Bradley dropped a soft kiss on Jenna's cheek. "Yes, it's really him. I found him last week, and he has been to the house to visit us. He was very excited to know that I was meeting you today. He's never married, either, you know."
David picked up the little boy, then his eyes met Jenna's. He gently put the boy down. In an instant, he reached Jenna. She was in his arms a long time before they pulled apart to look at each other.
The weekend ended much too soon. Bradley and his wife made Jenna promise to come visit in a few weeks. When they went to the airport, David helped Bradley's family get situated.
"Where are you flying out from?" Jenna asked.
"I'm not," he answered. "I've extended my vacation. We have a lot of years to make up for."
Bradley was able to witness his parents' marriage at Christmastime that year.
Yes, there really are some happily-ever-afters.
Mary J. Davis
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Holding On
A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
When I was a kid, I used to wake up, pull on jeans, and race down the street to Ann's house.
Today, I take my time getting ready. I walk around our old neighborhood, noticing the crepe myrtle bush Ann and I used to plunder, the magnolia trees still gracing the lawns, the sewer grate where Ann and I sat and practiced cussing.
I take a breath and knock on the door of Ann's house, where she's visiting her parents. Her father answers.
''She's in her room," he says.
The hallway seems smaller than I remembered.
"Come in," Ann says, to my timid knock. I look at the pictures lining the hall before I turn the knobAnn with two missing front teeth, Ann wearing a frilly yellow dress and riding a pony, Ann wearing her graduation robe. In the years since we've seen each other, we've added careers, husbands, children to our lives. In the past five years, Ann has struggled with cancer.
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Ann looks fragile and beautiful, posed among the bed's pillows. She wears a pink satin nightgown. A red scarf covers her head. A cigarette quivers in her right hand.
When she was fourteen, Ann would wake up and strike a match against the wall to light her first cigarette of the day. I loved seeing the charcoal streaks sweep her wall, like oriental symbols. Decadent, I thought enviously. Ann could do whatever she wanted and her father never got mad.
Ann's father comes into the room, bringing us cups of herbal tea.
"Do you need anything else?" he asks. Silver softens his once black hair.
Ann smiles and shakes her head. She pats the bed and I settle beside her, giving her a gentle hug. I hold her as if she is a secret unfolding.
"Guess what! I'm finally skinnier than you," she says, laughing and displaying legs that look childlike in their spindliness.
The morphine Ann takes so she can sit up without pain has softened her speech. Still, her giggle is the same. The round sweetness of her face is the same as when we were four years old and just becoming friends.
"Want to be best friends?" Ann had asked me. We stood across from each other, with a hedge between us. We had each just moved into the neighborhood.
"Sure," I said.
"Debbie, come in for dinner," my mother called for the second time.
I watched Ann walk down the street to her house, stooping to capture dandelions along the way. Then I skipped across the yard, the new grass nibbling my feet. I felt like a balloon at last released to the sky. Something important had happened: I was no longer dependent on my mother and father for love. I had a friend.
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"Excuse me while I go to the bathroom," Ann says. She used to always beat me at relays. Now, she walks gingerly, as if she is holding eggs in her pocket.
I think of Ann and me as kids, cramming into the family bathroom, taking turns, one on the toilet, one perched on the side of the tub. Going to the bathroom was the same as playing jacks or dressing dolls. We saw no need to be separated.
Yet we have been separated for years, staying in touch when we need comfort and talk. Ann knows my daughters without having met them; I love her husband for the wondrous supportive way he nurtures her. I look around her old bedroom and see the bookshelf with old copies of Little Women, The Royal Road to Romance, Catcher in the Rye, Atlas Shruggedbooks that wove a path through our girlhood.
"Would you like to see my head?" Ann asks, when she comes back into the room.
"Yes," I say.
I hold my breath as Ann pulls off her scarf. She looks luminescent without the covering. The powerful curve of her skull is softened by a few wildflower wisps of hair.
I touch my hair, remembering the hours of agony I spent rolling my hair on orange juice cans so I could have the same soft waves as Ann. Ann's dark hair always curled under in just the right way, while mine was a frenetic mass of frizz.
"At first, I was scared to walk around without the wig. But it turns out my husband likes me like this. I catch him looking at me and smiling," she says.
She slowly settles back in bed, and as we have done so many times, we talk. We used to talk about boys; now we discuss men. We used to talk about school; now we talk about work. We talked about who we wanted to be and the differences we yearned to make: We still do. Our history links us together, like charms on a silver bracelet.
