Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul

  My outgoing husband is always seizing an opportunity. This time, he gets my thanks for making a lasting memory for me. I hope those bright and cheery sneakers are still in the Bush closet somewhere—that is, if Millie hasn’t used them for chew toys by now.

  Christine Harris-Amos with Cliff Marsh

  Feather Light

  And all the loveliest things there be come simply, so it seems to me.

  Edna St.Vincent Millay

  In fifth grade I sat at a desk third row from the left, second seat in front, with my hands folded and my feet on the floor. Pastor Beikman served up the commandments every morning and we learned to chew them, swallow them and fear them. This was the essence of my early education: study, memorize, recite. Parochial school grounded me in uniforms and conventions, in a world of curriculum where men were cherished and women were invisible. Men discovered new lands, explained the laws of the universe and wrote the Bible. But it was a woman who quickened my soul and invited me to look deeply at life, to love sincerely and to see God in everything.

  One morning the pastor announced he was changing duties and leaving the school staff. He introduced us to our replacement teacher, Miss Newhart, and a ripple of excitement filled the room. A tall woman with a beehive hairdo, platform shoes and a skirt that almost showed her knees, Miss Newhart was powerful and light all at once. Her hands, big and freckled like a robin’s breast, spoke with gestures large enough to fill the air around us. From a sack the size of a suitcase, she handed a feather to each student and told us they were gifts from their original owners—birds who’d cast off their excess plumage and left behind the things they no longer needed to carry. That morning our world changed, and soon, so too would we.

  In history class that day, Miss Newhart told the story of Christopher Columbus. Having been at sea too long, the sailors on his ship became restive and demanded a port. There was talk of mutiny, and Columbus was said to have feared for his life. Then one morning, a feather floated down from the sky above, a sign that land was near. Miss Newhart said the sailors spied more gulls, screeching and whirling in the air, then quite dramatically she flung out her arms and the plump, freckled skin of her triceps quivered just a bit. She turned quick circles so that her skirt flung out flapping at her thighs and her feet went round fast. I thought she, too, might lift up and fly. She helped me see what those sailors must have seen: there is hope even in the smallest of things.

  The next morning, Miss Newhart’s sack was bulging at the seams. Inside it there was a poster of The Last Supper, a paintbrush, a compass and a long cylindrical tube. From the tube she pulled out a black and white drawing and tacked it on the particle board. It was a circle with a man inside, his arms stretched wide against the circumference, feet splayed at the bottom; dimensions, figures, designs and numbers were scrawled across the sheet. “Da Vinci,” she said in a whisper, “was more than a painter. He studied subjects until he knew them well: man, nature, science, math...”

  “Did he know anything about feathers?” I asked. The woman with the beehive hairdo loved that question.

  A pioneer in the science of aerodynamics, Leonardo da Vinci studied feathers. When viewed from the top, a feather appears convex, arched delicately up and out, allowing the air to flow over it without resistance. When feathers are put together, as a wing, they create an airfoil, something that provides just the right resistance against the air as it moves through the feathers. Miss Newhart, who was more than a teacher, and da Vinci, who was more than a painter, showed me how to see the extraordinary in a small thing.

  Later that day, Miss Newhart took us beyond the confines of the school walls to a nearby field, wide and high with weeds. There we lay among the blonde grasses and covered our bodies with sticks, leaves and stalks. These became our nests, windows to the sky. Hidden there we learned to be quiet, to rest and watch, to let the bugs crawl over and beyond us, to listen for the birds and study their movements.

