Chapter 8........... “There should be a home like that in our part of the country. A home where love is felt.”

The next morning, the doorbell chimed and a special letter from Texas was handed to us.

Words written on a piece of paper and sent twelve hundred miles away somehow don’t seem very adequate.  We certainly have been praying for you as your search for a home for Melissa.  And it will only be a temporary home for her, we know, for there will be no cause for tears when you see her in heaven.  I’ve wondered how the Lord will change such little ones; but, however He does it, the perfection of heaven won’t leave any room for defect in its inhabitants.

Penny and I put our heads together and decided that maybe we could do something concrete and useful by urging you to come and spend a few days with us in Big D.  So we are enclosing two pieces of paper that might help.  They are strictly first class (don’t drink the liquor) and family plan ( which means you don’t travel on Sunday) and on a jet direct from you to us.  The rest is up to you.  Fill in the date and let us know.  If you could come soon, you might relax around the pool.  And if I could think of any more enticements, I’d include them too.  But then, I’m a theologian, not a sales manager.

They were the most beautiful words we had ever read.  Charles was indeed a theologian, a doctor of philosophy and dean of the graduate school at a Texas seminary besides being the author of many published books.  He had picked a charming wife---Penny----quite a bit younger than he was---”so that I may smell perfume in my old age, and not liniment.”  Charles proved to be a master of sound logic.

They had been delightful friends for our family before they and two precocious offspring moved to Texas.  We missed them sorely.  It did not take us long to fill in the missing dates.  Soon we were enjoying a complete switch of environment and change of pace. The therapy of sharing openly our doubts and misgivings over the momentous decision we had made seemed to hasten the healing process,  

Six days later back in Pennsylvania we felt whole and strong again.  Life was the same curious mixture of mundane and momentous.

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My first shopping trip to the supermarket proved to be a traumatic experience.  I noticed a small baby asleep on the cold wire bottom of a shopping cart with cans and boxes of breakfast cereal piled helter-skelter around him.  An older brother, grabbing whatever he could reach on the shelves, dropped his booty alongside his small brother.

I stood there furiously looking around for their mother.  A young girl, her head outlined in pink curlers, stood nearby, pinching heads of lettuce at a vegetable counter.

I seethed.  It took all the strength I could muster not to snatch the little one out of the cart.  His round face and wide eyes peeped out alertly from his grimy white knit cap.  Tears stung my eyes as I left the store, not remembering what I had come for.

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Our visits to Melissa were shattering as well!  The scare tissue was so thin that each time we held her in our arms it was a though we were entering the very same Gethsemane all over again.

On our very first visit we arrived around ten in the evening, bone-weary after ten hours of turnpike driving.  The lights were dimmed and we tiptoed through the halls past the sleeping sounds of the children.

Down the long hall, through a buzzer-operated door, we hurried, faster and faster.  Paul with his long strides was always just a shadow ahead.

“Paul.”  I looked down into on of the cribs by the window. “This----is this our Melissa?”

I pawed through my purse to find my glasses.

“ Honey, no!” His voice was gentle.  “That isn’t our baby! They must have moved her crib.  Here she is, over by the door.”

I walked away from this small stranger with a sob of relief. But my heart gave a sickening lurch when I held my own three-month-old Melissa in my arms and looked at her carefully.  She was more like Geide than ever---a plump young-old face with eyes that would not focus for long on anything. 

Her body was warm and passive, and we held her tightly and walked and rocked her.  It was all we had.  Each crib we passed held other babies like her, some misshapen in body but all slow of mind.  Cribs filled with heartaches--and so many----so many.

Michael, almost five years old, could do nothing but smile, and this he did with gusto.  We stopped to play with him---pat-a-cake and tickle- in the-ribs, and whatever we could do to bring forth that big lopsided grin of his. 

Driving home the next day, we did not talk much.  Paul’s knuckles were white as he maneuvered into the stream of Sunday traffic.  I stared through the side window dully.  

“There should be a home like that in our part of the country.  A home where love is felt.”  The statement hung there between us, and no comment was made for many miles.

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When Melissa was seven months old, I went on a shopping expedition to replace her outgrown baby clothes.  It was a small children’s -wear shop.

“I’m looking for an overall set for a little baby girl.” They were heart-filling words.  I wondered how deep into my soul the salesman could look.

“What size do you want, lady?” he asked.  “We have infant sizes from 0 to 3 and toddler sizes from 3 to 6X.  I swallowed hard.  What size is she wearing?  I thought.  I don’t know.  I don’t know her correct size.

“She is s-seven months old.”

“Age doesn’t tell the story, you know.  Babies vary a great deal in their rate of growth.  How much does she weigh?”

My hands were wet with perspiration. What had they said in their last letter?

“About sixteen pounds I guess” I said in a low voice.  He gave me a long look. 
“Is this a gift, ma’am, or is this for your own baby?”

I could not speak.  My own baby?  I could not find words to answer the question.

Oh, yes, she is my own, yet she is five hundred miles away and I do not know any of the little things about her that I long to know.  I mumbled something meaningless under my breath and walked quickly out of the store.

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Again and again, the hurt came back.

We were attending a charity dinner in a large hotel ballroom where we were seated at a table with five other couples, three of whom I had never met before.  In exchanging pleasantries, the inevitable question came up.

“And how many children do you have?”

“Five,” I answered.

“Well, you’re doing all right for yourself,” she chattered on gaily.  “How old are they?”

“Two in college, and two in high school and a seven month-old baby.”

She whipped the information out of my mouth.

“Can you believe it?  This gal has two children in college and a new baby at home.  How about that?  I’ll bet it gives you a new lease on life to have a little one around the house.  Tell us all about your new baby.”

I knew if I opened my mouth, I would burst into tears.  But Paul jumped into the gap and adroitly changed the subject.

So I learned to say quite simply whenever family questions were asked, “We have five children, two in college, two in high school, and a little baby who is living in a special home for retarded children in the Midwest.”

The subject was usually dropped after a passing expression of sympathy.  I would never deny Melissa’s existence even to a stranger.