May peace be upon you.
One day while my young son was playing outside, he saw my neighbour's son.
"He's special, isn't he mom?"
"Yes, he is..Who taught you to say that he's a special kid?"
"You did. Remember you told me about the kid you babysit a long time ago?"
Ah! I remembered I told him about the four brothers I used to babysit. When we were living in Birmingham, I used to babysit my friends' children numerous times. Most Malaysians and Indonesians do not have families there so the closest thing to a family they had were friends. If they had to go somewhere, they left their children to friends like us.
The Lubis family from Indonesia was one of them. Pak Lubis who was studying for his doctorate in engineering and his wife, Kak Noor, a doctor, decided to go for their pilgrimage that year. So they entrusted their four sons to my husband and I.
Now I'm like a volunteer professional babysitter. I babysat for my many nephews and nieces since I was in primary school. I enjoyed babysitting so it was no problem at all.
But...I had never babysat for a special needs child before. I wasn't sure but they had nobody else to turn to so we practically had to say yes. That decision turned out to be a blessing to me.
The four boys, I can still recall their names - Ihsan,11 years old, the handsome and the always responsible big brother, Imran 10, the rebellious one, Ishak, 6, the youngest and Iqbal,8, the special one. Although Ishak is the youngest he had to be the big brother for Iqbal.
Iqbal looked like a Down syndrome child but her mother explained he's not. Kak Noor did explain to me in medical terms his condition to which I failed to fully comprehend. All I know he was such a sweet and special child.
Iqbal was so loving. He had a big sense of humour and touched everyone's heart. Everyday he will hug me and say that he loves me. He used to say "I love you, I don't love my mom". I'm sure he didn't meant it like that, he just wanted to show how much he loved me. And I really adore and love him too.
One spring day we brought them to visit a reservoir facilities which had a visitor's information center. After lunch we went for a walk along the open reservoir and just for a second I lost sight of Iqbal. I almost had a heart attack when I saw him at the edge of the water. Lying on his stomach, he was licking the water straight from the edge of the reservoir! We quickly grabbed him before he fell into the water. He said he was thirsty.
That incident taught me to be more vigilant with Iqbal. Thank God nothing happened to him.
When their parents came to fetch them, it was a really sad occasion. Iqbal didn't want to go home and said "I want to live with you" several times. He only relented when his mother promised that they will come back to visit us.
Iqbal will always be in my heart. He taught me to learn to love unconditionally. He has so much love to give. Why can't we?
