Not your typical fisherman story!
Our house was directly across the street from the
clinic entrance of
Johns Hopkins Hospital
in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to
out-patients at the clinic.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man.
“Why, he’s hardly taller than my eight-year-old,” I thought as I stared at the stooped, shriveled body.
But the appalling thing was his face. It was lopsided from swelling and was red and raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, “Good evening. I’ve come to see if you’ve a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there’s no bus ’til morning.”
He told me he’d been hunting for a room since noon but with no success,
no one seemed to have a room. “I guess it’s my face… I know it looks terrible,
but my doctor says with a few more treatments…”
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: “I could
sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning.”
I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went
inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old man if
he would join us.
“No thank you. I have plenty.” And he held up a brown paper bag.
When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him
a few minutes. It didn’t take long time to see that this old man had an
oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a living
to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who was
hopelessly crippled from a back injury.
He didn’t tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was
prefaced with thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain
accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He
thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.
At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children’s room for him. When I got
up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was
out on the porch.
He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as
if asking a great favor, he said, “Could I please come back and stay the next
time I have a treatment? I won’t put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a
chair.”
He paused a moment and then added, “Your children made me feel at home.
Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind."
I told him he was welcome to come again. And on his next trip he arrived
a little after seven in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and a
quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them that
morning before he left so that they’d be nice and fresh.
I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up in
order to do this for us. In the years he came to stay overnight with us there
was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from
his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special
delivery: fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or kale,
every leaf carefully washed.
Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these, and knowing how
little money he had made the gifts doubly precious. When I received these
little remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made
after he left that first morning.
“Did you keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You
can lose roomers by putting up such people!”
Maybe we did lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could have
known him, perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear. I know our
family always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it
was to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend, who has a greenhouse. As she showed me
her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum,
bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old
dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, “If this were my plant, I’d put it
in the loveliest container I had!” My friend changed my mind.
“I ran short of pots,” she explained, “and knowing how beautiful this
one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting out in this old pail. It’s
just for a little while, till I can put it out in the garden.”
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining
just such a scene in heaven.
“Here’s an especially beautiful one,” God might have said when he came
to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. “He won’t mind starting in this small
body.”
All this happened long ago, and now, in God’s garden, how tall this
lovely soul must stand.
Comments
Post a Comment
All comments are held for approval prior to being made public.