The Visitor
Written By Cheryl Roberts, Ed.D., Wondertime Editorial Advisory Council member
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It was cold that Thanksgiving night in 1963, so cold my mom said she felt like she was living in Boston instead of sunny southern California. On this particular Thanksgiving we set a record for eating late — it was almost midnight and we were so hungry you'd have thought it was our last supper.
In the early hours of the next morning, my little brother was folding newspapers on the front lawn for the first day of his paper route when he heard a baby crying. He thought it was the baby across the street who had come to visit for the weekend, but the crying got louder and more intense, so he went to explore. As he approached my father's old, windowless red truck, he found a newborn, wrapped only in her umbilical cord, lying next to the afterbirth.
My brother rushed into the house and woke us all up. When he told us there was a naked baby in Dad's truck, we just stared, immobile. My older brother ran out the door with a blanket from his bed. He swaddled that tiny blue baby and brought her in. She stopped crying and stared at us; we fell in love.
When my mom said the baby needed to see a doctor, we didn't expect an ambulance to take her away. Worried we might not see her again, we were told we could go to the hospital. We never dressed so fast! At the hospital, there seemed to be hundreds of strangers asking questions and taking pictures. There she was, nestled in an incubator, now all pink except for a little blue around her mouth.
We didn't understand why we couldn't take her home. As a family of nine, we were used to getting new babies on a regular basis; she just came to us in a different way. We were told there was too much publicity, that time was needed to let it die down. So they put us "on hold." For years we kept asking about her, until finally my mom was told we could not adopt her because it would be too easy for the birth mother to find us and possibly upset the baby's life.
We had given up all hope that we would ever know what happened to her. And then one day, about 10 years ago, she called. Our baby had found us! It wasn't easy; her records were sealed tight. But a compassionate social worker showed her the picture of us with her in the hospital, which had made the front page of newspapers around the world. She told us she had been adopted by a loving family; at last, she was again a part of ours. Not a year goes by that we do not give thanks for our special Thanksgiving baby blessing.
