When Margaret told her sons about the adoption, they were furious. “Mom, you can’t do this,” Daniel said over the phone. “You’re seventy-three years old! You can barely carry groceries, let alone a baby.”
Neighbors whispered. Some even laughed. “She’s lost it,” one woman muttered at the grocery store. “A baby with Down syndrome at her age? That poor child.”
But Margaret ignored them. She had always been gentle, but beneath that gentleness was steel.
She took parenting classes, met with pediatric specialists, and prepared her home all over again — painting the nursery a warm cream color, setting up a cradle near her own bed, and knitting tiny sweaters with her arthritic hands.
When she brought Clara home, she felt her life begin anew.
The First Year of Love
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