Chicken Soup Unsinkable Soul

  One day in the woods, we found a few tawny tufts of rabbit fur. Luke rolled it around with a sassafras twig. "This was Peter Rabbit," he said. "He was going home to

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  his house when a fox ate him up. He is in a fox now.''

  "But Peter Rabbit lives in the world of make-believe," I said, "and this was a real rabbit."

  "I know that," he said. "I was just seeing." I think he meant that he was making up a story that would somehow let things turn out in a way he could understand.

  I explained that most people thought only your body died. That you had another part, called a spirit, which survived. We didn't know that for sure, I said. But if you believed something deep insideeven though you couldn't prove itthat was called faith and that helped you to understand many things.

  This produced amazement. "You are in two parts?" he said.

  "Not exactly." I now knew I was in for it. His inquiry into these new ideas lasted about a week. On another of our walks, I showed him a butterfly cocoon that had once housed a pupa. I told him a caterpillar had spun that cocoon and eventually had emerged as a totally different creaturea butterfly. He accepted that easily because he had seen it happen on a nature show.

  He said, "But you can still see the real butterfly. He goes places. You can touch him. If you' re dead, people can only see you on TV."

  "That's true," I said. "But you can see dead people in your headin your imagination."

  He thought long about that one. Finally, he asked how that could possibly be. I told him to close his eyes and imagine someone who was not with us. His friend, Charlie, for instance. "Can you imagine Charlie?"

  He squealed with delight. "No! No! But I can hear him!

  "Well, it's like that. People who aren't with you right at the moment sort of hang around with you for as long as you remember them."

  "But I can play with Charlie."

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  "Yes."

  "And I couldn't go play with the bunny. Because he's dead."

  "Yes, that's right."

  Luke's preoccupation continued for another few days. But soon his attention switched to his upcoming birthday party, and he did not speak of his deep concern about death again.

  About a year and a half later, Mawmaw died. Our southern family's custom is to lay out our kin at home, so my father's mother had a wake. When Luke insisted he be allowed to go, my wife and I thought that might be a good idea.

  Mawmaw's house overflowed with guests and food and talk. She had lived a long, rich life, so there was none of the kind of wretched grief that attends early or unexpected deaths. People remembered her joy, her amazing personal strength, her humor and her kindness.

  We let Luke go about as he pleasedtalking with relatives, eating, getting praised and playing with his cousins. Then, at almost the last possible moment, he asked me to take him into the room where Mawmaw lay.

  I took his hand and led him to stand beside his great-grandmother's bier. He was too small to see anything but flowers, so I picked him up and held him on my hip. He took a long look and then said, "Okay, Dad."

  I put him down, and we walked out of the room down the long hallway toward the kitchen. Before we got there, he pulled me into a small room where my grandmother had once pressed flowers or done needlework. Looking solemnly at me, he whispered, "Dad, that is not Mawmaw."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It isn't," he said. "She is not in there."

  "Then where is she?" I asked.

  "Talking somewhere."

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  "Why do you think that?" I knelt down and put my hand on his shoulder.

  "I just know. That's all. I just know." There was a long pause as we looked at each other. Finally he took a deep breath and said with more seriousness than I had ever seen in him, "Is that faith?"

  "Yes, Son."

  "Well, then that's how I know. That's what I got."

  I looked at him with awe and joy, realizing he had just found one of the most powerful resources of the hearta guide other than his mother or me. He had found a way of understanding that would be with him for the rest of his life, even in the valley of the shadow.

  I suddenly felt deeply relieved and grateful in a way I had not anticipated when that day began. I looked at Luke smiling at me, and then we walked down the hall, hand in hand, to find something to eat and perhaps tell a story of our own.

  Walter W. Meade

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  Benny's Balloon

  Benny was seventy when he died rather suddenly of cancer in Wilmette, Illinois. Because his ten-year-old granddaughter Rachel never got the chance to say goodbye, she cried for days. But after receiving a big red balloon at a birthday party, she came home with an ideaa letter to Grampa Benny, air-mailed to heaven in her balloon.

