“I thought since you were giving away food to the Walters that we would never have enough. They really don’t have anything to give in return.”
“They will some day. But there is enough and more to share. Everything’s God’s anyway. Doesn’t matter who can or can’t give. If we just listen to our hearts, the right gifts will end up with the right families.”
Mom always knew truth.
I glanced out the window at my sister now sitting on her horse, and thought about how she had described the expression on the Walters’s faces when they discovered the Christmas basket. That “belonging” feeling was more precious than any of the gifts. And I thought, Families that care, care about families. All families.
That was the Christmas that I learned about the magic of giving.
Rachelle P. Castor
Together, We Can Do Anything
Sticking together as a family has always been important to my sisters, my mom and me—especially after my dad left us. I guess he didn’t feel the same way about us as we did about him, and he went off to start a whole new family.
I didn’t always want to talk to my mom about my feelings, because she had her own problems taking care of our ranch without my dad around. I was old enough to help out and we all pitched in, but it was still hard on her. I talked to my older sister, Alana, while we worked—and I talked to the Sisters B.
That’s what we called our six cows. All of their names started with a B. They were definitely part of the family. I got my first calf when she was three days old. We bottle-fed her and named her Belle. She grew into a beautiful cow who gave birth to two other cows, Brandy and Betsey, and was grandmother to Bootsie. I gave Bootsie to my little sister, Adena. Then I got one other cow that I gave to my older sister, Alana. We named her Blue, and Blue had a calf named Bailey.
All six of the Sisters B hung out and stayed close to each other all of the time. It was clear to us that they loved each other. And we loved them, too. We showed them at local 4H shows and took really good care of them.
When my dad left, he moved down the street from us. We would see him every day, driving down the street in his truck or working in his yard. He never visited us and had a new family to keep him busy. Finally, it was just too painful for all of us, especially my mom. We decided to sell our home and move.
We had to sell all the animals on our ranch, and we wanted to sell the Sisters B together. They were family, in more ways than one. We wanted them to go to someone who would love them like we did, and be willing to keep them together. We put an ad in the paper.
We thought it was an answer to our hopes when a man called and told us he wanted to buy our cows for breeding. He told my mom that he could only pay eighteen hundred dollars for all of them, but that he had other cows, lots of pasture and a large barn.
That afternoon, my mom, my sisters and I went to his place. It looked really nice, and we were happy that we had found the right home for the Sisters B. He looked right at my sister, Adena, and told her that she could visit Bootsie anytime and that he would take special care of her. My mom told him once again that we would only sell the cows to him if he would not sell the cows separately or kill them for meat, and he promised us that he would not.
The next day it was my job to help put the Sisters B in the trailer for delivery to their new owner. They trusted us, and wanted to please us so much that they went right into the trailer without even a fuss. My sisters both had tears on their faces and I could feel tears stinging my eyes, too. But I convinced myself that the Sisters B would be better off in their new home—and besides, they couldn’t go with us when we moved.
A week later, while we were having our moving sale, one of our neighbors came up to my mom and told her that she had almost bought my “big red cow” before the cow went to auction. My mom said she had to be mistaken and asked who was selling the cow. When our neighbor told us who it was, I felt sick. We had trusted him, and just a week later he was selling Belle away from her baby and from the rest of her family. He had lied to us.
My mom piled us in the car and we drove to his house. When he answered the door, my mom told him what the neighbor had said and he shut the door right in our faces. My sisters were really crying now, and my mom was begging him to tell us where the Sisters B were, and to sell them back to us. Mom was crying too, but he wouldn’t open the door.
I have never seen my mother so determined in my life. She told us she was going to find out where the cows were. She started calling a lot of auctions and finally found one that had a record of our cows, and told us that the cows would be auctioned off the next morning at 8:00.
That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking, How could someone do something like this? Finally, the sun started to come up and we were on our way. We arrived at the auction at 7:00 in the morning.
When we got there, we found the cows in a pen. They looked pretty bad. They had cuts all over them and looked thin, but we were just thankful that they were still alive. Belle saw us first, and came right up to where we were standing. They were just as glad to see us as we were to see them. Just then a man came by who was there to buy stock, and he said it would cost us about three thousand dollars to buy our cows. I couldn’t believe it! That’s why we’d been deceived: the man who bought the cows from us had just wanted to make a profit.
I suggested to my mom and sisters that we get busy praying. We didn’t know what else to do; we sure didn’t have three thousand dollars to buy back our cows, and we didn’t even know how to bid at an auction. We prayed really hard for God to show us the way.
Then Alana had an idea. She had brought some pictures of the Sisters B with her from our showing at the county fair. Every time someone arrived at the auction, she would hurry over to them, show our photos and share our story. The man who had bought the Sisters B from us was watching Alana, and when he realized that people were talking about him, and what he had done, he got all red in the face and left in a hurry. Most of the men that Alana talked to said that they wouldn’t bid on our cows when they came out for auction, and that’s when we got excited. Maybe we did have a chance, after all!
