As I headed to my car, I felt a tug on my shirt. There was the girl, looking up at me with her big brown eyes. She gave me a grin, wrapped her arms around my legs for a long moment then stretched out her little hand. It was full of coins. "Thank you," she whispered.
"That's okay," I answered. I flashed her a smile and winked, "Keep the change!"
Nancy Mitchell
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Big FeetBigger Heart
When deeds speak, words are nothing.
African Proverb
It was an unseasonably hot day. Everybody it seemed, was looking for some kind of relief, so an ice cream store was a natural place to stop.
A little girl, clutching her money tightly, entered the store. Before she could say a word, the store clerk sharply told her to get outside and read the sign on the door, and stay out until she put on some shoes. She left slowly, and a big man followed her out of the store.
He watched as she stood in front of the store and read the sign: No Bare Feet. Tears started rolling down her cheeks as she turned and walked away. Just then the big man called to her. Sitting down on the curb, he took off his size-12 shoes, and set them in front of the girl saying, "Here, you won't be able to walk in these, but if you sort of slide along, you can get your ice cream cone."
Then he lifted the little girl up and set her feet into the shoes. "Take your time," he said, "I get tired of moving them around, and it'll feel good to just sit here and eat my
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ice cream." The shining eyes of the little girl could not be missed as she shuffled up to the counter and ordered her ice cream cone.
He was a big man, all right. Big belly, big shoes, but most of all, he had a big heart.
Anonymous
From Brian Cavanaugh's The Sower's Seeds
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Winning
I believe every person has a heart and if you can reach it, you can make a difference.
Uli Derickson
His mother told us the story the day after.
Kenneth was in junior high school and was excited and eager about participating in a day of Special Olympics events. While his parents watched expectantly from the stands, he ran, and won, the first race. He was proud of his ribbon and the cheers from the crowd.
He ran in the second race. Just at the finish line, when he again would have won, he stopped, then stepped off the track. His parents gently questioned him. "Why did you do that, Kenneth? If you had continued running, you would have won another race."
Kenneth innocently replied, "But, Mom, I already have a ribbon. Billy didn't have a ribbon yet."
Clifford and Jerie Furness
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Goodness Defies the Odds
It is raining still. . . . Maybe it is not one of those showers that is here one minute and gone the next, as I had so boldly assumed. Maybe none of them are. After all, life in itself is a chain of rainy days. But there are times when not all of us have umbrellas to walk under. Those are the times when we need people who are willing to lend their umbrellas to a wet stranger on a rainy day. I think I'll go for a walk with my umbrella.
Sun-Young Park
She opened the letter as she strolled up the driveway from the mailbox. As she finished the first paragraph she stopped in her tracks, unable to focus because of the tears in her eyes. After a few seconds, she lifted her head toward the perfect sky and, for a brief, wonderful moment, she could hear her son singing his favorite song.
In the house, she put the mail down and called her husband at the store where he worked to tell him what had just arrived. At first, he was speechless, trying awkwardly to collect his emotions and having some difficulty.
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"Read it to me," the husband said.
She spoke softly and slowly, savoring each word. When she finished, neither said anything for a long time until, finally, the husband declared: "There really is a God."
Eighteen months ago, they were living at Children's Hospital in Boston. Their nine-year-old son had been diagnosed with cancer. As if that weren't enough, the father had just been laid off by a high-tech company that was surviving only by "downsizing," a 1990s word for unemployment. Like many people affected by such management decisions, the layoff was an economic death sentence to the household. His wife was a library clerk. In addition to their son, there were three other children, girls ages seven, five and two.
Cancer is the most vicious of diseases, consuming the cells of a victim's body without discrimination. It has no conscience either, striking the very young and the very innocent as well as those much older who at least have managed to see and taste a larger slice of life.
Day after day, both parents took turns at the hospital with their sick boy. The doctors and nurses were wonderful and heroic as they managed to evoke smiles and optimism from those so wounded by the bitter reality of their illness.
Their son struck up a friendship with another boy on the floor, a 10-year-old wholike himloved baseball. And on those dreamy summer nights when the Olde Towne Team was home, the two of them sat by a window on an upper floor in a hospital ward and listened to games on the radio as they looked at the lights of the ballpark off in the distance, washing across the July sky like some brilliant Milky Way all their own.
These two sick children became thick as thieves, joined by their passion for the Red Sox along with the anchor of their cancer. Naturally, their parents became friends, too.
