Well, the crazy man did not give up, just as he promised. He kept coming back and finally, mom gave in to his handsome ways. They went on a date a few days later, and on a beautiful day in April my mother married Duke. He became Dad to Brenda, Denese, Ruth, Johnny, Jody and me. He would never allow anyone to refer to us as his stepchildren. We were his children, and he was adored by our entire family.
He was such a positive influence for us. I can’t recall ever hearing him say anything derogatory about anyone. He encouraged us to believe in ourselves and that we could accomplish anything we desired or dreamed of achieving. “Just set your goals and go for it!” he would tell us. He took real good care of my mom and all of us.
A few years later, Dad started having some problems, so he made a doctor’s appointment to have a biopsy done on his throat. The results were not good—Dad had throat cancer. His prognosis was maybe six months. The doctors had to insert a feeding tube into his stomach, and he would never be able to eat or drink again. He would never again be able to have his cup of coffee in the mornings as he sat and watched the birds playing on the many feeders that he’d made for them.
A couple of weeks passed, and we noticed Dad getting weaker—he was sleeping all the time. Dad was giving up, and we had to encourage him to fight. My sisters and I took turns feeding him, and we had to give him morphine around the clock for the pain. Our emotions were like a roller coaster—we wanted to cry, but we couldn’t. We had to stay strong for Dad and Mom.
Early one morning, I slipped into Dad’s room and sat down beside him. I started singing, “Good morning to you, good morning to you. Good morning, dear Dad, good morning to you.”
He smiled weakly and sang, “Good morning, dear daughter.”
I took his hand in mine and whispered, “Do you remember singing this song to me when I was a little girl?” And I sang to him the song about the rubber tree and the ant that had high hopes. It was the song he sang to us whenever we were having a difficult time. He nodded and smiled up at me.
In April, my sister and I were giving Dad a bath. Dad turned his head and said, “Pam?”
I whispered through a broken voice, “Yes, Dad. I’m here.”
He said, “Thank you for finding me that day. I didn’t know I was lost until you found me.”
I laid my head on his chest and as tears fell from my eyes, I said, “Oh, Dad. It was you that found us.”
Dad held on until the next morning. His wife and all six of his children were by his bed. I held Dad’s hand. The room was crowded as Dad slipped away to heaven.
I will always remember the first day I saw him. He didn’t just happen to be at that store. I know in my heart that God had placed Duke right where we needed him the most. My dad had seen a woman with six children, and he had fallen in love with all of us. He said, “I’ll do whatever it takes to take care of them,” and he kept his promise. Dad never thought of himself, only of those he loved. He filled the gap for the children who had always longed to have a loving daddy.
The other day when I was getting a little discouraged, I found myself humming the song about the ant. And when I got to the chorus, I swear I thought I heard Dad singing, “. . . because, he’s got high hopes.”
Pamela D. Hamalainen
God on Her Side
God will help you if you try, and you can if you think you can.
Anna Delaney Peale
I was only five years old. People think that children don’t remember things from such an early age, but when I live to be 100 I will remember that day as if it were yesterday.
It seemed like we were sitting for hours in the emergency room, waiting for our turn to see the doctor. It has been my mother and me for as long as I can remember. My father and mother separated when I was a baby. I don’t like doctors or hospitals much, so my mom did her best to keep me happy and occupied while we waited. She did a good job of hiding how very awful she felt. We sang and played little games. She had called my grandparents, and they were on their way, but they were delayed in traffic.
Finally they called my mother’s name, and we were taken to a small bed with curtains all around it. The nurse asked my mother to change into a gown and to lie down. After she lay down, I quickly jumped on her tummy and straddled her with a leg on each side. We continued to sing and play our games while we waited for the doctor. Mom had had pants on before she was asked to change, but now with the hospital gown on, her leg could be seen, but I could not see it because I was looking into her face.
When the doctor finally came, he opened the curtain. I did not see his face; he was not there long enough for me to even turn my head. He said, “Oh my god!” Then he closed the curtain and left. A few moments later, he returned with not one, but five doctors. I will always remember the looks on their faces. It was a look of extreme terror. Then came the next words, “You have a flesh-eating disease, and unless we cut off your leg in the next ten minutes, you will die.” Then they closed the curtain and left just as fast as they had appeared.
My mother tried her best to change the subject. She asked me about school, my friends, my cat. I wanted to be brave for Mommy, but I couldn’t. The tears started coming faster and faster, and I could not control them.
When my grandparents arrived a few minutes later, they thought at first that something had happened to me, because when they opened the curtain I was crying and my mother was trying her best to comfort me. Now that I am older, I wonder how in the world she managed to comfort me, when her whole world was crashing in around her.
The nurse asked my grandparents to take me away from my mother, and the three of us left her and went to a private waiting area. All I could think about was how the doctor said my mother could die in ten minutes. I know every child thinks his or her mother is special, but mine is especially so. Ever since I had been born, we had spent every moment we could together. My mother has two artificial hips and has a hard time doing things, but that has never stopped her. She just figured out how she can do things in a different way, even if it meant she went to bed in pain. She never wanted to let me down. I know that now—I didn’t know that then. She was my rock, my hero, my champion, my best friend, and I was terrified that she was going to die.
