“Eric, wasn’t it funny what Daddy told you to do this morning?” his mother asked.
“What did he tell me to do?” he responded.
“He said, ‘Go upstairs, get dressed, brush your teeth and brush your hair!’ Remember what you told him?” she asked.
“I don’t have any hair!” Eric said with a smile.
Just then I realized where I was and why I was there. I was in the cancer clinic because of the lumps on my neck. I knew from listening to my doctor’s “Mmm-hmm”s and “Uh-huh”s that things weren’t normal. After my mom filled out some papers, they finally called me in. This really pretty, blonde doctor named Jennifer felt around my neck, underarms, shoulders, stomach and pelvic area. She measured the lumps on my neck and wrote stuff down on a piece of paper.
She had this worried look on her face. “You have such pretty hair, nice skin and your weight is healthy. I’m worried about those lumps on your neck, though, Sweetie. We’re going to have to do a biopsy on some of those lumps. It’s a procedure where we make a small incision in your neck and take some out to do tests. I’d also like to do a bone-marrow test while we’re at it.”
I started crying and looked at her. “Am I going to die?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” she said. “This cancer is 90 percent curable.”
She gave me a hug and helped us schedule the biopsy. All the way home, my mom and I cried. When I got home, I called all of my friends and told them.
I went back to the hospital for my biopsy, and they put a bracelet on me and put me in bed to watch some movies while I waited. I watched Ever After, Clueless and the beginning of A Bug’s Life before they came in to tell me what was going to happen. They gave me a Valium to relax me, which made me pretty sleepy. I tried to go to the bathroom and, when I got out of bed, I tripped because I was so dopey. My speech was slurred, too.
They hooked me up to an I.V. and rolled my bed down a large hallway and into a small, white room. There were several doctors in there, all wearing funny hats. They put a mask on me and told me to breathe deeply. It seemed like I blinked and then realized I was in the recovery room. It wasn’t like in those movies where the people just automatically flutter their eyes and wake up to see lots of people around their bedside, looking at them with presents, teddy bears and balloons. Waking up felt like trying to bench-press five hundred pounds with my eyelids. And I wasn’t so glamorous, either. I remember saying, “Ow . . . Oww . . . OWW!” Then I heard people talking about morphine to take away the pain. It did make me feel a little better. My mom helped me put on my clothes and they wheeled me out to my mom’s car. I crashed on the couch as soon as I got home.
The next day I went to our school’s Winter Ball and my boyfriend, Matt, dedicated the song “Let’s Get It On” by Marvin Gaye to me, just to make me laugh. I didn’t really dance that night because I was still tired and I was in a lot of pain, but I had fun.
A couple of days later, I went back to the hospital to see how the biopsy turned out. I had this feeling in my stomach. I knew I had cancer. I was right. I did have cancer. I burst into tears again because I knew my life would never be the same. I knew my hair was going to fall out; I knew I was going to have to endure chemotherapy; I knew all of it. And I just wanted to pretend I was dreaming.
I’m halfway done with my cycles of chemotherapy now and I’m not bald yet, but my hair is incredibly thin and still falling out. Matt and I broke up a couple of months ago. I was going out with this guy, Lucas, for a while but then he broke up with me. I’m okay with it, though, because there will be new romances. I will have new relationships. There’s lots of life to live. I’ve told all of the people who I love that I love them. I wrote letters to those people I had stopped writing to. I’ve tried things I was once scared to do. I pretty much have a normal, fourteen-year-old teenage girl’s life. I’ve been able to go to school pretty regularly except I’m not there a few Mondays a month. I just keep on saying to myself, “I’m a fighter, not a victim of cancer.” People have complimented me on how strong I am. Now that I think of it, maybe they’re right.
Christina Angeles
Go for the Gold
Be generous with your joy. Give away what you most want. Be generous with your insights and delights. Instead of fearing that they’re going to slip away and holding on to them, share them.
Pema Chödrön
I’ve had about seven surgeries already, and I am only twelve years old. I was born without a chin, and I really didn’t have much cheekbones, so they redid those. My ears were just skin, and right now the doctors are working on them. They’re using ribs. Ribs grow back until you’re eighteen years old.
My mom told me what I had—Treacher Collins Syndrome—when I was little. She never tried to keep it a secret. She has the same birth defect as I do. She had to go to a special school for the hard of hearing, and she didn’t want that to happen to me. I have a special hearing aid— a headband—called a “bone conduction hearing aid” that allows me to hear. I get to go to public school.
Mom and I went to different kinds of schools, but we both know about being teased. I don’t get teased much. But, if I do, I stand up for myself. I’ll say, “It doesn’t matter. You can make fun of me. Tomorrow it could be you.” They usually stop laughing, and some even say they’re sorry or they didn’t mean it. I tell them to just not do it again. If someone has a problem with me, it’s his or her problem, not mine.
I may not always fit in, but I try to stand up for what’s right. I’m always trying to help someone else. I even postponed a surgery in 1995 because of the Oklahoma City bombing. I saw the bombing on TV and decided to do something.
