Ausable did not fit the description of any secret agent. Fowler had ever read about. Following him down the corridor of the old French hotel where Ausable had a room, Fowler felt disappointed. It was a small room, on the sixth and top floor and hardly a setting for a romantic figure.
Ausable was, for one thing, fat. adult Inflatable Rabbit Jumpers Very fat. Very fat. And then there was his accent. Though he spoke French and German fairly well, he had never altogether lost the New England accent he had brought to Pairs from Boston twenty years ago.
“You are disappointed,” Ausable said over his shoulder. “You were told that I was a secret agent, a spy. You wished to meet me because you are a writer, young and romantic. You expected mysterious figures in the right, the crack of pistols, drugs in the wine.”
“Instead, you have spent a whole evening in a French music hall with a dirtylooking fat man who, instead of having messages slipped into his hand by dark -- eyed beauties, gets only an ordinary telephone call making an appointment in his room. You have been bored!” The fat man laughted quietly as he unlocked the door of his room and stood aside to let his guest enter.
“But take cheer, my young friend,” Ausable told him.
“Soon you will see a paper, a quite important paper for which several men and women have risked their lives, come to me in the nexttolast step of its journey into official hands. Some day that paper may well affect the course of history. In that thought is drama, is there not?” As he spoke, Ausable closed the door behind him. Then he turned on the light.
And as the light came on, Fowler had his first shock of the day. For halfway across the room, a small pistol in his hand, stood a man. Ausable blinked a few times.
“Max,” he said, “you gave me quite a start. I thought you were in Berlin. What are you doing in my room?”
Max was thin, not tall, and with a face that suggested the look of a fox. Except for the gun, he did not look very dangerous.
“The report,” he said in a quiet voice. “The report that is being brought to you tonight about some new missiles. I thought I would take it from you. It will be safer in my hands than in yours.”
Ausable moved to an armchair and sat down heavily. “I'm going to raise the devil with the management this time; I am angry,” he said firmly. “This is the second time in a month that somebody has gotten into my room from that balcony!” Fowler's eyes went to the single window of the room. It was an ordinary window, with the black night outside.
“Balcony?” Max asked. “No, I had a passkey. I did not know about the balcony. It could have saved me some trouble had I known about it.”
“It's not my balcony,” explained Ausable angrily. “It belongs to the next apartment. You see, this room used to be part of a large unit, and the next room had the balcony, which extends under my window now. You can get onto it from the empty room next door, and somebody did, last month. The management promised to block it off. But they haven't.”
Fowler was standing stiffly near Ausable. “Please sit down,” said Max to Fowler, waving his gun with a commanding gesture. “We have a wait of about half an hour.”
“I wish I knew how you Germans learned about the report, Max,” said Ausable.
The little spy smiled. “And we wish we knew how people got the report. But, no harm has been done. I will get it back tonight. What is that? Who is at the door?”
Fowler jumped at the sudden knocking at the door.
usable just smiled. “That will be the police,” he said, “I thought that such an important paper as the one we were waiting for should have a little extra protection. I told them to check on me to make sure everything was all right.”
Max bit his lip.The knocking was repeated.
“What will you do now, Max?” Ausable asked. “If I do not answer the door, they will enter anyway. The door is unlocked. And they will not hesitate to shoot.”
Max's face was black with anger as he backed swiftly toward the window; with his hand behind him, he opened the window and put his leg out into the night. “I will wait on the balcony. Send them away or I'll shoot and take my chances!”
The knocking at the door became louder and a voice was raised. “Mr. Ausable! Mr. Ausable!”
Keeping his body twisted so that his gun still covered the fat man and his guest, the man at the window seized the frame with his free hand to support himself as he rested his weight on one thigh. Then he swung his other leg up and over the window sill.
The doorknob turned. Swiftly Max pushed with his left hand to free himself, and dropped to the balcony. And then as he dropped, he screamed once shrilly.
The door opened and a waiter stood there with a tray, a bottle and two glasses. “Here is the drink you ordered, sir.” He set the tray on the table and left the room.
White faced and shaking, Fowler stared after him. “But... but... what about... the police?” he stammered.
2009年11月30日星期一
Telling Him
Early morning and mist is wrapped around the tops of the mountains. Down here it is lifting slowly like a reluctant child leaving her warm sleep. I walk through fields of shiny wet grass and pick out diamonds in the dew.for sale Inflatable Christmas I have come early and parked the car further away than I needed to so that I have time to think and to find the right words.
Now that I'm here I am not so sure and think about turning back and leaving. I could put it off for another time. Another day, another week -- what difference would it make?
I am out of the fields now and on the very edge of the village. And then just as I think about bolting like some scared rabbit he is there. He has seen me from the window and he's calling my name. I run to him. I like being in his arms. I love his love. He is the father I never had, the father I longed for as a child.
When Vincent first took me to meet him he opened his arms then. There was no formal handshake, none of the usual politeness or caution of strangers. Later I asked Vincent if his dad was like that with all his girlfriends.
"I've never taken any of them home before." he said. And although he laughed his dark eyes locked with mine and in that moment he told me that he loved me and that I was special. I looked right back at him to let him know that I felt the same.
We went together just months later to tell his dad that we had plans to marry, that we wanted to be married in the village where Vincent and his brother had grown up. His dad brought them up on his own above a coffee shop. His sons left to live and work in the town but his dad stayed. He still has the shop and it is busy all year round. In the summer, tourists come and in the winter the locals come as much for his conversation as his good coffee.
Vincent pulled him away from his customers that day and told him we were getting married. He didn't say anything for a long moment, just kept his head down, then he looked up and nodded, but his dark eyes were shiny and I knew how happy we had made him.
As we go into the coffee shop now, that moment is with me again. It was a moment of pure joy, a floating moment. He brings me in now and sits me down in front of the fire and brings over two mugs full of steaming mocha coffee. He goes and gets some cream and swirls it on the top.
"So, it's been ages, how have you been?" He is looking at the flames in the fire and I know that there is no reproach in his words. He is not telling me off for not coming to see him. He is very straight, what you see is what you get. That's why I had to come and see him, to tell him what is happening and to hope he will understand.
He pulls on his coat and we go out for a walk. Slowly the mist is leaving the mountains although the tops are still shrouded in swirls. We talk about this and that but I'm struggling. There's a tension in me that spills over into the conversation so it feels forced and unnatural.