  Rachel's mother didn't have the heart to say no, and she watched with tears in her eyes as the fragile balloon bumped its way over the trees that lined the yard and disappeared.

  Two months later, Rachel received this letter postmarked from a town six hundred miles away in Pennsylvania:

  Dear Rachel,

  Your letter to Grampa Benny reached him. He really appreciated it. Please understand that material things can't be kept in heaven, so they had to send the balloon back to Earththey just keep thoughts, memories, love and things like that in heaven.

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  Rachel, whenever you think about Grampa Benny, he knows, and is very close by with overwhelming love for you.

  Sincerely,

  Bob Anderson (also a Grampa)

  Michael Cody

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  One, Two, Three

  It was an old, old, old, old lady,

  And a boy that was half past three;

  And the way they played together

  Was beautiful to see.

  She couldn't go running and jumping,

  And the boy, no more could he;

  For he was a thin little fellow,

  With a thin little twisted knee.

  They sat in the yellow twilight,

  Out under the maple tree;

  And the game that they played I'll tell you,

  Just as it was told to me.

  It was Hide and Go Seek they were playing,

  Though you'd never have known it to be

  With an old, old, old, old lady,

  And a boy with a twisted knee.

  The boy would bend his face down

  On his one little sound knee,

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  And he'd guess where she was hiding,

  In guesses One, Two, Three!

  "You are in the china closet!"

  He would cry, and laugh with glee

  It wasn't the china closet;

  But he still had Two and Three.

  "You are up in Papa's big bedroom,

  In the chest with the queer old key!"

  And she said: "You are warm and warmer;

  But you' re not quite right," said she.

  "It can't be the little cupboard

  Where Mamma's things used to be

  So it must be the clothespress, Gran'ma,"

  And he found her with his Three.

  Then she covered her face with her fingers,

  That were wrinkled and white and wee,

  And she guessed where the boy was hiding,

  With a One and a Two and a Three.

  And they never had stirred from their places,

  Right under the maple tree

  This old, old, old, old lady,

  And the boy with the lame little knee

  this dear, dear, dear, old lady,

  And the boy who was half past three.

  Henry Cuyler Bunner

  Submitted by Laura McNamara

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  Mother's Hands

  How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will hav
e been all of these.

  George Washington Carver

  As teenagers we live in a different world from our mothers, a world where mothers hang out on the peripheries. Of course, almost everyone has one; they are unavoidable annoyances.

  Today, as I approach that edge, as I am the one with the teenage daughter, I look at my mother through different eyes. And I sometimes wish I could halt the years and stop her from growing older, stop her from repeating herself.

  We sit at my kitchen table as the sun designs a mosaic of light on the tile floor. My daughter, Anna, sits next to my mother.

  "When is Rick going to be here?" my mother asks, referring to my husband.

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  "I don't know, Mom," I answer patiently. "He'll be here for dinner."

  I sigh and get up from the table. This is at least the tenth time she has asked that question in as many minutes.

  While my mother and daughter play Monopoly, I busy myself making a salad.

  "Don't put in any onions," Mom says. "You know how Daddy hates onions."

  "Yes, Mom," I answer, shoving the scallions back into the fridge.

  I scrub off a carrot and chop it into bite-size pieces. I thrust the knife into the carrot with more force than is necessary. A slice falls onto the floor.

  "Don't put any onions in the salad," she reminds me. "You know how Daddy hates onions."

  This time I can't answer.

  I just keep cutting. Chopping. Tearing. If only I could chop away the years. Shred the age from my mother's face and hands. Go back to my high school days when my mother moved from room to room, leaving a trace of whatever fragrance she wore at the time.

  My mother had been beautiful. She still is. In fact, my mother is still everything she has been, just a bit forgetful. I try to convince myself that's all that it is, and if she really concentrated, she would not repeat herself so much. There isn't anything wrong with hernot my mother.

