Annie Sullivan is remembered as the “Miracle Worker” who brought communication to Helen Keller who was deaf and blind. Sullivan displayed commitment to her pupil that earned her the esteem as a teacher. Her heroic dedication to bringing Helen into contact with other people took her on an arduous path. Reading about her life and work, however, one can be struck by how ordinary her methods were. The results were undeniably extraordinary because of Helen’s circumstances, but the highly individual path of Helen’s beginning to learn is the same path charted by every child with the guidance of a first teacher.
Most people are aware of the iconic moment when Sullivan successfully conveyed the meaning of the fingerspelling of the word water at the pump. The moment is memorably illustrated in a unique way in a graphic novel about Sullivan’s journey with Helen, “Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller” by Joseph Lambert.
From that moment, the educational path that Sullivan took with Helen was beautifully mundane. After so many years in the proverbial dark, Helen craved language and wanted to continually learn more about the world. As the fascinating photobiography from National Geographic shows, Sullivan found the best way to meet this desire was to go into the world, narrating everything she saw by finger-spelling into Helen’s hand. Like a mother of a toddler, Sullivan accompanied Helen through daily life—the simple activities, walks, meals, and books—communicating with her about everything.
From there, Helen’s thirst for knowledge grew, and she was, in an astonishingly short amount of time, learning to write and communicate more through every means available to her. We all acknowledge how miraculous such a feat is. What we fail to see is how miraculous it is when any child is brought into communication with other people.
In a culture of large-scale educational initiatives and “No Child Left Behind,” we forget that education always begins one-on-one. In order to understand any communication, an individual must draw us out of ourselves and narrate our contact with the outside world. Children are not widgets to be tweaked on the assembly line and given inputs of useful information to spit back out again. Children are individuals who will only learn through a strong and lasting relationship with another person.
There have been and will continue to be many modes of early childhood care and education. The most successful remain those in which an individual takes personal responsibility for the success of a particular child. There are extraordinary circumstances like Helen’s. There are orphans. There are diseased and unfit mothers. But the stark fact remains that for the child, the most natural first teacher is his mother. This is not necessarily an isolated and exclusive position, but it is one that is irreplaceable.
Contemplating the everyday miracle of communication, one can better understand the labor of the mother of young children. Our culture is often so focused on technical advancement that we fail to see the meaning of the quiet life, the life of contemplation that makes possible the blossoming of the child in a loving relationship.
It is undeniable that the success of the child comes at the sacrifice of the mother. A mother cannot pursue her whims and develop her personal and professional life in every capacity while also caring for the needs of a child emerging into himself. It would be disordered to imagine the mother-child relationship as a one-way, all-consuming, isolated relationship. That is not what is meant by sacrifice. Rather, it is a matter of priority. Mothers can and should have rich and full relationships and life experiences outside the child, but the focus for a time is rightly bringing the child into contact with that broader, beautiful world.
The book “Helen’s Eyes” quotes Sullivan toward the end of her life saying, “I have never known…the deep joy of surrender to my own…individual bent or powers. I have been compelled to pour myself into the spirit of another and to find satisfaction in the music of an instrument not my own and to contribute to the mastery of that instrument by another.” What she describes is not only the task of a great teacher but more profoundly the experience of mothers.
Sullivan added, “We do not, I think, choose our destiny. It chooses us.” Motherhood often comes as a surprise. Generations of women taught that they have total control over their bodies can be stunned by the unexpected arrival of a child. On the other hand, women with no experience of children may pine for a baby for years and then be equally stunned by the reality of a child who emerges in their lives. The invitation offered in motherhood, whether biological or spiritual, is an invitation open to all people: to lay down one’s life for another.
The discomfort of pouring oneself out in the development of another risks the destruction of the manufactured identities of the single and the unattached. There is the possibility of a kind of annihilation, an extinguishing, a death of self. The child is under no obligation to repay his mother. The risk can seem too great to bear. But, as Sullivan’s famous pupil wrote, “Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” In the end, the mother who gives to her child is not lost.
