Last night, my husband and I attended the play, The Miracle Worker, about Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan.

Hellen Keller was an amazing person in so many ways. She has inspired so many people and made a huge impact on her world. I remember seeing the movie about her when I was in my teens, and I thought a lot about what life must have been like for her, locked inside herself for so many years with no means to communicate.

Last night, watching the play now as a mother, I felt even more the emotions her parents must have gone through, and the depth of their helplessness. I was even more amazed by Ann Sullivan, and her perserverance to break through and reach "the wild child" that no one else had gotten through to.

Reading through the program for the play, I learned more about the difficult upbringing experienced by Ann Sullivan and WHY she was determined to make headway in what everyone else thought was a hopeless case.

I realized that if she hadn't been so determined to help this little girl, to make a difference, to do the impossible, Helen and her great mind would have been lost to us all forever.

There were two quotes in the program that particularly "spoke" to me, and I wanted to share those here with you.

The first is a poem by Helen, from The Faith of Helen Keller, called "Mine to Keep":
They took away what should have been my eyes
(But I remembered Milton's "Paradise").

They took away what should have been my ears
(Beethoven came and wiped away my tears).

They took away what should have been my tongue
(But I had talked with God when I was young).

He would not let them take away my soul:
Possessing that, I still possess the whole.

And the second thing I wanted to share, which spoke to me profoundly as a writer, was written by Annie Sullivan in 1891, when Helen would have been 11 years old:

"At another time she (Helen) asked: 'What is a soul?'

'No one knows,' I replied, 'but we know it is not the body, and it is that part of us which thinks and loves and hopes...and is invisible...'

'But if I (Helen) write what my soul thinks,' she said, 'then it will be visible, and the words will be its body.'"