Chapter 7.... It was as though I was ripping out my own heart as I turned and walked away...........

The dreaded morning dawned;  the sun rose, a tired breeze blew now and then, and the mockingbird, intoned his doleful message over and over.  It was that morning that our twenty-three-day -old Melissa was to leave the sterile world of the hospital and enter her own special sphere of the retarded----500 miles distant.  It was that dreadful, dreadful morning when our dear, sad family gathered in the driveway around our car to see face to face our small handicapped baby, to bid her good-bye, even before their hello’s were uttered.  

They came wearing robes over their pajamas, in bare feet and with sleep-creased faces, and they huddled in silent homage around the white wicker basket wedged on the back seat of the car.  They viewed her through the magnifying lens of their emotions as they gently pulled back her soft pink blanket and reached out to touch her small bare feet.  Steve maneuvered his big thumb inside the clasp of her pink fist and stood mutely, his dark-brown eyes flooded with tears. How could it be that this small one, our baby so innocent, so seemingly perfect, was retarded?

Watching the tears streaming unchecked down my own mother’s face, I knew that she could not understand the wisdom of the impending separation.  I could almost feel her grandmother’s heart reaching out to enfold this child with the broken wing.  And my dear father, almost seventy- five stood somewhat apart, bewildered and reluctant to face the full impact of our decision.

“It is time now.”  It was Paul, ringing down the final curtain on this desolate scene.  

Our farewells were automatic;  we departed without further fanfare. There is so much a body can stand.

It was a ten-hour trip by automobile, but Melissa never once cried.  I cuddled her almost fiercely.  Tears splashed down on her upturned face, and she blinked in wonder.  I examined her face over and over, but each feature seemed perfect.  Inside I felt tied in knots of agony.  I did not know that I had the capacity to weep for such a long period.  By the end of our journey I was physically and emotionally exhausted.

We we reached the small town and spotted the home set back from the road in a cluster of trees, I panicked.

“Please drive by,” I begged Paul.  “I can’t do it.”

He pulled off the road and together we held our baby and cried.  How long we sat there, I do not know.  There were no audible words of prayer.  But we knew that God was with us.

Melissa grew restless and Paul turned on the ignition.  We drove back again to the square white house, very slowly.

There were three short steps in the front.  We walked up numbly, like robots.  Before our hands touched the doorknob, the supervisor met us with a smile and a cheery greeting.

“Well,  if it isn’t our new baby all the way from Pennsylvania.  May I hold her?

“My, if she isn’t the cutest little pumpkin.  Mary, come here and see this adorable---” And so it went.  It was like showing off any baby to adoring relatives.

Before we knew it we were in a nursery with three picture windows and twenty-two- stainless steel cribs.  The babies ranged in age from one month to three years.----babies suffering birth defects,  brain damage, and many crippled by cerebral palsy.

“Strange company to leave you with, my small one, but you belong here,”  I whispered over and over.  “This is your world.”

A yellow patchwork quilt was turned back on Melissa’s bed.  We gratefully watched her stretch.  Then we inspected the rest of the home.  In one room we saw fourteen mongoloid children about ten to twelve years old seated around a low table.  They were feeding themselves, sloppily but happily.  Each had a big bib running from under his chin much like any family dinner table, everybody jabbering at once.  Later we saw the same children in bathrobes and pajamas sitting on the floor in front of a television set.  

Everywhere we saw signs of love and care.  And our hearts were content.  Here was a place where we could be sure that Melissa would be safe and happy.

It was not easy to leave her there the next day.  When I bent over her crib to kiss her soft cheek, she was sleeping soundly.  I looked at her for a long hard moment.  It was as though I was ripping out my own heart as I turned and walked away.  Our return trip was bleak.  Neither of us felt like speaking.

When we thumped our suitcases on the kitchen floor, the first thing my eyes lit upon was our calendar.  In bold black letter it spelled out the month, September, and the day, Tuesday, and the numeral, 3.  And I drew in by breath sharply.  It was as though time had stopped on the day of Melissa’s birth.

Under the date there was a Bible verse: “ I shall yet praise Him.”  I ripped it off and stuffed it into my purse.  Thank God for a mentally handicapped child?  No, there will be no thank you for Melissa from me.  

Chapter 6.... Behind an over sized metal door were rows upon rows of chipped, painted cribs.......

Chapter 6

Our oldest boy, David, a rising junior in a New York college, was visiting at the home of his fiancee, Kathy, in a small town near Montreal when Paul’s telephone call arrive telling him of Melissa’s condition.  

David was conscious of the strained silence at the dining room table as he answered in stunned monosyllables.  And when he had hung up the receiver and returned to his place, David faced the questioning eyes of Kathy, her older sister, two brothers, and her parents.