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Ann tells me about her year of terrifying pain, of not being able to eat, of wondering if she'd even be healthy enough to complete her chemotherapy. I am silenced by her courage, awed by her strength.
"Tell me about you," she insists. "Tell me about your daughters."
As I begin, I notice her eyes fluttering closed.
I too close my eyes. As girls we slept together in many different places: the backseat of our fathers' cars, her playhouse near the crabapple tree, my double bed, a blanket spread on the front lawn.
I wake up to feel a blanket being draped over me. Ann's dad is tucking me in. Ann is already covered with a soft maroon quilt.
"You were sleeping so peacefully," he whispers. "It reminded me of when you were girls."
I feel cozy and cared for. I watch my friend sleeping, her face a familiar song.
She opens her eyes and smiles at me.
"I wouldn't fall asleep in front of just anyone," she says.
"Me neither," I tell her.
I scoot closer and touch her wrist. I remember playing games of Red Rover, clasping hands and holding fast while kids tried to break through our grasp.
"Red Rover, Red Rover, can Billy come over," we chanted.
Billy bombarded our clasped hands, running fast, hurling himself hard at us. Somehow, we hung onto each other and did not let go.
Ann takes my hand. Pain tightens her face. I curl my fingers between hers and hold on tight.
Deborah Shouse
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Of Miracles, Children and Joshua's Jingle Bell
Each year, around Christmas, I bring out a tiny symbol from the back corners of my desk. The red satin ribbon is faded and frayed, but the shiny bell still jingles. It always brings back memories of a very special child I knew when I was a kindergarten teacher in a Cleveland public school. It also reminds me of an important message I try to pass on to the new generation of educators: The powerful love of children can sometimes accomplish miracles.
I recall vividly how the winds from nearby Lake Erie could rattle the windowpanes in our kindergarten classroom. The school was a tall, imposing brick structure, in a neighborhood at the edge of an industrial areanot as barren or forbidding as the Flats, but still shabby and decayed. Pungent fumes from a paint factory wafted in on clear days. Banks of tall windows enclosed two sides of our room. The usual wooden cabinets held supplies.
My second year of teaching was memorable because my classroom overflowed with childrenforty in the morning session and forty more in the afternoon. How could I possibly manage one more, I thought angrily, when the
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principal informed me, a few days after school began, that an additional youngstera handicapped childhad been admitted.
Along with his registration form was a letter from a pediatrician, asking us to allow Joshua to participate in as many activities as his physical condition permitted, because more than anything he needed to be with children his own age. What could I say? Somehow I would have to manage.
The next morning, Joshua and his mother arrived. He was gnome-like. His head was enormous, and he had luminous black eyes, stretched out strangely at the corners. His mother gave him a last hug and kiss. The only tears were hers. Joshua's unusual face was lit up by a broad smile during most of the morning. Clearly, he was happy to be with other children. I wished I could match his happy mood.
Joshua's appearance was just one of his multiple handicaps. He had poor motor control, often stumbling over his own and other people's feet. Handling a paint brush was a tremendous task. He usually grasped it in a grubby fist and splattered away with great gusto. His art projects demanded strategy and diplomacy of us all. Someone always wanted to help him cut with the scissors or to finish his work for him. But he was very determined. He wanted to do it by himself.
His Thanksgiving turkey was a complete disaster. Multi-colored tail feathers emerged where the head should have been. Globs of paste oozed out as he worked, dripping down onto the floor. Time for the Christmas program was drawing near, and I began to have uneasy feelings.
Cities like Cleveland, New York and Chicago are still home to a melange of ethnic groups. Our classroom that year was a modern-day example of the old melting pot. The majority of the children were Irish, making their
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solo excursion into public school before joining their brothers and sisters at the local parish school. We also had Greeks, Italians, Syrians, Lebanese, Germans, Hungarians and Chinese, as well as many migrants from Appalachia.
To my surprise, Joshua was accepted unconditionally by the children. The day we talked about where we were born, he was unusually animated. Why, he had been born at Lutheran Hospital, too, just like half the class. He was really one of them. He belonged.
We began to shape and polish our Christmas program. It was always a social event of the first magnitude. Parents took off from work. Mothers baked their special holiday cookies. There would be new dresses for the girls and trips to the barbershop for the boys.