The doctors came into the little room where the nurse had put us, to explain the situation to my grandparents and to ask my grandparents to talk to my mother. She had given them permission to take out the part of the leg that was infected, but they were not allowed to cut her leg off. The doctors told my grandparents that this would not be enough and that she would die that night if they were not allowed to cut off the entire leg at the hip. This all seemed liked a dream. Again, in front of me, they said the same thing, “Your daughter is going to die if we do not cut off her leg.” My grandparents had a lot of questions, but the doctor said there wasn’t enough time to answer them. They were already preparing my mother for surgery.
I thought back to the day before, when my mother had been outside with me. We played hide and seek with our duck, Crackers. Crackers loved to hide, and when we found her, she would quack and quack and quack. It was May, and the weather was beautiful in California where we lived. We were in the process of repainting our entire home inside. I helped paint each room with a roller. We wanted to make it our home; a place that the two of us created with love. She had been fine all that day. What had happened? I only knew that she got a high fever, and it did not go away. She had not shown me her leg, swollen all over with bright red spots and one big bump with a big white circle on the top. I only caught sight of it as the nurse was taking me from her lap.
My grandparents told the doctor that they could not help him. My mother was forty-one years old, and they could not make her cut her leg off if she did not want to. I did not understand this as a five year old. They were her parents. Why couldn’t they tell her what to do? She always told me to do what was right. Why couldn’t they tell her what was right? I just wanted her to live. I wanted my mommy.
Before she was t
aken to the operating room,my mommy insisted she see me. Instead of being worried about herself, she was worried about me. She was angry with the doctors for saying she was going to die while I was right there on her lap. She wanted to see me to tell me something before she went in for the surgery.
So the nurse came to get me but asked my grandparents to stay behind. There I was, holding the hand of a stranger, going down what seemed to be the longest hall in the world. There were no other beds in the hall. Just one. And on it was my mother. She greeted me with a big smile. There were no tears in her eyes or on her face. She asked the nurse to pick me up and put me on her chest. I remember that the nurse said no. But my mother insisted. There I lay, on top of my mother. I could feel her heart beating. I could smell her smell, the one I had always known. It was comforting.
She looked me straight in the eyes and told me these special words. “I have told you before, Ashleigh, that you are my gift from God.” She had told me the story since the day I was born. My mother was told that she could never have children. She had had a condition called endometriosis, and she had had many surgeries due to complications from the condition. Her doctor told her she could never have children, but she wanted me so very badly. On the night I was conceived, she said a prayer over and over to God, begging him for the chance to be a mother. When her cycle did not come, she called her doctor and asked for a blood test, but he refused. He said she could not possibly be pregnant and told her it was a “hysterical pregnancy.” He explained that he thought it was because she wanted me so badly, she just had the symptoms of being pregnant. Another month went by and my mother took a home pregnancy test. She said it seemed like forever before the results showed in the window of the test stick (she still has the stick, framed on the wall). It said she was pregnant! Again she called her doctor. He still refused to do the blood test. Another month went by and finally the doctor agreed to see her. He did not want to perform a blood test for her though, because he was sure that she was not pregnant. Instead he did an exam. My mother said the look on his face was priceless. He said, “I don’t know how you did it, but you are indeed pregnant!” My mother promptly told him she had prayed for me.
So there I was, lying on my mother, feeling calm but not really understanding why. She used to say a prayer to me every night before we said our other prayers together. She said she heard it in the movie Yentel, and it had stayed with her. She recited the prayer to me again as we lay there together, in that long hallway with the nurse standing next to us. And then she told me, “Ashleigh, I don’t want you to worry. I am not going to have my leg cut off, and I am not going to die.”
“But, Mommy,” I remember saying, “the doctor said you would die unless he cuts it off.”
“He is a doctor, Ashleigh. He is not God. God gave you to me as a special gift. The doctor does not know that. But I know that God is not going to take me away from the special little girl he gave me. He knows you need me here right now. He can wait a little longer for me in heaven.”
The nurse was crying, but I wasn’t. My mother was right; we had God on our side. So from that very moment on, I was fine.
When, I returned to my grandparents, the doctors were still begging them to “talk some sense” into my mother.
My mother had told my grandparents, too, that God was not going to let her die. When the doctors left the room, you could tell that they were exasperated.
My mom was in surgery for hours, and my grandparents tried their best to keep me busy as we all waited. I know now that they must have been crazy with worry, but they didn’t show it to me. We went to the cafeteria where I had some ice cream, and we waited and waited . . . and waited.
Finally, one of the doctors appeared in the little waiting room. He told us that the surgery was over. They did not cut off her leg, although they had to take a lot out of the front of it.
