......And then it was that I noticed her large saucer like eyes and the tiny, tiny slant in her left eye.

Chapter 5 by Mildred Krentel.....Melissa Comes Home

The next morning when they brought her into my room for her early feeding, I checked her over carefully.  Ten fingers, ten toes----the usual mother’s routine, but accompanied by an unsung love ballad.

And then it was that I noticed her large saucer like eyes and the tiny, tiny slant in her left eye.

I propped her alongside me and she collapsed into a small uncompromising heap, like one of those Japanese sleeping dolls.

“They must have forgotten to put any starch in you honey, I whispered into her flat pink ear, wondering who in the world she looked like. Brother Bob?  Or big sister Diane?  Or possible some forgotten relative?

Quite unbidden, there came to mind the face of a twenty-ish girl whom I had not seen for many years.  Sunday after Sunday, she had attended our church in Greensboro, always placing herself in the very front pew.  I seemed to recall that she had a rather unusual first name; Geide!

I stared anew at my baby lying asleep in my arms.  Melissa looked exactly like Geide!  And I began to shiver from head to foot.  For Geide was a mongoloid.

“Dear God, how could You?”

I lay back against the pillow and let the tears roll in a deep soundless sobbing.  When the nurse came to take Melissa from my arms, I could not open my eyes.  I wept for myself, too old and too tired to even think of more babies.  I wept for my family at home, and I wept for my husband, my love.  Oh, surely this would break his heart.!

The three hours that I lay there waiting for the morning visit of my pediatrician were of the purest agony.

And then, footsteps down the hall.  My obstetrician poked his head into my room.

“How’s the new mother?”

I turned my face away toward the window.  He walked over to my bed and patted my foot cheerily.

“I’m worried about my baby.”

“Now, now, why should you worry?  Your little baby girl is perfectly all right---face a little bruised from delivery but other than that----”  His voice trailed off.

I managed a quick smile so that he would go away.  He left, reassuring me every step of the way to the hall.

Maybe I was getting neurotic. Where was my baby’s doctor?  I must hear it from him.

When at last he appeared, in his faultless attire, I brushed aside all amenities.

“What does a mongoloid baby look like?” 

He turned away from me, too quickly, and then began to answer in a deliberately professional manner, devoid of any emotion.

“The mongoloid child has a broad face; the bridge of his nose is flat, and the eyes appear to be almond-shaped.  those are the signs you would most easily recognize.  Of course, there are tests too.”

Do you suspect my baby of being a mongoloid?”

“We were waiting for the results of a few more tests, but your suspicions have made it easier for me to tell you that she is afflicted with Down Syndrome---a mongoloid.”

Well, there is was.  I did not need to hear more  It was a cold, bleak fact. I had given birth to a mentally retarded child.

***************************************************************

There is a spiritual called, “ I Won’t Have to Cross Jordan Alone.”  This was a terrifying Jordan, and although I was well acquainted with the one who had promised to cross with me, it was so very black all around me, I could not seem to find His hand.  It seemed to me, in those terrible moments, that I would have to cross all alone.

I put in a long-distance telephone call for Paul who had flown to Pittsburgh for the day.  He was in the office of one of the vice-presidents of United States Steel.

“Paul, I need you.  Can you come right home?”

“What’s wrong, honey?  Tell me, what is wrong?”

“It’s not me.”

“The baby?”  His voice was incredulous.

“Melissa is a mongoloid.”  How utterly cruel of me to package a heartache so neatly in four little words. The impact was immediate.

He was at my side in two and a half hours. He stood in the doorway for a long minute just looking at me, tears streaming down his face.  I could hardly bear his grief.  It is an awesome thing to see a big man break down and sob.

That evening, towards dusk, my husband and I were able to talk and reason together.  There had come a calm and quietness.  And we haltingly began to clothe with words our acceptance of the present and our worries over the future.

The doctor, in his impersonal way, had already suggested placing Melissa in an institution.  But all our instincts screamed against the thought of turning over to others the particular burden that God had given us. We would take our imperfect angel home.

Yet, somehow, through the pain that even talking about this gave us, we felt that we were not thinking clearly, not separating emotion from reason. We then did the only thing we knew.  

We turned to the problem over to God.  He had sent it in the first place, and He certainly must know how He wanted us to handle it.

“God, Melissa is Yours and so are we.  You have promised wisdom to those who ask.  OK, we are asking!”

We began to consider the four other normal healthy children which God had given us and the solemn responsibility we had to each of them as well as to our baby.  Would bringing Melissa home create an intolerable situation for them?  Would we end up devoting our lives to one we could never cure, at the expense of four teenagers who also needed so much from us?

Then the pendulum would swing back again.  The feeling of guilt that accompanied the thought of giving our baby up was overwhelming.  We felt as though we would be side-stepping our God-given duty.  And to be honest, there was the fear of outside censure.  would not our friends and neighbors be critical?  How much easier to win their respect and admiration if we brought Melissa home, gave up our outside activities, and dedicated ourselves to the care and training of this special child with her special needs.  

