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THE OLD FISHERMAN
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic Entrance Hopkins
Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to
out patients at the clinic. One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there
was a knock at the door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man.
"Why, he's hardly taller than my eight-year-old,
the stooped, shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face--lopsided
from swelling, red and raw. Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good
evening. I've come to see if you've a room for just one night. I came for a
treatment this morning from the eastern shore, and there's no bus 'til
morning." He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no
success, no one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face...I know it
looks terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments..
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could sleep in
this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the morning." I told
him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch.
I went inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the
old man if he would join us "No thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a
brown paper bag. When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to
talk with him a few minutes. It didn't take a long time to see that this old
man had an oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished
for a living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband,
who was hopelessly crippled from a back injury.
He didn't tell it by way of complaint; in fact, every other sentence was
prefaced with a thanks to God for a blessing. He was grateful that no pain
accompanied his disease, which was apparently a form of skin cancer. He
thanked God for giving him the strength to keep going.
At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's room for him. When I got
up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly folded and the little man was
out on the porch. He refused breakfast, but just before he left for his bus,
haltingly, as if asking a great favor, he said, "Could I please come back
and stay the next time I have a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can
sleep fine in a chair." He paused a moment and then added, "Your children
made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't
seem to mind." I told him he was welcome to come again.
On his next trip he arrived a little after seven in the morning. As a gift,
he brought a big fish and a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He
said he had shucked them that morning before he left so that they'd be nice
and fresh. I knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had
to get up in order to do this for us. In the years he came to stay overnight
with us there was never a time that he did not bring us fish or oysters or
vegetables from his garden. Other times we received packages in the mail,
always by special delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young
spinach or kale, every leaf carefully washed.
Knowing that he must walk three miles to mail these, and knowing how little
money he had made the gifts doubly precious. When I received these little
remembrances, I often thought of a comment our next-door neighbor made after
he left that first morning. "Did you keep that awful looking man last night?
I turned him away! You can lose roomers by putting up such people!" Maybe we
did lose roomers once or twice. But oh! If only they could have known him,
perhaps their illnesses would have been easier to bear. I know our family
always will be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was
to accept the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse. As she showed me her
flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum,
bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was growing in an old
dented, rusty bucket. I thought to myself, "If this were my plant, I'd put
it in the loveliest container I had!" My friend changed my mind. "I ran
short of pots," she explained, "and knowing how beautiful this one would be,
I thought it wouldn't mind starting out in this old pail. It's just for a
little while, till I can put it out in the garden."
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining
just such a scene in heaven. "Here's an especially beautiful one," God might
have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He won't
mind starting in this small body."
~~~~~~~~~~~~
"The LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance,
but the LORD looketh on the heart." (1Samuel 16:7b)
-- Author Unknown
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