Return of the Imperfect Son
Stories > Return of the Imperfect Son

The following story, by Paula Brook, first appeared in the Mix section of the Vancouver Sun, Saturday May 11, 2002. It is reprinted with permission.

Years ago, Iona Kelly clipped a piece out of Readers' Digest about being the mother of an "imperfect" son. It is now rumpled and yellow, having been hauled out of her scrapbook dozens of times as Mother's Days marched by in their parade of roses and chocolates and inscribed coffee mugs.

"Other children bring home high marks and enrich life with the adventure of growth," Iona reads from the clipping. "My ‘imperfect' son achieves in a different way, and his victories cover me with even greater honour."

It's true, she tells me over tea in the kitchen of her Port Moody home, I dropped by this week to catch up on the globe-trotting adventures of her 30-year-old son, Angus MacKinnon, about who I wrote a column last November. Angus's story got under my skin as few others have done. It ran with a stunning portrait by the Sun's Stuart Davis, showing blue-eyed Angus gazing off into other worlds, his head resting on his beloved guide dog Dabney, whose big brown eyes nailed the photographer dead on.

Iona's husband John pout it in a gilt frame and gave it to Iona for Christmas. The newsprint copy in my office is just tacked to the wall, but I've probably looked at it almost as often, and not just for its artistic merit.

How would this young man survive, I wondered, never mind succeed in his mission - which was to spend five months on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia teaching other blind people how to use computers? Besides his sight impairment, he suffers from a variety of neurological conditions that make it very difficult for him to walk and talk. When I first met him he had just returned home from a two-hour bus trip across the Lower Mainland to see a physiotherapist, and I was astonished he could accomplish all that on his own. Setting himself up in an apartment and a job on St. Lucia? Where there are open storm sewers in place of sidewalks and the narrow, broken-down roads are choked with honking cares, and where residents deal with rampant crime by keeping fierce guard dogs that pose almost as much threat to passersby as the feral packs that roam the streets?

Just crossing the street in the city of Castries could pose a mortal danger to both Angus and Dabney. Which is why most sight-impaired St. Lucians tend to stay home, deprived of social contact and employment opportunities and virtually all sense of belonging in the world. Which is also why Angus went there, on a CNIB internship. To give blind St. Lucians the tools to reach out.

I stayed in touch with him and his family over the winter by e-mail. Perhaps it was an antidote to my own aching loneliness for my "perfect" daughter who is away at college. How much harder it must have been for Iona to let go of Angus.

It was quiet for the first weeks. As Iona later discovered, the folks at the welfare society were more than a little shaken when Angus teetered off the plan, then struggled to introduce himself. Was he here to help us, or the other way around, they wondered. But not for long. In the kitchen of their ramshackle little office, Angus improvised a training program - which was interrupted whenever the roof leaked or the haywire electrical system shorted out or a storm blew through town. He set up computers, installed image-voice translation software and offered one-on-one training in electronic reading, writing and surfing.

Never having taught before, he worked his way through the society's client list, from squirming teenagers to dismayed seniors, for which he received a stipend that barely covered his rent.

Never having held a job before, he proved he could do it.

This was the main thing for Angus. He'd spent years looking for a job locally that would allow him to put his considerable talents to work - to demonstrate his perfect side to the world, and be rewarded for it, like anyone else. There have been times when the injustice almost got the better of him.

The period following graduation from BCIT's business administration program was one of those times. With the help of a note taker, he had completed the two-year course in three and had emerged full of hope for a career in human resource management. But no one would hire him, and for the first time in his life he became depressed.

That was nine years ago, and things could have gone from bad to worse as his health deteriorated. Though he was blinded in early childhood by a rare disorder called choroideremia, and suffered growth deficit due to hypothyroidism, Angus was nevertheless strong and agile until his mid 20s. He was always among the fastest learners at CNIB summer programs, excelling in cycling and windsurfing. All that came to an end four years ago as his cerebellum began to atrophy, compromising his muscular coordination.

These days, he's remarkable cheerful when he describes his "hodgepodge" of medical conditions. His doctors, who describe his case as one in a billion, are less so. They offer no roadmap - which both mother and son view as the ultimate challenge for positive thinking.

"You hold on to threads of hope," says Iona, who watched her son use those threads to pull himself out of his depression. In the absence of paid work, he became an expert on choroideremia and the rest of the hodgepodge, passing technological tips and news of research breakthroughs along to a network of disabled people and their advocates in the community. He joined volunteer boards and offered his services as an image-voice software trainer, most of which he did for love and company.

There was never enough money to move out on his own, though he's been ready to do so four years. He's a decent cook, a fastidious housekeeper and a devoted master to Dabney, whose coat always shines like silk.

"Now he's able to say, See, I can do it. I really can," says Iona. "It seems like a miracle after all he's been through. I'm so tremendously proud of him. He's my hero."

The way Iona tells it, her life has unfolded pretty much as she had hoped, one imperfect achievement after another, covering her with honour. Only this week it's even better: Angus has come home for Mother's Day, his first truly perfect achievement in his pocket.

Paula Brook

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