| |
 |
A handicapped orphan and his mother
|
DIVORCED and unemployed, Qiu Xiulian is trying hard to raise her 7-year-old adopted son Lin Qingqing who is brain-paralyzed and hepatitis B contracted.
Efforts to have her own child failed because an unnamed disease robbed her of pregnant ability. Later, Qiu's marriage ended in divorce.
The date of July 3, 1993 was unforgettable to her, when she just stepped out of the Futian District Court with a divorce verdict in hand. A feeble infant being held by a policeman caught her eyes. Later she learned that the baby was an orphan discarded by his parents. With love, sympathy and desire to be a mother, she decided to make the infant her son on the spot.
She never expected her motherhood would be such an odyssey. A medical check indicated that the infant was born to be brain-damaged and hepatitis B contracted. People persuaded her not to keep the baby because the cost of medical care would be surprisingly high. But she made up her mind to raise the child against all difficulties.
With only retirement pensions and a 500-yuan-per-month social welfare offer, Qiu was buying expensive imported milk powder to feed her "son". And because of the child's disability to walk, she had to carry him in arms here and there in their two-room quarter. Under her attentive care, the boy was growing healthily and quickly.
Qingqing was then six years old; he had to be sent back to a welfare centre to get special education. But the child got ill when being separated from his mother and without the mother's care. Every morning, Qiu took a long way to see her son and every evening remained awake late into the night enduring the pain of missing her son.
In April last year, she made an application to the welfare centre to take back her son again.
Eventually the son and mother happily got reunited in their shabby but warm home, though life is still hard. "I am not anticipating anything else except being with my son," Qiu said. For her, the happiest moments in the life are being called by Qingqing as "Mum".
(Alfred Zhang)
|
|
|
|
