An Important Call He was born on a hot July morning. I could feel discomfort drift from wary and avoiding glances. One single line across a tiny palm is an indicator extreme; hard news to be delivered. A test for Down Syndrome took two weeks in nineteen eighty-two, and everyone knows the rules; a nurse calls to spill good news. For everything else, doctors call to talk plans. So, I knew when I heard his voice, words slow and cautious, asking me to find a seat. I dropped a pan of hot grease and wasted fried chicken on my bare summer legs. It wasn’t from anger or shock; I was in such a frantic rush to get to his little blue room. Unaware of burns and blisters, I held my sleeping angel tightly, in love’s sheltering embrace. Shirley Alexander © 2007Return to: The Gifts of a Child
