AFTER 21 YEARS I MEET MY WARD. Early one morning as I walked the less than 200 feet from our back door to the Battle Abbey, I heard the haunting call of a Mourning Dove, whose voice must sound very much like its old world cousin, the Turtledove. This called to my mind snatches of some verses that begins, "Rise up, my love, my fair one and come away. For low, the winter is passed." The verses end with ---"the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." As I could not recall all the lines I attempted to find the verses in the Old Testament. Failing to find them I went on to other things. Later, I happened to be passing the home of a minister that I consult occasionally about such a matter, so I stopped at his house. In our conversation he happened to say, "Sherry, is now 21 years old." This exploded in my mind the fact that the child he was talking about had been born my ward, and in all these years I had never seen the child. I had been appointed guardian of her mother before she was born, and as such was required to sign a consent when the minister and his wife, her foster parents, wanted to take the child out of the state. It all happened this way: The child's mother, a daughter of a cousin of mine, was mentally retarded. As such she and a sister became a problem for the social welfare workers when the girls became of child-bearing age. They arranged and I agreed to be appointed guardian of the girls for the purpose of having them operated on, a then new operation that required a minimum sized incision. The operation was scheduled for a Monday. On the Friday before there was a newspaper story of a federal indictment that had been made in the "interest" of a girl, somewhere down south, against some parties who had similarly had her operated on. From that time on no doctor will perform such an operation. As could have been foretold, Sherry was born and hidden from the social workers by her family. When found some weeks later, the child was almost dead. It was placed with the minister and his wife. On a return visit, I finally saw the child that had been my ward. Sherry, at 21, has the mind and manners of a two year old. In size she is about like a normal ten year old. They told me that she was blind for a while after they first got her. She was eight years old before she could walk and even now she waddles when she walks. Her feet are very flat and can only walk when she has shoes on. She does not have any childhood playmates that visit her at home but she does go to child ca! re. She babbles and cannot talk, but is a very happy and affectionate child and is a joy to her adopted parents, who will always have a little girl. With me when I visited them was my sister-in-law Beulah. As the parents and I talked she showed Beulah around the house much as a normal child would. Now, whenever I hear the haunting call of the Morning Dove, I will be wondering, "Those many years ago, what difference would it have made, if the social workers and I had acted one week earlier?" For lo, the winter has passed, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land." Song of Solomon, Chapter 2, Verses 11 and 12. JESS WILSON