Dorothy, My Sister-in-Love

Thanne’s sister’s name is Dorothy. Thanne is my wife. That makes Dorothy my sister-in-law. Sister-in-love, too.

Four feet and six bitty inches stands Dorothy; she’ll grow no more than that. Silent she can be, all the day long; but her silence expresses a multitude of things moral, emotional, judgmental, and kind. She cries easily, though she’s 32 years old; mourns noisily at the prospect of eating vegetables; weeps for her father when he lies abed and sick. Her hands and feet are miniature, her tongue thick, her eyes slant, modeled on the order of the oriental. Her palm lacks a line, though all the rest of the world closes its fist with two creases to her one. Her mind lacks the ability to reason, to solve problems in the manner of the rest of the world. So she may be classified, I suppose, abnormal. It’s her chromosomes, you see: she possesses one more than most of the race. She is mongoloid. Dorothy has Down’s Syndrome. She’s retarded.

Now, that always seemed a curious thing to me: that we should label one who lacks the reasoning capacity in terms of contempt, judging her undeveloped, subhuman, less than we are, piteous, retarded! Yet those who lack more critical capacities—such as to discern right from the wrong and to do the right, such as to love—these people, severely retarded in other ways, we take for granted, labeling them nothing at all. Why do we damn the irrational, while granting the unmoral and the unloving all the rights, choices, protections of society and law?

But Dorothy has her Ph.D. in loving and caring for her family.

I know. I broke my nose against her iron ethics …

I courted Thanne on the farm that reared her. The setting was exquisite for the melting of hearts, since it possessed a screened back porch, which possessed a hanging swing of old wood. A northern Illinois evening is cool. A farmer’s supper is satisfying. An invitation to the farmer’s daughter that she accompany me to the swing is accepted. The swing faces west, and God himself doth smile upon the project, spreading heaven with an orange quilt, needling the evening with nighthawks, sweetening the air with the breath of corn. I am smiling, too. My arm slides woman-ward, finding the far side of the farmer’s daughter that all sides might be near. My husky whisper begins a well-turned speech: “Thanne—”

—When suddenly the back door shocks the countryside with a bang! Three heavy steps, and Dorothy stands in front of us, arms akimbo, effectively blocking the sunset. Without a word she turns, presents us with her rear, then jams that cushion of morality down betwixt our knees, the farmer’s daughter’s and mine. Boom, push, tussle, and boom! Dorothy hath made a seat for herself and a division between us. And so we sit the rest of the night. There shall be no mauling of her sister (her jaw is firm). No hanky-panky on her porch (her arms are folded). And no talk but what is fit for company (her silent eyes do twinkle distantly). God may have smiled; but Dorothy frowned. And when it came to disputations between God and Dorothy, God lost.

Now, we can analyze the irrationality of Dorothy’s acts; we could even get angry at her for not understanding the ways of the world. But I haven’t the heart to do that, for her motives were unimpeachable, and her love of such sophisticated quality that few of the intelligent beings about me now—yea, even at Harvard University—have attained unto her degree.

And yet! I learn that were Dorothy’s mother pregnant with her today, a doctor could use ultrasound scans to guide a needle through the womb and into the amniotic sac, withdrawing fluid to analyze the cells there; and finding those cells to possess one extra chromosome, that mother could freely choose to abort the fetus, seeing that this baby would be born lacking the reasoning capacity.

For the baby’s sake? Life is hard on a retard? No. Without a baby, there is no sake. It’s specious reasoning, even for those who have the capacity. And there is such an infinite variety of life that one cannot determine whether a child may not find some form to fit her joyfully.

For the parents’ sake? I’m afraid so. Life is hard on a so-called retard’s parents.

Oh, people! Why must we so passionately seek to reduce sacrifice in our lives? Why do we so fear and hate hard service unto others that we at every turn—and righteously—run from it, calling the right thing wrong and the good thing bad? Do you not know that sacrifice is the very stuff of Christlike loving? And selfishness the seed of sin?

“But, it’s my body. I’ve the right to choose whether to carry a baby to term.”

No! Not if you are Christian. For coming unto Christ is no mere shaking hands with him; it is giving yourself to him wholly, body and soul. You are not your own. You were bought with a price. Another has authority of choice! So glorify God with your body, which glory is loving, which loving must needs be sacrifice (even if that be one of nine months’ duration, followed by a sharing of the love/sacrifice with an adopting couple).

For my parents-in-law, Dorothy has been a 32-year hardship, indeed. But it hasn’t been empty, debilitating suffering. It has been a Christian opportunity.

Mr. Wangerin is pastor of the Grace Lutheran Church, Evansville, Indiana. He is the acclaimed author of several books, the latest being The Ragman and Other Cries of Faith (Harpar & Row, 1984). This article was adapted from a column appearing in the Evansville Courier.

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