Here, too, we realized that we must not allow our feelings of guilt to dictate our decision.  Our baby’s welfare must be our first and most important consideration.

Melissa would always need someone to care for her physical and emotional needs.  She was entitled to the privilege of associating with people on her own level, with similar mental and social capacities.  Had we a right to isolate her in a cocoon, albeit a cocoon of love?  And what about the inescapable fact that we might not always be here to take care of her?  I was forty-two and Paul was forty-three. We must plan realistically for her future.  

Pearl Buck, in her book, The Child Who Never Grew.says it all so simply:  “The world is not shaped for the helpless.” 

Finally we came to the most important truth of all:  Keeping Melissa

at home would not make her be any more “accepted” by us, nor would placing her in a special home make her any more “rejected.”

So it was that we decided to place Melissa in a home for retarded children.

I remembered reading somewhere about the two kinds of sorrow that man must endure.  One was called “escapable” and the other, 

“ inescapable.”  The first occurs where death strikes--swift, final and irrevocable.  but the door is closed.  The freshness of the agony dissipates.  the days and years pass; there is a welcome blurring of the memory, and the soothing balm of healing.  There is an escape.  That was Martha.

The inescapable sorrow is is that which must be faced when a crippling defect in mind or body occurs---much like a stone which is thrown into a pond.  The placid waters part to receive the stone and then flow back together as the stone sinks slowly to the bottom of the pond, there to remain,  buried and deep.  An inescapable sorrow must be accepted and made friends with, for there is no escape.  Hello, Melissa mine!

**************************************************************

At five-thirty the following morning, as the wheels of the baby carts were squeaking eerily down the corridor,  I made a quick decision.  When the nurse handed me my baby to breast-fee, I asked for a bottle of formula.

Even so, i was consumed with grief while she lay so helplessly by my side.  Each meal grew progressively worse. I could no longer find the small opening to her mouth with my eyes awash with tears and my breasts aching to be emptied.

The next morning I asked that they feed her in the nursery.

Still, I could not keep myself away.  I tottered down the hall to the nursery and stood weakly by the large picture window while a young nurse cuddled Melissa in her arms.  And it was a hurtful thing.  

O God, You have placed in my hands a strange burden.  I cannot see the size or the shape of it clearly just now, but I know You have tailored it to fit.  For You made my frame and You must have remembered that I am no very strong.  Help me not to forget what I have known about You for such a long time.  Please help.

An uncontrollable trembling seized me from head to foot.  I willed myself to be still.  So still that I could hear the throbbing of my heart against my eardrums. I listened, straining.   There was no voice from on high, no whisper in the winds,just a very matter-of-fact voice bursting against my senses.

“Come, you had better go back to your room now.”

**********************************************************

A few days later, I was discharged from the hospital.  The sunshine was everywhere that morning as we said our shaky good-byes.  My husband carried my suitcase and I held a potted yellow chrysanthemum in my hands.   Down at the end of the long hospital corridor, our five-day-old daughter slept peacefully in the nursery.  I could not trust myself to bid her good-bye.

What horrendous deed was I about to perform?  What unnatural love was my mother heart spilling out that I could leave my baby behind for strangers to care for and walk out of the hospital empty-armed?

Chapter 4 Melissa Comes Home by Mildred Krentel

One more......

THE SOUL has a desolate desert.  I discovered mine after the fierce hurricane of emotion had stopped its wild churning and left in its wake a quivering quiet, a hush so tenacious it could deal dry-eyed and grim-lipped with the half-filled can of baby powder, the pair of high-topped white shoes never walked in, and the too-new crib unmarked by tiny teeth. Yet it was a hush so frail it could be shattered by the merest scrap of a lullaby, or a newborn baby’s sob. 

Time passed.  The season slid into each other, and then it was Christmas.

David, Bob, Diane and Steve gathered around the gaily decorated tree in the recreation room in somewhat subdued frivolity.  I sensed that they were all thinking of what this family time would have been like with one-year-old Martha pulling at the packages.

Bob, not quite fifteen, looked at me and smiled a lopsided grin. He seemed ready to burst. 

“Please, open my present to you-all first, OK?”

It was a twelve-by-fifteen-inch oil painting of our baby Martha.  The trace of a smile on her tiny face, a faraway look in her too-blue eyes, and the dark baby hair hugging her head like a cap brought a startling reality to the canvas.

But my eyes were blurred, almost too blurred to find his cheek to say “Thank you, Bob!”

Then the details spilled out. Bob had taken one of our Polaroid snapshots to a talented  friend of ours who had agreed to attempt a likeness.  The sum asked was a modest amount that his babysitting income could tolerate.  It had been a well-guarded secret for the past two months. 

******************************************************************

We put down the most shallow of roots in Middletown, for Paul’s new position, that had offered such a rosy prospect, now seemed to present a dubious future. 

One afternoon, about fifteen months after Martha’s death, Paul walked into the house with a flushed look on his face.  He had just returned from Philadelphia and had been offered the vice-presidency of a company there. This opportunity seemed advantageously timed with his growing discontent.  The children were elated at the prospect of a change.

