"Okay. Hello. Who is this?"
At last I had gotten through. Now he was curious. I told him who I was and asked who he was.
"My name's Adolf Meth. I'm 88 years old, and I haven't had this many wrong numbers in one day in 20 years!" We both laughed.
We talked for 10 minutes. Adolf had no family, no friends. Everyone he had been close to had died. Then we discovered we had something in common: he'd worked for the New York City Police Department for nearly 40 years. Telling me about his days there as an elevator operator, he seemed interesting, even friendly. I asked if I could call him again.
"Why would you wanta do that?" he asked, surprised.
"Well maybe we could be phone friends. You know, like pen pals."
He hesitated. "I wouldn't mind . . . having a friend again." His voice sounded a little tentative.
I called Adolf the following afternoon and several days after that. Easy to talk with, he related his memories of World Wars I and II, the Hindenburg disaster and other historic events. He was fascinating. I gave him my home and office numbers so he could call me. He didalmost every day.
I was not just being kind to a lonely old man. Talking with Adolf was important to me, because I, too, had a big gap in my life. Raised in orphanages and foster homes, I
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never had a father. Gradually, Adolf took on a kind of fatherly importance to me. I talked about my job and college courses, which I attended at night.
Adolf warmed to the role of counselor. While discussing a disagreement I'd had with a supervisor, I told my new friend, "I think I ought to have it out with him."
"What's the rush?" Adolf cautioned. "Let things cool down. When you get as old as I am, you find out that time takes care of a lot. If things get worse, then you can talk to him."
There was a long silence. "You know," he said softly, "I'm talking to you just the way I'd talk to a boy of my own. I always wanted a familyand children. You're too young to know how that feels."
No, I wasn't. I'd always wanted a familyand a father. But I didn't say anything, afraid I wouldn't be able to hold back the hurt I'd felt for so long.
One evening Adolf mentioned his 89th birthday was coming up. After buying a piece of fiberboard, I designed a 2' x 5' greeting card with a cake and 89 candles on it. I asked all the cops in my office and even the police commissioner to sign it. I gathered nearly a hundred signatures. Adolf would get a kick out of this, I knew.
We'd been talking on the phone for four months now, and I thought this would be a good time to meet face to face. So I decided to deliver the card by hand.
I didn't tell Adolf I was coming; I just drove to his address one morning and parked the car up the street from his apartment house.
A postman was sorting mail in the hallway when I entered the building. He nodded as I checked the mailboxes for Adolf's name. There it was. Apartment 1H, some 20 feet from where I stood.
My heart pounded with excitement. Would we have the same chemistry in person that we had on the phone? I felt the first stab of doubt. Maybe he would reject me the
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way my father rejected me when he went out of my life. I tapped on Adolf's door. When there was no answer, I knocked harder.
The postman looked up from his sorting. "No one's there," he said.
"Yeah," I said, feeling a little foolish. "If he answers his door the way he answers his phone, this may take all day."
"You a relative or something?"
"No. Just a friend."
"I'm really sorry," he said quietly, "but Mr. Meth died day before yesterday."
Died? Adolf? For a moment, I couldn't answer. I stood there in shock and disbelief. Then, pulling myself together, I thanked the postman and stepped into the late-morning sun. I walked toward the car, misty-eyed.
Then, rounding a corner, I saw a church, and a line from the Old Testament leaped to mind: A friend loveth at all times. And especially in death, I realized. This brought a moment of recognition. Often it takes some sudden and sad turn of events to awaken us to the beauty of a special presence in our lives. Now, for the first time, I sensed how very close Adolf and I had become. It had been easy, and I knew this would make it even easier the next time, with my next close friend.
Slowly, I felt a warmth surging through me. I heard Adolf's growly voice shouting, "Wrong number!" Then I heard him asking why I wanted to call again.
"Because you mattered, Adolf," I said aloud to no one. "Because I was your friend."
I placed the unopened birthday card on the back seat of my car and got behind the wheel. Before starting the engine, I looked over my shoulder. "Adolf," I whispered, "I didn't get the wrong number at all. I got you."
Jennings Michael Burch
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Simple Wooden Boxes
It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.
Henry Ward Beecher
I suppose everyone has one particular childhood Christmas that stands out more than any other. For me, it was the year that the Burlington factory in Scottsboro closed down. I was only a small child. I could not name for you the precise year; it is an insignificant blur in my mind, but the events of that Christmas will live forever in my heart.