All the way down here, I thought about what I would say and how I would say it but now words fail me. Silence falls between us. We are by the church now where Vincent and I had planned to marry. It is a tiny church just big enough for the village and late creamy roses are still in bloom around the entrance.
"Do you want to go in?" I ask him. He shakes his head and relief washes over me. He tells me that he doesn't go often, " I did at first, not now."
We walk on past whitewashed cottages and ancient trees just holding on to the last of their leaves. We're thinking about Vincent and remembering.
"I knew you were the one, I saw how Vincent looked at you and I was so happy for both of you. To love someone and be loved back, it's everything."
I slip my hand in his and hold on tight. Vincent died riding his bike too fast, always in a hurry, too busy even to live. I miss him.
Now I say out loud, " I miss him," and this is the right time to tell the truth. To tell Vincent's father that I have found someone else.
The right words I had practised are all but gone and everything comes out in a rush, tumbling words with no sense. I am jumping and mixing up the time sequence I know, so I backtrack to emphasise how it has happened suddenly, over weeks really, although the friendship was there for months, longer.
"I don't want you to think I am some sort of merry widow. Vincent hasn't been dead two years. I worry that people will think it's too soon."
This is where he interrupts me, after saying nothing at all. His voice is quick and angry.
"You're not to worry about what people think. It's what's in your heart that's important. You cannot have your life ruled by what other people think. One year, two years -- who cares? Love isn't something you order after five years of mourning. You love this man, he loves you. It's natural you should be together." He lets his breath out and I do the same.
"There's more," I say. He is looking away from me when I tell him that it is his older son that I love. Vincent's brother, Joseph. He turns to me slowly and his face is just a smile, a huge smile. He holds out his arms and I move close.
Now that I'm here I am not so sure and think about turning back and leaving. I could put it off for another time. Another day, another week -- what difference would it make?
I am out of the fields now and on the very edge of the village. And then just as I think about bolting like some scared rabbit he is there. He has seen me from the window and he's calling my name. I run to him. I like being in his arms. I love his love. He is the father I never had, the father I longed for as a child.
When Vincent first took me to meet him he opened his arms then. There was no formal handshake, none of the usual politeness or caution of strangers. Later I asked Vincent if his dad was like that with all his girlfriends.
"I've never taken any of them home before." he said. And although he laughed his dark eyes locked with mine and in that moment he told me that he loved me and that I was special. I looked right back at him to let him know that I felt the same.
We went together just months later to tell his dad that we had plans to marry, that we wanted to be married in the village where Vincent and his brother had grown up. His dad brought them up on his own above a coffee shop. His sons left to live and work in the town but his dad stayed. He still has the shop and it is busy all year round. In the summer, tourists come and in the winter the locals come as much for his conversation as his good coffee.
Vincent pulled him away from his customers that day and told him we were getting married. He didn't say anything for a long moment, just kept his head down, then he looked up and nodded, but his dark eyes were shiny and I knew how happy we had made him.
As we go into the coffee shop now, that moment is with me again. It was a moment of pure joy, a floating moment. He brings me in now and sits me down in front of the fire and brings over two mugs full of steaming mocha coffee. He goes and gets some cream and swirls it on the top.
"So, it's been ages, how have you been?" He is looking at the flames in the fire and I know that there is no reproach in his words. He is not telling me off for not coming to see him. He is very straight, what you see is what you get. That's why I had to come and see him, to tell him what is happening and to hope he will understand.
He pulls on his coat and we go out for a walk. Slowly the mist is leaving the mountains although the tops are still shrouded in swirls. We talk about this and that but I'm struggling. There's a tension in me that spills over into the conversation so it feels forced and unnatural.
All the way down here, I thought about what I would say and how I would say it but now words fail me. Silence falls between us. We are by the church now where Vincent and I had planned to marry. It is a tiny church just big enough for the village and late creamy roses are still in bloom around the entrance.
"Do you want to go in?" I ask him. He shakes his head and relief washes over me. He tells me that he doesn't go often, " I did at first, not now."
We walk on past whitewashed cottages and ancient trees just holding on to the last of their leaves. We're thinking about Vincent and remembering.
"I knew you were the one, I saw how Vincent looked at you and I was so happy for both of you. To love someone and be loved back, it's everything."
I slip my hand in his and hold on tight. Vincent died riding his bike too fast, always in a hurry, too busy even to live. I miss him.
Now I say out loud, " I miss him," and this is the right time to tell the truth. To tell Vincent's father that I have found someone else.
The right words I had practised are all but gone and everything comes out in a rush, tumbling words with no sense. I am jumping and mixing up the time sequence I know, so I backtrack to emphasise how it has happened suddenly, over weeks really, although the friendship was there for months, longer.
"I don't want you to think I am some sort of merry widow. Vincent hasn't been dead two years. I worry that people will think it's too soon."
This is where he interrupts me, after saying nothing at all. His voice is quick and angry.
"You're not to worry about what people think. It's what's in your heart that's important. You cannot have your life ruled by what other people think. One year, two years -- who cares? Love isn't something you order after five years of mourning. You love this man, he loves you. It's natural you should be together." He lets his breath out and I do the same.
"There's more," I say. He is looking away from me when I tell him that it is his older son that I love. Vincent's brother, Joseph. He turns to me slowly and his face is just a smile, a huge smile. He holds out his arms and I move close.
Gettysburg Address
Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new Nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to theproposition that all men are created equal. Now, we are engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that Nation, or any nation soconceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war.airblown Inflatable Toys We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who gave their lives that Nation might live.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that this Nation, under GOD, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the People by the People and for the People shall not perish from the earth."
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead, we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that this Nation, under GOD, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the People by the People and for the People shall not perish from the earth."
2009年11月29日星期日
Mr. Good 2
It was cold. I was in Purcell’s lot, smoking, drinking coffee, half-listening to the Spanish talk all around me. giant Sumo Wrestling Suits I had seven hundred dollars in my socks—after getting paid today I’d have enough to get the Gibson back, and after Monday and Tuesday I’d have enough to go back to Dallas—and then suddenly an angry shout came from behind the trailer, then another. The lot quickly fell silent. Then the Spanish started up again and most of the men walked over and looked behind the trailer but as soon they did they started leaving, some running, and in about two minutes the place was deserted except for me.