And so we moved to the Main Line of Philadelphia and Paul joined the briefcase-burdened commuters on the Paoli Local.  We purchased a charming split-level home on the side of a very steep hill near Valley Forge and tried to raise pachysandra on our backyard mountain instead of grass.  

But still there was that empty hole in our family circle. 

****************************************************************

“Paul.”

His name hung there between us as we lay sleepless in our four-poster bed.

“I’m here.”

He was obviously not too conversational.

“I want another baby!”

“You’ve got to be kidding!”

I did not answer.

“Miggy, listen!  You are almost forty-one!  Have you thought about that?”

“Long and hard”

“Aren’t you asking God for a replacement baby?”

“I don’t think so, Paul.  I’ve talked with Him about it. We have a lot of leftover love to give.   Doesn’t it seem kind of a shame to waste it all?”

I guess he just didn’t feel up to arguing.  He quietly reached over and gathered me in his arms.

******************************************************************

But the months went by, and still no baby. I busied myself taping some of my stories in rhyme with organ background and sent them off to a record producer in Texas.  He was quite enthusiastic and offered me a three-year contract.  I know that nobody else would ever discover me, so I signed on the dotted line with great dispatch.

Recording proved a marvelous  antidote of the housewife doldrums.  But just when I began to think about my next recording, a reproduction of quite another sort demanded my total attention. 

How would I announce such stupendous news to my family?  They would flip--every last one of them!

Some secrets are meant to whisper and tell,

For most folks can’t hide things awfully well;

But the hardest to keep ( and there are no maybes)

Is the secret of ladies---about to have babies!

And every last one of them did exactly that, including my dear husband who gave one ear-splitting war whoop that set our timid collie to howling.

The baby was due the second week in August and I knew from experience that I was in for a long, hot summer.  David, a junior in college, and Steve, an eighth-grader literally took over my conditioning program those last few months.  Obviously, anyone past forty was well over the hill and would have to embark on a rigorous training schedule to accomplish anything as hazardous a producing a sixth child.

Their inconsistencies were delightful.  I was not permitted to stoop down in their presence or do any talk as rigorous as the dishes, but up and down Valley Forge Mountain they traipsed me over the trails, with Ladybird, our collie, panting at my side. 

“Walk backwards up the hills, Mom , it strengthens the muscles in the back of your legs. “

I was totally exhausted, tremendously expanded, and thoroughly exasperated with the continued hot, humid weather.  At forty-two, you simply don’t bounce around like the young ones. 

Together, Diane and I went up to the attic. 

“It’s still so new!” she said, stroking the smooth teething rail on Martha’s crib.

I turned away.

We handed down the things to the boys---the Little Bo Peep nursery lamp with the yellow shade, the baby scales, and then the size-one dresses, never worn, just hanging there kind of limp.  It was a traumatic experience.  I began to hurry.

We reassembled the crib in the small room, perfect only for a baby and right across from the master bedroom and happily, right next to Diane’s.

None of us openly admitted wanting a little girl more than a boy, but Steve came right out with it one night as “D” day had come and gone.

“Don’t you think, Mom, it would be rather considerate of God to send us a baby girl?”

Well, I did , but I said I didn’t care one speck.

*****************************************************************

When I finally checked in at the hospital, it was at the unforgivable hour of three-thirty in the morning on a sultry humid day right after Labor Day, and three weeks late, at that.

It was as though our sixth baby had stood poised at heaven’s portals waiting for divine reassurances before she could be persuaded to be born.

“It’s now your time to leave, small one.  Your family is waiting for you down there, wondering why you delay so long.  They are beginning to worry!  No, you must not cry! No tears are permitted up here.  I know that you are frightened, but you have a special mission to perform just for Me.  There, now, I have placed a tiny dimple in you left cheek, but they would have loved you anyhow.  I have blessed you with a laughing heart.”

And, after a never-to-be forgotten labor of eight hours, baby Melissa was delivered and I heard the relieved pronouncement of my obstetrician:  “She’s a girl-----a 100 percent healthy little baby girl.”

I floated away into a happy-happy world where my body was numb and delicious with no more pain.

Until next week................Blessings, DKH

I remember this May day like no other......Difficult to type this chapter out but it's all about  the fabric of life.  DKH

Chapter Three of Melissa Comes Home by Mildred Krentel

Our new neighborhood was saturated with young couples busily engrossed in raising kids and grass.  We moved into a five-bedroom, all aluminum home and decorated one small room for our new baby, due in two months.

Bambi plaques on the wall candy-striped draw drapes, and a bright blue rug on the floor completed the nursery.  Diane, an effervescent twelve-year-old was chattering like a magpie as we began the final scrubdown of Steve’s old crib.

“Hey, Mom, it looks a bit forlorn, eh?”

I surveyed the nine-year-old relic dubiously. This business of “beginning all over again” was expensive.  Yet, does not a P.S. child deserve something better than an old hand-me-down?  Diane and I decided definitely YES!  But, before we could even locate the car keys to go shopping, the doorbell rang and two big boxes from Michigan were delivered.

