“Well,” I told him, “it didn’t work. I didn’t smile.”
“Yes, you did,” he said. “You just had to be upside down to see it.” He was basically implicating that my frown had been turned upside down. He flashed me a smile and said goodnight, and I smiled all the way home.
After a year and a half at the Creamery, I decided I wanted to move on, so I wasn’t there the night it happened. On July 15, 1999, they had just finished closing and Kris was the only one behind the store when he got into his car around 11:00 P.M. He never made it out of the parking lot.
I was eating breakfast and watching the news the following morning. I listened with absolute terror as the reporter recounted the story. “A seventeen-year-old boy was the victim of a random act of violence last night. Two fifteen-year-old boys and a seventeen-year-old boy are in custody for what was appears to have been an attempted carjacking in Old Colorado City.” My heart stopped, my whole body went numb, and I knew even before his picture flashed on the screen and she said his name. “Kristopher Lohrmeyer died instantly from a single gunshot wound to the head.”
Something changed for me the night Kris died. I realized that nothing in our future is certain. The only thing I am ever going to have control over is my own attitude. And the most important thing I can do is to open my heart to everyone, just as Kris did to all of us. And it is because of him that I now know how to turn my own frowns upside down.
Jessie Williams
Sorrowful Lesson
The mall was overcrowded, shoppers rushed from store
to store;
Nobody paid attention, as she crouched there on the
floor.
She didn’t look in trouble, and she didn’t seem afraid;
Apparently, she stopped to rest, she did not need my aid.
A little girl of eight or nine, and cute as she could be,
I wondered, should I stop and ask, if she needs help from
me?
I wondered if her mother had just left her there alone,
I thought, as I walked by her, in my haste to get back
home.
As I left the mall, I could not get her off my mind.
Did that little girl need help? Was I just acting blind?
It bothered me so much, I had to go back in the mall;
I had to get this settled in my mind once and for all.
The mall began to close, I heard some chain doors coming
down,
But, as I looked, the little girl was nowhere to be found.
Is it my imagination, that again is running wild?
Thinking I had lost my chance to help this poor lost child.
I guess she must be fine or she would still be sitting here,
I get way too emotional at Christmastime each year.
I had to leave and get back home, where it is safe and
warm,
The weather forecast for that night, a chilling winter storm.
Late that night it happened, as the weather station said,
Frigid cold and heavy snow while I was snug in bed.
In the morning, I awoke to winter’s nasty caper,
The only place I’d go that day was out to get the paper.
Cozy in my kitchen, with my news and cup of tea,
But as I saw the front page, it just devastated me.
On the front page down below, a little headline read,
“At the local shopping mall, a little girl found dead.”
It was 4 A.M. this morning when police received the call,
The caller said a little girl was dead behind the mall.
It was the chilling elements that brought her close to death,
As she lay down, she fell asleep and breathed her final
breath.
I could not read the rest of it, as I began to weep,
While I slept safe, a little girl had frozen in her sleep.
Many years have passed me now, but it still haunts my
dreams;
Was the little girl they found the same one I had seen?
I can’t forget that little girl, no matter how I try,
But now when someone seems in need, I never pass
them by.
The lesson I have learned from this was difficult but true,
The last chance that someone may have could very well
be you.
James Kisner
Someone to Watch over Me
To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.
Pablo Neruda
“I’m off!” eighteen-year-old Charissa Harris sang. “I’m going to find something gorgeous to wear for graduation!”
Sandy Beard smiled at her daughter. She’s got her whole future ahead of her, Sandy thought. But that future would soon be in jeopardy—and fate would deliver the Garland, Texas, girl into the hands of an angel. . . .
The setting sun hung red in the sky as Charissa drove home. Suddenly, she felt a jolt from behind. “No!” she cried, as her car crashed into a tree—and her world went dark.
Riding up on his motorcycle, fifty-four-year-old Jack Hadlock saw a commotion. Several drivers had stopped when they saw the accident—but only Jack had taken first-aid classes for his job at Southwestern Bell. Now he thought, Maybe this is what they were for. He parked his bike and rushed toward the wreck.
When he got to the car, what he saw made him pale. A girl about the age of his twin sons was pinned between the car’s bucket seats, her neck pinched into her chest at a grotesque angle.
Quickly, Jack found her pulse. Then he put his ear to her mouth. She wasn’t breathing. I’ve got to clear her airway! he thought. Heart pounding, he gently straightened her neck. Suddenly, the girl coughed and began breathing.
“You’re going to be okay,” he whispered.
Fading in and out of consciousness, Charissa saw only a glimmer of light from her rescuer’s glasses. Who are you? she tried to say. Are you an angel?
Moments later, the paramedics arrived, and Jack helped them lift the girl into the ambulance.