  In the afternoon, Miss Newhart stood at the door as we were leaving, touched each of us on the shoulder and said “Good-bye” or “God bless.” I remember how warm and light her hands were. She often asked me to stay awhile, to straighten the chairs, put away ruffled papers, and dust chalk from the board. During one of those grace-filled afternoons, I shared a troubled thought I had been keeping secret. I told Miss Newhart that I might love birds more than I loved God, a sin according to the commandments. My teacher rummaged through her cluttered desk, found her Bible, flipped it open to the Psalms and read, “He will cover you with His feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; His faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.” She wrote down the little verse and handed it to me. I have it still. I didn’t know what rampart meant—it didn’t really matter—but something deep inside of me awakened: I was given full permission to love things deeply, for God was in all things and had given them to me. On the way home that afternoon I imagined I could fly. I ran full speed, arms outstretched and legs behind me, skimming the sidewalks as though I were a bird.

  Around my neck I wear a gold charm—a bird, given to me when I was younger. That bird’s wings have become my symbol. They remind me of those sidewalks I flew over all those years before, and of the roads I’ve traveled since. And I have become more of a feather myself as the years have flown by: I am less resistant to what life offers up, and the pressures flow over me much more easily. As a teacher, I’ve guided children through the sometimes rough waters of fractions, spelling lessons and self-doubt. I have led them to safe shores when they were lost. I’ve learned to rest in quiet places now and then, and to leave behind the things I no longer need to carry, like grudges, sorrows and regrets. I have an inner strength, a gentle state of being, and I believe with all my heart no rampart will thwart me.

  Melody Arnett

  365 Days

  According to my friends and associates, I’m secure, educated, modestly intelligent, organized and creative. But for most of my adult life, for 14 days out of each year, I felt exactly the opposite of those attributes. What brought this on, you ask? Not PMS, but worse—my parents’ annual visit. Being separated from them by 1,600 miles for 351 days a year, I got on with my life quite well, being wife, mother, volunteer and businesswoman. But my parents’ annual visits were excruciating for me.

  The story is an old one—the first-born child who could never live up to her father’s expectations. In the eyes of others I was pleasantly successful in my endeavors, but not to Dad. And I spent most of my life resenting him for that, and deep in my psyche, resenting myself.

  Not only did I suffer during my parents’ visits, but so did everyone around me. Certainly my sweet husband of 32 years, Dave, suffered along with me. For weeks before the visit, I’d scour the house, nag my husband to do little fix-up jobs, buy new drapes, pillows, sheets—and generally turn our household budget on its ear. I’d plan gourmet meals, bake till the freezer was full and hound my children about rooms, etiquette and raising their voices. During the visit, an ever-present aura of tension surrounded me like a gossamer veil. (Maybe it was more like a wet, wool blanket!) After the visit, nights of discussions with my hubby ensued. I would try to decipher what was, and wasn’t, said by my father. And I would cry myself to sleep, inconsolable, the child of rejection and exhaustion. Thirty-two years of marriage can have its ups and downs, but the one real test of Dave’s love was helping me survive those visits!

  When I reached my 40s, immortality (or the lack of it) began to rear its nagging little head. I’d been into the study of spirituality for several years, sort of a peripheral investigation of ideas. I was a closet psychic, not about to acknowledge it publicly. However, every year for 14 days, my spirituality deserted me, and I was left as naked, defenseless and vulnerable as a five-year-old child.

  Then one year Dad was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. In a short time he turned from the vital, intelligent, athletic god of my childhood into a stumbling, gaunt, confused old man. With the clock ticking faster than ever for both of u
s, I came to the realization that before Dad left this life, I had to mend our broken relationship and let go of my feelings about never living up to his expectations. But how? I’d tried everything I could think of. The only thing left was to forgive him.

  So I did. Just saying aloud, “I forgive you,” changed my whole inner experience from self-doubt to peacefulness. I let go of “should have,” “could have” and “I wish.” In the process I forgave me, too.

  I never told my dad that I had forgiven him, but it must have been apparent to him on some level because our entire relationship changed.