My father, who had been employed at Burlington, never let on to us that we were having financial difficulties. After all, children live in a naive world in which money and jobs are nothing more than jabberwocky, and for us the excitement of Christmas could never be squelched. We knew only that our daddy, who usually worked long, difficult hours, was now home more than we had ever remembered; each day seemed to be a holiday.
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Mama, a homemaker, now sought work in the local textile mills, but jobs were scarce. Time after time, she was told no openings were available before Christmas, and it was on the way home from one such distressing interview that she wrecked our only car. Daddy's meager unemployment check would now be our family's only source of income. For my parents, the Christmas season brought mounds of worries, crowds of sighs and tears and cascades of prayers.
I can only imagine what transpired between my parents in those moments when the answer came. Perhaps it took a while for the ideas to fully form. Perhaps it was a merging of ideas from both of my parents. I don't know for sure how the idea took life, but somehow it did. They would scrape together enough money to buy each of us a Barbie doll. For the rest of our presents, they would rely on their talents, using scraps of materials they already had.
While dark, calloused hands sawed, hammered and painted, nimble fingers fed dress after dress after dress into the sewing machine. Barbie-sized bridal gowns, evening gowns . . . miniature clothes for every imaginable occasion pushed forward from the rattling old machine. Where we were while all of this was taking place, I have no idea. But somehow my parents found time to pour themselves into our gifts, and the excitement of Christmas was once again born for the entire family.
That Christmas Eve, the sun was just setting over the distant horizon when I heard the roar of an unexpected motor in the driveway. Looking outside, I could hardly believe my eyes. Uncle Buck and Aunt Charlene, Mama's sister and her husband, had driven all the way from Georgia to surprise us. Packed tightly in their car, as though no air were needed, sat my three cousins, my "Aunt" Dean, who refused to be called "Aunt," and both
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my grandparents. I also couldn't help but notice innumerable gifts for all of us, all neatly packaged and tied with beautiful bows. They had known that it would be a difficult Christmas and they had come to help.
The next morning we awoke to more gifts than I ever could have imagined. And, though I don't have one specific memory of what any of the toys were, I know that there were mountains of toys. Toys! Toys! Toys!
And it was there, amidst all that jubilation, that Daddy decided not to give us his gifts. With all of the toys we had gotten, there was no reason to give us the dollhouses that he had made. They w
ere rustic and simple red boxes, after all. Certainly not as good as the store-bought gifts that Mama's family had brought. The music of laughter filled the morning, and we never suspected that, hidden somewhere, we each had another gift.
When Mama asked Daddy about the gifts, he confided his feelings, but she insisted he give us our gifts. And so, late that afternoon, after all of the guests had gone, Daddy reluctantly brought his gifts of love to the living room.
Wooden boxes. Wooden boxes, painted red, with hinged lids, so that each could be opened and used as a house. On either side was a compartment just big enough to store a Barbie doll, and all the way across, a rack on which to hang our Barbie clothes. On the outside was a handle, so that when it was closed, held by a magnet that looked remarkably like an equal sign, the house could be carried suitcase style. And, though I don't really remember any of the other gifts I got that day, those boxes are indelibly etched into my mind. I remember the texture of the wood, the exact shade of red paint, the way the pull of the magnet felt when I closed the lid, the time-darkened handles and hinges . . . I remember how the clothes hung delicately on the hangers inside, and how I had to be careful not to pull Barbie's hair when I closed
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the lid. I remember everything that is possibly rememberable, because we kept and cherished those boxes long after our Barbie doll days were over.
I have lived and loved 29 Christmases, each new and fresh with an air of excitement all its own. Each filled with love and hope. Each bringing gifts, cherished and longed for. But few of those gifts compare with those simple, wooden boxes. So it is no wonder that I get teary-eyed when I think of my father, standing there on that cold Christmas morning, wondering if his gift was good enough.
Love, Daddy, is always good enough.
Martha Pendergrass Templeton
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A Family for Freddie
I remember the first time I saw Freddie. He was standing in his playpen at the adoption agency where I work. He gave me a toothy grin. What a beautiful baby, I thought.
His boarding mother gathered him into her arms. ''Will you be able to find a family for Freddie?"
