Chicken Soup Unsinkable Soul
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I know you've been looking forward to this moment for a long time. I've watched you during this past year, as the countdown has become reality. You've worked hard and planned. That's one of the things I like best about you, your ability to run a good race. To set a goal, train and then go for it.
Funny, goal-setting. When you were little and I held your tiny body in my arms and rocked and sang and read to you, my goal was to give you two essentialsroots and wings. I think I've done that. So it seems I'm just seconds away from one of my own finish lines. The problem is, I seem to be enjoying the race a little too much. Somehow I've lost my stride and want to run the rest of this particular race in slow motion.
The other problem is I've also lost my concentration. Instead of focusing on the finish line, I keep rerunning the race. I think about the tears in your father's eyes the first time he saw you. I think about how I'd wake up to the sound of you and your sister talking, way back when you used to share a room and giggles and secrets. And I remember your gentleness six years later when you would sit next to your baby brother and read to him.
Not that the course has been particularly easy. When you were almost ten and I watched you place your favorite Star Trek book in your dad's coffin, I wasn't even certain the race was worth running. It was then that I learned that sometimes things are not fair. There really are no guarantees. Sometimes you can have a great pace going and get a cramp. All you can do is give it your best shot. Guess that's where I learned that if you keep going, somehow it's possible to get past the wall.
I suppose that when I got cancer and was almost
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pulled out of the game, I realized exactly how precious this race was to me. I'm not certain you are aware of what an impact you had on getting me over that hurdle. I know it must have been difficult for you, but you were always there cheering me on by listening and talking me through. You filled in as my coach at that meet, and you instinctively knew a secretgreat coaching involves shouting and listening. Thanks.
If life is a racethough I really don't like to think this experience is anything we should rush throughI think you're going to do well. You're in shape, you've trained hard and you have the tenacity to make it over the obstacles. I'm proud of you.
Enjoy the view. Remember you've got teammates who'll help when the course is rough. Take time to rest every once in a while, and whenever you need to . . . use your wings.
I love you,
Mom
Paula Bachleda Koskey
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The Other Mother
"Hey, Mrs. Prins!" I shout while waving at her kitchen window. Standing on top of the monkey bars, I stretch across the school boundary fence toward her house, waving frantically, but she doesn't seem to notice. Her husband does though. He closes the kitchen curtains.
Mrs. Prins is my third-grade teacher, though sometimes I accidentally call her "Mom." I know she isn't my mother, but I can't stop hoping that she will adopt me if my mother dies from cancer. Mrs. Prins knows nothing of this hope, but she knows I like her enough to fight the kids after school who make fun of her curled-up mouth. Half her mouth is always smiling because she had a nerve operation, and kids sit at their desks curling up half their mouths, mocking Mrs. Prins behind her back.
As I hang off the monkey bars, I can't understand why Mr. Prins has closed the kitchen curtains on me. This makes about as much sense as the kids teasing Mrs. Prins. Maybe he didn't see me hanging off the bars, waving five feet from their window. Through their living-room curtains, I can see Mrs. Prins sitting on her couch reading the paper. I start waving and shouting hello again. Mr. Prins walks over and closes those drapes. Now I know he finds me a nuisance.
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With all their drapes tightly closed, I remain on the monkey bars in the empty playground, dreading going home, wishing Mr. Prins didn't find me a pest. If he wasn't there, Mrs. Prins would invite me over. Just because school is done for the day, she can't suddenly find me a pest.
On the first day of school, Mrs. Prins had asked me, "Aren't you the girl that used to have that pretty long hair?" I didn't know her yet and was worried about why she had noticed me. Before school started, I had cut my hair off to make sure one more year wouldn't be spent with a cruel teacher yanking it every time I did something wrong. Now all my hair rests in a paper bag in Mom's dresser drawer, safe from cruel teachers. Standing on the monkey bars with short-hair, I imagine what it would be like to have Mrs. Prins brush my long hair while sitting next to her on the couch. But there is no more hair and the drapes are pulled.
