Acceptance

The Old Fisherman

--Mary Barte--

Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance to John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients 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 old 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 wais 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. “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 meanwhile. Then, 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 to see that this old man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me that 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; 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 old Man was out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for the bus, haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, “Could I please come back and stay 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, then added, “Your children made me feel at home. Grown ups are bothered by my face, but children don’t seem to mind.”

I told him he would be welcome to cone again. On his next trip, he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As a gift, he brought us a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked them that morning before he had left so they would be nice and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4 a.m., and wondered what time he had had to get up in order to do this.

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 and always 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 how little money he had, made these 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.”

And maybe we did, 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 will always 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 out of pots,” she explained, “and knowing how beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn’t mind starting 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 fisherman. “He won’t mind starting in this small body.”

But, that’s behind now, long ago, and in God’s garden how tall this lovely soul must stand!!