THE OLD FISHERMAN
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns
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, 'I thought as
I stared at 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 helped
finish 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 we had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him a
few minutes. It didn't take 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 preface 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. And 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 illness' 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. "All this happened long ago -- and
now, in God's garden, how tall this lovely soul must stand. The LORD does
not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but
the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7b)
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