“Melissa is a mongoloid.”

David blurted it out, then retreated into a tower of silence.  He wanted to avoid a family discussion because he was not sure exactly what a mongoloid was.  

“Does this mean that Kathy and I might have a mongoloid baby, too?”

Gently and kindly, Kathy’s doctor-father explained the happenstance of this chromosomal abnormality.

“Melissa,” he said quietly, “has received the damning gift of one extra chromosome at the time of conception.   Her blood cells will continue to divide and reproduce in the same imperfect manner, thus establishing as an irrevocable trust her sad inheritance.  Your mother, David, because of her age ran an extra risk of having a child with Down’s Syndrome ( which is the more knowledgeable way to refer to mongolism).  Her chances were one in seven, at least those are the figures now quoted.”

David’s fears were somewhat quieted, but later that evening he broke down and sobbed in Kathy’s arms.

Each of the children in his or her own way bore the double-barreled blast of grief---remembering baby Martha and questioning the “why” of baby Melissa.  We were pathetically grateful that they did not challenge ( at least not openly) the wisdom of our decision to place Melissa in a private home.

Paul took three days off from work the following week and he and I started out early each morning on our mission.  Our goal was to visit as many of the mental health facilities in our geographical area as we could locate. 

I will not soon forget the day that we visited our first state mental institution.  Here, we were told, almost 3,000 retarded of all ages lived, with a waiting list of nearly 7,000 more.  A staggering thought.  Acres of green lawns and wooded areas surrounded the complex of rectangular brick buildings.  A network of macadam roads spun in and out and around the tired-looking structures.

We kept looking for small children, and when I spotted a group of what appeared to be about fifty or more boys in an open field, I asked Paul to pull over to the edge of the road.  We got out of the car and walked closer,

“Looks like they’re going to play baseball or something,” I said.

They were milling about uncertainly, dressed in an odd assortment of cast-off clothing.  Some older men wore women’s dresses that flapped around their ankles.  Even the youngest----who might have been twelve or thirteen-----had old and creased faces.  Over in one corner a gray-haired woman in a white uniform threw back her head to blow puffs of smoke into the air.  She did not seem to see us or anyone else.

I watched with a kind of fascination.  Then Paul put his arm on my shoulder and gently turned me away . We walked to the car in complete silence.

We were not allowed to tour the buildings without a guide.  A young girl was assigned to this responsibility, and we followed in her wake like two mechanized dolls.

“Would you like to see the crib area?”

“Oh, yes,” I said eagerly.

The sand and dirt gritted under our heels on the concrete steps and halls, making a hissing, scraping sound.  Behind an over sized metal door were rows upon rows of chipped, painted cribs.  I expected to find babies or small toddlers, but in each crib was a body with arms and legs and a face with eyes---shipwrecks of humanity huddled in smelly, sodden diapers and tattered gray undershirts.  And some were even as they came into the world -----naked as your nose.

It was like entering another world ----a world where bodies grew and minds stood still---a world where troubled minds could not control twisting bodies,  where eyes would not focus, heads grew too large or forever remained too small, those who banged their heads against their cribs, or beat their bodies with tightly clenched fists.  And my heart screamed out; Were these the creation of a loving God? I fled to the next room where they were spooning out the food for supper.

There is a verse somewhere in Exodus, “Who maketh the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind?  Have not I the LORD?

Then our guide unlocked the doors to the dayroom------large, cement-floored room with benches around the sides and long tables here and there for no apparent reason.  This was their playroom, yet I could see no toys or playthings.

“What do they do all day?” I asked.

But nobody heard the question.  The minute we entered the room we were swallowed up by the clamoring children. I could not understand their garbled speech as they reached out to grab  or touch my dress.  I wanted to pull away and unclasp their fingers, but somehow I did not dare; it would be like rejecting my own Melissa.

“Which are the mongoloids?”  I asked.

She pointed them out, calling them “ the best of the lot” and “ if you had to have a retarded child, thank God it’s a mongoloid.”  but her words were small comfort.

After that break through into the “world of perpetual children” we started down the list of private homes.  I did not know what to expect, but we discovered waiting lists here, as well as crowded conditions, high monthly cost, and a seeming lack of honest-to-goodness love and concern. It was a macabre world of dreary routine, bed-making, diaper-changing and meal- feeding, and it left us chilled to the bone.

Then, unexpectedly, we heard of a children’t home located in the Midwest.  Friends of ours in the area spoke of it with highest praise.  On the basis of this, we made application for Melissa’s admission.  Regulations, however dictated that she be admitted directly to this home upon hospital discharge, without a home visit.  

......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.”

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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.