I kept watching the trailer, about fifteen yards away. Nothing. I couldn’t hear anything either but the hum of the arc lights. I didn’t know what to do. I was kind of scared, but I had to try to work that day, no matter what, so I decided to stay where I was and wait for Purcell to show up. I started to light another cigarette, then footsteps sounded on the gravel and a man staggered around the side of the trailer. He was clutching his side and when he saw me he said something in Spanish. He was big, at least three hundred pounds, and looked like a bear coming toward me. Then he just stopped and stood there. I could hear his breathing. He sank to his knees like a camel sitting down and fell over.
For about a hundred and fifty dollars I would’ve left. But there weren’t any philanthropists in the vicinity. I went over to him. He had rolled onto his back and when he saw me standing over him he started talking in Spanish. He had a rip in the side of his thin jacket and there were dark stains around it. I took off my denim coat and kneeled down, and when he saw what I was doing he moved his hands and let me use the coat as a compress. Some warm blood soaked into the denim, but not much. He seemed more panicked than anything. He just kept on jabbering.
Then I heard other voices. Two Mexicans were standing a few yards away, at the edge of the light.
"Habla ingles?" I called out.
"No much, no much," the taller of the two said.
I got him to hold the jacket in place and right away he and the injured man started talking, arguing it sounded like. I ran the three blocks to the store where I made a point of buying my coffee every morning because I liked the way the clerk looked. I asked her to call 911.
"Sorry, the phone’s not public," she said.
"Are you kidding?" I said.
She shook her head. "That’s the rule."
"But a guy’s been knifed or something."
She hesitated, then looked at her watch, a pink thing the size of a coaster. "My manager’s due here any minute now and he says you can’t let the phone thing get started or people’ll be asking to use it all the time." She looked over my shoulder. "Could you move, please?"
I stepped over but stayed at the counter and an old black guy in a baseball cap moved up and gave her numbers for a lottery ticket.
"So you’re not going to call?" I said.
"No," she said.
I went outside and picked up the receiver on the pay phone on the side of the building and put it to my ear even though I knew it was dead. I asked two people going into the store if they had cell phones—both shook their heads, though one had his in a holster on his belt. Then I ran back to the temp service because there wasn’t another payphone nearby and I didn’t know what else to do.
Purcell was there. He had his headlights directed onto the scene and he stood in their beams next to the injured man and the two Mexicans who were squatting over him. The shorter one, who I could now see was an older man, was crying.
"I can’t have this kind of helling going on here," Purcell was saying.
"Mr. Purcell," I said.
He jerked his head around and squinted into the headlights. "Hey, who’s there?" He recognized me. "So did you see what happened here?"
"No. I just tried to call an ambulance but I couldn’t find a phone."
He waved like he was shooing a fly. "I checked him, he doesn’t need one. It’d be a waste of the taxpayers’ money. All he’s got is a little lard sliced off." Then he put his hands on his hips and stared down at the man. He had on a white short sleeve shirt and a dark tie; I had never seen him in a coat, no matter the temperature. "Hey," he said loudly and all three Mexicans looked up at him and he spoke to them in broken Spanish. The tall one holding my jacket answered.
According to Purcell’s translation: the two Mexicans who had stayed were from the same town in Mexico as the injured man, and the older one was his uncle or cousin or something. Two days ago the tall Mexican had heard that the injured man—who looked at least thirty—had gotten someone’s teenage daughter pregnant. The tall Mexican wasn’t sure who the girl was, but he’d heard there’d been a blow up with her father.
"I didn’t think there was anybody left who cared about that," Purcell said. He took out a pack of Juicy Fruit and put a stick in his mouth. He stared down at the man, his face a brown study. I crossed my arms and hugged myself. I was freezing.
"This has implications," Purcell said.
"We should probably call an ambulance," I said.
"We might do that," he said. "But we’ve got to move him off this property first."
I didn’t say anything, but Purcell jerked his head around like I had.
"Just because this pussel-gut decides to tap some Mexican cheerleader, I should have to pay double and triple on my liability insurance? And as for the police," he said, "what’d you think: Columbo’s gonna show up here at dawn?" He pulled a wallet-on-a-chain out of his back pocket and started speaking Spanish again. When he finished all three Mexicans nodded. The old one wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Then Purcell took out two fifty-dollar bills and handed one to each of the two squatting men. They both spoke to the injured man, patted him on the shoulder, then stood up and left. Purcell bent over the injured man and slipped two bills into his pants pocket. He spoke to him and the man answered. Purcell replied, his voice angry. The man shook his head back and forth on the ground. Purcell started cursing in English. He turned to me, "Sack of shit says he can’t get up."
"Huh," I said.
Purcell gave the man a little kick in the hip and said something in Spanish. Then he grabbed the man’s arm and tried to haul him up. He didn’t budge. He was dead weight. Purcell dropped his arm. "All right," he said, "you get his shoulders and I’ll get his legs," and he stepped around the man to his feet. I didn’t move.
He waved. "Come on, let’s go."
"That’s my coat there," I pointed.
"Yeah? So?" he said.
"It’s ruined," I said.
His expression deadened as he figured it out, which took about two seconds. He shook his head and cursed again. He took out his wallet and handed over a fifty.
"I need a hundred more," I said.
If either of us had been smoking the whole block would’ve exploded. "Listen," he said, "I wouldn’t be paying anybody anything if I could speak enough Spanish to make these tacos understand if they don’t do what I say I’ll tell the police whatever I want. But even though you’re a goddamn briar you understand me, don’t you?"
"The police might hassle me on your sayso," I said, "but that’s about all they could do. And think about it. If I do end up talking to them, I’m such a briar I might let it slip how you run a straight cash business."
He turned his back to me and started muttering. He stayed that way at least a half-minute. Then he turned back around holding out five twenties. His mouth was very tight.
Lifting the man was like picking up one end of a rowboat full of water, if you’ve ever done that. We carried him ten yards, rested, then went the last ten yards to the street. Purcell dropped the man’s feet and stayed bent over with his hands on his knees, huffing and puffing. He glanced up at me, then unhooked his key ring from his belt and tossed it and it hit the sidewalk right in front of me and I had to do a skip to keep it from hitting my feet. "Move my car up to the trailer," he said.
I looked at the keys, then at him. "What?" I said.
"Do it, or I’ll tell the cops you robbed me." He took his cell phone out of his back pocket.
"Why do you want me to do it?" I said.
"Just because I do," he said.
"Forget you," I said.
"All right," he said and punched a button on the phone, and that’s when I thought of the seven hundred dollars in my socks and how great it would look on a guy without a coat.
