Мать аутичного сына в Малайзии готова отпустить его в самостоятельную жизнь

KUCHING (Aug 11): For almost 38 years, Jennifer Kueh has spent her life helping her son, Anthony Liew, understand the world—and helping the world understand him. But at 69, she knows she cannot be there forever. Anthony, 38, is autistic, nonverbal, and deaf. Jennifer is his mother, teacher, and lifelong interpreter. At Heart Treasures—a Kuching-based social enterprise where individuals with physical and intellectual disabilities build practical skills through craft—they don’t sit glued together. Anthony works at his table; Jennifer works at hers a few feet away. They can go hours just focusing on their tasks. During my conversation with Jennifer, Anthony demonstrated immense curiosity. Halfway through, worried that he might be bored, I produced some mathematical questions on a notepad. He showed interest and was deeply focused on the questions. But when Anthony hit a wall with a mathematics problem I had scribbled, he did not panic; he simply reached out and tapped his mother’s hand. Jennifer turned, glanced at the page, and explained the equation using a few rapid, subtle gestures known only to the two of them. Satisfied, Anthony turned back to the paper, absorbed in the numbers once more. The exchange lasted only seconds, but that small tap spoke volumes. “When we are gone, I don’t know what will happen to Anthony. Maybe my second son can look after him, but whether his future wife is willing to look after Anthony or not, I don’t know. That is my concern,” she told me. A world without many words Before Heart Treasures, Jennifer was a physics and mathematics teacher in Kuching. Her classroom career was cut short by a severe middle-ear infection that left her deaf in her left ear and compromised her right, forcing her to leave the profession she loved. Her life took another turn during her pregnancy with Anthony when she contracted rubella. Recognising the illness and understanding that it could affect her child, she spent months carrying a quiet dread. Anthony arrived prematurely at 35 weeks. One of Jennifer’s earliest memories in the hospital was leaning over his incubator, whispering: “Baby, baby, Mummy came to see you.” But there was no response from him. A hearing assessment in Singapore later confirmed profound bilateral hearing loss. “The moment I heard that, I was so sad. I just broke down and cried,” she recalled. His autism was diagnosed later, after Jennifer noticed distinct repetitive behaviours, such as compulsively switching light switches on and off. However, finding appropriate support in Kuching proved frustrating: a local school for the deaf could not manage his autism, while an autism centre lacked staff who knew sign language. When her husband’s work temporarily relocated the family to Sibu, Anthony attended a deaf school for a time. Yet most of what he learned came from home. Jennifer and her husband took sign language classes, and eventually, Jennifer stepped back into teaching—this time for only one student, her son. She painstakingly taught him letters and numbers, advancing from basic counting to division. “It took me six years to teach him basic mathematics,” she said. That six-year labour of love explains why numbers still hold Anthony’s focus so effortlessly today. He loves calculators and often collects shopping receipts, meticulously recording what was spent. During my visit, maths was one of the few ways I could cross the silence and reach him. When words fell short, numbers provided a shared, quiet language. What the hands reveal There was another side to Anthony that emerged not through conversation, but through what his hands could create. Heart Treasures co-founder Kelly Bong brought out several of his old drawings. They were unexpectedly detailed—intricate grids of lines running through figures like hidden electrical circuits. Even Jennifer could not always explain what he was depicting. Two drawings caught my attention. Both showed a painting of a couple, completed a year apart. Kelly pointed out a subtle shift: in the earlier sketch, the figures stood apart; in the later one, they drew closer together. Perhaps it reflected something Anthony had quietly observed in his parents’ relationship over that year. We could only speculate. Anthony could not tell us his intention. There is a whole world inside his mind, and the rest of us are left to decipher the fragments he leaves on paper. Jennifer, despite knowing him better than anyone, could not read every fragment either. Until then, I had viewed her as Anthony’s ultimate interpreter. But even mothers cannot know everything. Jennifer knows that a finger pointed at the rice cooker means it is time for dinner, or a gesture toward his father’s car means it needs to be moved. But there are still quiet territories within Anthony that remain entirely his own. Perhaps independence begins there, too. Almost 14 years of coming together They first came to Heart Treasures on Sept 3, 2012, when he was about 24. And they have been coming together ever since. Over the years, Anthony has mastered several stages of handicraft production. He is exceptionally fast at cutting wallpaper into precision triangular strips used for paper beads. He also weaves, moving entirely according to his own rhythm—resting when he is tired, then returning to the table when he is ready. As we stood looking through the paintings and crafts Anthony had produced over the years, the sheer delicacy of his work was impossible to miss—intricate woven patterns, beaded necklaces, paper-rolled bead jewellery, and keychains, all crafted with meticulous care. Jennifer looked over at his finished pieces, then toward the table where Anthony sat working. “He can do crafts that I cannot do,” she said, nodding toward his intricate weaving. When I asked how that made her feel, she didn’t hesitate: “I feel very proud of him.” Her decision to accompany Anthony every day for nearly 14 years grew out of a simple, persistent fear: that no one else would know how to understand him. “If I don’t follow him, they won’t be able to look after him,” she admitted. Yet her ultimate goal was always to reach a point where she could finally step back. “I keep waiting for the day I could leave him here—the day I wouldn’t have to follow him anymore,” she said. A place for Jennifer too Heart Treasures not only became an outlet for Anthony, but for his mother as well. Jennifer lives with bipolar disorder and has experienced long periods of depression. There were days when staying home meant doing little more than sleeping. Coming to the centre gave her somewhere to be. “It helped me to overcome my depression. At least I got something to do. I’m occupied,” she said. The routine could be tiring, requiring early mornings to prepare meals before riding over with Anthony. There were times she wanted to stop altogether, yet she returned day after day. “At home, I just wear anything. But come here, I have to dress properly,” she said. It was an ordinary remark, but that was the point. An outlet does not always have to dramatically transform a life. Sometimes, it is simply a reason to get dressed and sit at one table while your son sits at another. Jennifer had followed Anthony to Heart Treasures to protect him. Somewhere along the way, the place she chose for her son became somewhere she needed for herself. The small distance between two tables By the time our conversation ended, Anthony had returned to his work. Jennifer remained at hers. That image stayed with me—a mother and son in the same room, not sitting side by side, yet connected by the smallest of gestures when needed. For almost 14 years, Jennifer accompanied Anthony out of worry. But watching him move around the room on his own, settle into tasks, and seek her out only when necessary, I wondered whether letting go had already begun in small ways. It was there in the few tables between them. In the moments Jennifer did not have to watch him. In the things Anthony could do that even his mother could not. Before leaving, I asked Jennifer whether she was ready for the day when she could finally leave Anthony at Heart Treasures on his own. She looked directly at me. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m ready to let go.” There was no dramatic moment after that. Anthony did not look up, remaining absorbed in his work. Perhaps letting go will not mean walking away all at once. Perhaps it will simply mean allowing the distance between their two tables to widen a little—trusting that when it does, there will still be someone willing to understand the son she spent a lifetime learning to understand. Beyond those two tables, Anthony’s hands were already reaching farther than Jennifer could have ever imagined—his precise weaving skill eventually finding its way across the country to a historic artefact carried into Parliament by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim. But that is a story for another day—and one that belongs to more than just a single pair of hands. Read also: Inside Kuching’s hidden workshop of ‘angel artisans’