At the hospital, doctors told Sandy that her daughter’s heart had stopped twice, her skull was fractured and her pelvis was broken. Now she lay in a coma. “If it weren’t for a man on the scene who cleared her airway, she would have died before she got here,” they added.
Why did this happen? Sandy wept. Why my baby?
The day after Charissa arrived at the hospital, a man was brought in to the bed across from hers. He’d been on a motorcycle, Sandy heard nurses say, when a car had swerved in front of him, forcing him into the barrier. They’d operated on his eye and knee.
“The strange thing is,” he told a nurse, “just yesterday I stopped to help a girl who’d been in a car accident. I wonder where that little girl is now. . . .”
The nurse’s hand flew to her mouth. “Mr. Hadlock,” she said, “there’s your little girl!”
Trembling, Sandy rose to her feet. So this was the man who had saved her daughter’s life.
“This is Jack Hadlock,” the nurse said. “He’s . . .”
“My hero!” Sandy cried.
Jack blushed. “I would have done the same for anybody,” he said.
“But you didn’t do it for anybody,” she cried. “You did it for my little girl!”
Eight days after his accident, Jack was released. But he couldn’t stop thinking about Charissa and called regularly to check on her.
Then one morning, Charissa awoke—she felt her mother’s hand and heard her father’s voice, but looking up, she made out only shadows . . . and glimmers of light. “The angel . . . ,” she murmured.
“Rest,” Sandy soothed. But as Charissa grew stronger, a doctor explained to her that she’d need therapy to walk.
“And my eyesight . . . ?”
A long silence. “I’m sorry,” the doctor finally said. “You may see light and colors, but . . .”
As Charissa burst into tears, her mother took her in her arm
s. “All that matters is that you’re alive!” Sandy cried. Then she told Charissa about Jack. “He’s been watching over you,” she said. “You’re not alone.”
Mom’s right, Charissa thought. I have so much to be grateful for.
Anxiously, she awaited Jack’s visit. What will I say? she fretted. But as Jack sat down by her bed, a familiar light danced off his gold-rimmed glasses. His gentle voice made her feel at ease—like she’d known him forever.
“Thank you for saving my life,” she choked.
Squeezing her hand, his eyes welled with emotion. “Get better, okay?” he said gruffly.
Charissa struggled to do just that. Mom was right, she thought. I’m not alone! And as the months went by, Jack comforted her and cheered her progress. He beamed when she managed to brush her hair or cut her steak herself. And when Charissa took her first steps in three months, he applauded.
“You said I’d do it!” she exulted.
Soon after, Charissa went home. Jack and his wife visited often, and one day, Charissa had a favor to ask. Her high school was holding a special graduation ceremony to replace the one she’d missed. “Jack, will you come with me?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he smiled.
And as the principal announced her name, Jack guided Charissa to the stage. The audience rose to its feet.
“Everyone loves you!” Jack reminded her.
Today, Charissa attends a combined college and rehab program in Austin. Once a week her phone rings, and a voice she’ll never forget asks, “How are things going, little girl?”
“Just fine, Jack,” she says. He’s still watching over me, she smiles. My angel.
Eva Unga
Excerpted from Woman’s World. ©1998 Eva Unga.
A House Is Not a Home
My first year of high school felt awkward. After leaving junior high at the head of my class with all the seniority the upper grade levels could afford me, it felt strange starting over as a freshman. The school was twice as big as my old school, and to make matters worse, my closest friends were sent to a different high school. I felt very isolated.
I missed my old teachers so much that I would go back and visit them. They would encourage me to get involved in school activities so that I could meet new people. They told me that in time I would adjust and probably end up loving my new school more than I had my old one. They made me promise that when that happened I would still come by and visit them from time to time. I understand the psychology in what they were saying, but I took some comfort in it nonetheless.
One Sunday afternoon not long after I had started high school, I was sitting at home at our dining-room table doing homework. It was a cold and windy fall day, and we had a fire going in our fireplace. As usual, my red tabby cat was lying on top of all my papers, purring loudly and occasionally swatting at my pen for entertainment’s sake. She was never far from me. I had rescued her when she was a kitten, and somehow she knew that I was the one responsible for giving her “the good life.”
My mother kept stoking the fire to keep the house nice and warm. Suddenly, I smelled something strange, and then I noticed it . . . smoke pouring in through the seams of the ceiling. The smoke began to fill the room so quickly that we could barely see. Groping our way to the front door, we all ran out into the front yard. By the time we made our way outside, the whole roof was engulfed in flames and it was spreading quickly. I ran to the neighbors to call the fire department, while I watched my mother run back into the house.
My mother then ran out of the house carrying a small metal box full of important documents. She dropped the case on the lawn and, in a crazed state, ran back into the house. I knew what she was after. My father had died when I was young, and I was certain that she was not going to let his pictures and letters go up in flames. They were the only things that she had to remember him by. Still I screamed at her, “Mom! No!”