“From Uncle Frank, Mom!”  Diane was a bit starry-eyed.  

When we had finally torn the carton open, there was a shiny new crib with an innerspring mattress!  Nothing would do now but a new bathinette, baby scales, and a Little Bo-Peep nursery lamp.  All was in a state of readiness. 

*****************************************************************

1959---- Martha Helen was born on December the second!  When six people all suddenly fall in love, it is an awesome thing to behold!  Martha was so special. She was the uncrowned ruler of our busy household.  Three big brothers, and one adorning older sister all paid homage to our new love.  A mere whimper or the tiniest tremble of her baby lips, and we flew into action.

Almost before we knew it, she had been with us half of one whole year, six beautiful months!  And still our hearts were filled with the wonder of her.

And then it happened.  It was the sixteenth of May, on my mother’s birthday, a made-to-order Monday morning.  Under a round-eyed sun, frisky breezed flapped the diapers on the clothes tree merrily.  I sang aimlessly as I tucked Martha into her carriage for her morning nap.  There were moist fat creases in her neck to kiss and dimpled wrists and ankles to pinch before I flew indoors to attack my housework with springtime vigor.  Beds were made, dishes stacked in the dishwasher, and the coffeepot was reloaded.  

Soon the sound of wheels crunching over the driveway gave me ample reason to abandon all thoughts of housework.  I warmly welcomed two friends from my old neighborhood who had come to see this child of my middle years.  

We sat at the table, talking over cups of coffee.  I’m afraid I bored them with my baby talk.  My mind was a delicious jumble of formulas, schedules and doctor’s visits.  I found myself waiting for empty conversational  spaces where I could insert some incredible new thing our darling had done. 

“Look at the time!” I suddenly exclaimed.  “It’s almost time for Martha’s bottle.  I’ll run out and see if she’s awake.”

She usually napped for an hour or two in the morning.  I went to the back door and looked out.  The mosquito netting was billowing gently in the soft breeze.  I ran out and peeked in through the slit of the hood.  We often played peekaboo with each other.  She lay face down in the carriage.

I tore at the netting and turned her over.  Her face was puffed and her closed eyes were bluish and swollen.  I picked her up in my arm.  She lay like a tiny rag doll, limp and life-less.  From somewhere deep inside me there cam a strange unearthly wail.

Did You hear it way up there, God?  That was the veil of my heart being torn asunder. 

I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me!  This happened to other people’s children, not to your own. I stumbled into the kitchen with my bundle and numbly handed her to Marge. She swiftly loosened the baby’s clothing and with her mouth gently began to breathe air into those quiet little lungs.  There was no response.

What followed was a nightmare of neighbor, machines, doctors, ambulances.  And my baby---on the kitchen table. 

I must call Paul, I thought.  Oh, what will he do?  It’s already after twelve; he’ll be out to lunch.  Paul, what shall I say to you?  You loved her so----

Paul was there.  When I heard his dear familiar voice, my words froze in my throat.

“Oh, my dear---our baby.  She’s gone---she’s dead!”

I clung to the phone, dry sobs stuck in my throat.  Tears that would not flow held me, numb and shocked. 

How Paul ever drove those ten miles is something close to a miracle.  He never stopped believing that somehow everything would be all right when he arrived, that somehow the crisis would be over.  He ran into the house, into the confusion of the kitchen, and gathered me in his shaking arms.  There was no need for words. We clung to each other and wept, shut away from the world, encased in a little box of grief.  

We paced from the living room to the kitchen and back again, listening to the steady mechanical breathing of the respirator.  We went to our bedroom and fell down on our knees by the bed.  There we sobbed out our grief. 

Our broken hearts asked the timeless question, Why? There seemed to be no rhyme or reason.  We couldn’t understand it.  There were sickly babies, unwanted babies, mentally imperfect babies----why didn’t God take them?  We had loved her so.  The heavens seemed leaden’.  There was no answer. 

And, still, little Martha lay there on the green formica kitchen table, surrounded by people, strangers looking down at her smallness with pity and trying to coax her back to life again.  They just wouldn’t give up, but kept on trying.  And that was an added “hell” for me. 

But, one by one, they finally left, each on his private errand of mercy.  Flowers were delivered, hot casseroles arrived, and our four children were brought home from their schools.  We opened our arms and joined in their grief.  

The doctor was kind and sympathetic.  I was unnerved by his diagnosis; aspiration of the vomitus in the trachea.  My sick thoughts stampeded wildly.  If only I had gone out to look at her sooner! If only I hadn’t had company!  If only I had put her in her crib! If only I had been there by her side! But no, I was laughing and sipping coffee while my baby was dying.  I would never forgive myself.

“But, Doctor, she was so strong,” I said.  “She could lift her head and turn over.  How could it have happened?”

“My dear, this could have happened while you were holding her in your arms, and you would have been helpless,”  he explained gently.  “Why, just yesterday in the papers there was a case in which a ten-month-old baby died exactly-----”

My ears were deaf.  I had closed my mind to his case histories.  There was cold comfort in the fact that other babies had died in the same way.  At the doorway, he stopped and  asked gently, “Do you have anything that you can take tonight?  Sleeping pills or tranquilizers?”