The other boy was from Connecticut. His parents were
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trust-fund wealthy, but even their affluence could not insulate them from the cargo of grief that attaches itself to anyone with a wounded child.
So, this boy's mother and father were deeply touched when the parents of the nine-year-old presented both boys with Red Sox jackets and two baseballs signed by Mo Vaughn.
We are a land of baseball and miracles and progress, but none of it can impede the nearly inevitable curse of cancer. And so it was that the nine-year-old died on a clear, crisp fall day when his favorite game had long fallen silent from a strike. The combination of hospitalization and unemployment had nearly bankrupted the family, yet they had to fight on for their three surviving children.
But every day was like carrying a load of bricks up some steep, never-ending hill. The only job the father found was at a variety store while his wife simply could not return to work. And on the morning she stopped in her tracks, letter in hand, their home was on the verge of foreclosure as she read that first paragraph.
We will never forget the kindness you showed our son at Children's. God moves in mysterious ways. We are so fortunate. Our son is doing well. We heard about your difficulty from a nurse and want you to accept what we have sent. Your son gave a lot to our son. We think about him every day and we still hear his beautiful voice singing his favorite song, "The Star Spangled Banner," when we watch the Red Sox. You gave to us. Now it is time for our family to give in return. May God bless you.
They had enclosed $10,000. It is the kind of generous gesture, one wounded couple to another, forged forever at the edge of a gentle sadness.
Mike Barnicle
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Hope in a Bottle
They say a person needs just these things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for.
Tom Bodett
I truly believe everyone in their lifetime comes face-to-face with a bit of magic. It's the kind of magic that reminds you of one single word that can be easily forgottenhope.
One blustery 1992 day as I walked along the shoreline, I watched waves roll in from a spate of thunderstorms. Trash lined the shore, along with large mounds of seaweed.
I don't know what made it catch my eye. But atop those smelly mounds, a large Canadian Club bottle was perched upright. Inside, I spotted a piece of papera damp slip curled with lettering on it. I clutched the bottle under my arm and got the message out. It said: Return to E. L. Cannon, Hollywood, Florida,
with a note and your address and receive $20.00 U.S.
I wrote to one E. L. Cannon and learned that he and his wife had tossed the bottle from a cruise ship about 100 miles off Los Angeles after coming up from the Panama
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Canal. Soon my husband, Jim and I became pen pals with Ed and Mary, who turned out to be delightful, retired world travelers who regularly cruised the planet. To this day, although they are in their 80s, I still have images of them dancing across the ship's deck.
We began exchanging short letters. During this time, I read a magazine article and grew intrigued by the country of Belize. I dreamed about its lush tropical jungles, its jaguars, its hundreds of palm-lined caysislandspeppered inside the second longest barrier reef in the world. I liked that some of the country's descendants had come from a line of British and Scottish pirates, who once hid among the cays that laced the aqua-green Caribbean. I shared my dream with Jim, and we decided to go the next year. We collected information and saved money. On a lark, I wrote the Cannons and asked if they'd been there.
In response, a huge envelope arrived and out fell a pile of photos: Mary and Ed standing on a pier in San Pedro, Ambergris Cay, the largest island. Mary posing proudly with their fishing guide, Luz, who was holding up a giant barracuda. The Cannons had been visiting San Pedro three times a year for more than two decades. This seemed so ironic that we agreed Belize would be the perfect place to meet. We planned our trip for February, and decided to meet at the only hotel where the Cannons stayed because its Mayan owner Celi was like a daughter.
Meeting absolute strangers in this way seemed remarkable, but that's only the beginning. In late March, I drove home from my reporting job when I noticed a cloud fogging my right eye. I lost about 25 percent of my vision. By week's end, I was totally blind in that eye. My vision returned in a few days, but in mid-June, after some tests, the doctors delivered the news that I had multiple sclerosis. This neurological disease is unpredictable and affects each individual so differently, anything could happen
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from tingling to numbness, from blindness to total paralysis. No person reacts the same way to MS, an illness that's like a short-circuit to the brain.
I went into a tailspinbecame angry, depressed and moody. I was exhausted every day. I dragged myself to work and quit writing the Cannons. I decided not to go to Belize. We hadn't saved enough money, anyway. Four months went by, and finally, I responded to some of the Cannons' letters. I told them about the multiple sclerosis and that we wouldn't join them after all.