As the sky darkens, Mrs. Prins walks into her yard and offers me a few peanut-butter cookies and a glass of milk. Instead of walking around the playground, I climb the fence, hoping to impress her with my strength, but she looks worried as I rip my shirt coming down on her side of the fence. For once there's no blood, just a torn shirt, not a bruised body.
"Don't you have to go home after school?" she asks.
"Of course, but not right away."
We sit on lawn chairs eating our cookies. Now that I'm finally in her yard, I don't know what to say.
"Did you just make these cookies?"
"After school."
"They're the best I ever had," I say, certain she made them especially for me.
When the cookies are finished, I know it's time to walk back home down the half-mile hill. I thank Mrs. Prins for the cookies, leaving her quiet home behind, slowly cutting
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through the alleys and looking over fences at dogs, wondering if my dad will be home for dinner or at a bar drinking. I feel guilty for having not gone home right away to fix dinner, making Mom have to cook knowing she's not feeling well. I wonder what Mrs. Prins is having for dinner and figure it won't be frozen fish sticks and a box of macaroni and cheese. That's what we'll be having.
At night, I write a story about Pepper, our dog. Mrs. Prins wants the class to write stories about people who are important to us, but it seems like all my important humans would make a sad story. Pepper's different. He's stuck at home, not dying or drinking, just waiting for someone to play with him.
A few days after I hand my story in, Mrs. Prins asks if she can talk with me after school. I agree and then spend the entire day worrying about what I did wrong. Three times I go into the bathroom and cry, certain I have hurt her feelings somehow. But after school Mrs. Prins takes my story out of her desk drawer and asks, "May I keep this?"
"Why?"
"Because I want to save it in a special drawer at home with all my favorite stories." She looks like she is about to cry, and I want to ask for the story back, just to read what I had said that could make her feel this way; but I can't speak without crying. Then she hugs me and my eyes swell with tears.
Walking home I know that even if I never get to sleep in her house, my story does, and that is enough to make Mrs. Prins seem like my mother. This will be my mother with half a face smiling while the eyes are tearing. The mother I can watch by climbing the monkey bars. And most importantly, the mother who understands my stories.
Diane Payne
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A Prayer for Children
We pray for children
Who give us sticky kisses,
Who hop on rocks and chase butterflies,
Who stomp in puddles and ruin their math workbooks,
Who can never find their shoes.
And we pray for those
Who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
Who've never squeaked across the floor in new sneakers,
Who've never "counted potatoes,"
Who are born in places we wouldn't be caught dead,
Who never go to the circus,
Who live in an X-rated world.
We pray for children
Who bring us fistfuls of dandelions and sing off key
Who have goldfish funerals, build card-table forts
Who slurp their cereal on purpose
Who put gum in their hair, put sugar in their milk
Who spit toothpaste all over the sink
Who hug us for no reason, who bless us each night.
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And we pray for those
Who never get dessert,
Who watch their parents watch them die,
Who have no safe blanket to drag behind,
Who can't find any bread to steal,
Who don't have any rooms to clean up,
Whose pictures aren't on anybody's dresser,
Whose monsters are real.
We pray for those
Who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
Who throw tantrums in the grocery store
And pick at their food,
Who like ghost stories,
Who shove dirty clothes under the bed
And never rinse out the tub,
Who get quarters from the tooth fairy
Who don't like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
Who squirm in church and scream on the phone,
Whose tears we sometimes laugh at
And whose smiles can make us cry.
And we pray for those
Whose nightmares come in the daytime,
Who will eat anything,
Who have never seen a dentist,
Who aren't spoiled by anybody,
Who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
Who live and move, but have no being.
We pray for children
Who want to be carried,
And for those who must.
For those we never give up on,
And for those who don't have a chance.
For those we smother,
And for those who will grab the hand of anybody kind enough to offer.
Ina J. Hughs
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Washing Teddy Bears
Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their carvings.
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
We are washing teddy bearsmy eldest daughter and I. Old childhood toys. She has recently separated from her husband of seven years, and we are washing teddy bears.
Last week I helped her get settled in her new apartment. For the first time in her life, she is living alone and she is struggling to make a new lifejust her and her bears.