“Sleeping pills?  Tranquilizers?”  I sobbed convulsively.  “”Yes, we used to have one--just one--a fifteen-pound one, wrapped in a pink plaid blanket.  She was all we ever needed.  But no more; she’s gone.”

The doctor spoke quietly.

“Shall I prescribe something for you both?”  he asked.  Paul assured him that everything would be all right, so he left reluctantly.  Later that night we decided to take aspirin, but in searching the medicine closets we unearthed not even one lone grain.

“Let’s pray!”  my husband suggested simply.

We knelt quietly by the edge of the bed and asked God to give us a night of sleep.  God answered that prayer and the comfort of sleep came to erase, however briefly, what seemed to be God’s mistake of the day.

We awoke, and she was still gone.  We listened, but there was no sound from the nursery.  The house was so quiet, it literally swallowed us up.  I stumbled from our bed and went over to the bureau.  There was a large pink diaper pin on top of my comb.  With trembling hands, I pushed it aside and combed my hair.  The face that looked back at me from the mirror was drawn and haggard: the eyes were cold and despairing.  I was not needed; my baby was gone.

Steve tiptoed in and stood in the doorway watching me.  Then he ran over and threw his arms around me.  I felt his young fierce strength and would not let him see my weakness.

“Steve, the hole is so big and so very empty.”

Then, with the wisdom only a ten-year-old can know, he whispered, “Mom, you just wait and see!  God will fill that empty hole.”

****************************************************************

While dressing that evening to go to the funeral home, I suddenly missed Paul.  I knew instinctively where he was.  There in the nursery, he had rolled up her pink baby blanket and rocked it back and forth in his arms as if he were trying to remember that sweet essence of our faraway angel.

“Don’t do that!”  I said sharply.

Almost automatically he folded the blanket and placed it neatly at one end of the vacant crib. 

***************************************************************

In the funeral home, I couldn’t take my eyes away from her.  I desperately wanted to cover her; her arms looked so cold.  I had the awful feeling that if I looked away even for one second, she might suddenly roll over and fall to the floor. 

And then the minister began to read from the Bible.

“Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

My soul stood on tiptoe to listen.  I drank in the words like a thirsty sponge.  And then, like the old Scottish woman, I wanted to throw my apron over my head and be alone in the tabernacle with my God.

My baby had finished her life’s works.  She didn’t have to try to “become as little children”: she was one--a very tiny lamb that had gone home to her heavenly Father.

A quietness and hush swept over me.  clenching both my thumbs tightly, I shot up an intense little plea for understanding and forgiveness. 

“It’s OK, God, I don’t need to know why You did it.”

It was a sixty-seven-mile ride to the cemetery.  We wanted to be alone together as a family, so Paul drove and the four children. David, Bob, Diane and Steve, sat watching the rain beat upon the car windows.  It was almost as though we were out for a Sunday afternoon ride, only our littlest one rode on ahead of us in a small black hearse.  Diane pressed her tear-stained face against the window. 

“Just think, I have a sister up in heaven waiting for me.”

A sunbeam had shattered right there on the back seat.  

“Remember what we used to do when Martha had all those shots and was so fretful?”

“We’d sing to her!”

So we did--each of her songs---the special ones that we waltzed her around the living room to and the Sunday-school ones that we knew so well.  “Jesus loves me, this I know”---” Jesus wants me for a sunbeam”----”When He cometh, when He cometh.”

As we lay the smallest member of our family in the ground, we knew we were depositing our first treasure up in heaven.  

I went home and composed my own song of Lamentations.  

Now I lay thee down to sleep

here, my little one---here,

blue eyes shut in slumber deep,

in a satin-quilted bier.

Why have you fled so far away?

Didn’t you know you’d be missed?

Loosen my broken heart, small one;

unclasp your tiny fist.

Tell me, dear, is there one your size 

to be your angel friend, 

to play with you forever

in a world that has no end?

Please ask our God one question, dear:

Why did He take you so soon?

Six months is just the break of day:

He could have waited -----til noon.

Chapter Two from Melissa Comes Home by Mildred Krentel

And somehow the “hurts” seemed all the greater because for the first eighteen years of our marriage we had lived in a cotton-padded world with marshmallow corners.

All during the war we were handsomely quartered at the Naval Proving Grounds in Virginia. We were totally grateful to be together. So many of our friends had been separated, wives returning home to mother.  Somehow I felt guilty. 

Two sons and four years later, we were civilians again and buying our first home with Paul's mustering out pay  as a modest down payment. He had no difficulty finding a position in his chosen field. We settled down to relative normality when suddenly, after six months of chemical research, his company asked him to go back to school to get his masters degree, at their expense. 

So, we pulled up stakes and moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where our first daughter Diane was born.  With a Herculean effort, Paul applied himself to graduate studies over the babbles of two lively boys and one baby girl and one demanding life. One year zoomed by. 