  The summer before Dad died, he came alone to stay with us for two weeks in August. On my part, there was no maniacal cleaning or sheet buying or tension. Because I had forgiven him, I could now talk with him as a friend and a companion—not as a resentful, disappointed, wounded daughter. We talked about his life, marriage and war experiences, and about his love of trees and animals. For the first time in our lives, he told me he admired my intuitiveness and intelligence, and how he loved the feel of our home and the beautiful gardens we grew. Together we explored some alternative healing techniques and he shared some startling psychic events that had occurred in his life. Most stunning of all, he told me for the first time that he loved me.

  My father never came to my home again. After he died, my mother had a video shot with pictures of Dad’s lifetime, complete with music. I see the video case now, as I look up from my writing, tucked into the bookshelf. I’ve never watched it. My life with my father was two weeks in August. My memories are of Dad, sitting in the wicker chair on the porch, amidst streams of sunshine and overflowing flowerpots, joking, talking, sharing—and loving me.

  Complete and unconditional forgiveness brought me soul-soothing peace and opened the door to a life I never dreamed possible.

  Now, in addition to being wife, mother, gram my and psychic counselor, I’m a whole person 365 days a year.

  Rosemarie Giessinger

  Spots of a Different Color

  “Honey, someone left a coat in your mother’s closet,” I called to my husband. The faux-leopard jacket was tucked in the back of the closet against the wall, out of place among the dark coats and sweaters. I wondered who would hide clothes in my mother-in-law’s closet. We were there to get a winter coat for her because she was coming home from the hospital, a week after being rushed to the emergency room.

  “Coat? What coat?” My husband looked up from sorting the mail. I took out the jacket, holding it up in the light for him to see. “Oh, that jacket. Mom bought it years ago, when I was a kid...you know, when they were fashionable. She and Pop even argued about getting it.”

  I thought of the woman I’d known for 30 years. She bought her housedresses and polyester pantsuits at Kmart or Sears, kept her gray hair tightly confined in a hair net and chose the smallest piece of meat on the dinner platter when it was passed around the table. I knew she wasn’t the kind of flamboyant type who would own a faux-leopard print jacket.

  “I can’t imagine Mom wearing this,” I said to him.

  “I don’t think she ever wore it outside the house,” my husband answered.

  Removing the jacket from its padded hanger, I carried it to her bed and laid it on the white chenille bedspread. It seemed to sprawl like an exotic animal. My hands brushed the thick, plush fur, and the spots changed luster as my fingers sank into the pile.

  My husband stood at the door. “I used to see Mom run her fingers over the fur, just like you are,” he said.

  As I slid my arms into the sleeves, the jacket released a perfume of gardenias and dreams. It swung loose from my shoulders, its high collar brushing my cheeks, the faux fur soft as velvet. It belonged to a glamorous, bygone era, the days of Lana Turner and Joan Crawford, but not in the closet of the practical 83-year-old woman I knew.

  “Why didn’t you tell me Mom had a leopard jacket?” I whispered, but my husband had left the room to water the plants.

  If I’d been asked to make a list of items my mother-inlaw would never want in her life, that jacket would have been near the top. Yet finding it changed our relationship. It made me realize how little I knew about this woman’s hopes and dreams. We took it to the hospital for her to wear home. She blushed when she saw it, and turned even rosier at the gentle teasing of the staff.

  In our last three years together, I bought her gifts of perfume, lotion and makeup instead of sensible underwear and slippers. We had a lunch date once a week, where she wore her jacket, and she began to curl her hair so it would be fluffy and glamorous for our date. We spent time looking at her photo album, and I finally began to see the young woman there, with the Cupid’s bow mouth.

  Faux fur has come back into fashion. It appears in shop windows and on the street. Every time I catch a glimpse of it, I’m reminded of my mother-in-law’s jacket, and that all of us have a secret self that needs to be encouraged and shared with those we love.

  Grazina Smith

  7

  LIVE YOUR

  DREAM

  Alice laughed. “There’s no use trying,” she said. “One can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,”said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

  Lewis Carroll

  Through the Looking Glass

  The Wind Beneath

  Her Wings

  Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them and try to follow them.

