An army captain crossed paths with Magdalena one day. He was a kind man, full of compassion and understanding. She doesn't give the impression that he sought her out for the same reasons that other men did. The implication was that she met him outside the realm of her "work". He asked, "Why don't you leave the madam and go live with your mother?" Having been deceived by the madam into thinking that she owed her a great deal of money for clothing and lodging, Magdalena told the captain that she couldn't leave until she had paid her debt. "I don't know what I owe her for. She says for food and clothing and lodging, but she's never given me anything. My room is nothing special. It's just a room with a bed." "I'll talk to her and help you pay off whatever you owe," he said. Magdalena isn't sure what kind of an arrangement was made, but that was the day she left the madam and returned to the company and fellowship of her family.
Shortly thereafter, Magdalena met John. He was a hard working man some ten or fifteen years her senior. (She only found out recently from her doctor what their birth years are.) John loved to dance. And Magdalena certainly didn't mind accompanying him. Their friendship deepened, but Magdalena never even considered marriage. She never felt she was good enough for that most intimate and blessed of relationships, all things considered. One day her mother said to her, "Magdalena, if that man proposes to you, you'd better accept! You can't do any better than him. He's a good, hard-working man." Shocked, Magdalena replied, "Propose to me???!!" "Yes," her mother stated emphatically, "Tell him yes!" Mom must have been very intuitive. John and Magdalena were married not long after that.
Magdalena had a baby girl. The nuns at the hospital told her, "That baby isn't for this earth. Don't get too attached to her." An uncle told her something similar shortly after she brought her baby home. Magdalena refused to pay much attention to their depressing warnings. She loved her daughter and cared for her diligently. One day, before leaving for market, Magdalena told her husband she was going out and to please watch their nine month old baby. When she returned the child was no where to be found. They searched high and low until they found her down behind the bed, digging in the dirt with her tiny hand. A persistent fever wracked her body for hours that night and she never recovered. Whatever drug they gave Magdalena the day she brought her dead daughter home had her so altered she could only say, "What a pretty baby that is. Who's pretty baby is that?" She doesn't remember much else about the funeral and burial of her own child.
A few years after Magdalena's tragedy of losing her daughter, one of Magdalena's sisters asked her to please come and pick up her new born son. "Take him. I don't want him. I can't afford to raise him myself. You can have him." Magdalena had no baby clothes, nothing. She wrapped the child in a sheet and took him home to raise. He wore that sheet for a few days before Magdalena had the opportunity to buy and make him some clothes suitable for a baby his size.
Some thirty-odd years later, Magdalena sits at the dinner table in our home and tells her story, giving thanks to God for His blessings in her life. The bitterness of so many sad years has been assuaged by His grace and she is thankful for her good husband and caring son. And I, I love her. She's my grandmother here in Mexico. She's the only parishioner, besides my wife, who gets a hug and a kiss almost every time I see her. And that, my friend, is Magdalena's story as best I can remember her telling of it.
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