A Song in the Night Read Online Free PDF Page A

serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.”
    Drawn by such daring visions, bubbling with curiosity, I yearned to know as much about the workings of the world as I could. My mother brought home stacks of brilliantly illustrated volumes from the Time-Life Science series that revealed some of the hidden mysteries and glories of our planet. I pored over volumes on the cell, the body, and the mind; on energy, matter, sound, and flight; on weather, planets, and space. Each photograph and diagram and paragraph reinforced what has become a fundamental part of my view of life: that we live in a magnificent universe with innumerable and beautiful secrets; that many of these secrets can be unlocked through the steady application of the human mind; and yet at the same time there will always remain an awe-inspiring complexity, vastness, and unknowable glory to creation. Those books, and the other materials that my parents carried home to feed my ravenouscuriosity, helped me to peer past the edge of my wheelchair and bed, beyond the boundaries of our home and backyard, and into the mysteries that ruled everything from the tiniest cell in my body to the rhythm of galaxies in space.

    While I was in elementary school, I missed weeks of classes at a time. At home, day after day I stared out my window, watching the trees sway in the wind as I waited interminably for my joints to heal. In the time before the Internet, the only sources of information were people, television, newspapers, books, and mail. I scoured them all. Whenever my parents invited other adults to dinner, I quizzed them about their lives. Our primitive television carried exactly seven channels, and I watched them all. I tried to make sense of the newspapers that arrived on our doorstep. I pulled every book I could reach off our shelves. I went through the mail like a detective, studying
TV Guide, Time
, and even the Sears catalogue with forensic care. When my parents finally bought an encyclopedia, I could not believe my good fortune—there were articles about everything, neatly bound in leather. My loneliness nurtured an insatiable desire to learn—about people, about places, and about the mysteries of life.
    My parents did everything they could to feed this hunger. My sisters, Susanna and Elizabeth, helped me even more by providing companionship and balance in the struggle to grow up. I was far from a perfect child; I was often willful, noisy, impatient, and selfish. There was always the danger that my difficulties might drag me into a black hole of fury and self-pity.
    I survived the long periods of convalescence by imagining the future. Having picked a moment or an event that I would like to see take place, I acquired the habit of working backward from that point through the steps that needed to take place so that I could get there. I lived through anticipation, and I was often disappointed, as bleedings and other problems forced the postponement and cancellation of dozens of longed-for events. With the encouragement of my parents, I steadily developed the rapid capacity to accept the new reality and establish a new goal. Through this process I slowly gained the upper hand over the soul-crushing emotion of regret.
    As I observed others, I also inched away from my self-centered view. I realized that many, if not most, other people faced their own struggles. Passing in and out of hospitals, I saw children with far more serious physical problems than mine. Scanning the pages of the newspapers, I glimpsed the horrors of war and poverty and disease. Dipping more and more deeply into works of history and fiction, I imagined the hard lives that others had lived. I wanted to understand not just their ideas but their feelings, and this desire helped to move my curiosity past the mind and toward the heart. Slowly, as I did these