Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Karmas, Part 10 - Story of a family with mobility impaired parents

I am Eszter Gaál. I am fourteen years old, and the violin is my life.

I really love playing the violin. I was seven when I started it,

and I haven't done practically anything else since then.

My younger sister is Julcsi, she plays the violin, too.

I love her very much. She is so cute when she is playing.

She is still very young. She is only nine years old.

Making music means for me that I play the violin,

in one word, I perform a piece for someone;

or I practice it thoroughly, I practice for a concert

and I present the piece for the world.

I applied to the preparatory class for special talents of the Academy of Music

in last February and I was admitted.

It means a lot to me as college and academy professors teach us.

It is a place from where the greatest artists come from.

My plan is to be a violinist.

It would be important to make a carrier as a soloist as well

since it is the way to achieve results.

Then I like to playing in orchestra or in chamber orchestra.

We often play together with Julcsi, too.

It is a very good feeling that I can play together with an elder girl,

who is already attending the Academy of Music.

Practically, she had been able to play the violin before she could read.

I like teaching her, or I would rather say,

helping her to be able to do what her teacher demands.

I respect her, and she is my ideal.

I think, we are so special because Mother and Father are special, too.

I am Tünde Beregszászi, Mrs. Gaál.

I have been disabled from my birth; my movement is impaired.

I am a religion teacher and a cantor.

I am Miklós Gaál. Due to a brain haemorrhage during my birth,

my legs were paralyzed.

I was told twenty - three years ago

that I would need a wheelchair approximately within five years.

But thank God, I am still able to walk.

It is true that I need a walking stick, but I am still able to walk.

It seems that both of us will need a wheelchair, by-and-by,

but we try to delay it.

The miracle that we just run away is not very probable to happen.

Father reads a lot that makes him so special.

He is very clever,

and he helps us quite a lot with learning pretty often.

My mother can paint really nicely.

Maybe, we inherited our interest in art from her.

She can make beautiful music as well.

What I cannot do any more, and I really loved to do,

it is playing the organ, the piano and the zither.

It has completely disappeared from my life,

I am sorry to say, I cannot do it anymore physically.

The only remaining thing that I really love to do is painting.

There are subjects that captivate me

and make me depict and express them.

Our lifestyle is very special.

You cannot compare it with the lifestyle of a healthy person.

Now my older daughter accompanies me to many places, my poor little thing,

if she has time, since she is taking lessons.

Well, it is pretty difficult.

From shopping to purchasing anything is a big problem.

If I really have to, I can waddle around the flat,

but I couldn't go to a workplace anymore.

Getting somewhere or going out is very demanding;

for example, using public transport is difficult.

I can hardly bear travelling on public vehicles.

Miki cannot use the public transport at all.

I prefer taking a taxi if I definitely must go somewhere.

I have never lived with healthy parents, so...

well, I don't know, I have not seen many other families.

I often go to the shop on my own. I always accompany Mother

if we go out together to somewhere. She leans on me because she wambles,

her legs hurt, so she cannot walk properly.

But it is fine for me, I am absolutely used to it.

I am happy to be able to help her. I do not know how else could I learn

to be an adult and how to live, if this wasn’t the situation.

Good morning! I am Miklós Gaál.

You can say I am the girls' manager, in brief.

Now, it means that I look after all sorts of courses, programmes,

and I decide what to do with each of them.

We have bought recently a violin for Eszti.

For this end we received financial support

from the New Europe Foundation of MOL company.

Now, it meant a huge administrative work load,

because everything must have been written properly.

The right invoice and documentation and so on should have been handed in

to here and there, to the MOL and to the National Cultural Fund as well,

so all of it involved a lot of work.

When the girls started to play the violin,

we took out the camera.

I began to record when they performed in concerts.

And until now I have wrote about 180 discs fully.

I attend the Ferenc Erkel Primary School as a private student.

It means that I do not always go to school,

or even better to say, I miss school more often than I am there actually.

The time I would spend in school is too valuable to me.

Being a private student takes a lot of time.

Most of the time I work with Julcsi in fact.

My husband helps her in science, and I help her in humanities.

It is a task for us, even if you do not have to explain

everything in detail to the children,

but you have to make sure they complete their tasks.

If there is a question, you should try to answer it.

In case you do not have a ready answer accidentally,

you have to look up one.

It is a pity that because of these making friends becomes secondary.

We could not meet other families as their classmates do.

We could not make friends with other families or classmates.

I would rather not attend a regular school.

If I attended one, I think, I would have more friends.

I have no friends now.

I have never made real friendships with my classmates in fact.

I was not really liked by my classmates,

somehow no one has ever really liked me.

Then a kind of class got together from violinists,

and they accepted me more or less.

The only problem is that I cannot go out with them at all

because I have to help Mother and Father.

That's why I have never belonged to a circle of friends.

The blue sky, the green grass and things like this I miss.

We cannot manage to get to an exhibition.

Shall I say as a painter

I would attend exhibitions with great pleasure.

Well, once I got to an exhibition.

Since then I haven't gone to any other one.

Practically we are confined to our flat.

What I miss most is being able to roam together.

I don't feel being closed up because we go to the countryside each summer.

There I forget about everything, and anyway,

we spend some time outside during the school year.

I badly miss friends, to have someone to talk to about things.

Well, I do not have cousins or relatives of this kind.

Julcsi is still very young, so I cannot speak with her about things.

So, well, this is what I miss.

Such a special life makes you lonely.

Now, you have to accept it, or you can say that you do not take it.

There is so much evil in the world nowadays.

My goal is to make people forget

about these evil things for a while by my music performance.

My biggest wish would be to make people happy by my violin performance.

I do not really know what my other two wishes would be.

Well, I whish I became a violinist,

and Eszti became a violinist as well, and my parents lived longer.