Adoptive mother's love has no bounds
-
Nhan practises with his artificial leg, He doesn't like using it and his mother doesn't force him because she doesn't want him to hate the leg and his disability.
Caring for a physically disabled child has won his adoptive mother accolades and given the boy a great start in life. Hoang Hong reports.
"How are you today?" three-year-old boy Phung Thien Nhan asks his adoptive mother everyday after she returns from work. If his mother has energy left she will play with her son, if not she lies down to rest.
Nhan's life hasn't been easy. He was found 72 hours after being abandoned in a garden in 2008. The critically injured newborn was rushed more than 100km to a hospital in Quang Nam Province. Doctors managed to save his life, but not his right leg or his genitals.
After he recovered, Nhan was adopted by Tran Mai Anh and her husband, Phung Quang Nghinh, a young Hanoian couple who already had two boys.
Anh has taken Nhan to 14 hospitals in Thailand, Singapore and the US to be treated by some of the top physicians in the world.
For her intrepid efforts, Mai Anh was honoured as one of the first 11 distinguished Hanoian citizens to be recognised this year on the occasion of the 1,000th anniversary of Thang Long-Ha Noi.
Mai Anh begins every day by waking up her children and urging them to wash their faces, brush their teeth and helps them dress. While they are washing, she prepares breakfast for them. After breakfast, she takes her sons to school. After work, she picks them up and then goes back home to cook her family dinner. After eating, she plays with them for an hour, puts them to bed and then reads a book until midnight.
As the main editor for Heritage and Heritage Fashion magazines, Mai Anh looks too small to carry out such mammoth tasks.
Nhan says that he likes playing with his mother the most. He enjoys "brooding", in which Nhan and his brothers Hai and Minh huddle together under a blanket while his mother sits above them and says "give an egg, give an egg..."
Nhan says he likes his mother to bath him because she lets him splash the water and tells funny stories.
Mai Anh says she always works hard to ensure that her boys have a peaceful life.
"Nhan once asked his brothers a riddle: ‘What has four legs, but is always hiding one leg?' No one was able to solve the riddle. Nhan said with delight, ‘It is Thien Nhan!'"
"His answer made many of the adults in our family cry, but I wasn't worried because I know that Nhan has accepted his condition," says Mai Anh.
Nhan does not like using his artificial leg and Anh doesn't force him to use it. She worries that if she forces him to wear it then he will begin to hate the leg and his disability. "When a person hates themselves, it is difficult to help them. If someone has a health problem, it can be treated with medicine," says Anh. "But psychological trauma may be more difficult to treat."
In the last three years, Anh has taken Nhan around the world to see the best doctors to help treat his disability and improve his physical mobility.
"Many people think that I am demanding perfection, but I don't think I am," says Mai Anh. "He is my son, not just some boy that I am helping. As a mother, I always want to do what's best for my son."
Anh says that she was honoured to receive the State President's letter of merit and the Distinguished Citizen's award for charity.
"I never think of what I do as charity," says Mai Anh. "I am lucky enough to have a son who is very intelligent and lovely, that's what matters."
Anh is the youngest person to receive the award, which is usually reserved for politicians, historians, and engineers.
Anh's work has inspired her community and moved people across the country to reach out and help children that are in need. — VNS