“How domineering!” I thought to myself. I was at my local home improvement store waiting for some help with a storm door. But the one and only sales rep in Windows and Doors was busy with the bossy man and his wife, another guy sat waiting near the register, head bent over his phone, and I was third up.
So I stood there, listening to the man and woman debate over the type of door they were ordering. He was overruling her. After awhile, they finished their debate and the wife and the sales rep were at the computer, while the man stood off to the side with their cart. I didn’t hear who won the debate. I hoped it was the woman.
After a minute or two the man turned to me and said, “I’m sorry, but we have a big order and it’ll probably take awhile. We’re re-doing our house. (Whatever, I thought.) “No apology needed,” I told him. “You were here first; I’ll just have to be patient.”
That’s something she has in spades,” he said, pointing to a little head in the cart. I peered in and saw a toddler with blonde pigtails sucking on a bottle with one hand and turning the pages of a miniature book in the other.
“That’s Anna Rose. She’s the sweetest thing ever to come into my life.” I looked at the child a little closer. Anna Rose had the round face and slanted eyes of a Downs baby. What do you say to a stranger about something so, well, personal. My brain flew through responses and came up with, “What a pretty name.”
He did the work for me. A completely rebuilt heart at just six months old, and no guarantees it’d last. Turning her over to the surgeons, not knowing if he and his wife would ever see her alive again.
“That must’ve been really hard,” I said. I looked at the little girl again. She was pretty, with milk white skin, clear blue eyes and cornsilk hair. “Hi, there,” I said to her. She looked up at me for half a second, still sucking on her bottle. “She’s really smart,” said her daddy, “and always so happy.”
The wife and the sales rep were still at the computer, the second guy still waiting. “I’m going to come back another time,” I told Anna Rose’s father. “Have a good one.”
I never said good-bye to little Anna Rose with her bottle and her book. That bothered me on the way home. I hope she’ll have a good life. And I hope her daddy gets a lot of years with his little angel.
Kaleidoscope 