We called for the moving van again and trekked back to New Jersey and the research laboratory. Not for long was Paul content with the confinement of the nine-to-five routine.  It took little persuasion to convince him to join the sales and marketing efforts of the corporation. This was scarcely three months after he had received his Masters degree in organic chemistry from Lehigh University. 

He was a natural---disposition,orientated to people, open face, honest gray green eyes, and a quick enthusiastic smile. It was small wonder that two years later he was asked to organize and manage a new district sales office in North Carolina. 

And off we went----happy as gypsies---- to acquire a four bedroom home, a year old boxer, and a somewhat dilapidated southern accent that David, Bob and Diane quickly imitated. Fortunately our year old Steve was just beginning to talk, so he at least could sport a genuine drawl. 

I loved every single thing about Greensboro-- her people, her natural rolling hillside, and her tailor made suburban charms. The abounding warmth and hospitality we encountered at every turn soon filled our calendar with dinner, picnic and barbecue invitations. 

Even housewifery and motherhood were a pleasure with the wealth of household help available. I had ample leisure time for teaching Bible clubs, Sunday school, and release time in public schools. 

One late afternoon, two members of the local child evangelism committee in the city came to pay a visit. 

“You're familiar with our Sunday television program?” I nodded vaguely; I had remembered hearing about it. 

“ We need a storyteller! 

“Me on TV?” I was incredulous. 

Even my husband was aghast. “Why you can't stand still for a snapshot.” 

It was true.

 But I finally agreed to at least try. 

The first Sunday found me sitting on the floor in the television station with my shoeless feet tucked under me. Three wide-eyed children, mesmerized by the camera the lights and the hushed commands from the camera men, were grouped around me. 

Assignment; keep their interest. 

I grimaced, I screwed my face into countless contortions I raised and lowered my eyebrows, I whispered, I laughed and I shouted. The cameras had a field day.

For over three years, we ran the gamut of puppet shows,  flannelgraph and dramatic portrayals, using children, pets and miniature models.  And when the imaginative boneyard was barren, there was always a book to read with the camera zooming in on the illustrations.

But good Bible story books with exciting illustrations were hard to find. They were dull and ponderous and hopelessly behind the times.

And more and more of the kids I was acquainted with did not seem to know whether Noah had built the ark or was mangled in the lion’s den.

I decided  I would write a book.  I started with the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and it began to come out in jingle:

Then a torrent broke loose----

NEBUCHADNEZZAR WAS FURIOUS!

His face changed its color

( a sight rather curious);

HE SPOKE

( and his voice was as dry as a blotter),

“Heat that old furnace just SEVEN TIMES HOTTER.”

Why not do Bible stories in rhyme? I thought. 

“As long as you don’t get sacrilegious!” I was warned piously by my would-be critics.

No sooner had I lined up an artist to do the illustrations  (not realizing that most publishers like to take on the responsibility themselves) than off he sailed to South America with his family for a five-year missionary term.  I was crushed.

But few people are irreplaceable.  And I was soon in touch with a New York illustrator.  He agreed to take on the dubious honor of drawing cartoon-like characters for I See 4.

Our five years in North Carolina were all too brief.  Paul was asked to assume new responsibilities as manager of a new chemical division in New York.  Again all our belongings were stashed on a moving van.  There were four two wheelers strapped onto the tailgate this time. 

We settled in one of New York’s “bedrooms”--a suburb called Glen Rock in northern New Jersey.  A middle-aged Dutch Colonial on a tree-arched street was picked for our domicile.  Again we laid wall-to-wall carpeting.  (It was our secret weapon against instant insanity in our noisy world of children.)  We picked up the threads of our lives again, met new people, and began to involve ourselves in an independent church in Hawthorne.

****************************

I will not soon forget the blonde, willowy neighbor who lived directly across the street from me in Glen Rock.  She had more bounce than most ping-pong balls and effervesced from the moment she “ding donged” her way into my living room.

But one morning, as she rattled on the great length with high enthusiasm, I sensed a need in her.  I wondered at myself that I  had not noticed it before.  Why, she needed to know the One whom I had known for such a very long time--the Lord Jesus!  But I panicked.  My tongue flew to the roof of my mouth and clung tenaciously. I could talk to children about God, but this was a grown woman, an adult who most assuredly would mock me.  I backed off a bit.  

You really didn’t have that in mind, did You, God?  I asked mentally.

It seemed He did, for my inner conviction to communicate with her made me more and more miserable.  

I opened my mouth and stammered, “Alice, I want to share something with you.”

Then I sank back into a wretched silence.  I had committed myself.  Alice looked at me with her pert blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly, her eyebrows arched into twin questions marks.  She was waiting.  I felt for sure that she expected me to tell her I was in love with a two-headed monster, or that my husband was going to the moon, or that I was going to have another baby.

When I finally blurted out rather lamely what God meant to me, she looked at me with a dazed expression on her old-young face. 

