One day, however, looking for a jar in which to pour leftover iced tea, I found myself probing deep into the wilderness of the overstuffed, airless pantry. Into the land of the old-fashioned, the outmoded, the outdated. The humble and the obsolete. There was a smoothing iron, a churn. A butter press. And two large bowls.
One was cream and rose with a blue stripe. The other was a deep, vivid blue.
“May I have this bowl, Mama?” I asked, looking at her and at the blue bowl with delight.
“You can have both of them,” she said, barely acknowledging them, and continuing to put leftover food away.
In giving me these gifts, my mother had done a number of astonishing things in her typically offhand way. She had taught me a lesson about letting go of possessions— easily, without emphasis or regret—and she had given me a symbol of what she herself represented in my life.
For the blue bowl especially was a cauldron of memories. Of cold, harsh wintry days, when my brothers and sister and I trudged home from school burdened down by the silence and frigidity of our long trek from the main road, down the hill to our shabby-looking house.
Slogging through sleet and wind to the sagging front door, thankful our house was too far from the road to be seen clearly from the school bus, I always felt a wave of embarrassment and misery. But then I would open the door. And there inside would be my mother’s winter flowers: a glowing fire in the fireplace, colorful handmade quilts on all our beds, paintings and drawings of flowers and fruits and, most of all, there in the center of the rough-hewn table, stood the big blue bowl, full of whatever was the most tasty thing on earth.
There was my mother herself. Glowing. Her teeth sparkling. Her eyes twinkling. As if she lived in a castle and her favorite princes and princesses had just dropped by to visit.
A blue bowl stood there, seemingly full forever, no matter how deeply or rapaciously we dipped, as if it had no bottom. And she dipped up soup. Dipped up lima beans. Dipped up stew. Forked out potatoes. Spooned out rice and peas and corn. And in the light and warmth that was her, we dined.
Alice Walker
Always Believe in Miracles
Where there is great love there are always miracles.
Willa Cather
The year was 1924, and it was a few days before Christmas. Outside, a blinding snowstorm raged around the typical city row house into which my family had moved from the country only two months earlier. We hadn’t yet become acquainted with any of our new neighbors.
I didn’t see the snowflakes making frosty designs on my window, nor was I aware of my mother’s lonely vigil by my bedside. I was a little girl of five, deep in a feverish coma, and had the only case of the dreaded diphtheria in Philadelphia.
Two weeks earlier, my illness had been diagnosed by the neighborhood’s family doctor, whose office was a well-worn room in the basement of his home at the corner of the block. Immediately, my father and older sister had been given shots of antitoxin and shipped off to relatives until the danger passed. My mother, refusing to trust her child to a strange hospital, in a strange city, stayed behind to nurse me at home.
The city posted yellow warning signs on our front and back doors announcing a contagious disease. To make doubly sure no one other than the doctor approached, a policeman stood guard, twenty-four hours a day, outside each door. It was also their duty to see that my mother remained inside. Mail was laid on the doorstep, and the officer would tap on the door, then move back some distance to see that my mother opened the door only a crack and quickly took the mail inside.
In those days, Christmas shopping didn’t begin in October, nor were toys given in the abundance popular today. A week or so before was time enough to prepare, and the tree was to be decorated by Santa Claus when he came on Christmas Eve. This year, in my family, it was different. With the sudden onset of diphtheria, no thought had been given to Christmas. My getting well was all that mattered.
Late in the afternoon of December twenty-third, the policeman tapped on the door. There was a letter on the stoop from my mother’s sister. She was Catholic, and she’d enclosed a small bag of medals with her letter. “I can’t be with you,” she wrote, “but I want to help. My priest has blessed these medals. The bag is never to be opened, just pin it on your little girl’s nightgown and believe.”
My mother, willing to try anything, pinned the medals to my gown, but with little hope, as she looked down at my drawn cheeks and proceeded to apply cool compresses to my forehead. My eyes remained closed. During his visit, the doctor’s face was grave, and he only shook his head sadly before taking his leave.
Late the next afternoon, my mother heard a faint call. Rushing into my room, she burst into tears of joy. The fever had broken and my eyes were open! Uncomprehending but overcome with gratitude, she fell to her knees and hugged me, but her relief was suddenly shattered when my first words were, “Mama, it’s Christmas Eve. What is Santa going to bring me?”
“No, no!” she cried. “Honey, you’ve been sick a long time, but it isn’t Christmas Eve yet.” But try as she might, she could not persuade me to think otherwise, and I fell asleep that night with sugarplums dancing in my head.
Downstairs, my mother was frantic. She told me years later how she even considered putting on some of my father’s clothing and trying to sneak out to the corner store to get me a few toys, but of course she didn’t. Come morning, all she could do was hope to convince me that Christmas was yet to arrive.
Christmas morning came, and I awoke with the usual childish anticipation. My mother, exhausted with heartache, was still half-asleep when the policeman gave his familiar tap on the door. Wearily, my mother opened it, and then gasped in surprise. On the doorstep was a large country basket filled with a Christmas dinner for two and an assortment of toys for a five-year-old girl. My mother’s eyes silently questioned the policeman, but he only smiled and shrugged his shoulders. There was no answer there. Where had this spirit of Christmas come from? Would she ever know?
