Smile Pinki (2012. Smile Train)
I received a DVD copy of the 2008 Academy Award winning documentary, Smile Pinki, unsolicited in the mail a few months back. The movie sat on my writing desk for a bit because the subject matter of the film was too personal, too emotional, for me to confront. Last night, I finally watched the DVD and I am glad I did.
Many of you know that our fourth son, Jack, was born with a cleft lip. The cleft was completely unexpected. My wife had undergone extensive genetic testing while Jack was in utero because my wife was 40 when our son was conceived. The testing showed nothing abnormal,. We were both surprised when Jack was born with a significant cleft. However, he was thankfully spared the other, more serious complications that accompany such an impairment: a cleft palate or a heart defect. Cleft issues arise during a fetus’s 4th-12th week of gestation, usually around the 7th week, which is approximately the time the fetal heart is forming. Our hypothesis, unsupported by any scientific studies, is that Jack’s cleft occurred when Rene’ was exposed to insecticide being sprayed at a condominium we were renting in Cancun. My wife was exactly seven weeks pregnant when she stepped through a cloud of what we believe was DDT lingering in the condo. Like I said, this scenario is only a hypothesis, though according to at least one website, environmental factors are believed to play a part in the formation of clefts. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleft_lip_and_palate). In any event, Jack’s situation was unforeseen but given the sophisticated level of health care most Americans are able to access, Jack had corrective surgery on his lip six weeks after birth. Dr. Willie Portilla did a marvelous job. So instead of a childhood of speech issues, low self-esteem, and teasing from other kids, Jack endured only a brief period of being fed through a syringe (the cleft made the suction necessary for bottle or breast feeding impossible), a little discomfort, and follow-up out-patient cosmetic surgery when he turned six years old. He was, thanks to the luck of his birthplace, spared the sort of life memorialized in Smile Pinki.
The movie depicts the journey of two children, Pinki and another young boy born with severe cleft lips, in rural India. The images of the Indian countryside, the agrarian lifestyle, and the extreme poverty of the parents of these children is heartbreaking. Add to this background the social isolation and lack of education each child experiences due to their clefts and you have the makings of an very, very emotional story. But the point of the film, well played and unfurled with deliberate respect for the children by the director, isn’t tragic but hopeful: Through the auspices of Smile Train, an international organization that accepts donations for the treatment of cleft palates and lips around the world (each surgery costs an average of $250 so the repairs are a bargain for the donors and the kids!), the viewer witnesses the process of finding Indian children in need of surgery, the screening and prioritization of their cases, and the actual operations. Five months after treatment, you are reintroduced to the beaming, wide, confident smiles of children whose hope has been renewed and restored.
This is a short film of great visual power that will leave you in tears. But the tears you will shed will be ones of joy and admiration for the courage of the children, their families, and the medical professionals working to deal with an issue that impacts 1 in 700 children. In fact, according to one of the physicians interviewed in the film, India alone has a backlog of over one million untreated cases of cleft.
Jack is a fortunate young man. He was born in a era and in a country that provided him with a level of sophisticated medical care children in places like rural India and China and Africa can only dream of. To help kids around the world in a small way, a modest way, Cloquet River Press donates 10% of all proceeds from the sales of its books to Smile Train. But you, and I, can do more. Why not think about mailing off a check to Smile Train today? I know I will.
Peace.
Mark
