When I Was Four, My Mother Left Me Alone in a Church—Twenty Years Later She Returned Crying, “We Need You”
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Chapter 9 / 34
Chapter 9 - MY LIFE AT TWENTY-FOUR
I earned a scholarship to a small Catholic college.
Majored in social work.
Then moved into community outreach instead of clinical work.
By twenty-four, I was back at Saint Thomas Aquinas as parish outreach coordinator.
Food drives.
Emergency rent assistance.
Referrals for shelters.
Programs for children.
Help with medical transportation.
Nothing glamorous.
I liked it.
Florence, now nearly eighty, still played the piano when her arthritic hands allowed.
Other Sundays, I filled in.
We had a quiet life.
Not perfect.
Not dramatic.
Stable.
May you like
I had stopped waiting for my biological family.
Then, exactly twenty years after the afternoon they left me, the church doors opened again.
