I stood outside New York's Madison Square Garden and just stared, almost speechless. I was a farm boy from County Kilkenny, a child who some thought would never walk, let alone go as far as I had in the world. From the day I was born, there was a problem. The doctors at the Dublin hospital told my parents I had phocomelia, a _ that affected both legs below the knee, which were outward and shorter than normal and each foot had just three toes. Life was tough. I couldn't stand, much less walk. I rarely, left the farmhouse---and then only in someone's arms. Mam bundled me up whenever she took me to town, no matter the season. "The world will see him when he can walk," she told Dad. "And he will walk." Mam devoted herself to helping me. She tried everything to get me on my feet. When I was three, she and Dad took me to a clinic in Dublin. A few weeks later we returned to Dublin with my artificial limbs  . Back home I practiced walking with my new limbs. "There's nothing anyone can do but you can't," Mam said. "You and I are going to walk through town." The next day Mam dressed me in my finest clothes. She wore a summer dress and fixed her hair and makeup. Dad drove us to the church. We stepped out of the car. Mam took my hand. "Hold your head up high, now, Ronan," she said. We walked 300 meters to the post office. It was the farthest I'd walked, and I was sweating from the effort. Then we left the post office and continued down the street, Mam's eyes shining with a mother's pride. That night, back on our farm, I lay exhausted on my bed. It meant nothing, though, compared to what I'd done on my walk. Then I began to pursue my dream of singing. And at every step Mam's words came back to me--Ronan, you can do anything anyone else can do--and the faith she had in God, who would help me do it. I've sung from the grandest stages in Europe, to music played by the world's finest musicians. That night, I stood at the Madison Square Garden, with Mam's words chiming in my ears. Then I began singing. I couldn't feel the pulse of the music in my feet, but I felt it deep in my heart, the same place where Mam's promise lived. Why did Mam dress him and herself in finest clothes?
To hide their depressed feeling. To indicate it an unusual day. To show off their clothes. To celebrate his successful operation.