The car was a Cadillac in name only. The last time it looked good Eddie Murphy was funny. I slid under the wheel, but didn’t close the door so the rooflight would stay on and I could find things. The seat was too far up for me to fit my feet to the pedals, so I reached down to find the lever and my hand hit a bottle under the seat. It was a half-pint of Jack Daniels and all that was empty was the neck. I unscrewed the cap, bent over like I’d dropped the keys and took a drink, then sat up again. The glove box was missing its door, a cigar with an inch of dead ash was in the ashtray, a single porno playing card was in the passenger seat, a woman who looked like she was waiting for surgery to begin. I turned the card over: seven of clubs. I bent over and took another drink. I was thinking of the last time I saw my father—one of these old boats always did that.
I discovered the seat wouldn’t move, so I managed to get situated with my legs splayed out on either side of the steering wheel. I shut the door, then pulled the car up in front of the trailer and cut the engine and the lights. I stuck the half-pint down the front of my pants. Then I looked in the rearview mirror: Purcell was still at the curb, under a streetlight, standing over the injured man talking and gesturing. It looked like he was haranguing a corpse.
I leaned over to get at my pants pocket and took out the hundred and fifty and put it on the dash behind the steering wheel. I just couldn’t abide the idea of having to think of Purcell everytime I played the Gibson. I would’ve rather seen it in the hands of Campfire Girls
The pawn shop opened a half-hour before the liquor stores. I’d been waiting in a coffee shop across the street. I had the Gibson’s empty calfskin case and a Epiphone in its case. I was going to pawn the Epi which would give me the last fifty I needed to get the Gibson back, plus another sixty or seventy. That much would get me to Shreveport,cheap Inflatable Snowman and I figured I knew enough people in Dallas I could find someone who’d drive out and get me.
I went in the pawn shop, the bell ringing over my head, and right away I noticed the Gibson wasn’t on its stand in the line of guitars that sat on a high shelf in the back. Holding the two cases I suddenly felt like an idiot in a Norman Rockwell painting. The empty one felt light enough to throw through the display window.
The owner was still wearing his pea coat and was at the back of the long shotgun room behind a line of jewelry cases to my left. He came up front.
"It’s gone," he said. "Girl bought it last night not long after you came in."
I set down the guitar cases.
"She paid cash so I don’t know who she was," he said.
I asked him what she looked like.
"I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers," he said.
I kept looking at him. I couldn’t believe he had said that. Then he gave a police blotter description of the girl—young, long brown hair, skinny, pale, wearing jeans and a green jacket, said he wouldn’t call her pretty exactly. I asked him, if she came back in, to give her my name and the place where I roomed and to tell her I’d pay to get the Gibson back. I said I’d pay him, too, for doing that.
"Once I tell her, you got no reason to pay me," he said.
"That’s true," I said.
"A twenty ought to take care of it," he said.
I felt so beat I didn’t argue. I squatted down and lifted my pants leg to get at my sock. The bell rang and a guy in a dirty overcoat and came in and set down a kit bag and started pulling out barber tools. I stood up and the owner took my twenty. I picked up my guitar cases and left.
Walking down the street, freezing, I realized I could take the money I had and buy a coat and a bus ticket and be back in Dallas by midnight or I could stay in Cincinnati and buy a coat and try to find the Gibson. I thought about it three seconds and decided to stay.
I kept watching the trailer, about fifteen yards away. Nothing. I couldn’t hear anything either but the hum of the arc lights. I didn’t know what to do. I was kind of scared, but I had to try to work that day, no matter what, so I decided to stay where I was and wait for Purcell to show up. I started to light another cigarette, then footsteps sounded on the gravel and a man staggered around the side of the trailer. He was clutching his side and when he saw me he said something in Spanish. He was big, at least three hundred pounds, and looked like a bear coming toward me. Then he just stopped and stood there. I could hear his breathing. He sank to his knees like a camel sitting down and fell over.
For about a hundred and fifty dollars I would’ve left. But there weren’t any philanthropists in the vicinity. I went over to him. He had rolled onto his back and when he saw me standing over him he started talking in Spanish. He had a rip in the side of his thin jacket and there were dark stains around it. I took off my denim coat and kneeled down, and when he saw what I was doing he moved his hands and let me use the coat as a compress. Some warm blood soaked into the denim, but not much. He seemed more panicked than anything. He just kept on jabbering.
Then I heard other voices. Two Mexicans were standing a few yards away, at the edge of the light.
"Habla ingles?" I called out.
"No much, no much," the taller of the two said.
I got him to hold the jacket in place and right away he and the injured man started talking, arguing it sounded like. I ran the three blocks to the store where I made a point of buying my coffee every morning because I liked the way the clerk looked. I asked her to call 911.
"Sorry, the phone’s not public," she said.
"Are you kidding?" I said.
She shook her head. "That’s the rule."
"But a guy’s been knifed or something."
She hesitated, then looked at her watch, a pink thing the size of a coaster. "My manager’s due here any minute now and he says you can’t let the phone thing get started or people’ll be asking to use it all the time." She looked over my shoulder. "Could you move, please?"
I stepped over but stayed at the counter and an old black guy in a baseball cap moved up and gave her numbers for a lottery ticket.
"So you’re not going to call?" I said.
"No," she said.
I went outside and picked up the receiver on the pay phone on the side of the building and put it to my ear even though I knew it was dead. I asked two people going into the store if they had cell phones—both shook their heads, though one had his in a holster on his belt. Then I ran back to the temp service because there wasn’t another payphone nearby and I didn’t know what else to do.
Purcell was there. He had his headlights directed onto the scene and he stood in their beams next to the injured man and the two Mexicans who were squatting over him. The shorter one, who I could now see was an older man, was crying.
"I can’t have this kind of helling going on here," Purcell was saying.
"Mr. Purcell," I said.
He jerked his head around and squinted into the headlights. "Hey, who’s there?" He recognized me. "So did you see what happened here?"
"No. I just tried to call an ambulance but I couldn’t find a phone."
He waved like he was shooing a fly. "I checked him, he doesn’t need one. It’d be a waste of the taxpayers’ money. All he’s got is a little lard sliced off." Then he put his hands on his hips and stared down at the man. He had on a white short sleeve shirt and a dark tie; I had never seen him in a coat, no matter the temperature. "Hey," he said loudly and all three Mexicans looked up at him and he spoke to them in broken Spanish. The tall one holding my jacket answered.
