MAY’S MIRACLE

MAY’S MIRACLE
In 1983 a television movie was made starring Clois Leachman called The Woman Who Willed a Miracle. It is based on the amazing true life account of Mae ??? and her adopted son Leslie. Leslie was born blind and abandoned with compound disabilities. An agency brought him to Mae to care for. They warned her that it was not likely that Leslie would survive, but May’s indomitable spirit not only saved little Leslie but taught him to swallow, and after years, to walk. He could not communicate in any functional way and required continual care from Mae and her husband. One night after Mae and her husband had gone to bed, she heard sound coming from the living room. She asked her husband if he had left the television running. He insisted that he had not. She ventured out through the dark house to discover that it was not the television at all, but Leslie was seated in the darkness at the piano playing songs by ear that he had heard from the radio. Leslie possessed the savant quality (profound genius in an otherwise disabled mind), which enabled him to play by ear anything that he heard. Later on he was able to mimic famous singers with remarkable accuracy. Mae did not have the benefit of today’s remarkable technology to see how music forces the brain into functioning at a higher level, but she did recognize a special power therein that created a “miracle.” She refers to the ingredient as “love” living in the music. Perhaps she is right.