Then I saw it. Freddie had been born without arms.
"He's so smart. He's only 10 months old, and already he walks and talks." She kissed him. "Say 'book' for Mrs. Blair."
Freddie grinned at me and hid his head on his boarding mother's shoulder. "Now, Freddie, don't act that way," she said. "He's really very friendly," she added. "Such a good, good boy."
Freddie reminded me of my own son when he was that age, the same thick dark curls, the same brown eyes.
"You won't forget him, Mrs. Blair? You will try?"
"I won't forget."
I went upstairs and got out my latest copy of the Hard-to-Place list.
Freddie is a 10-month-old white Protestant boy of English and French background. He has brown eyes,
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dark-brown hair and fair skin. Freddie was born without arms, but is otherwise in good health. His boarding mother feels he is of superior mentality, and he is already walking and saying a few words. Freddie is a warm, affectionate child who has been surrendered by his natural mother and is ready for adoption.
He's ready, I thought. But who is ready for him?
It was 10 o'clock on a lovely late-summer morning, and the agency was full of couplescouples having interviews, couples meeting babies, families being born. These couples nearly always have the same dream: They want a child as much like themselves as possible, as young as possible, and most importanta child with no problems.
"If he develops a problem after we get him," they say, "that is a risk we'll take just like any other parents. But to pick a baby who already has a problem, that's too much."
And who can blame them?
I wasn't alone in looking for parents for Freddie. Any of the caseworkers meeting a new couple started with a hope: maybe they were for Freddie. But summer slipped into fall, and Freddie was with us for his first birthday.
"Freddie is so-o-o big," said Freddie, laughing. "So-o-o big."
And then I found them.
It started out as it always doesan impersonal record in my box, a new case, a new Home Study, two people who wanted a child. They were Frances and Edwin Pearson. She was 41. He was 45. She was a housewife. He was a truck driver.
I went to see them. They lived in a tiny white frame house, in a big yard full of sun and old trees. They greeted me together at the door, eager and scared to death.
Mrs. Pearson produced steaming coffee and oven-warm cookies. They sat before me on the sofa, close together,
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holding hands. After a moment, Mrs. Pearson began. "Today is our wedding anniversary. Eighteen years."
"Good years." Mr. Pearson looked at his wife. "Except"
"Yes," she said. "Except. Always the 'except.'" She looked around the room. "It's too neat,'' she said. "You know?"
I thought of my own living room with my three children.
Teenagers now. "Yes," I said. "I know."
"Perhaps we're too old?"
I smiled. "You don't think so," I said. "We don't either."
"You always think it will be this month, and then next month," Mr. Pearson said. "Examinations. Tests. All kinds of things. Over and over. But nothing ever happened. You just go on hoping and hoping, and time keeps slipping by."
"We've tried to adopt before this," Mr. Pearson said. "One agency told us our apartment was too small, so we got this house. Then another agency said I didn't make enough money. We had decided that was it, but this friend told us about you, and we decided to make one last try."
"I'm glad," I said.
Mrs. Pearson glanced at her husband proudly. "Can we choose at all?" she asked. "A boy for my husband?"
"We'll try for a boy," I said. "What kind of boy?"
Mrs. Pearson laughed. "How many kinds are there? Just a boy. My husband is very athletic. He played football in high school; basketball, too, and track. He would be good for a boy."
Mr. Pearson looked at me. "I know you can't tell exactly," he said, "but can you give us any idea how soon? We've waited so long."
I hesitated. There is always this question.
"Next summer maybe," said Mrs. Pearson. "We could take him to the beach."
"That long?" Mr. Pearson said. "Don't you have anyone at all. There must be a little boy somewhere." After a
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pause he went on, "Of course, we can't give him as much as other people. We haven't a lot of money saved up."
"We've got a lot of love," his wife said. "We've saved up a lot of that."
"Well," I said cautiously, "there is a little boy. He is 13 months old."
"Oh," Mrs. Pearson said, "just a beautiful age."
"I have a picture of him," I said, :reaching for my purse. I handed them Freddie's picture. "He is a wonderful little boy," I said. "But he was born without arms."
They studied the picture in silence. He looked at her.
"What do you think, Fran?"
"Kickball," Mrs. Pearson said. "You could teach him kickball."