“Miggy,” she said,  “I don’t blame you for loving your God. He has given you one fantastic, sweet deal.  You’ve got a husband who adores you, four healthy children, and a nice home to live in with no creditors breathing down your back.  But God must have dealt me a fistful of life out of another deck.  My husband is having an affair with a girl who is only a year  older than our sone, Bill.  All three of them are over in the house right now, and I have to go home and cook supper for them  Why, for two months he hasn’t given me money to live on or to pay our mortgage and I have borrowed until I can borrow no more  And, just as a note of interest, this is his sixth affair in our nineteen years of marriage. Now, how do you like that?”

I was rocked right back on my spiritual heels.  How could I tell her that I would love God no matter what troubles or trials He sent my way?

After she left, I began to wonder about God and His dealings with me and our family.  Was it that He could not trust us with anything other than happiness?  Was I not a fit vessel for sorrow or grief?

I tried again many times to talk about God with Alice, but it was a closed subject.  I had had no experience in the vale of tears and I could not communicate with her.  I was a holy “innocent,” unsullied by the world, and unacquainted with grief.  As far as she was concerned, there was no middle ground.  My God was unfair, handing out good to some and evil to others.

*********************************************

I found myself headed for a new career as a school-bus drover!  My school bus, however, was an ignominious bilious-green Volkswagen.  I felt completely and intimately involved with the warp and woof of this funny square vehicle that I managed to maneuver so inexpertly.  I wanted to protect him.

Monstrous yellow school buses zoomed by us at break-your-neck speed on the highway to and from the Hackensack Christian Day School that our children attended.  I was properly indignant when they fumed carbon monoxide in our faces as they passed us.  I even felt hurt when we couldn’t keep up with these “big boys” on the hills.  I could almost imagine the VW bus saying”

Ach yah, Ich been new here! I’m chust now imported!

From over the seas on a big boat transported!

My name is Volkswagen, but if that should trouble you,

You children can simply say, “Mr. VW.”

And suddenly even this routine task seemed more palatable! Life held so much that was worth communicating about to someone.  Maybe I should write---but my besetting sin was procrastination, and it was three years later that my first picture storybook was published.  I was thrilled to the core when my trembling fingers caressed at last the bright red cover of my book, vI See 4 by Mildred Krentel.  My name in print!  It was unbelievable!

That was the summer when Paul decided that working for the same company fourteen years was long enough and that, before he added to his thirty-nine years, he should investigate what opportunities were available to a man with his experience.  

And that was the summer I discovered that there was going to be another baby in the Krentel household. 

That fall, we moved to southern New Jersey to a suburb called Middletown where Paul assumed the challenge of director of marketing for a small chemical company nearby.  

In 1972 Moody Press published a little book called, Melissa Comes Home for $.95!!!  No longer in print, yet still is one of the best stories Mom wrote because it was a heartfelt story of the birth of my sisters and the eventual beginning of Melmark," the home that love built."  I will post a new chapter each Tuesday for you to enjoy once again.................Diane

MELISSA COMES HOME by Mildred Krentel

THE FIRST SHOCK

The next Morning when they brought her into my room for her early feeding, I checked her over carefully.  Ten fingers, ten toes-the usual mother's routine.

And then it was that I noticed her large saucer-like eyes and the tiny, tiny slant in her left eye.

I propped her alongside me and she collapsed into a small, uncompromising heap, like one of those Japanese sleeping dolls.

Quite unbidden, there came to mind the face of a girl who had attended our church in Greensboro.  She had an unusual first name: Geide!

I stared anew at my baby.  Melissa looked exactly like Geide!  And I began to shiver from head to foot.  For Geide was a mongoloid. 

Chapter One

I lay there plucking dream-dust fuzz from my addled brain.  What on earth was that noise?  The rhythmic pounding of a faraway surf- a devil's tattoo on a bong drum- or someone knocking at our door?

"I'm coming!"  I bellowed in a none-too-gentle roar.

I pushed away the warm blanket.  My husband's size twelve slippers did not begin to fit, but they bore a faint resemblance to what one should wear for an early-morning pre breakfast visit.  I glared at my snoring mate in our king-sized bed and clutched his red paid bathrobe around me protectively as I unbolted the lock to our third-floor haven of rest.  

Nineteen-year-old Debbie stood in the long hall.  Any moment , now, she will burst into tears, I thought.  Her pin-striped uniform and starched cap seemed inappropriate backdrops for her panic-stricken eyes.

"It's Mary Lou again!"

"Where now?"

"Under her bed.  I can't get her to budge.  All the other girls are downstairs eating breakfast."

"I'll handle it."

The words came out with a reassuring calm.  No way did they indicate my inner state of being.  I belted up more securely and stumbled down the hall in her wake, transfixed by her nurse's cap sliding back and forth over her blonde hair.  She bounced wit a professional vigor that was faintly nauseating at that hour of the morning.   I peered at my wrist. without my glasses,  I could barely see the watch let alone the numbers. 

"6:45,  Mrs K."  Debbie volunteered.

I shivered.

Mary Lou was flat on her belly under her bed.  The pink flowered bedspread was a gypsy tent.  As soon as she spotted me, she turned her weak blue eyes toward the wall.