We waited until almost 11:00 before we saw the first of our cows. It was Brandy. Because we didn’t understand the bidding process well, Alana didn’t hold her number up fast enough and the men bidding on Brandy didn’t see Alana. The price went up too high and we lost her. But then we understood how it worked.
Every time one of our cows would come into the ring, Alana would raise her number, and no one would bid on the cow. At one point the auctioneer stopped the whole auction and yelled that this had better stop, but everyone ignored him. Alana kept holding up her number, and the men resisted bidding on our cows. By 5:00, we had bought back all of the cows, except for Brandy, for twenty-two hundred dollars. Belle, her mother, kept mooing for her baby, and we were all sad to lose her. Mom used the eighteen hundred dollars we had from selling the cows, and we had to use our moving-sale money to make up the difference, but we had done it. We had them back!
Some friends of ours gave the Sisters B a new home. At first, we didn’t get any money for them, but money wasn’t as important to us as what could have happened to our cows. Recently, our friends sent us fifteen hundred dollars for the cows. After all we had sacrificed, it was a really nice surprise.
Family needs to love and protect family, and they were our family. Now when we go to visit them, they are always together—just like my mom, my sisters and me.
What happened to us was hard, but we survived and we learned a lot. Although there are dishonest people in the world, there are also many kind people who are willing to help you, even if they don’t know you. But the best part is that we did it together. Together, we can do anything.
Jarod Larson, sixteen
Gains and Losses
The mind can have tremendous control of the body; very few ailments can defeat focused energy and a determined spirit.
Katherine Lambert-Scronce
Most of us have experienced unforgettable moments in our lives. The moment that I will never forget happened in my family.
For the first fifteen years of my life, I was the only child in my family. I didn’t have any siblings. Fortunately, I’ve always had my parents, who love and care about me a lot. They help solve any problem and they will do anything for me. What I’d never really thought about is that, someday, one of them could no longer be there for me.
One day, I found out that my mother was pregnant, which was big news in my family. Everyone was excited and happy, especially me. I imagined that I would have a baby brother, and I thought about playing and having fun with him. He would have a cute face and look at me with his naive eyes, begging me to play with him. I was expecting that day to come soon. I kept asking my mother questions about what my brother was going to look like, what he would eat and when he was going to be born.
Finally one morning, my mother went into labor and she and my father went to the hospital, while I went to school. Of course, I thought everything would be fine. After all, women have babies every day. Thus, I was hoping to see my baby brother as soon as I got to the hospital.
After school, when I went to the hospital, my brother had already been born. But my mother was still inside the operating room, while my father waited anxiously outside. After waiting for a long time, the doctor came out and told us that after my mother had given birth to my brother, they had trouble stopping the bleeding. He told us not to worry; my mother would be fine. Then, he went back into the operating room. Seconds later, lots of doctors and nurses rushed inside. My father and I were growing more anxious by the minute. Waiting was very painful for us, because we had finally realized that anything could happen and all we could do was wait.
At 7 P.M., my mother came out of surgery. She lay on the bed with an oxygen mask and an IV. Her skin was ghastly pale, and her eyes were closed.
“Mom, Mom . . . ,” I called to her, but she didn’t react. The doctor told us that if my mother survived this night, she would be fine. Then the doctors sent my mother to the intensive-care unit.
Inside the room were many instruments for checking blood pressure, pulse rate and heart rate. Standing next to the bed, I tried to talk to my mother, whether she could hear me or not.
“You have to wake up, you have things that you have not done yet. . . . You have me, my father and your newborn son. You cannot just leave us . . . and you will be fine . . . trust me. . . .”
I was scared to death. At that moment, I felt that I would lose my mother forever—that she was never going to come back.
Many thoughts flashed through my mind. What would life be like if the unthinkable happened—life without my mother? I could only imagine that my life would be full of darkness, sadness and hopelessness. I would lose my closest relative, my dearest friend, and I would never again have the chance to enjoy the love of my mother. Remember, during these fifteen years, my mother was always around, watching over me, no matter what. I could not imagine how I was possibly going to survive without her.
Of course, I told myself that it would not happen, that she might leave me after thirty, forty, fifty or more years, but definitely not now, not yet. It was too early. I wasn’t ready to let her go.
After I slowly came back to reality, I noticed that a flood of tears was running down my cheeks.
My mother survived that night. You can imagine my great relief when she woke up the next morning. I was so excited. I gave her a big hug as I cried tears of happiness.
My mother told me that she had actually heard the words that I had said to her when she was unconscious. Three times she had almost stopped breathing, but she told herself to stay alive, for us, her family.