I wanted to raise $20,000 to help the victims. My mom wanted to knock it down to $10,000, so I agreed. My mom asked my grandpa to help, and together they wanted to knock it down to $5,000. This time I said no—my goal was $10,000.
I planned a bowl-a-thon. To announce it, I made banners and started going out asking for sponsors. I got bored going house to house. I didn’t raise very much money that way. So I told my mom I wanted to try car dealerships.
My mom and I walked into dealerships, and every time we went in, a salesperson said to my mom, “May I help you?”
She said, “No, talk to him.”
I told the salesperson my plan and asked for his or her help. I don’t think anyone said no. The car dealerships provided a lot of money.
Lots of people came to the bowl-a-thon, and we had a big banner for everyone to sign. The governor of Colorado, Governor Romer, also signed it. Then I flew to Oklahoma and handed the governor of Oklahoma, Governor Keating, a check for $37,000 and the signed banner. We made $27,000 over our goal!
I have raised over $87,000 for different causes since then, and my goal is to raise $100,000 by the time I am thirteen years old. Why do I spend my time raising money? I believe everyone can make a difference, and it doesn’t matter how old you are, or who you are, or if you feel you are different, because everyone is different in one way or another. Some differences are on the outside and other people can see them, but some differences are on the inside.
Michael Munds
The Walk That Changed Our Lives
It can be hard to break the friendship code of secrecy and make your friend mad at you, but you must do what you feel in your heart is right.
Amanda Ford
The closer we came to the counselor’s office, the more obvious it became that this walk would be one of the most important of our lives. It was one of the last days before school got out for the summer, and eighth grade was coming to an end. My friends and I were all thrilled. Everyone, that is, except our friend, Hannah.
It had started the previous summer, when Hannah had begun to keep to herself a lot. Whenever we would go out, she would insist on staying home by herself just to sit around. In fact, a lot of changes had come over Hannah ever since we had entered junior high. She obsessed about her weight, her complexion and how unpopular she was. She never seemed to focus on t
he good things she had to offer; it was always about what she didn’t have or what she was lacking. We were all concerned that something was very wrong, but at thirteen we didn’t exactly understand it or know what we could do to help her. Hannah seemed to be getting worse every day. She hated herself, and it was tearing our friendship apart.
Then one morning not long ago, Hannah came to school and told us she had almost committed suicide. She said she had thought about her friends and could not go through with it. We were in shock and had no idea what to do. Since she told no one else—not her parents or her sisters, just us—we tried to figure out what to do ourselves, feeling that no one else would understand. Though we didn’t want to stop being there for her, we couldn’t carry the burden by ourselves. We knew that if we made one wrong move, it could cost us our friend’s life.
We walked into the counselor’s office and waited for what seemed like an eternity until they called our names. We held hands as we walked in, each of us holding back tears. The counselor invited us to sit down, and we began to tell him about Hannah and all that had been going on. When we were finished, he told us that we had done the right thing. We waited as he called Hannah’s mother. We were overwhelmed with a million questions. What would Hannah say when she found out that we had told? Would her parents be mad at her for not telling anyone sooner? What was going to happen?
When Hannah’s mother arrived at school, she had obviously been crying and her face seemed full of questions. She began to ask about Hannah’s behavior and what she had told us. It was awful to tell her how Hannah had been alone at home one day testing knives to see if they were sharp enough to take her life. We all cringed at the thought of not having her in our lives today.
We learned later that after we had gone back to class, Hannah had been called down to talk to her mother and her counselor. It turned out she was relieved and grateful that she didn’t have to keep her secret any longer. She began counseling and has since gotten better. Since that day we are so grateful to see Hannah’s smiling face, or even to simply be able to pass her a note in the hallway between classes.
If we had not taken that long, horrible walk to the counseling office, we may not have been able to share high-school memories with Hannah. I know now that when we took that walk, it gave us the ability to give her the greatest gift of all . . . her life.
Maggie McCarthy
8
LEARNING
DIFFICULT
LESSONS
Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.
Vernon Saunders Law
What My Father Wore
What my father wore embarrassed me as a young man. I wanted him to dress like a doctor or lawyer, but on those muggy mornings when he rose before dawn to fry eggs for my mother and me, he always dressed like my father.
We lived in south Texas, and my father wore tattered jeans with the imprint of his pocketknife on the seat. He liked shirts that snapped more than those that buttoned, and kept his pencils, cigars, glasses, wrenches and screwdrivers in his breast pocket. My father’s boots were government-issues with steel toes that made them difficult to pull off his feet, which I sometimes did when he returned from repairing air conditioners, his job that also shamed me.
But, as a child, I’d crept into his closet and modeled his wardrobe in front of the mirror. My imagination transformed his shirts into the robes of kings and his belts into soldiers’ holsters. I slept in his undershirts and relied on the scent of his collars to calm my fear of the dark. Within a few years, though, I started wishing my father would trade his denim for khaki and retire his boots for loafers. I stopped sleeping in his clothes and eventually began dreaming of another father.