It has been six years now since that day. On the wall in our house is a paper. The paper reads, “We told her we had to cut off her leg or she would die. The patient states that God would not let this happen.” My mother and I smile each time she walks past that paper, on her own two legs. We even smile as we look at the scar on the front of her leg that also serves as a reminder. A reminder to us of a gift from God—me—and how important he knew it was for me and my mom to be together a little while longer.
Ashleigh Figler-Ehrlich, 11
Miracle Babies
Iknow not by what methods rare, but this I know: God answers prayer. I leave my prayer to Him alone whose will is wiser than my own.
Eliza M. Hickok
My Aunt Raquel and I have always had a special connection. Every time I visit her and my Uncle Tony, she has something to talk to me about or to ask my sister and me. When I’m around her, she brings such a glow to my heart. She always has that way of making me smile because she is such a fun-loving person. I have never been around her when she didn’t smile or wasn’t in a cheerful mood.
After getting married to my mom’s brother Tony, my aunt’s dream was to start a family together. But then my aunt was diagnosed with cervical cancer at the age of twenty-six , and everyone was devastated by the thought that she might never have a chance of having children.
After some treatments and the doctor’s hard work for a couple of months, my Aunt Raquel was cancer free. We were all happy that she would have a chance of having a baby. And before long, she became pregnant with not just one baby, but two!
The months passed quickly, and it was coming to the sixth month of her pregnancy when suddenly, the unthinkable happened! My aunt went into labor. The doctors couldn’t stop the delivery from happening, so my first cousin, Brianne, was born weighing one pound, six ounces. My second cousin, Brooke, was born weighing one pound, two ounces. After being delivered, the girls were put in incubators and rushed to the nearest children’s hospital.
My mom and grandma were there when my aunt had the girls, but I wasn’t. I had to stay home with my dad and wait for their phone calls to find out what was happening.
My mom finally called and said she couldn’t believe her eyes when she saw Brooke and Brianne in their incubators. She said she had never seen such little babies in her entire life.
Aunt Raquel and Uncle Tony had already been through so much. Now they had to worry about Brooke and Brianne. Brooke was pretty much okay. She really didn’t have any problems. But Brianne needed two brain surgeries. She had some bleeding in her brain, and she had holes in her heart. That meant she needed heart surgery.
Over the following three months, both girls remained in the hospital. As they were being cared for, they were pricked and poked at with shots and needles from IVs that left scars. Their stay in the hospital seemed like an eternity. My mom went up to see them about two or three times a month, and I would always beg her to let me go with her. Since I was only eight, there was no chance that I could go into the neonatal intensive care unit where they were. I would have to wait for the girls to come home.
Brooke was the first to get to come home. I can remember going to see her at my aunt and uncle’s house where she was still hooked up to the oxygen machine. Brianne came home about a week and a half after Brooke. She was also hooked up to an oxygen machine and had to stay on it longer than Brooke did. It was so scary to see them like that, but the thought of how much they had gone through made me realize that they were strong babies and deserved a chance in life.
There were times when their machines would sound an alarm, indicating that the girls had stopped breathing. Luckily though, they were all false alarms. My aunt and uncle always dreaded those times, but they got through them.
Many people in the community knew about Brooke and Brianne and they prayed and prayed for them. I think the whole town was reaching out to the girls in prayer. So, by the time the girls were home and settled in, they had become celebrities. The newspaper featured a story about them on the front page of the local news section. ABC News even did an interview with my uncle on Father’s Day when the girls w
ere in the hospital. The whole time they had their own fan club as well—our family.
Now healthy and full of life, the girls are five years old and are beautiful as can be. Brianne still has some difficulties with mild seizures every once in a while and has a slight case of cerebral palsy. Other than that, Brianne and Brooke act like normal everyday five year olds.
Currently, my aunt is teaching fifth grade, my uncle has his own business and my cousins are going to start kindergarten. They live on a ranch in the country, and the girls love taking care of their animals. With every new day, the girls have something to live for, and they are enjoying it! They will always hold a special place in my life and will always be miracle babies to me and to everyone else.
I once made a goal list when I was eleven. One of the goals was to witness a miracle. I believe I can cross that goal off my list now, because the girls were definitely a miracle as far as I am concerned.
As I mentioned, my aunt is such a special person. She has been an inspiration to me and always will be. Even though she has faced many obstacles in her short thirty-three years, she has an unbelievable faith and constantly reminds everyone of us to live well, laugh often and love much!
Stephanie Marquez, 12
The Perfect Brother
You had better live your best and act your best and think your best today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the other tomorrows that follow.
Harriet Martineau
I’ve never had a very good relationship with my nine-year-old brother, Geoff. We started fighting with each other just about as soon as he could talk. For some reason, we enjoyed tormenting each other, and it wasn’t a very good pastime. I still wonder why we fought at all, but I think he has a lot going on that I don’t know about. He gets angry very easily, so it’s hard to talk to him, much less play with him. It’s pretty frustrating sometimes. I used to tell him that I hated him and that I never wanted to see him again, but I stopped doing that after what happened just before Christmas last year.