The Old
Fisherman
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic Entrance
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."
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Fisherman