I was about to run in after her when I felt a large hand hold me back. It was a fireman. I hadn’t even noticed that the street had already filled with fire trucks. I was trying to free myself from his grasp, yelling, “You don’t understand, my mother’s in there!”
He held on to me while other firefighters ran into the house. He knew that I wasn’t acting very coherently and that if he were to let go, I’d run. He was right.
“It’s all right, they’ll get her,” he said.
He wrapped a blanket around me and sat me down in our car. Soon after that, a fireman emerged from our house with my mom in tow. He quickly took her over to the truck and put an oxygen mask on her. I ran over and hugged her. All the times I ever argued with her and hated her vanished at the thought of losing her.
“She’s going to be okay,” said the fireman. “She just inhaled a little smoke.” And then he ran back to fight the fire while my mother and I sat there dazed. I remember watching my house burn down and thinking that there was nothing I could do about it.
Five hours later, the fire was finally out. Our house was almost completely burned down. But then it struck me . . . I hadn’t seen my cat. Where was my cat? Much to my horror, I realized that she was nowhere to be found. Then all at once it hit me—the new school, the fire, my cat—I broke down in tears and cried and cried. I was suffering loss, big time.
The firemen wouldn’t let us go back into the house that night. It was still too dangerous. Dead or alive, I couldn’t imagine leaving without knowing about my cat. Regardless, I had to go. We piled into the car with just the clothes on our backs and a few of the firemen’s blankets, and made our way to my grandparents’ house to spend the night.
The next day, Monday, I went to school. When the fire broke out, I was still wearing the dress I had worn to church that morning, but I had no shoes! I had kicked them off when I was doing my homework. They became yet another casualty of the fire. So I had to borrow some tennis shoes from my aunt. Why couldn’t I just stay home from school? My mother wouldn’t hear of it, but I was totally embarrassed by everything. The clothes I was wearing looked weird, I had no books or homework, and my backpack was gone. I had my life in that backpack! The more I tried to fit in, the worse it got. Was I destined to be an outcast and a geek all my life? That’s what it felt like. I didn’t want to grow up, change or have to handle life if it was going to be this way. I just wanted to curl up and die.
I walked around school like a zombie. Everything felt surreal, and I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. All the security I had known, from my old school, my friends, my house and my cat had all been ripped away.
When I walked through what used to be my house after school that day, I was shocked to see how much damage there was—whatever hadn’t burned was destroyed by the water and chemicals they had used to put out the fire. The only material things not destroyed were the photo albums, documents and some other personal items that my mother had managed to heroically rescue. But my cat was gone and my heart ached for her.
There was no time to grieve. My mother rushed me out of the house. We would have to find a place to live, and I would have to go buy some clothes for school. We had to borrow money from my grandparents because there were no credit cards, cash or even any identification to be able to withdraw money from the bank. Everything had gone up in smoke.
That week the rubble that used to be our house was being cleared off the lot. Even though we had rented an apartment nearby, I would go over to watch them clear away debris, hoping that my cat was somewhere to be found. She was gone. I kept thinking about her as that vulnerable little kitten. In the early morning when I would disturb her and get out of bed, she would tag along after me, climb up my robe and crawl into my pocket to fall asleep. I was missing her terribly.
It always seems that bad news spreads quickly, and in my case it was no different. Everyone in high school, including the teachers, was aware of my plight. I was embarrassed as if somehow I were responsible. What a way to start off at a new school! This was not the kind of attention I was looking for.
The next da
y at school, people were acting even more strange than usual. I was getting ready for gym class at my locker. People were milling around me, asking me to hurry up. I thought it strange, but in light of the past few weeks, nothing would surprise me. It almost seemed that they were trying to shove me into the gym—then I saw why. There was a big table set up with all kinds of “stuff” on it, just for me. They had taken up a collection and bought me school supplies, notebooks, all kinds of different clothes—jeans, tops, sweatsuits. It was like Christmas. I was overcome by emotion. People who had never spoken to me before were coming up to me to introduce themselves. I got all kinds of invitations to their houses. Their genuine outpouring of concern really touched me. In that instant, I finally breathed a sigh of relief and thought for the first time that things were going to be okay. I made friends that day.
A month later, I was at my house watching them rebuild it. But this time it was different—I wasn’t alone. I was with two of my new friends from school. It took a fire for me to stop focusing on my feelings of insecurity and open up to all the wonderful people around me. Now I was sitting there watching my house being rebuilt when I realized my life was doing the same thing.
While we sat there on the curb, planning my new bedroom, I heard someone walk up to me from behind and say, “Does this belong to you?” When I turned around to see who it was, I couldn’t believe my eyes. A woman was standing there holding my cat! I leapt up and grabbed her out of the woman’s arms. I held her close to me and cried into that beautiful orange fur. She purred happily. My friends were hugging me, hugging the cat and jumping around.