At least once a month, I backed my 1965 Chevy Caprice out of Escondido Village. I took U.S. 101 south, then turned east through Pacheco Pass. The curvaceous, golden hills and spinning silver windmills filled my windshield: nature framed like a Salvador Dali painting. At Highway 99, I turned south.
About four hours later, I arrived in Porterville, a destination I’d been visiting since I was 8. In the 1960s, my parents had placed Carlos, my younger brother, in Porterville State Hospital. In doing so, my mother had fought every maternal instinct she had. My father had felt as if he were abandoning his son.
Born a few months premature, Carlos left the hospital blind and deaf. Later he would be diagnosed as mentally retarded. An operation at 3 restored his sight. His deafness impaired his balance, so he walked with a stiff, halting gait. Slight indentations above both eyes were just one indication of how many times he had tumbled. His slow development and spasticity made it difficult to take care of him. Ours was a military family often on the move, and Carlos, who was 6, needed more stability.
A social worker recommended the hospital in Porterville. We made the difficult journey from Salinas, where we were living at the time. The l-shaped building we checked Carlos into housed developmentally disabled children and adults. High-pitched voices and heavy footsteps echoed off the gray walls; the din reminded me of a crowded school cafeteria. I watched Carlos lumber to his room, grinning at everyone who passed. After unpacking his things, we embraced him and forced ourselves to leave. The noise hadn’t abated, but I felt enveloped by a soundless void as we walked out.
We visited Carlos once or twice a month. We took him to shop for new clothes, to parks, out to eat. He loved ice cream. Haste and spasticity sometimes led him to shove big scoops of ice cream into his mouth all at once. He would slap his forehead and shake from the burst of cold in his head. His smile, displaying a rowboat of teeth, remains etched in my mind.
Over the years, care for the developmentally disabled began to change in California. My parents received a letter informing them that the state wanted to move away from institutional settings and toward group homes. Eventually Carlos would move in with five or six other young adults like him. They learned how to be as independent as they could be, while still receiving training and care. The first homes he lived in were in Porterville. Now he lives in Visalia. Some of the residents have been together for a decade or more.
While Carlos lived in the state hospital, the rest of our family moved on: to Nebraska, Puerto Rico, Panama, California again, Colorado, Puerto Rico again and Florida. Amid those transfers, in the fall of 1974, I moved into Blackwelder Hall to attend graduate school.
At Stanford, I continued the family tradition of visiting Carlos. I thought I was doing him a favor. Actually, I was doing myself one. That became evident on one particular visit. At the time I felt depressed. I enjoyed the University. I studied with first-rate professors and stimulating classmates. But I felt empty. My studies were to end in a few months, and my job prospects seemed slim. The gray skies and rain that dogged me on the drive to Porterville didn’t help.
At the hospital, someone brought Carlos to a waiting room that held a few chairs and a box of used toys. Carlos, then 21, still looked like a teenager. When he saw me, Carlos beamed and hugged me. His long arms squeezed me so tightly I could barely breathe.
When I didn’t respond with my usual enthusiasm, he cradled my head with his hands and drew my face close to his. Then he gently bumped our noses and foreheads together a few times, one of his ways of showing affection. His huge smile seemed ready to swallow my face whole.
I started laughing. So did he. And I remembered a scripture: whatever you do for the least of these brothers of mine, you do for me.
I had long thought I was doing that when I came to see Carlos. In fact, he had been doing it for me. When I was feeling at my “least,” my brother lifted me up. His love reminds me not that I am my brother’s keeper, but that he is mine.
Aly Colón, MA '75, is the ethics group leader at The Poynter Institute, a journalism institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.