  Louisa May Alcott

  In 1959, when Jean Harper was in the third grade, her teacher gave the class an assignment to write a report on what they wanted to be when they grew up. Jean’s father was a crop duster pilot in the little farming community in Northern California where she was raised, and Jean was totally captivated by airplanes and flying. She poured her heart into her report and included all of her dreams; she wanted to crop dust, make parachute jumps, seed clouds (something she’d seen on a TV episode of “Sky King”) and be an airline pilot. Her paper came back with an “F” on it. The teacher told her it was a “fairy tale” and that none of the occupations she listed were women’s jobs. Jean was crushed and humiliated.

  She showed her father the paper, and he told her that of course she could become a pilot. “Look at Amelia Earhart,” he said. “That teacher doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  But as the years went by, Jean was beaten down by the discouragement and negativity she encountered whenever she talked about her career—”Girls can’t become airline pilots; never have, never will. You’re not smart enough, you’re crazy. That’s impossible.”—until finally Jean gave up.

  In her senior year of high school, her English teacher was a Mrs. Dorothy Slaton. Mrs. Slaton was an uncompromising, demanding teacher with high standards and a low tolerance for excuses. She refused to treat her students like children, instead expecting them to behave like the responsible adults they would have to be to succeed in the real world after graduation. Jean was scared of her at first but grew to respect her firmness and fairness.

  One day Mrs. Slaton gave the class an assignment. “What do you think you’ll be doing 10 years from now?” Jean thought about the assignment. Pilot? No way. Flight attendant? I’m not pretty enough—they’d never accept me. Wife? What guy would want me? Waitress? I could do that. That felt safe, so she wrote it down.

  Mrs. Slaton collected the papers and nothing more was said. Two weeks later, the teacher handed back the assignments, face down on each desk, and asked this question: “If you had unlimited finances, unlimited access to the finest schools, unlimited talents and abilities, what would you do?” Jean felt a rush of the old enthusiasm, and with excitement she wrote down all her old dreams. When the students stopped writing, the teacher asked, “How many students wrote the same thing on both sides of the paper?” Not one hand went up.

>   The next thing that Mrs. Slaton said changed the course of Jean’s life. The teacher leaned forward over her desk and said, “I have a little secret for you all. You do have unlimited abilities and talents. You do have access to the finest schools, and you can arrange unlimited finances if you want something badly enough. This is it! When you leave school, if you don’t go for your dreams, no one will do it for you. You can have what you want if you want it enough.”

  The hurt and fear of years of discouragement crumbled in the face of the truth of what Mrs. Slaton had said. Jean felt exhilarated and a little scared. She stayed after class and went up to the teacher’s desk. Jean thanked Mrs. Slaton and told her about her dream of becoming a pilot. Mrs. Slaton half rose and slapped the desk top. “Then do it!” she said.

  So Jean did. It didn’t happen overnight. It took 10 years of hard work, facing opposition that ranged from quiet skepticism to outright hostility. It wasn’t in Jean’s nature to stand up for herself when someone refused or humiliated her; instead, she would quietly try to find another way.

  She became a private pilot and then got the necessary ratings to fly air freight and even commuter planes, but always as a copilot. Her employers were openly hesitant about promoting her—because she was a woman. Even her father advised her to try something else. “It’s impossible,” he said. “Stop banging your head against the wall!”

  But Jean answered, “Dad, I disagree. I believe that things are going to change, and I want to be at the head of the pack when they do.”

  Jean went on to do everything her third-grade teacher said was a fairy tale—she did some crop dusting, made a few hundred parachute jumps and even seeded clouds for a summer season as a weather modification pilot. In 1978, she became one of the first three female pilot trainees ever accepted by United Airlines and one of only 50 women airline pilots in the nation at the time. Today, Jean Harper is a Boeing 737 captain for United.