I squatted down on the floor and threw back a corner of the bedspread.  Mary Lou did not move.  Her strawberry thick-lesed glasses hesitated halfway down her nose, and her spindly arms and legs bore little resemblance to her bulky 165 -pound body.  She lay there taking root, thumb in her mouth, and fingers stroking her nose.  It was difficult to remember that she was sixteen years old.  Yet her application had stated it bluntly, adding rather succinct.  "This child is subnormal in intelligence."

"Good morning, Mary Lou."

She eyed me suspiciously.

"Hey, move over a bit."

She managed to squeeze out an inch or so of space for me.  I  maneuvered alongside her awkwardly.  

"Man, this is a cool hiding place!  Didn't mind my coming in, did you?"

"Nope!"

Her voice was pure. "Kadiddle-hoffer."

"What ever happened to upset your applecart, Mary Lou?"

" I'm mad!"

It was not a debatable point.  I asked the question which she was obviously waiting to hear next. 

"Why are you mad?"

"My honey-bunny--she went away."

" Well, I never heard a single word about that! She's the best helper we have around here-just about." I 

amended lest Mary Lou quote me later.

"Her didn't even say good-bye."

"You must be teasing me."

"Nope!"

As soon as the words were out for her mouth, her thumb was back in.

"Well, I don't exactly blame you for getting all upset. Hey, let's get out of here and sit up on your bed.  

We'll talk about it some more." 

In the confusion of squirming out from under the bed, I managed to lose one of the size-twelve slippers.  But, since forward progress was being made, I decided that this was not the time to retrieve an innocuous item like a slipper.

Five minutes later, Mary Lou had clarified her sad state of being. One of our child-care workers, a dark-haired Portuguese girl of twenty-three named Mary, had not been on duty in the girls' wing for the past four days.  I realized that Mary must have been assigned to the night shift.  But Mary Lou was convinced that "her" Mary had vanished.  Over and over again I tried to reassure her.

Because I was making little progress with my explanation, I jumped to my feet, grabbed both her hands, and laughingly dragged her up the stairs to the third-floor staff area just outside our apartment.

"Wait till you see!  You'll never ever believe it.  Hurry up, Mary Lou!"

We stopped before the closed bedroom door where her "honey-bunny" shared a room with another of our staff Very gently, I made a few mouse-scratchings on the door, waited a second or two, then turned the doorknob and let Mary Lou peek through the slit.  When she spotted that familiar dark head wedged into the hump of her pillow, a foolish grin crept over her face.  

Quietly I pulled the door shut and we went down the stairs together to breakfast.

At the door of the dining room, she left me happily and took her place around one of the small formica-topped tables. There were about twenty boys and girls seated around five tables.  You might have thought you had stumbled into a high-school cafeteria.  But, if you lingered a moment you would have witnessed the babble of fall-finished sentences, the unexplained laughter, the unblinking stares, the siren of an ascending trial-run scream, the avid attention accorded anything edible, and the unabashed thievery of loose morsels of food. 

Debbie looked up briefly, spotted Mary Lou seated complacently in her chair, and winked.  She continued to place heaping spoonfuls of scrambled eggs alongside buttered slice of toast.  A handsome young Spanish-American Gomez deftly served it with one hand while whisking oversized terry-cloth bibs from the fireplace mantle. 

Gomez tapped my shoulder and pointed wordlessly to a football helmet resting on the floor beside the chair of the thin-faced boy of ten with protruding cheekbones covered with set-inflicted deep purplish welts and bruises. 

I nodded slowly and walked over to pat Bobby on the shoulder.

"God boy, Bobby.  You don't need your helmet after all, do you/"

He threw me a calculated look.

"Daddy will come in the morning."  

"Well, " I hedged, "probably not until the weekend, Bob, but it won't be long."

"Morning bells are ringing." His voice had an insistent singsong quality.  His piercing eyes demanded answers. 

A few of the older girls had noticed my early-morning appearance and started to giggle behind their hands. I acknowledged them with a sweeping bow, holding my red plaid robe regally around me, and flounced out of sight with hasty good-byes all the way around.

My precipitous exit only brought me smack into the path of an advancing battalion of eight toddlers headed for their own special "mess" hall which in more formal moments we chose to call the toddler dining room.  Shepherded by a diminutive Miss Lottie, they step-by-stepped down the winding carpeted stairway, hands clinging to the leather- balustrade. 

And then I spotted Melissa.  She had planted herself dead center on the stairs a good five steps higher than where I was and prepared to fling herself in my general direction.  Mouth open, eyes sparkling, and nose running, she stood there with her bath-robed arms askew.  I had no sooner looked up than my arms were full of my five-year-old daughter  Melissa, my mischievous little mongoloid.  

I wiped her nose on a big white hankie stuffed in my husband's bathrobe pocket.  Then I smothered her with kisses while she patted me condescendingly on my shoulder.  And then she was off, blowing me kisses and heading for her first love-oatmeal!

I pulled out the big white hankie again and wiped my eyes.  How quickly the memory of her birth flooded over me.  But, to remember was to hurt. 

 And, dear God, I had hurt so much already..................