According to Purcell’s translation: the two Mexicans who had stayed were from the same town in Mexico as the injured man, and the older one was his uncle or cousin or something. Two days ago the tall Mexican had heard that the injured man—who looked at least thirty—had gotten someone’s teenage daughter pregnant. The tall Mexican wasn’t sure who the girl was, but he’d heard there’d been a blow up with her father.
"I didn’t think there was anybody left who cared about that," Purcell said. He took out a pack of Juicy Fruit and put a stick in his mouth. He stared down at the man, his face a brown study. I crossed my arms and hugged myself. I was freezing.
"This has implications," Purcell said.
"We should probably call an ambulance," I said.
"We might do that," he said. "But we’ve got to move him off this property first."
I didn’t say anything, but Purcell jerked his head around like I had.
"Just because this pussel-gut decides to tap some Mexican cheerleader, I should have to pay double and triple on my liability insurance? And as for the police," he said, "what’d you think: Columbo’s gonna show up here at dawn?" He pulled a wallet-on-a-chain out of his back pocket and started speaking Spanish again. When he finished all three Mexicans nodded. The old one wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Then Purcell took out two fifty-dollar bills and handed one to each of the two squatting men. They both spoke to the injured man, patted him on the shoulder, then stood up and left. Purcell bent over the injured man and slipped two bills into his pants pocket. He spoke to him and the man answered. Purcell replied, his voice angry. The man shook his head back and forth on the ground. Purcell started cursing in English. He turned to me, "Sack of shit says he can’t get up."
"Huh," I said.
Purcell gave the man a little kick in the hip and said something in Spanish. Then he grabbed the man’s arm and tried to haul him up. He didn’t budge. He was dead weight. Purcell dropped his arm. "All right," he said, "you get his shoulders and I’ll get his legs," and he stepped around the man to his feet. I didn’t move.
He waved. "Come on, let’s go."
"That’s my coat there," I pointed.
"Yeah? So?" he said.
"It’s ruined," I said.
His expression deadened as he figured it out, which took about two seconds. He shook his head and cursed again. He took out his wallet and handed over a fifty.
"I need a hundred more," I said.
If either of us had been smoking the whole block would’ve exploded. "Listen," he said, "I wouldn’t be paying anybody anything if I could speak enough Spanish to make these tacos understand if they don’t do what I say I’ll tell the police whatever I want. But even though you’re a goddamn briar you understand me, don’t you?"
"The police might hassle me on your sayso," I said, "but that’s about all they could do. And think about it. If I do end up talking to them, I’m such a briar I might let it slip how you run a straight cash business."
He turned his back to me and started muttering. He stayed that way at least a half-minute. Then he turned back around holding out five twenties. His mouth was very tight.
Lifting the man was like picking up one end of a rowboat full of water, if you’ve ever done that. We carried him ten yards, rested, then went the last ten yards to the street. Purcell dropped the man’s feet and stayed bent over with his hands on his knees, huffing and puffing. He glanced up at me, then unhooked his key ring from his belt and tossed it and it hit the sidewalk right in front of me and I had to do a skip to keep it from hitting my feet. "Move my car up to the trailer," he said.
I looked at the keys, then at him. "What?" I said.
"Do it, or I’ll tell the cops you robbed me." He took his cell phone out of his back pocket.
"Why do you want me to do it?" I said.
"Just because I do," he said.
"Forget you," I said.
"All right," he said and punched a button on the phone, and that’s when I thought of the seven hundred dollars in my socks and how great it would look on a guy without a coat.
The car was a Cadillac in name only. The last time it looked good Eddie Murphy was funny. I slid under the wheel, but didn’t close the door so the rooflight would stay on and I could find things. The seat was too far up for me to fit my feet to the pedals, so I reached down to find the lever and my hand hit a bottle under the seat. It was a half-pint of Jack Daniels and all that was empty was the neck. I unscrewed the cap, bent over like I’d dropped the keys and took a drink, then sat up again. The glove box was missing its door, a cigar with an inch of dead ash was in the ashtray, a single porno playing card was in the passenger seat, a woman who looked like she was waiting for surgery to begin. I turned the card over: seven of clubs. I bent over and took another drink. I was thinking of the last time I saw my father—one of these old boats always did that.
I discovered the seat wouldn’t move, so I managed to get situated with my legs splayed out on either side of the steering wheel. I shut the door, then pulled the car up in front of the trailer and cut the engine and the lights. I stuck the half-pint down the front of my pants. Then I looked in the rearview mirror: Purcell was still at the curb, under a streetlight, standing over the injured man talking and gesturing. It looked like he was haranguing a corpse.
I leaned over to get at my pants pocket and took out the hundred and fifty and put it on the dash behind the steering wheel. I just couldn’t abide the idea of having to think of Purcell everytime I played the Gibson. I would’ve rather seen it in the hands of Campfire Girls
The pawn shop opened a half-hour before the liquor stores. I’d been waiting in a coffee shop across the street. I had the Gibson’s empty calfskin case and a Epiphone in its case. I was going to pawn the Epi which would give me the last fifty I needed to get the Gibson back, plus another sixty or seventy. That much would get me to Shreveport,cheap Inflatable Snowman and I figured I knew enough people in Dallas I could find someone who’d drive out and get me.
I went in the pawn shop, the bell ringing over my head, and right away I noticed the Gibson wasn’t on its stand in the line of guitars that sat on a high shelf in the back. Holding the two cases I suddenly felt like an idiot in a Norman Rockwell painting. The empty one felt light enough to throw through the display window.
The owner was still wearing his pea coat and was at the back of the long shotgun room behind a line of jewelry cases to my left. He came up front.
"It’s gone," he said. "Girl bought it last night not long after you came in."
I set down the guitar cases.
"She paid cash so I don’t know who she was," he said.
I asked him what she looked like.
"I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating crackers," he said.
I kept looking at him. I couldn’t believe he had said that. Then he gave a police blotter description of the girl—young, long brown hair, skinny, pale, wearing jeans and a green jacket, said he wouldn’t call her pretty exactly. I asked him, if she came back in, to give her my name and the place where I roomed and to tell her I’d pay to get the Gibson back. I said I’d pay him, too, for doing that.
"Once I tell her, you got no reason to pay me," he said.
"That’s true," I said.
"A twenty ought to take care of it," he said.
I felt so beat I didn’t argue. I squatted down and lifted my pants leg to get at my sock. The bell rang and a guy in a dirty overcoat and came in and set down a kit bag and started pulling out barber tools. I stood up and the owner took my twenty. I picked up my guitar cases and left.