I recovered fully, unaware that two miracles had occurred that Christmas. My father and sister returned, and we settled into life in the city. As the years passed, my mother made a lasting friendship with one neighbor in particular, a friendly Irish woman and busy mother of six. Although they were close friends for years, it was only much later that my mother finally discovered the secret of the second Christmas miracle. Her friend with the thick, Irish brogue and smiling eyes—at the time a complete stranger—was the one who had understood, as a mother, the awful predicament my mother faced and cared enough to leave that wonderful Christmas basket on our doorstep. Thanks to her, I still believe in Santa Claus! You just have to know where to look for him.
Gerrie Edwards
Love on Trial
A story is told about Fiorello LaGuardia, who, when he was mayor of New York City during the worst days of the Great Depression and all of World War II, was called by adoring New Yorkers the “Little Flower” because he was only five foot four and always wore a carnation in his lapel. He was a colorful character who used to ride the New York City fire trucks, raid speakeasies with the police department, take entire orphanages to baseball games, and whenever the New York newspapers were on strike, he would go on the radio and read the Sunday funnies to the kids.
One bitterly cold night in January of 1935, the mayor turned up at a night court that served the poorest ward of the city. LaGuardia dismissed the judge for the evening and took over the bench himself. Within a few minutes, a tattered old woman was brought before him, charged with stealing a loaf of bread. She told LaGuardia that her daughter’s husband had deserted her, her daughter was sick, and her two grandchildren were starving. But the shopkeeper, from whom the bread was stolen, refused to drop the charges.
“It’s a real bad neighborhood, Your Honor,” the man told the mayor. “She’s got to be punished to teach other people around here a lesson.”
LaGuardia sighed. He turned to the woman and said, “I’ve got to punish you. The law ma
kes no exceptions— ten dollars or ten days in jail.” But even as he pronounced sentence, the mayor was already reaching into his pocket. He extracted a bill and tossed it into his famous sombrero, saying: “Here is the ten-dollar fine, which I now remit; and furthermore, I am going to fine everyone in this courtroom fifty cents for living in a town where a person has to steal bread so that her grandchildren can eat. Mr. Bailiff, collect the fines and give them to the defendant.”
So the following day the New York City newspapers reported that $47.50 was turned over to a bewildered old lady who had stolen a loaf of bread to feed her starving grandchildren, fifty cents of that amount being contributed by the red-faced grocery-store owner, while some seventy petty criminals, people with traffic violations and New York City policemen, each of whom had just paid fifty cents for the privilege of doing so, gave the mayor a standing ovation.
James N. McCutcheon
2
A MOTHER’S
COURAGE
A mother’s love perceives no impossibilities.
Paddock
My Mother’s Strength
The doctors told me I would never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.
Wilma Rudolph
When I was just fourteen, I watched my mother age ten years in a sickly green hospital room. It was cancer, and I knew it was bad because although I had seen my mother bear many crosses in her life, I had never seen her face look so drawn, tired and hopeless.
For my mother, though, this cancer was more than another cross to bear. She believed she was watching me, her youngest daughter, die.
Through the glass walls of my hospital room I could see the doctor and my mother. As the young resident started talking, my mother’s head fell back, and tears started streaming down her face. Her arms flailed in despair.
When she walked into my hospital room with the doctor, she looked like she had just been dealt the knockout blow of her life. Her eyes stared pleadingly at the doctor. She wanted me to know—I had that right—but she just couldn’t be the one to tell me.
And when the doctor sat on the side of the bed and put his cold, clammy hand on my arm, I knew I was really, really sick. But it was when I looked over at my mother’s face—which had gone from a youthful, smiling one with dancing eyes to the haggard, lackluster one before me— that I knew I was dying.
It was Hodgkin’s disease. My fourteen-year-old body was riddled with cancerous tumors. The doctor sugarcoated nothing. He told me of the incredible pain I would endure. He told me of the weight I would lose and all the hair that would fall out. The doctors would try to shrink the existing tumors with chemotherapy and radiation therapy, but that was no guarantee. There was the very good chance that I would never turn fifteen.
My head fell back on the pillow, and I closed my eyes. I wanted to shut it all out and run away. When the doctor left the room, I wanted to believe that all the ugliness was walking out the door with him. Maybe, I thought, when I opened my eyes, my mother’s face would look young again, and we could go home and bake one of my infamous lopsided cakes.
Instead, when I opened my eyes, my mother, sitting beside me, took my hand, pursed her lips and said determinedly, “We’ll get through this.”
During my stay at the hospital, my mother arrived in my room every morning and stayed there until the last seconds of the last visiting hour at night. For most of the day no words passed between us except for the occasional, “Pat, you should eat something.” I spent my days staring out of the window while my mother sat and read or watched television. There was absolutely no pressure to talk about the situation. It wasn’t profound words of support and love that entwined our souls. It was simply my mother letting me be.
