Treasury of Joy & Inspiration (14 page)

A Family for Freddie

by Abbie Blair

December 1964

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?” she asked.

Then I saw it. Freddie had been born without arms.

“He's so smart. He's only ten 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 ten-month-old white Protestant boy of English and French background. He has brown eyes, dark-brown hair and fair skin. Freddie was born without arms, but is otherwise in good health. His boarding mother feels he is showing signs 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 ten o'clock of a lovely late-summer morning, and the agency was full of couples—couples 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 important—a child with no medical problem.

“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 party.

“Freddie is so-o-o big,” said his boarding mother, stretching out her arms.

“So-o-o big,” said Freddie, laughing. “So-o-o big.”

And then I found them.

It started out as it always does—an 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, 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 immaculate 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. “Even when you begin to guess the truth, you don't want to accept it.”

“We've tried everything,” Mrs. 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 one 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.

“Of course,” he went on after a pause, “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.”

“Athletics are not so important,” Mr. Pearson said. “He can learn to use his head. Arms he can do without. A head, never. He can go to college. We'll save for it.”

“A boy is a boy,” Mrs. Pearson insisted. “He needs to play. You can teach him.”

“I'll teach him. Arms aren't everything. Maybe we can get him some.”

They had forgotten me. But maybe Mr. Pearson was right, I thought. Maybe sometime Freddie could be fitted with artificial arms. He did have nubs where arms should be.

“Then you might like to see him?”

They looked up. “When could we have him?”

“You think you might want him?”

Mrs. Pearson looked at me.
“Might?” sh
e said.
“Might?”

“We want him,” her husband said.

Mrs. Pearson went back to the picture. “You've been waiting for us,” she said. “Haven't you?”

“His name is Freddie,” I said, “but you can
change it.”

“No,” said Mr. Pearson. “Frederick Pearson—it's good together.”

And that was it.

There were formalities, of course; and by the time we set the day Christmas lights were strung across city streets and wreaths were hung everywhere.

I met the Pearsons in the waiting room. There was a little snow on them both.

“Your son's here already,” I told them. “Let's go upstairs, and I'll bring him to you.”

“I've got butterflies,” Mrs. Pearson announced. “Suppose he doesn't like us?”

I put my hand on her arm. “I'll get him,” I said.

Freddie's boarding mother had dressed him in a new white suit, with a sprig of green holly and red berries embroidered on the collar. His hair shone, a mop of dark curls.

“Going home,” Freddie said to me, smiling, as his boarding mother put him in my arms.

“I told him that,” she said. “I told him he was going to his new home.”

She kissed him, and her eyes were wet.

“Good-bye, dear. Be a good boy.”

“Good boy,” said Freddie cheerfully. “Going home.”

I carried him upstairs to the little room where the Pearsons were waiting. When I got there, I put him on his feet and opened the door.

“Merry Christmas,” I said.

Freddie stood uncertainly, rocking a little, gazing intently at the two people before him.

They drank him in.

Mr. Pearson knelt on one knee. “Freddie,” he said, “come here. Come to Daddy.”

Freddie looked back at me for a moment. Then, turning, he walked slowly toward them; and they reached out their arms and gathered him in.

A String of Blue Beads

by Fulton Oursler

December 1951

P
ete Richards
was the loneliest man in town on the day Jean Grace opened his door. You may have seen something in the newspapers about the incident at the time it happened, although neither his name nor hers was published, nor was the full story told as I tell it here.

Pete's shop had come down to him from his grandfather. The little front window was strewn with a disarray of old-fashioned things: bracelets and lockets worn in days before the Civil War, gold rings and silver boxes, images of jade and ivory, porcelain figurines.

On this winter's afternoon a child was standing there, her forehead against the glass, earnest and enormous eyes studying each discarded treasure, as if she were looking for something quite special. Finally she strengthened up with a satisfied air and entered the store.

The shadowy interior of Pete Richards's establishment was even more cluttered than his show window. Shelves were stacked with jewel caskets, dueling pistols, clocks and lamps, and the floor was heaped with andirons and mandolins and things hard to find a name for.