She has just told me a story about two eighty-year-old women she met at the Laundromat yesterday. One of them was washing her teddy bears. The old woman gingerly explained to her the proper way to wash teddy bears.
"You put them into a pillowcase and pin the end of the case shut with a safety pin. Then you wash and dry them and they come out nice and clean and fluffy."
The old woman went on to explain that ever since her
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husband passed away, whenever she gets lonely or anxious, she holds her teddy bear pressed close to her face for a long while and then she feels better. She says it always works.
They got to talking, and my daughter explained that she had always wanted to wash her bears but was afraid that they would be ruined in the process. She was delighted by the old woman and her tale and they continued to talk. My daughter explained that she was recently separated and that she was fixing up her new apartment and thanked the woman for the advice.
The old woman said that if she were her daughter, she would scoop her up and take her home with her. That she would not be living alone. I wanted to tell my daughter that the old woman's sentiments were also mine. I knew she had to find her own way. Although I wanted to rescue her, in my heart I knew that was not what was best for her.
Doing what is best for your child can be so difficult sometimes. Watching my daughter struggleemotionally, financially and otherwiseis tugging at my heartstrings. I really do want to scoop her up and take her home and tuck her and her teddy bears into bed.
She was and is a beautiful child. Although she is a twenty-eight-year-old woman now, it is difficult for me sometimes to think of her as one.
We finish washing bears, and she is on her way home now. Her bears are clean, all present and accounted for. And I know that she will press them close to her face for a long time on many days and nights to comeand that they will help her feel better. They will listen as only teddy bears can. They will soak up her tears and hug her back when she needs it. And they will smile back at her when her own smile finally returns.
Watch over my little girl, Teddy Bears. Love her extra hard. The big wide world can be a pretty scary place. Hold her hand, tuck her
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in at night and remind her how very much her dad and I and her sisters love her. Help her to find that peaceful, teddy-bear place inside each one of usthat warm and fuzzy place that brings us to a ''knowing" that everything will be all right, that tomorrow is another day, that all the answers we need are inside us. Remind her that time heals, that out of pain comes tremendous personal growth. And that there are no boogeymen under the bed.
Sweet dreams, my precious daughter. May the glory of your morning sun and the light of your magnificent moon dry all your tears and mend your heart and spirit. And may each new tomorrow bring you, my beloved child, deep and lasting joy, and teddybear peace.
Jean Bole
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To Love Enough
My mother isn't speaking to my father. She hasn't spoken to him in five years, and for that, my father is truly grateful.
I was crying the last time she did speak to him. I saw the exchange though I could not hear the words. His whisperings, her whisperings.
The two of them silhouetted against the window light at the end of the long hall. My father leaning over my mother's gurney, pressed forehead to forehead. The word "Surgery" on the doors behind them forming a caption for the picture they made. Hands clasped together as if believing they held each other's hearts. As longingly as the first time they had reached for each other, as desperately as two lovers being forced apart.
Being forced to part on this day of life and death.
They had made the decision together, to do or die . . . to do and die. These two who had lived for and in each other's dreams these past forty years.
My mother with a disease that was cutting the blood flow to her brain. It was deteriorating her life and it would take it in three years. Her life could be prolonged if the surgery was done now. Twelve brave hearts had gone
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before her but only three of them had walked away.
I watched their process of decision making, both prayerful in the face of death. My mother wanting to live, wanting to try. The churning and turning until there was peace.
How brave we knew she was; we three sisters gathered around her hospital bed feeling time pushing us toward her fate the next day. We were quick to smile, slow to leave, hoping our "Good nights" were not our good-byes.
Our father was left to keep his prayerful, loving vigil. It was painful to leave him that night, too painful to think of him alone. But he reminded us that he would not be alone, at least for this night, he had his Love.
And morning came. We gathered and prayed. We kissed our mother, hugged our father and then followed her gurney until we were told that only one of us could go any farther.
My father continued to walk alongside her as he always had. Two people who had stood together against all odds. My mother orphaned at a young age and moved from place to place. My father the youngest of nine in a family hurting with poverty.
They who had found their home in each other.
We children were loved in their home. Given by these two what they had not been given in their own childhoods: safety, nurturing, moral guidance.