  I cut off the end of the cucumber and rub it against the stalk to take away the bitterness. The white juice oozes out the sides. Wouldn't it be nice if all unpleasant situations could be so easily remedied? Cut and rub. This is a trick I have learned from my mother, along with a trillion other things: cooking, sewing, dating, laughing, thinking. I learned how to grow up and when to stay young. I learned the art of sorting through emotions.

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  And I learned that when my mother was around, I never had to be afraid.

  So why am I afraid now?

  I study my mother's hands. Her nails are no longer a bright red, but painted a light pink, almost no color at all. And as I stare at them, I realize I am no longer looking at those hands but feeling them as they shaped my youth. Hands that packed a thousand lunches and wiped a million tears off my cheeks. Hands that tucked confidence into each day of my life.

  I turn away and throw the cucumber into the bowl. And then it hits me. My hands have grown into those of my mother's.

  Hands that have cooked uneaten meals, driven hundreds of car-pool miles, held my own daughter's frightened fingers on the first day of school and dried tears off her face.

  I grow lighthearted. I can feel my mother kiss me goodnight, check to see if the window is locked, then blow another kiss from the doorway. Then I am my mother, blowing that same kiss to Anna off that same palm.

  Outside everything is still. Shadows fall among the trees, shaped like pieces of a puzzle.

  Someday my daughter will be standing in my place, and I will rest where my mother now sits.

  Will I remember then how it felt to be both mother and daughter? Will I ask the same question one too many times?

  I walk over and sit down between my mother and her granddaughter.

  "Where is Rick?" my mother asks, resting her hand on the table next to mine. The space between us is smaller than when I was a teenager, barely visible at all.

  And in that instant I know she remembers. She may repeat herself a little too much. But she remembers.

  "He'll be here," I answer with a smile.

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  My mother smiles back, one of those grins where the dimple takes over the shape of her face, resembling my daughter.

  Then she lets her shoulders relax, picks up the dice and rolls.

  Janie Emaus

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  The Game

  ''Do you still love me?" I asked.

  "I don't know." Ralph looked away.

  It was a game we played again and again throughout our thirty years of married life. But today, something in his voice alarmed me. His eyes were not laughing when he said, "I don't know." This was not the way we played the game.

  He was supposed to say, "Oh, I don't know" in a mocking way and then ask, "Do you still love me?"

  And I would answer, with a deliberately provocative move toward him, "Mmm, let me see," then shrug regretfully and say, "I guess I don't."

  Then, his brows arching mischievously he'd announce, "So what . . . I don't love you either. I guess I'll find another." And with head high and chest out he'd march away.

  "Don't you dare find another!" I'd shake my fist and run after him. He'd turn with a start, and colliding he'd reclaim my lips in a most persuasive way and declare, "Mmm, I guess I was wrong. I guess I still love you after all."

  That was the way we always played the game. But

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  today Ralph remained uncomfortably still after uttering the words "I don't know."

  Suddenly feeling as hollow as my voice sounded, I drew a deep breath, and forbidding myself to tremble, I repeated the question. "Do you still love me?" The words now seemed strange on my tongue.

  And after an endless moment Ralph answered in a low, raspy voice. "I guess I don't."

  A crow flashed black across the sky, its shadow skimming the earth. I was frozen into limbo where decisions and actions were impossible, where feelings were impossible. A defensive mechanism I supposed, a reflex taking over. Like a nothing I stumbled through nothingness. Pull yourself together and tell the kids, an inner voice roused my unconscious mind. What would they say?

  I stood by the window with my back to John when he came into the room. "Your father and I are getting divorced."

  I felt rather than saw Johnny's shocked movement. "Why?"

  "Your father doesn't love me anymore, and I can't live without love. I mean I can't live with someone who . . . I mean. . . ." Oh God, I mustn't cry. "Do you know what I mean?" I turned around.

  There were lines of concern about John's eyes, masking his youth. He came toward me and put his arms around me. "I'm sorry, Mom. I'll always be here for you." His understanding and kind words barely registered on my numbed mind.

  Peter masked his emotions with a deceptive calmness. He was a master at this. My defenses began to subside, puzzling over the feelings he was hiding.