Maria Reunites with Long-Lost 'Son'

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Maria Reunites with Long-Lost 'Son'
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Last Christmas I called to get the gift wishes of nearly 50 Angel Tree children on Staten Island. Children of prisoners. They don’t open the packages in my presence. Even so, each child reminds me of a four-year-old boy named Angel, who tore open a gift under my tree, Christmas morning 1963.

Angel came into my life as a result of an offhand wish made by my youngest daughter, eight-year-old LuAnn. As she left for school on December 22, she said, “Christmas isn’t fun anymore…I wish I had a baby brother.”

 

I sent her out the door and turned to my morning routine. But the house seemed quiet, “empty.” Maybe it would be nice having a little one around the house for Christmas, I thought…Why not? Why not call Saint Michael’s—a home for children from broken families—and “borrow” a child for Christmas?

 

The nun seemed surprised at my request. “We have just one little boy left,” she said. “All the other children have gone with relatives for the holidays, but we can’t get home to our families because of him”—Angel.

 

Angel actually looked like a cherub with curly, dark hair and an irresistible smile. He could stay with us for three days, until Christmas night. Driving him to our house, I asked what he wanted for Christmas. He had one wish: “I want to be a cowboy.”

 

When we stopped at a store, he spotted a brown cowboy outfit with green fringes. “See!” he cried. “That’s what I want to be.”

 

Christmas morning Angel opened a mound of gifts. But he was most excited about his cowboy suit—the plastic boots and the hat that engulfed his head.