I was a single mother in my 30s who lived down and out with my daughter Peggy in a small apartment, struggling hard to make our needs meet.

One day, I headed to the downtown for an interview. I sat down in the streetcar, and there against the seat was a beautiful silk umbrella with a silver handle decorated with gold, on which there was a name carved.

On impulse (冲动) I determined to find the owner myself. I got off the streetcar in the heavy rain and thankfully opened the umbrella to protect myself. Then I searched a telephone book for the name. I found it immediately and called it, waiting patiently, and then a lady answered.

“Yes,” she said in surprise, with extreme excitement. “It was my umbrella which had been stolen a year ago.”

So appealing was her pleasure that I forgot I was looking for a job and went directly to her small house. She took the umbrella, with teary eyes, explaining with choking voice that the umbrella was given by her parents, now dead. Her happiness at recovering this special possession was such that to have accepted her reward would have ruined something, so I refused her offer and left.

The following months were hard. I could only obtain temporary employment, for a small salary. What was worse, I had just lost my last job before Christmas, with only fifteen dollars left. Unless a miracle (奇迹) happened, I would be homeless in January, foodless and jobless. I had prayed steadily for weeks, and there had been no answer but this coldness and darkness.

The air was full of Christmas merriment, with the bells ringing and children shouting in the bitter dusk of the evening dreaming of the gifts from Santa Claus (圣诞老人). But there should be no Christmas for me, I knew, no gifts, no remembrance whatsoever.

Thinking of this, I couldn’t control my tears on my way home, but I managed a smile so I could greet my little daughter. She opened the door for me and threw herself in my arms, screaming joyously and demanding desirably for her Christmas gift. There I stood, frozen, overcome by sorrow.

Suddenly, the doorbell rang and Peggy rushed to answer it, calling that it must be Santa Claus.

I was still in confusion when a note attached to the package caught my eyes.

When I was young, I lived in a small village in Melaka. We lived in a house in a row of shop houses. The spirit of neighborliness was very strong then. We needn’t lock the doors of our houses by day or night. The village had a variety of trades to serve the needs of the villagers. There was s barber, tailor, coffee shop owner, grocer, baker, electrician, plumber, and so on. All of us were quite poor by today’s standards but we got by. However, one family that could be considered to live a marginal(边界的) existence was the Lim family living in the bicycle shop opposite our house.

Mr Lim, the bicycle mechanic, had quite a few children—twelve to be exact. The joke among the neighbors was that he was aiming to form a football team among his children. How-ever, seriously speaking, it was no joke for him trying to feed his growing children daily.

My mother was a kind-hearted woman. Often, she would remark that his children were dressed in ragged(破旧的) clothes and looked malnourished(营养不良的). My family was relatively rich in the village and my father was the headman. My mother would bring over whatever food we could spare to our neighbors. On occasions when there was leftover food from village weddings or festivals, my father would ask me to take the food to Mr Lim. I did not mind visiting Lim’s bicycle shop as I had an interest in bicycles.

I shared a room with my brothers overlooking the bicycle shop. I was interested in the re-pair of bicycles and would often stare out of the window to see Mr Lim work. As time went on, I noticed Mr Lim become more and more cheerful. The number of customers at his shop had increased steadily. He sold many shiny new bicycles.

“Have you decided on your major?” my parents inquired.

“Bioengineering, of course.” I responded without the slightest hesitation.

I entered this world with Poland syndrome, a disease that prevented the formation of my right arm and pectoral muscle(s 胸肌). My parents, believing that playing with Lego could enhance my dexterity(灵巧), gifted me my first kit when I was five. Struggling to piece the components together, I crafted my first Lego work – a car. As I got older, I grew obsessed with Lego Technic, a more advanced range, and how to use it to build more delicate structures. By the age of nine, I had fashioned my first prosthetic arm(义肢)using Lego Technic – a simple box that perfectly accommodated my right arm.

This early creation sparked my drive for further exploration. Years later, I developed another prosthetic arm that I called the MK-1, which had fingers, a motor, a pressure sensor, a movable elbow joint, and a grabber capable of picking things up.

Before constructing it, I had already decided against traditional prosthetics. Not because they were ineffective, but because playing with Lego did significantly improve my dexterity, helping me adapt to my condition. However, a more frustrating reason was that prosthetics were too expensive. My parents and I had looked into getting one a few years earlier, only to be discouraged by the prohibitive price. So, I concluded that I might not need one because I was managing well without. Nevertheless, the joy of creating prosthetics with Lego remained, and I continued making them purely for the fun of it.

As the years passed, my creations evolved from MK-1 to the more advanced and comfortable MK-V. It featured a control unit that could send and receive orders from sensors on the arm to the motors, with cables that contract like muscles.

One day, a couple with their eight-year-old son, who lost both arms in an accident, reached out to me after learning about my creations. Short of money, they couldn’t afford well-functioning prosthetics. “Daniel,” the father earnestly asked, “we were wondering if you could possibly help build a set of prosthetics for our son.”

I knew it would be a challenging and demanding task, but I responded with a “yes”.

I rushed to the boy’s home and secured the prosthetics onto him!