I read the story of an orphan boy, who was adopted thanks to the mediation of Santa Claus, and remembered... not even the story, there is no plot. A small episode.

At the age of 14, I went to the hospital for a month. It turned out that I was the oldest among the melouses. The younger boys were four years old, and one girl was probably two years old. She could not speak yet. She was from a child’s home, or rather from a child’s home. Naked, in dotted slides and all in green. It is unlikely that she would be kept in a common chamber with something contagious, so probably not watermelon or scabies, but some harmless wounds. But it looked ugly.

Because of these wounds, the older girls chased her, called the ugly. And she was drawn to everyone, apparently lacking affection in her childhood home. And on the first day, when I came to the dining room and sat down on a chair, she ran up, scratched her pants to my knees, hugged me and froze frighteningly. She was afraid and hoped she’t be driven away.

I did not drive her out. I lacked the tactile feelings. In our family, calf tenderness was not accepted, parents almost never hugged us, my brother and I if we did not fight, then played something noisy. In the hospital, there was little. So I embraced that little girl, pressed to myself and started shaking. And she sang something like it, without words, but very cozy and affectionate.

I do not remember her name. Everyone called her Marty, and she really had something like a monkey in her face. When I left the room in the morning, the babysitters said to me, “Where are you, the bride has already been waiting.” I cried loudly, “Martich!” and she, wherever she was, heard and ran to meet me in the hospital corridor with a joyful cry. I picked her up on my arms and then pulled on me all day, then on my shoulders, then under my mouth, then sat down and kneeled.

I would like to write something like, “My parents adopted Martyška, and now she is my sister.” But I’m not telling a Christmas tale, but a piece of real life. I know nothing about her fate. Per she was actually adopted later. Per not, and she rolled down the slope and slept like 90% of childhouseholders. Maybe she overcame everything and lived a decent life. Or maybe she never learned to speak and ended her days in a disabled home.

This meeting turned me. I then longed very much for this feeling when a tiny warm creature sits on your knees and confidently embraces you. I still believe that this is the most delightful thing a person can feel in his life, no cigars with cognac, orgasms and sports victories have stood by.

The grief passed when my own children were born, and they were born quite early. From the first day I hugged, licked, pulled and pressed them endlessly – but, of course, not only pressed, but also pressed, dressed, washed, fed and did all the other things that should be done with young children. There was a moment in my family life when I fell in love with another woman and thought about leaving. But I thought exactly for a moment, until I asked myself: Can I survive at least a day without my hamsters? I immediately realized that not, and the issue was resolved.

My wife had a friend, Galia, who married a man who was disturbed by cleanliness and order. He washed his hands twenty times a day and could have caused a scandal because of a crumb on the floor or a drop of water in a dishwasher. The man grew up in a house full of dirt and cockroaches, and moved on this topic. Of course, there was nothing to think about the children in this family, because they write, crack, let saliva, scratch, scratch food on the table and so on. Galia first worried, then reconciled.

In the sixth year of this marriage, Galle brought her husband to visit us. He cautiously sat down on our not too clean sofa, holding his hands on the weight, like a surgeon before the operation, to not touch anything. But then came our youngest daughter, she was just two years old, and without saying a bad word fell to him on her knees.

I saw the inner struggle on his face. It seems uncomfortable, not a cat anyway. Touching is scary and disgusting. I asked a kind of secular question, like what your doll’s name is. The daughter responded readily, she spoke well at two years old. I told him something, he replied. Keeping your hands on weight. But gradually he felt that nothing terrible was coming, but something good was happening, and he stopped watching for the sterility of his hands. He embraced the daughter by the shoulders, nodded on his knees, grabbed his head. I saw a man shrinking. Twenty minutes later, he was already behaving like any other guest in the house with children. He left very pleased and sorry for everyone's hands, like a normal person.

And the next morning Galia called my wife in a joyful shock: returning from us, the husband demanded immediately, without delaying a day, to have a child. Here is such an exhibition from Martyška through my daughter to Galina's son, who otherwise could not have been born.