Walking down the street, freezing, I realized I could take the money I had and buy a coat and a bus ticket and be back in Dallas by midnight or I could stay in Cincinnati and buy a coat and try to find the Gibson. I thought about it three seconds and decided to stay.
Mr. Good
I could’ve kicked myself for chasing a woman bass player all the way to Cincinnati: a month after I got there, I left her for a twenty-three-year-old grocery clerk. A few weeks later that was over, too, and I didn’t even have money for a bus ticket back to Dallas.buy inflatable christmas I hadn’t been able to find a gig since I’d moved. I tried finding work in a music store, and then started applying anywhere and everywhere—fast food, motels, convenience stores—and finally to stay out of a homeless shelter I had to pawn the only one of my guitars worth much, a 1965 Gibson Hummingbird. I stayed drunk for two days. Then I started working day labor so I could get it back. I was mixing mortar and carrying bricks, which I hated because it messed with my hands. The second week I smashed a thumbnail.
Everyday I went to the pawnshop to make sure the guitar was still there. The owner looked like a vaguely degenerate antique dealer in a movie. He wore a vest.
Every morning I got up at five and made the half-hour walk to the temp service, a trailer set up in a gravel lot. The place looked like a used car dealership without any cars and the owner was a big thick guy named Purcell who was quick to let you know he was retired Navy. The whole set up was pretty shady. Pay was always in cash and you had to get there before dawn to get a job. Except for me the crowd was all Mexican, illegals I’m pretty sure. They stayed to themselves, so I’d stand alone while we waited for Purcell to show up and smoke and drink coffee and think about how I was going to smash the guitar over a low brick wall once I got it back. My father gave it to me when I was eighteen. One afternoon, 1979, when my high school let out he was in the parking lot sitting on the hood of an old Lincoln he’d parked sideways across five spaces. You couldn’t miss him any way you looked. He was dressed in the same outfit Hank Williams was buried in. I hadn’t heard from him for seven years.
I told my friends I was supposed to meet with a teacher and went back inside and hid in the bathroom—I figured if I waited long enough he’d leave. The janitor ran me out of there so I wouldn’t interfere with his drinking. I killed some time walking the halls, then fooling at my locker. Finally the assistant principal who was locking up made me leave.
He was still outside. It was deserted now. He smiled and waved.
"Thought that was you I saw," he said. "Figured I’d wait."
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.
"I hear you’re getting ready to be a high school graduate," he said.
I nodded again.
"That’s real good." He cocked his head, looking at me and smiling. "Your grandma don’t mind your hair being that long?"
"She hasn’t said anything."
"First time I came in with a duck tail she chased me with the scissors." He took a pack of cigarettes from his inside coat pocket and rapped it on his knee and a single cigarette jumped halfway out, and if he hadn’t been my father that would’ve been cool as hell.
He wanted to go get a hamburger. The inside of the Lincoln smelled like a strip club at six AM. The radio was missing. I reminded him how to get to McKenna’s, a place that had curb service. After we got our drinks he poured part of his Coke out the window and filled it back up from a pint of bourbon he pulled from under the seat. He offered me the bottle but I shook my head.
"Don’t drink?" he asked.
I shrugged.
He nodded. "Don’t seem to talk, either."
After seven years that crawled all over me. I turned away and stared out my window.
"Ah son," he said, "I know, I know. I . . . well," and then I heard his cup slosh. I was looking out at a station wagon where a woman was handing around soft serve cones to her kids. A little boy in the backseat was looking back at me.
"Your grandma tells me you’re playing now," he said.
"Yeah." I still didn’t look at him.
"What’re you doing?"
I was in a bad cover band that played sock hops and dances at country clubs. I’d been listening to Earl Klugh and Wes Montgomery, too, trying some of that out.
"Not much," I said.
The boy pulled his nose up with his thumb and grinned. He had braces. His mother had on a green scarf.
"I guess you don’t go in for Bob Wills and such," he said.
"No," I said.
"Not many do anymore," he said. "That’s why this car’s such a piece of shit."
Then neither of us said anything. A long minute passed, then another. The little boy kept making faces between licks of his cone. Then the mother caught him. After a glance at me, she jerked him around by the collar.
I heard him splash bourbon into his cup again.
Then the car hop brought the tray with the food and hung it on his window and I felt like I could finally turn around.
"Anything else?" she asked. She was bleach blond and pudgy—I recognized her from school a couple years back but didn’t know her. She had on white jeans and a pink shirt with the tails tied into a knot below her breasts. When you looked at her all you saw was stomach.
"You all got any ice cream left in there?" he said.
"Sure," she said.
"Then get you one and charge it on my ticket. Girl who looks sweet as cake needs some ice cream to go with her."
She giggled.
"Or maybe you want a drink of this special Co’-Cola instead?" he asked.
She leered, looked left and then right. "Sure," she said. He handed her the cup and she ducked her head and took a drink.
"When they let you off here?" he said.
"Not soon enough," she said. "The horse’s ass that runs the place keeps us here half the night."
"Well, we’re big boys," he said. "We get to stay up late."
I opened my door and got out. He looked around. "Hey, where you going?"
I shut the door. My eyes met the girl’s over the roof of the car, then I ducked my head in the window. "I’ve got to go," I said. "I’ll see you," and I started away from the car.
"Hey!" he yelled.
But I didn’t turn around. He yelled a couple more times but I kept going. When I was far enough away I looked back. The girl was still standing at the Lincoln.
I was hoping he’d be waiting outside the house when I got home. He wasn’t.
A week later a notice came from Martin’s Drugs saying I had a Trailways package. It was a cardboard box wrapped in brown butcher’s paper and tied with string, light to carry but about the size of Shakespeare’s coffin. When I got it home and opened it I found a new calfskin guitar case packed in newspaper and inside that was the Hummingbird. The guitar was in good shape, but the words Mr Good were scratched in tall letters on the back of the body. In the bottom of the case was a note:
Son
I wont you to have this a fine instrumint i bought it new in 1965. Maybe somday we can play together i can teech you some Bob wills. The only thing about it is i got no idee how the writing got on the back i woke up in a motel in oddessa tex 8 yeer ago and it was almost nite and their it was this is stil a good guitar.
Dad
I hadn’t heard from him since. If he was alive he’d be sixty-three, and the older I got the more I wished I could see him. We’d have something to talk about now that I’d made every mistake he had.
