Only the Beautiful

by Susan Meissner

“But it’s a ship where everyone aboard can feel safe. I don’t care about any mistakes you might have made or that were made against you, and I don’t count those mistakes as defining who you are. I know life can be unfair. I know things can happen to you that you don’t deserve. I also know there might be decisions you made in the past that you’d like to undo and can’t. But here in this house, we look to tomorrow, not yesterday. Does that sound like something you can agree to?”

Of all these women, she has been the most like my own mother and, in a way, most like my father, too. I have felt safe with her. Cared for by her. I matter to her. Mrs. Clark has been interested from the get-go in how I am feeling, not just how I am progressing.

With giving, there is cost, isn’t there? There is always cost. Sometimes it is an easy sum to hand over. And sometimes it exacts from you the whole measure of your heart. I will pay it, though. It is the right thing to do. And in a way, I will be righting a wrong the only way I can. I am at last returning to a mother the child that was taken from her.