Later, many nurses said my mother was incredibly lucky to survive because she had lost a lot of blood. Of course, I gave them the most glorious smile, which said it all.
Today, my brother is almost two years old. On the day of his birthday, I always remember this unforgettable event in my life. I remember that I’m a really lucky person, with great parents and a wonderful little brother.
Xiao Xi Zhang, seventeen
Forever Garrett
We shared so much laughter, shared so many tears.
We had a special friendship that grew stronger each year.
We were not siblings by birth but we knew from the start,
We were put together, to be siblings of the heart.
Megan Youpa, 13
I followed Garrett into the kitchen to find Mom. Garrett had been with our family for about a month, and even though I was only five and he was eight, we had been getting along pretty great. Like me, he had a lot of energy and liked to run and play ball. Up until Garrett came to live with us I had played with three boys who lived on our street that were around my age. They liked Garrett right away, and the five of us had been playing together every day. Now, Garrett and I had argued and he was mad at me.
“I want to go back! I don’t want to be here anymore,” Garrett announced to Mom.
Garrett’s face was set with determination and his eyes were shiny with unshed tears. I looked at Garrett and my face crumpled. I started to cry.
“I hurt him, Mommy, I hurt him. I didn’t mean to!” I liked Garrett, and I didn’t want him to go back to the adoption agency where he had lived before he came to us.
“You two wait until your father comes home tonight,” Mom said as she cleaned both of our faces. Then she made me blow my nose as she said, “He’ll have something to say about this.”
When my dad got home that night, he sat us down and said that when he and my mom married they had a dream. They wanted to have a big family with both biological children and adopted children. He and Mom had been involved in the civil rights movement and wanted to adopt kids of mixed racial background because they knew how hard it was for these kids to get adopted. He told me that we were lucky to have Martin, my little brother who was a baby, and Garrett come to us.
Then Dad explained to Garrett that sometimes in families there are arguments and disagreements, but that didn’t mean that we didn’t care about each other. I knew all about that—I had had plenty of disagreements with my sisters and we always got over it. Dad said that Garrett belonged with us now and that was the way it was going to be; we were a family and families stick together forever.
I don’t know who felt better after Dad’s lecture, Garrett or me, but I do know that I really can’t remember having another bad argument with Garrett after that day.
When I was in the third grade, our family moved from Wichita Falls to San Antonio. When I was younger, we had moved a lot because of my dad’s job in the Air Force. In fact, my first words were in Italian because we lived in Italy when I learned to talk. But this was the first time that we had moved since Garrett and Martin had become a part of the family.
I didn’t like moving. I was pretty shy anyway, and trying to make new friends wasn’t the easiest thing for me. There was one exception: when I got on the playing field, whatever it was—soccer, football or volleyball—I felt like I was at my best and I was myself, 100 percent. On the playing field I could make friends. Garrett and I had that in common. We both loved sports.
I used to watch him play soccer and baseball and be amazed at how well he could play and how fast he could run. Not only was he fast, but he was also so competitive that what he lacked because of his size he made up for with his speed and aggressive actions.
Garrett would take me to play ball with the other kids, and when he got to pick his team, he always picked me first. I was his secret weapon. He liked to see the surprised looks on the faces of the boys on the team when I ran circles around them. Even though I was younger than most of the kids and I was a girl, I was a better player. With both Garrett and me on the same team, we couldn’t lose.
Pretty soon, our whole family felt settled in our new home and started to love living in San Antonio. We lived right on the base and had tons of freedom to come and go without my mom or dad h
aving to worry about us.
When we were finally all perfectly happy in San Antonio, we moved again. I was in the sixth grade, and for me it was the hardest move I had ever experienced. I had to leave behind the friends I had made and start all over again. Although our move was back to Wichita Falls, I didn’t remember very much about living there before and missed my life in San Antonio. I told myself that the moving didn’t matter, because my true home was the playing field. I threw myself into every sport that was offered, and I started to feel better.
We had been back in Wichita Falls for about two and a half years, and I was in the eighth grade, when we found out something terrible about Garrett. It was the beginning of his fight for life.
Garrett had chosen to attend a small Catholic high school instead of the larger public school, and he went out for football. During one of the first games, Garrett was tackled and had a hard time getting back up again. One of the dads attending the game was a doctor, and he went over to take a look at Garrett to see if he could help. He noticed that my brother had several large bruises on his back. He knew these bruises were not normal, and the doctor told my parents that Garrett shouldn’t play again until he was checked out.
When my parents took Garrett to the doctors they did several tests on him to find out what the problem was. He was eventually diagnosed with aplastic anemia, a disease that happens when a person’s bone marrow is either destroyed or not able to function correctly. People with aplastic anemia can bleed to death from internal hemorrhaging. The doctors told my mom and dad that all they could do for Garrett was to put him on steroids, and that might help. Then, they told Garrett that he couldn’t play contact sports anymore at all.