Once I was living with a psychologist and she started ribbing me after she saw how I took such good care of the Gibson. Better take Mr. Good to soccer practice, she’d say, or Mr. Good says he wants to order Chinese. If she hadn’t been so good-looking I wouldn’t have put up with her—she’d come home after counseling all day and make astrology charts on her clients and smoke pot. She finally drank enough coffee one morning to think to ask how I got the guitar. I told her the story about my dad.
"That’s cute," she said.
I just stared at her.
"What is it?" she said.
I shook my head.
"No, what is it?" she asked, almost hysterical.
Nothing," I said. "Just looking at your hair."
* * *
Everyday I went to the pawnshop to make sure the guitar was still there. The owner looked like a vaguely degenerate antique dealer in a movie. He wore a vest.
Every morning I got up at five and made the half-hour walk to the temp service, a trailer set up in a gravel lot. The place looked like a used car dealership without any cars and the owner was a big thick guy named Purcell who was quick to let you know he was retired Navy. The whole set up was pretty shady. Pay was always in cash and you had to get there before dawn to get a job. Except for me the crowd was all Mexican, illegals I’m pretty sure. They stayed to themselves, so I’d stand alone while we waited for Purcell to show up and smoke and drink coffee and think about how I was going to smash the guitar over a low brick wall once I got it back. My father gave it to me when I was eighteen. One afternoon, 1979, when my high school let out he was in the parking lot sitting on the hood of an old Lincoln he’d parked sideways across five spaces. You couldn’t miss him any way you looked. He was dressed in the same outfit Hank Williams was buried in. I hadn’t heard from him for seven years.
I told my friends I was supposed to meet with a teacher and went back inside and hid in the bathroom—I figured if I waited long enough he’d leave. The janitor ran me out of there so I wouldn’t interfere with his drinking. I killed some time walking the halls, then fooling at my locker. Finally the assistant principal who was locking up made me leave.
He was still outside. It was deserted now. He smiled and waved.
"Thought that was you I saw," he said. "Figured I’d wait."
I nodded. I didn’t know what to say.
"I hear you’re getting ready to be a high school graduate," he said.
I nodded again.
"That’s real good." He cocked his head, looking at me and smiling. "Your grandma don’t mind your hair being that long?"
"She hasn’t said anything."
"First time I came in with a duck tail she chased me with the scissors." He took a pack of cigarettes from his inside coat pocket and rapped it on his knee and a single cigarette jumped halfway out, and if he hadn’t been my father that would’ve been cool as hell.
He wanted to go get a hamburger. The inside of the Lincoln smelled like a strip club at six AM. The radio was missing. I reminded him how to get to McKenna’s, a place that had curb service. After we got our drinks he poured part of his Coke out the window and filled it back up from a pint of bourbon he pulled from under the seat. He offered me the bottle but I shook my head.
"Don’t drink?" he asked.
I shrugged.
He nodded. "Don’t seem to talk, either."
After seven years that crawled all over me. I turned away and stared out my window.
"Ah son," he said, "I know, I know. I . . . well," and then I heard his cup slosh. I was looking out at a station wagon where a woman was handing around soft serve cones to her kids. A little boy in the backseat was looking back at me.
"Your grandma tells me you’re playing now," he said.
"Yeah." I still didn’t look at him.
"What’re you doing?"
I was in a bad cover band that played sock hops and dances at country clubs. I’d been listening to Earl Klugh and Wes Montgomery, too, trying some of that out.
"Not much," I said.
The boy pulled his nose up with his thumb and grinned. He had braces. His mother had on a green scarf.
"I guess you don’t go in for Bob Wills and such," he said.
"No," I said.
"Not many do anymore," he said. "That’s why this car’s such a piece of shit."
Then neither of us said anything. A long minute passed, then another. The little boy kept making faces between licks of his cone. Then the mother caught him. After a glance at me, she jerked him around by the collar.
I heard him splash bourbon into his cup again.
Then the car hop brought the tray with the food and hung it on his window and I felt like I could finally turn around.
"Anything else?" she asked. She was bleach blond and pudgy—I recognized her from school a couple years back but didn’t know her. She had on white jeans and a pink shirt with the tails tied into a knot below her breasts. When you looked at her all you saw was stomach.
"You all got any ice cream left in there?" he said.
"Sure," she said.
"Then get you one and charge it on my ticket. Girl who looks sweet as cake needs some ice cream to go with her."
She giggled.
"Or maybe you want a drink of this special Co’-Cola instead?" he asked.
She leered, looked left and then right. "Sure," she said. He handed her the cup and she ducked her head and took a drink.
"When they let you off here?" he said.
"Not soon enough," she said. "The horse’s ass that runs the place keeps us here half the night."
"Well, we’re big boys," he said. "We get to stay up late."
I opened my door and got out. He looked around. "Hey, where you going?"
I shut the door. My eyes met the girl’s over the roof of the car, then I ducked my head in the window. "I’ve got to go," I said. "I’ll see you," and I started away from the car.
"Hey!" he yelled.
But I didn’t turn around. He yelled a couple more times but I kept going. When I was far enough away I looked back. The girl was still standing at the Lincoln.
I was hoping he’d be waiting outside the house when I got home. He wasn’t.
A week later a notice came from Martin’s Drugs saying I had a Trailways package. It was a cardboard box wrapped in brown butcher’s paper and tied with string, light to carry but about the size of Shakespeare’s coffin. When I got it home and opened it I found a new calfskin guitar case packed in newspaper and inside that was the Hummingbird. The guitar was in good shape, but the words Mr Good were scratched in tall letters on the back of the body. In the bottom of the case was a note:
Son
I wont you to have this a fine instrumint i bought it new in 1965. Maybe somday we can play together i can teech you some Bob wills. The only thing about it is i got no idee how the writing got on the back i woke up in a motel in oddessa tex 8 yeer ago and it was almost nite and their it was this is stil a good guitar.
Dad
I hadn’t heard from him since. If he was alive he’d be sixty-three, and the older I got the more I wished I could see him. We’d have something to talk about now that I’d made every mistake he had.
Once I was living with a psychologist and she started ribbing me after she saw how I took such good care of the Gibson. Better take Mr. Good to soccer practice, she’d say, or Mr. Good says he wants to order Chinese. If she hadn’t been so good-looking I wouldn’t have put up with her—she’d come home after counseling all day and make astrology charts on her clients and smoke pot. She finally drank enough coffee one morning to think to ask how I got the guitar. I told her the story about my dad.
