Orphan

Abstract I've been waiting ail my life for the orphan to come home. My preoccupation with lost children had lost its obsessive quality, had been sleeping gently in some nearby corner of my heart where I could keep an eye on it, soothe it, and try adult reasoning if it woke. And then along came Bowie, an orphaned black Lab puppy. The thirty-something son of friends had taken the pup from her litter-mates, fallen for this silky-coated, brown-eyed baby with a blue star in her right eye, and named her for a rock-and-roll idol. Lulled by this young one's sweet disposition and curious canine intelligence, the single lad soon woke to his task, measured the young dog's needs against a traveling man's available time, and put her up for adoption.