This is a true story. Since many of you now make the Threads for Charity and many will find there way in the arms of a child, I bring my own experience to you as one of those children who lived on the hope and love of the stitches of one kind woman like yourselves.

THREADS

They found her in a closet, dirty and frightened. She was only 3, given away by her mother for the black market to be sold. She made no sound when lifted from her place of secrecy.

Although she was now cleaned up, with the tangled strands of hair washed and brushed into a head of curled gold ringlets, she was a child with no expression. Looking deep into her eyes I saw no sparkle. She was not a child who had lost people she trusted, but a child who knew no one.

Whisked off to one of many foster homes she would have in her life time, I sent her off with a small quilt wishing to see some reaction as I placed it over her arm. It would be many years gone before this day would give me the satisfaction I had hoped for.

As the years passed my thoughts of this child would become less and the haunting eyes she looked into space with would no longer break my heart. The many children who passed through my office took away my attention from the golden haired child of the past.

Reaching the age of retirement, my job had changed from placement to examination of the Foster homes applying to care for children. It was a cold blustery day in the northeast. Snow swirled around my ankles as I walked up the path to the home of a new applicant. This would be a home for temporary placement, those children who need care in the middle of the night, those most in need of someone with a big heart. I wasn’t sure why I was making this journey. After reading the application I felt this lady was too old for the care these children would need even though it would be only for a few days at a time.

She appeared at the door, friendly but not bubbling over like so many of our best foster home parents. We sat in a living room made cozy by the French country décor and many pictures of her children. We had a nice chat but I couldn’t help feeling that she was hollow or perhaps, I was missing something unique about her. She spoke of knowing what a child would need in an emergency situation but when I asked her how she knew, she was lost for words to explain herself.

The room got very empty without the sound of our voices. Then she looked me in the eyes with the first sign I had seen of true emotion. “Threads hold us all together”, she said. “It only takes one thread to change our life” she explained. With that said she walked me into her sewing room where she had a stack of small quilts made and piled neatly in an old cradle.

These are all new threads that I hope will connect these children to themselves and the future. I once was given my own threads, my own small quilt. As I traveled through my life, I spent many hours looking at the threads that someone had carefully sewn my quilt together with. These threads were my only connection to hope and to the touch of one kind lady. I’ve always wanted to be her, to be the one who passed along the threads of hope. Then she reached for a tattered quilt hanging from the back of her sewing chair.

I held the quilt to my chest with tears running freely down my cheeks. I looked into this woman’s eyes and saw that curly toe headed child from so long ago. I had been trying to find something to overcome this woman’s hollow look when instead I should have looked into the hollowness to find her caring heart. “I see my stitches have lasted through the years”, I said. Not wanting to cause her any disturbing emotions from the past, I just gently smiled.

She held her hand out to me with the humble grace of a proud queen. No words were needed because our hearts were connected through the threads in this small quilt.

She became our best temporary placement. Children taken from the worse possible situations were greeted with her carefully sewn threads and when they left, they were sent on their way carrying along the threads that join us all together.

(Ghost writer)