THE OLD FISHERMAN
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 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 preface with a thanks to God for a blessing.
He as 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 illness' 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.
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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The LORD does
not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance,
but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7b)
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Visitors since February 2000.