Then came a cold and unforgettable November night. When I came home, I smelled the familiar aroma of garlic and vegetables, and Jim was cooking. I was feeling pretty miserable when I spotted a yellow envelope on the table. Jim looked up from the stove with a large smile and said: ''Read it."
Dear Diana and Jim:
We received your letter the day we left for Florida and we were very sorry to hear about your illness. . . . It so happens we have a niece who has a travel agency in a suburb of Cleveland, and she has arranged for two round-trip tickets from Los Angeles to San Pedro (Ambergris Cay, Belize) for you. They will be freeno chargeand will be just the medicine you need: a week or so in San Pedro, Belize.
Congratulations! You haw won the San Pedro lotto!
I looked at my husband. "Let's go!" he shouted happily. But somehow, I just couldn't accept such a gesture. I was raised to give, not take. We agreed I would talk to my father because we were close and he always gave good advice. The prospect of talking to him, however, made us cringe. We knew the trip was doomed. My father was a man who loved to give to people, but whose pride
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wouldn't allow him to accept such an offer.
But my father said, "The Cannons wanted to do this or they would never have offered. You should go and consider it one of the greatest gifts anybody has ever given you." I was stunned. What he said was so true. This was a gifta gift of hope.
And it became one that I would cling to and remember for the rest of my life. Two months before our trip, five days before Christmas, my father died. It was two days after the last time I saw him, and again, I was swallowed by a deep depression. The only thing I had left in my life, I believed, was the gift.
When we arrived in the sandy streets of San Pedro, we met the Cannons on the hotel porch they call "Happy Corner." Eddie and I listened to the waves as they roared over the reef. I talked about my father, and he talked about his. I was in the right place for healingsurrounded by an emerald sea where I would snorkel for the first time in my life and see the ocean's underwater treasures: deep caverns, fish of brilliant colors, seahorses and schools of squid.
Eddie told me something he lived by: "In this life, always give yourself something to look forward to."
And I have been doing that ever since. In 1995, we returned to the island for a reunion with the Cannons. We shared the bottle story with other tourists who came to "Happy Corner" and toasted the Cannons.
When we arrived home, we received letters from everyone we met. They all wanted to remember the bottle story. I can't thank the Cannons enough.
Their message in a bottle had returned my hope. And still does to this day.
Diana L. Chapman
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The Code of the Road
Blessed are those that can give without remembering and take without forgetting.
Elizabeth Bibesco
As the daughter of a truck driver and a secretary, I grew up knowing my mother far better than my father. As a young child I was "Daddy's little girl," but then I hit those teen years and my relationship with my father no longer existed. He had spent most of my life on the road, leaving before 4:00 A.M. and arriving home well after my bedtime. By the time I was old enough to stay up past 9:00 P.M., I was no longer Daddy's little girl, I was a teenager. Now we were strangersI didn't know him and he couldn't have known me. It was almost as if one day he went out on the truck, and, when he returned, I was 13. It took me years to understand that he had no idea what to do with me. He didn't know how to handle a teenage girl with crazed hormones and a big mouth. The little girl who adored her daddy was replaced by a horrendous teen who liked nothing better than to have the last word in every argument. And so began a lesson I will never forget . . .
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I was a rebellious teenager with big dreams and an open mind. During the hardest parts of my life, I believe my mother sustained me. When she attempted to guide me, of course I fought every inch of the way. But she never let goshe held on for dear life, and finally I outgrew those raging hormones and outrageous behaviors. It was during this time that I learned an important lesson from my father. A lesson of strength, love, honesty and kindness.
One evening he returned from another day on the truck, probably delivering cargo to Brooklyn, the Bronx, Harlem or Philadelphia. He told us how that afternoon he was on the highway and saw a woman opening her trunk to take out a spare tire. He stopped, introduced himself and proceeded to take over the task of changing the blown-out tire. While he jacked up the car, the woman told him how grateful she was for his kindness. She said people's fear of crime in urban areas often dissuade local people from stopping to help one another. When Dad finished changing the tire and returning all of the equipment to the trunk of her car, she offered him a $20 bill for his help. He smiled at her and said, "No need. I have a wife and a daughter who just started driving, and my only hope is that if ever one of them breaks down on the side of the road, someone honest and friendly will stop and do for them what I just did for you." He said good-bye and headed back to the 18-wheeler he had left with its motor running on the shoulder of the road.