that mistake. I left Brazil with the sole aim of being a long way from Brazil.
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When the New York neurologist recommended avoiding Venice in the winter months, my first thought was to buy tickets for Rio de Janeiro.
However often I had rejected Brazil, and I did reject Brazil, I could never deny that it was hot.
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Christmas 2001, we flew off to Rio de Janeiro.
It was hot.
Our plan was to stay for two months. We ended up staying for nine years.
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In the previous image: Tito on Ipanema beach.
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I look back now at the photos from that time.
Tito is free. Tito is unimpeded. Tito is naked. Tito is in touch with the sand. Tito is in touch with the earth. Tito is in touch with the water.
In Rio de Janeiro, we found everything that the New York neurologist had recommended.
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We stayed in Rio de Janeiro for nine years — instead of only two months — because of Ipanema beach.
There was another reason too: a Bobath therapist.
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Karel Bobath was a pediatrician.
Berta Busse was a gymnastics instructor.
Born in Berlin, they had to flee Hitler’s Germany because they were Jews.
Berta Busse arrived in London in 1938. Karel Bobath in 1939.
They married and together developed a physiotherapy program for the treatment of cerebral palsy, known as the Bobath Concept.
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While Adolf Hitler, in Germany, was exterminating Jews and children with cerebral palsy, a pair of Jews who had escaped from Hitler’s Germany were developing a treatment for children with cerebral palsy.
That’s what Tito’s story is like: circular.
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Karel Bobath and Berta Busse both committed suicide on 19 January 1991.
He was eighty-five. She was eighty-three.
Together, Karel Bobath and Berta Busse developed a method for treating cerebral palsy and they remained together until the moment of their deaths.
Cerebral palsy unites people.
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We took Tito to his Bobath therapist for one or two hours, four days a week.
He had his muscles stretched. He was tossed around in a net. He was put inside a cylinder and rolled around the room. He had an elastic belt tied around his hips. He had his legs immobilized and was then made to turn the top half of his body. He had adhesive tape applied around his lips to stop him dribbling. He was held in an erect posture in front of a mirror. He had to sit down with his knees straight. He was splayed across a large red ball and rolled backward and forward. He was thrown onto a foam mattress. He was encouraged to crawl.
My wife and I enthusiastically accompanied Tito’s gymnastics.
We were happy in that place. We were as united as two old Jewish suicides.
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In the previous image: Tito and his Bobath therapist.
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Neil Young has two children with cerebral palsy.
That’s right: two.
He is my guru.
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Neil Young’s first child, from his first marriage, is called Zeke. Neil Young’s second child, from his second marriage, is called Ben.
Zeke was born in 1972. He has a mild case of cerebral palsy.
Ben was born in 1978. He has a severe case of cerebral palsy.
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When Ben was two years old, Neil Young and his wife took him to the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential.
The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential persuaded them to devote all their time to Ben’s treatment, giving him twelve hours of physiotherapy a day, seven days a week.
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The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential is a sect.
If Neil Young is my guru, the guru of the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential is Glenn Doman.
According to Glenn Doman, a child with cerebral palsy needs to be continually manipulated by his parents, because if he keeps passively repeating a series of standardized movements over a long period of time, his brain will change and replace the damaged parts.
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In 1981, Neil Young recorded a song about Ben’s treatment using Glenn Doman’s method.
It’s “T-Bone” from the album Re-ac-tor.
It is the anthem of cerebral palsy.
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In “T-Bone” Neil Young fanatically repeats the same two lines, for nine minutes and ten seconds, just as the physiotherapists at the Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential told him to fanatically repeat Ben’s movements, twelve hours a day, seven days a week.
In the first line, repeated twenty-five times, Neil Young says, “Got mashed potatoes.” In the second line, repeated another twenty-five times, he says, “Ain’t got no T-bone.”