Behind the counter stood Pete himself, a man not more than 30 but with hair already turning gray. There was a bleak air about him as he looked at the small customer who flattened her ungloved hands on the counter.

“Mister,” she began, “would you please let me look at that string of blue beads in the window?”

Pete parted the draperies and lifted out a necklace. The turquoise stones gleamed brightly against the pallor of his palm as he spread the ornament before her.

“They're just perfect,” said the child, entirely to herself. “Will you wrap them up pretty for me, please?”

Pete studied her with a stony air. “Are you buying these for someone?”

“They're for my big sister. She takes care of me. You see, this will be the first Christmas since Mother died. I've been looking for the most wonderful Christmas present for my sister.”

“How much money do you have?” asked Pete warily.

She had been busy untying the knots in a handkerchief and now she poured out a handful of pennies on the counter.

“I emptied my bank,” she explained simply.

Pete Richards looked at her thoughtfully. Then he carefully drew back the necklace. The price tag was visible to him but not to her. How could he tell her? The trusting look of her blue eyes smote him like the pain of an old wound.

“Just a minute,” he said, and turned toward the back of the store. Over his shoulder he called, “What's your name?” He was very busy about something.

“Jean Grace.”

When Pete returned to where Jean Grace waited, a package lay in his hand, wrapped in scarlet paper and tied with a bow of green ribbon. “There you are,” he said shortly. “Don't lose it on the way home.”

She smiled happily at him over her shoulder as she ran out the door. Through the window he watched her go, while desolation flooded his thoughts. Something about Jean Grace and her string of beads had stirred him to the depths of a grief that would not stay buried. The child's hair was wheat yellow, her eyes were sea blue, and once upon a time, not long before, Pete had been in love with a girl with hair of that same yellow and with eyes just as blue. And the turquoise necklace was to have been hers.

But there had come a rainy night—a truck skidding on a slippery road—and the life was crushed out of his dream.

Since then Pete Richards had lived too much with his grief in solitude. He was politely attentive to customers, but after business hours his world seemed irrevocably empty. He was trying to forget in a self-pitying haze that deepened day by day.

The blue eyes of Jean Grace jolted him into acute remembrance of what he had lost. The pain of it made him recoil from the exuberance of holiday shoppers. During the next ten days trade was brisk; chattering women swarmed in, fingering trinkets, trying to bargain. When the last customer had gone, late on Christmas Eve, he sighed with relief. It was over for another year. But for Pete Richards the night was not quite over.

The door opened and a young woman hurried in. With an inexplicable start, he realized that she looked familiar, yet he could not remember when or where he had seen her before. Her hair was golden yellow and her large eyes were blue. Without speaking she drew from her purse a package loosely unwrapped in its red paper, a bow of green ribbon with it. Presently the string of blue beads lay gleaming again before him.

“Did this come from your shop?” she asked.

Pete raised his eyes to hers and answered softly, “Yes, it did.”

“Are the stones real?”

“Yes. Not the finest quality—but real.”

“Can you remember who it was you sold them to?”

“She was a small girl. Her name was Jean. She bought them for her older sister's Christmas present.”

“How much are they worth?”

“The price,” he told her solemnly, “is always a confidential matter between the seller and the customer.”

“But Jean has never had more than a few pennies of spending money. How could she pay for them?”

Pete was folding the gay paper back into its creases, rewrapping the little package just as neatly as before.

“She paid the biggest price anyone can ever pay,” he said. “She gave all she had.”

There was a silence then that filled the little curio shop. In some faraway steeple a bell began to ring. The sound of the distant chiming, the little package lying on the counter, the question in the eyes of the girl and the strange feeling of renewal struggling unreasonably in the heart of the man, all had come to be because of the love of a child.

“But why did you do it?”

He held out the gift in his hand.

“It's already Christmas morning,” he said. “And it's my misfortune that I have no one to give anything to. Will you let me see you home and wish you a Merry Christmas at your door?”

And so, to the sound of many bells and in the midst of happy people, Pete Richards and a girl whose name he had yet to learn walked out into the beginning of the great day that brings hope into the world for us all.