But that’s not the end of the story. In life there always seems to be another chapter. Sometimes in church we sing a song I’ve known since I was a kid. One of the verses starts like this: "How sweet to hold a newborn baby." I don’t like to admit it, but that song always brings pain. I honestly don’t know what was more difficult: not having our own babies or giving up Carrie’s--and I know you can’t compare suffering. For a long time, we wondered about a little girl we knew only when she was a day less than two days old.
And then the most unbelievable thing happened.
She got the call on a Tuesday, just before lunch, but she called me anyway, even though we'd both be home inside of fifteen minutes. She told me the agency had called to let us know that Carrie's baby's adoptive mother had just told them she'd like to meet Carrie and her family, that she was going to be in southern Wisconsin at some church meeting, and that she had the kids along.
Kids. There was more than one.
I sat there at the front desk of the store, customers buzzing around me, and I couldn't move. The afternoon Carrie's baby was taken out of that basinet, I told our pastor I wanted this adoption to be something special, and that should God give me the years--I didn't care if I was 100 years old--I was going to see that child, my granddaughter, again.
"This child wants to see us?" I asked Sandra.
"The mom wants to meet the child's family," Sandra told me over the phone. "And Carrie?"
"I told her she was getting married," Sandra said.
Carrie lives in Rochester, New York, where she has lived since college. She works in sales, where she met Doug, the man she's marrying, a nice guy who'll make a great husband.
"You going to call her?" I said.
"I've got to," Sandra said.
"She can't come--"
"Of course, she can't--and I'm not even sure she should." The silence over the phone hung in the air like a fog.
"What about us?" I said.
She nodded her head the way she does. "I don't know about you, but I wouldn't miss this for the world."
Annabeth has radiant blue eyes and a reddish tint in her hair that makes it look nearly bronze in low light. She’s a doll. The moment Sandra saw her, she fell in love. With her auburn hair and those dark eyes, I saw Carrie twenty-some years ago.
Then what happened with Garny all those years ago happened again. Annabeth’s adopted mom, a woman named Hannah, walked into the back of the store, then took my wife in her arms and hugged her, as if they were long lost friends. I don't know how to explain that other than an answer to a prayer we hadn’t even thought of asking.
Hannah is a gorgeous woman with the same Southern lilt in her words as my Sandra has. That darling child started in to looking at a book, one of several Sandra had taken along. Sandra looked at Hannah and pointed with her head, asking permission. When the girl’s mom nodded, Sandra stooped down and took that child's hand in hers.
"These are people who just love children," that young mother told her daughter. "They're like grandpas and grandmas who just love to love kids."
That little girl's eyes beamed at us for a just a moment before returning to the pages. Sandra sat with her legs beneath her on the floor and asked her if she could read the book to her.
"I'm seven," the little girl said, proudly.
"Well, maybe you can read to me," Sandra told her.
"There's this boy named Eddie and he has horse named Silver, and they live in a place where there are lots and lots of hills," she said, as if to get my wife into the middle of a movie that’s been running for some time. "And when Silver runs, his tail goes almost flat behind him," she held her hand out as a demonstration. "But there's bad men too," she said.
"They steal horses?" Sandra said.
"Did you read this one?" she said, innocently.
"I think so," my wife said, "but I won't tell you what happens."
I can't still speak of it well, what happened, I mean. I can't. But you can imagine what I felt when I saw my wife down there on the floor with the child she'd called, in her Southern way, her grandbaby. The little girl walked over the other side of the room to get more books. Sandra looked up at her mom and asked whether she could hug that child. So when the little girl came back in and climbed into my wife's lap, Sandra did just that.
I got a picture, but it’s not one I show people, not even our daughter, yet. But it's a picture that's worth more than I ever say.
*
Later, when the two of us were sitting together on the couch at our place, Sandra stumbled through tears whose source I can only dimly perceive even in myself—part of it was love, sure as anything; part of it was grief, pure and simple; and part of it was some kind of regretful happiness that at least for now, even without that darling grandchild in our arms and in our lives, all is well.
So the whole thing tonight was only hunger. When I swept my leg across the bed and didn't find her there, when I had this nightmarish sense she was somehow gone, stolen away or something, when I found her downstairs chewing a half a bagel, it was only the munchies.
And I've been writing this down, not knowing why. I don't have to tell her any of it either because she knows everything. We are one, the two of us.
So, who is all of this for? Not for neighbors, not for friends, not for the kids, and not for the Lord either, who knows all of this and more.
Time to go back to bed. She'll be half asleep, and the moment I crawl in beside her, she'll make an odd noise and then, as if by instinct, wrap herself around me, throw her arm across my chest as if even in sleep she knows that against me is the kind of place she can rest.
It's late, Lord, and I'm going to bed. Soon enough it'll be morning and I'll have to go back to the store.
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