Stories

 

 

Given in Love

This week Dick and I sorted treasures hidden in many boxes that we have saved for years and years. As we discovered these long-forgotten items, memories flooded in from as far back as our childhoods.

One of these memories for me was when I was in seminary and worked at “Mount St. Joseph’s Home for Dependent and Neglected Girls” (a former orphanage), run by the nuns of The Daughters of Charity in San Francisco.

When I arrived each  morning, I never quite knew what to expect on the other side of the heavy front door of “The Mount.” During the two years I worked there in the late 1960s, I had experienced girls of all ages, been with them in all kinds of situations, and seen the whole range of human response magnified by their youth, their pain, and their needs.

On trips to the beach, I spent my time counting to be sure they were all still there, and more than once a few of the older ones had slipped through the tunnel under The Great Highway and found the sailors at Playland at the Beach.

One afternoon my job was to keep two sisters far away from The Mount, because there was strong indication that their violent father was coming to kidnap them. He came, and we were indeed far away eating ice cream.

I experienced children with their tantrums and tears, panic and hatred, resistance and testing, and their insatiable hunger for love. I experienced from Sister Mary Faith, the nun in charge, who at the age of 27 was significantly older than I, how to be firm, to set limits, to protect my own emotions from the onslaught, and still to love these troubled kids … not always easy. I left exhausted at the end of each day with them. And always came back the next time ready for anything.

As Dick and I prepared to be married, we invited to our wedding all the children from the unit I was currently working with: fifth and sixth graders. They took me totally off guard with a shower the Saturday before our wedding. One had baked a chocolate cake and hadn’t even burned the frosting. Some gave me gifts that we used for years: our measuring spoons and cups and the green plastic colander. Some had spent hours making their gifts: seven dishtowels embroidered with orange and olive-green owls; an apron made by Rosario, and a doily which Lisa had crocheted.

There was one gift that stood by itself. I didn’t know what to say, and even today all these years later, I still find myself at a loss. Inside a small, slim, square gold box were six silver-plated demitasse spoons. This was Maria’s gift. She hadn’t been at “The Mount” long, and I didn’t know her well, but I often found her pasted to my side. Her mother had died when she was three years old; her father could no longer care for her, and so this institution of women and girls was her family for an indefinite time to come.  Her mother had given the tiny spoons to her; she gave them to me.

What does one say? What does one do, when one receives such a gift? I thought of giving it back but wrestled with what that might mean to her. Surely the spoons meant more to her than to me. Or did they? Would it be more important to her to have her gift accepted rather than refused? I struggled. I have those spoons tucked in my silver chest still today, never used for coffee, but among the greatest of my treasures because they were given to me in love. I also have had Maria tucked away in my heart for these past sixty years.

(with gratitude to Kostiantyn-li on Unsplash for the photo of a brown paper package wrapped up with string)