Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance
of John 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 --- lopsided from swelling, 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 a 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 a 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.
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.
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