How does the earth bear such mothers! She sent her little son to an orphanage, not wanting to care for him, and the boy was but four.
I have one dear friendher name is Grace. She and I have shared thirty years of laughter and tears. Grace is a wonderful person and would have been the most nurturing mother, but she and her husband never managed to have children of their own. The Lord simply didnt see fit, yet their love never falteredthey stayed true to each other all these years.
As for me, Ive my own childrentwo daughters. Grace, naturally, became their godmother. Shes my closest friend, living just a few streets away in our tidy English townwhy ever not? I remember her laughter as she played with my girls, and how many times shed babysit if I asked. Afterwards, wed sit in my small kitchen, taking tea, tears welling as we wished things had been different for her.
Then, one peculiar day, like something out of a dream, her distant relatives rang her up. They told her of another remote relation, on her fathers side, who decided to send off her son to a childrens home. Doctors had found something wrongnothing certain, but there was little money in the family for doctors or cures. His motheralways chasing after men in pressed trouserswanted nothing of child-rearing.
Grace spoke to me about it later, her words floating, strange and somber. She felt oddly compelled to goshe must meet the child. So she travelled through mist and memory, arriving at the orphanage. As her friend would later tell me, the very moment Grace looked into that boys tired, lonely eyes, she knew, without a doubt, she must take him home. Her husband agreed, as quietly as a shadow passes over the lane.
It wasnt easy with the boy. Over a year of doctors and strange specialists, of uncertain nights and afternoons bright as buttercups, striving for some hope. The boy, it turned out, was autisticyet somehow, surprisingly, Grace and her husband drew him out into the world.
You might not believe me, but now THOMAS is twenty-four, as bright and eager as any young Englishman, his studies complete and shelves lined with sporting trophies.
Yesterday, washed in the golden evening light that seemed never to end, I returned from his wedding.