There was one thing Joshua did do well. He could jingle his bell. The bells were threaded on thin red ribbons and decorated the children's wrists. We helped to tie each other's in a big bow, proud of the newly acquired skill. Someone was always nearby to help Joshua tie his. We shook our bells in unison, singing: "Jingle, jingle, jingle, Christmas bell. I've got a secret. Don't you tell! (Shh! Shh!) Santa's going to visit you and me. Let's all dance merrily."
Shuffle, slide, shuffle, slide. In a carefully rehearsed circle dance, there were many chances to jingle, jingle, jingle. Joshua's eyes sparkled. He loved to jingle his bell. The only problem was that he hated to stop. He would jingle-jingle away, long after everyone else had finished.
A glimmer of hope flickered in my mindperhaps his mother would sense the difficult situation and keep him home. I hated myself for the cruel thought, but I rationalized that it would be for the good of the group.
I was very, very wrong.
The day before the program, I couldn't stand the suspense. I called his home and asked if he would be
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participating the next day. ''Oh, yes!" his mother answered in her halting English. "He come!" The program would proceed . . . including Joshua.
The day was typical for Cleveland. Leaden gray skies heralded a cold, dismal day. It might be months before we saw the sun again. Inside our kindergarten room, though, warmth and love glowed over all. One young father came in overalls, straight from his factory job nearby. Bridget's dad came in his fireman's dress uniform, resplendent with polished brass buttons and shiny black shoes. Mary Chung's family had closed the laundry for the morning. The entire clan was there, including an ancient grandmother. Joshua's mother came with her married daughter.
As the frigid gusts howled outside, we warmed up with songs, singing of the Prince of Peace and of Santa on the rooftop. Joshua did quite well. At least, he did not fall down. There was always a helping hand stretched out at critical moments. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes shining. He was trying very hard. I found myself with an enormous lump in my throat. Tears blurred my eyes so that I could barely read the notes. Glancing over at Joshua's mother, I could see tears on her cheeks, too.
When it came time to perform our finale, "Jingle, Jingle, Jingle, Christmas Bell," Joshua was ready. He tinkled and shook his bell in all the right places. When forty other little fingers were placed on forty little lips in a muchrehearsed "Shh! Shh!" so were Joshua's. He was doing everything correctly, along with the other children. He was transformed for those brief moments, freed from the burden of his physical ills. The love and warmth of the children encased him like a cocoon, and a beautiful Joshua emerged. It was a Christmas miracle.
The cookies, sumptuous with honey, figs and sesame seeds, disappeared quickly. The parents were delighted
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with the program. The children were only five years old, yet they had given us the best gift of allthemselves.
I went back East to visit my mother for the holidays. When I returned to school in January, there was a letter in my mailbox. It was from Joshua's married sister, written for her mother. Joshua had died peacefully in his sleep, a few days after Christmas. The brief period he had spent in kindergarten had been the happiest in his life.
How could I possibly explain Joshua's death to the children? They had so little idea of life's final passage. Thinking they would understand a simple explanation best, I told them Joshua had gone to heaven.
"You mean," Michael piped up, "he went to be one of them Christmas angels?"
What a great idea, I thought. God bless you, Michael. Dozens of little heads nodded in agreement. Oh, yes! Our Joshua was a Christmas angel now!
Each year, when I hear the church bells ring out joyously at Christmas, I look at his little bell and think of Joshua. He taught all of usespecially mewhat miracles the love of children can accomplish.
Aline Stomfay-Stitz
Submitted by Carol Repella
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Love in Action
One night a man came to our house and told me, "There is a family with eight children. They have not eaten for days." I took some food with me and went.
When I finally came to that family, I saw the faces of those little children disfigured by hunger. There was no sorrow or sadness in their faces, just the deep pain of hunger.
I gave the rice to the mother. She divided the rice in two, and went out, carrying half the rice. When she came back, I asked her, "Where did you go?" She gave me this simple answer, "To my neighborsthey are hungry also!"
. . . I was not surprised that she gave, because poor people are really very generous. But I was surprised that she knew they were hungry. As a rule, when we are suffering, we are so focused on ourselves we have no time for others.
Mother Teresa
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2
ON ATTITUDE
I will tell you that there have been no failures in my life. I don't want to sound like some metaphysical queen, but there have been no failures. There have been some tremendous lessons.
A Second Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul Page 7