I blamed the way he dressed for my social failures. When boys bullied me, I thought they’d seen my father wearing his cowboy hat but no shirt while walking our dog. I felt that girls snickered at me because they’d glimpsed him mowing the grass in cut-offs and black boots. The girls’ families paid men (and I believed better-dressed ones) to landscape their lawns, while their fathers yachted in the bay wearing lemon-yellow sweaters and expensive sandals.
My father only bought two suits in his life. He preferred clothes that allowed him the freedom to shimmy under cars and squeeze behind broken Maytags, where he felt most content. But the day before my parents’ twentieth anniversary, he and I went to Sears, and he tried on suits all afternoon. With each one, he stepped to the mirror, smiled and nodded, then asked about the price and reached for another. He probably tried ten suits before we drove to a discount store and bought one without so much as approaching a fitting room. That night my mother said she’d never seen a more handsome man.
Later, though, he donned the same suit for my eighth-grade awards banquet, and I wished he’d stayed home. After the ceremony (I’d been voted Mr. Citizenship, of all things), he lauded my award and my character while changing into a faded red sweatsuit. He was stepping into the garage to wash a load of laundry when I asked what even at age fourteen struck me as cruel and wrong. “Why,” I asked, “don’t you dress ‘nice,’ like my friends’ fathers?”
He held me with his sad, shocked eyes and searched for an answer. Then before he disappeared into the garage and closed the door between us, my father said, “I like my clothes.” An hour later my mother stormed into my room, slapped me hard across the face and called me an “ungrateful little twerp,” a phrase that echoed in my head until they resumed speaking to me.
In time they forgave me, and as I matured I realized that girls avoided me not because of my father but because of his son. I realized that my mother had slapped me because my father could not, and it soon became clear that what he had really said that night was that there are things more important than clothes. He’d said he couldn’t spend a nickel on himself because there were things I wanted. That night, without another word, my father had said, “You’re my son, and I sacrifice so your life will be better than mine.”
For my high-school graduation, my father arrived in a suit he and my mother had purchased earlier that day. Somehow he seemed taller, more handsome and imposing, and when he passed the other fathers they stepped out of his way. It wasn’t the suit, of course, but the man. The doctors and lawyers recognized the confidence in his swagger, the pride in his eyes, and when they approached him, they did so with courtesy and respect. After we returned home, my father replaced the suit in the flimsy Sears garment bag, and I didn’t see it again until his funeral.
I don’t know what he was wearing when he died, but he was working, so he was in clothes he liked, and that comforts me. My mother thought of burying him in the suit from Sears, but I convinced her otherwise and soon delivered a pair of old jeans, a flannel shirt and his boots to the funeral home.
On the morning of the services, I used his pocketknife to carve another hole in his belt so it wouldn’t droop around my waist. Then I took the suit from Sears out of his closet and changed into it. Eventually, I mustered the courage to study myself in his mirror where, with the exception of the suit, I appeared small and insignificant. Again, as in childhood, the clothes draped over my scrawny frame. My father’s scent wafted up and caressed my face, but it failed to console me. I was uncertain: not about my father’s stature—I’d stopped being an ungrateful little twerp years before. No, I was uncertain about myself, my own stature. And I stood there for some time, facing myself in my father’s mirror, weeping and trying to imagine—as I will for the rest of my life—the day I’ll grow into my father’s clothes.
Bret Anthony Johnston
The Graduation Speech
Jesse was well liked by everyone, so everybody anticipated what he had to say
As he walked up to the microphone, on graduation day.
For a moment he remained silent, as he peered at the faces from his senior class,
And then Jesse leaned into the microphone, and finally spoke at last:
“As your class president, I’m here to speak to
you today.
I was up most of the night, considering what words that I should say.
I reminisced on school days, and all the many things I’ve done,
So many memories came to mind, but my thoughts kept me focusing on one.”
And then Jesse held up a photo, and he moved it all around,
As everyone leaned to view it, and silence was the only sound.
You could have heard a pin drop, as Jesse placed the picture in full view,
And began talking of a classmate, that no one really knew.
“Charlie’s life seemed meaningless, compared to yours and mine,
Because none of us understood him, we never took the time.
We saw onlywhat we wanted to, that Charlie was not cool,
He was far from being popular, the butt of all our jokes in school.
“That’s what we knew of Charlie, that much we decided on our own,
He simply wasn’t worth our time, he was an outsider who deserved to be alone.
But you see Charlie had a passion, deep within he had a dream,
It was his one desire, to play for our soccer team.
“And of course that was ludicrous, it was totally absurd,
Charlie was no athlete, he was the senior nerd.
In gym class he was never captain, he was always chosen last,
He was the poster child for unpopular, he preferred history, science and math.
“And so some of us took it upon ourselves to keep Charlie from wanting to play,