Three weeks later, on the morning I was to be released from the hospital, my mother brought me my favorite bell-bottom jeans, tie-dyed blouse and earth shoes. Seeing them perked me up like no medication in that entire hospital could. I couldn’t wait to wear them.
My mother drew the curtains, and I, like any other clothes-crazy teenager, dressed with great glee. When I pulled up the jeans and buttoned them, I could tell right away that they were not mine. They couldn’t be, because they fell off the once rounded hips they used to hug so nicely. I was incredulous. In the hospital gown I hadn’t noticed the ravages of illness.
I yelled at my mother as though it was her fault. “You brought the wrong jeans! These are too big!” I screamed.
My mother just walked out of the room and went out to the nurse’s station, returning immediately with two safety pins. “Look,” she said, “it will be all right. All we have to do is pin them up here in the back. Your top will cover them.”
“No, I don’t want to pin them. I want them to fit right,”
I sulked, and folding my arms, sat on the bed and cried to the wall.
When I finally looked over at my mother, her eyes boring into mine, I realized that I had to pin my pants. Without saying a word, she was telling me: No matter how much you pout, cry and stomp like a mule, these pants are not going to fit right without these pins. You are sick. Your body is not the same. You have to accept this.
It was then that I learned to compromise with my mother, and with a force larger than myself—a force I could not see, or hear, or touch, but a force that nonetheless had taken control of my life.
Though I left the hospital knowing the doctors believed that I would only return to die, none of it ever felt completely real. My body was disintegrating, I could barely walk and I couldn’t keep food down, but death felt as far away from me as grandmotherhood. I don’t know why I had this feeling. Maybe it was because my fourteen-year-old mind couldn’t grasp the concept of mortality, or perhaps I felt something telling me that this wasn’t going to be the end.
I quickly slipped into the normalness of everyday life at home, surrounded by my mother and my sisters. And my mother and I, in the face of my illness, discovered a special way of being together.
We knew what was destroying my body, but we never said the words cancer or death. Still, on a day when I was too weak even to feed myself, I looked up at my mother as she was feeding me some mashed food, and something in me felt that one, if not both, of those words needed to be spoken.
“Mommy,” I finally said after about the third swallow, “am I really going to die?”
My mother dropped the bowl of food, spilling it all over me and broke into uncontrollable tears that would not stop, no matter how hard I pleaded with her.
I was frozen with fear. I couldn’t take back what I had said. Besides, I really wanted to know. If my mother would just confirm it one way or another, whatever she said would be what was real.
Finally, she looked up at me and said, “My baby is not going to die. Do you hear me? I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. Do you hear me?”
I heard her. I never said it again. I simply went about the business of fighting for my life.
Yet as my body withered to eighty-two pounds and my hair fell out, I could see how helpless my mother felt. Her hair grew grayer. She even matched me, pound for pound, with the weight she lost. And yet, it was her strength that jump-started my will to make my frail body walk instead of ride in a wheelchair. It was her strength that helped me walk into school wearing a wig amidst stares and whispers from pretty, healthy-bodied girls. And it was her strength that made me see that in the larger picture, those stares and whispers didn’t mean a thing.
More than a year went by before I finally went into remission. When the doctor called my mother and me into his office after the last chemotherapy treatment, we didn’t know what to expect. Somehow, though, we knew we didn’t need to expect the worst. He went through a longwinded dissertation about shrunken tumors and good cell counts before he told us, essentially, that I was in remission.
My mother and I didn’t cry tears of joy. We didn’t get swept up in a whirl of happiness and giddiness, hugging the stuffing out of each other. We just smiled and squeezed each other’s ha
nds. The doctor was really only telling us something that we already knew: that I was not going to die.
Patricia Jones
Learning to Say Hello
Each handicap is like a hurdle in a steeplechase, and when you ride up to it, if you throw your heart over, the horse will go along too.
Lawrence Bixby
It was December 1986. As I looked out the window of Chicago’s O’Hare International terminal, the sunlight seemed unusually bright and warm. This helped to soothe me and remove some of my anxiety. The precious passengers on Northwest Airlines Flight 517, Korean babies who had been adopted by American couples, had just begun to deplane. I watched with awe and anticipation as, one by one, blanketed bundles with little black tufts of hair peeking out were carried closer and closer to the door. I knew that one of those little bundles was mine—my daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Hee-Jin. Sarah had spent ten of her eleven months of life in an orphanage. When I heard my name called, I panicked. What right do I have to mother this little girl? What can I, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian, offer this orphaned Asian child? Dear God, what was I thinking when I decided to adopt Sarah? I wanted to hide, but people were crowding around me. And then I saw her. She was pathetically thin, dehydrated and obviously frightened and confused, but there was something about her that was beautiful. I fell in love with her as she laid her tiny head against my breast, closed her black eyes and fell asleep in my arms.
A full year passed, during which time I poured my entire being into this little girl’s emaciated body and neglected soul. I adored each of my other children, yet my love for this little one was a new experience, far beyond anything I had felt before. It was inexplicable. But my love was not blind. I could see something was not right. She was not developing: Her eyes did not connect with people or with things in her environment, her motor skills were minimal for a two-year-old, and she wasn’t babbling or making any attempt to speak.