"That’s cute," she said.
I just stared at her.
"What is it?" she said.
I shook my head.
"No, what is it?" she asked, almost hysterical.
Nothing," I said. "Just looking at your hair."
* * *
Spring Thaw
Every April I am beset by the same concern-that spring might not occur this year. The landscape looks forsaken, with hills,ariblownInflatable Arch sky and forest forming a single graymeld, like the wash an artist paints on a canvas before the masterwork. My spirits ebb, as they did during an April snowfall when I first came to Maine 15 years ago. "Just wait," a neithbor counseled. "You'll wake up one morning and spring will just be here."
Andlo, on May 3 that year I awoke to a green so startling as to be almost electric, as if spring were simply a matter of flipping a switch. Hills, sky and forest revealed their purples, blues and green. Leaves had unfurled, goldfinches had arrived at the feeder and daffodils were fighting their way heavenward.
Then there was the old apple tree. It sits on an undeveloped lot in my neighborhood. It belongs to no one and therefore to everyone. The tree's dark twisted branches sprawl in unpruned abandon. Each spring it blossoms so profusely that the air becomes saturated with the aroma of apple. When I drive by with my windows rolled down, it gives me the feeling of moving in another element, like a kid on a water slide.
Until last year, I thought I was the only one aware of this tree. And then one day, in a fit of spring madness, I set out with pruner and lopper to remove a few errant branches. No sooner had I arrived under its boughs than neighbors opened their windows and stepped onto their porches. These were people I barely knew and seldom spoke to, but it was as if I had come unbidden into their personal gardens.
My mobile-home neighbor was the first to speak."You're not cutting it down, are you?" Another neighbor winced as I lopped off a branch. "Don't kill it, now," he cautioned. Soon half the neighborhood had joined me under the apple arbor. It struck me that I had lived there for five years and only now was learning these people's names, what they did for a living and how they passed the winter. It was as if the old apple tree gathering us under its boughs for the dual purpose of acquaintanceship and shared wonder. I couldn't help recalling Robert Frost's* words:
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods
Andlo, on May 3 that year I awoke to a green so startling as to be almost electric, as if spring were simply a matter of flipping a switch. Hills, sky and forest revealed their purples, blues and green. Leaves had unfurled, goldfinches had arrived at the feeder and daffodils were fighting their way heavenward.
Then there was the old apple tree. It sits on an undeveloped lot in my neighborhood. It belongs to no one and therefore to everyone. The tree's dark twisted branches sprawl in unpruned abandon. Each spring it blossoms so profusely that the air becomes saturated with the aroma of apple. When I drive by with my windows rolled down, it gives me the feeling of moving in another element, like a kid on a water slide.
Until last year, I thought I was the only one aware of this tree. And then one day, in a fit of spring madness, I set out with pruner and lopper to remove a few errant branches. No sooner had I arrived under its boughs than neighbors opened their windows and stepped onto their porches. These were people I barely knew and seldom spoke to, but it was as if I had come unbidden into their personal gardens.
My mobile-home neighbor was the first to speak."You're not cutting it down, are you?" Another neighbor winced as I lopped off a branch. "Don't kill it, now," he cautioned. Soon half the neighborhood had joined me under the apple arbor. It struck me that I had lived there for five years and only now was learning these people's names, what they did for a living and how they passed the winter. It was as if the old apple tree gathering us under its boughs for the dual purpose of acquaintanceship and shared wonder. I couldn't help recalling Robert Frost's* words:
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods
A Letter to Year 2100
Dear you,
Are you wearing pajamas? house Inflatable Toys I do not mean to begin this letter by getting personal.I was just wondering if you people leave the house anymore. Somthing that seems to be increasingly unnecessary these days, A hundard years ago.
Are you six-feet-six? Are you fly-fishing on Mars? Are you talking on the cell phone? We are, usually
As lovers leaving lovers say. By the time you read this,I'll be gone. Or posibbly I won't.Given the way life is being prolonged these days. I, with my pig's liver , titanium hips and knees,artifical heart,thranplanted kidney and reconstracted DNA,could write this letter in my centry and pick it up in yours.
I write you in a dead winter from a summer village by the Atlamtic Ocean. The last of houseflies beats its body against the window,through which I watch the tremors of a berry trees and the shorn stoic trees.
Afternoon lowers on evening,the sky is the color of unpublished silver
We are generally content, generally at peace, generally optimistic, and with good reason.We are generally rich,more people have homes theirs own.We are generally healthy, thanks largely to remarkbale advances in medicine.People who died of certain dieases even 30 years age are rountinely saved today.
In short,we are generally OK in spire of notable low spots and areas of significant concern. Our movies are mostly silly. Our books? Mostly small.The quality of our culture criticism is generally so low that one can not tell how good or bad any others is.But in lierature, at least, it is highly unlikly that any writer toured as a heavyweigh in our era or make it to the ring in yours.Movies that once were judged by normal artistic criteria are now valued by the amount of money they make over a weekend. For your horrified amusement, see if u dig up something called"Scream" or "The Blair With Project".
We enlarge and expand. we have recently found out that the entired universe is expanding more than we had initially believed.We build, invent and discover at a peace that is dizzing for us,perhaps turtle footed for you
I wonder how far you have progressed.I wonder if you figured out how to make the best use of the past. I see you looking back at us.You see us looking out of at you.Because we can imagine one another, we constitute each other's dreams.
Outside,the air is cold and deep. The moom hangs in a fingernail of light. The clouds conspire and retreat to reveal your strats and ours. Come. Walk with me in the chill still of the night.
Yours,
Roger Rosenblatt
Are you wearing pajamas? house Inflatable Toys I do not mean to begin this letter by getting personal.I was just wondering if you people leave the house anymore. Somthing that seems to be increasingly unnecessary these days, A hundard years ago.
Are you six-feet-six? Are you fly-fishing on Mars? Are you talking on the cell phone? We are, usually
As lovers leaving lovers say. By the time you read this,I'll be gone. Or posibbly I won't.Given the way life is being prolonged these days. I, with my pig's liver , titanium hips and knees,artifical heart,thranplanted kidney and reconstracted DNA,could write this letter in my centry and pick it up in yours.
I write you in a dead winter from a summer village by the Atlamtic Ocean. The last of houseflies beats its body against the window,through which I watch the tremors of a berry trees and the shorn stoic trees.
Afternoon lowers on evening,the sky is the color of unpublished silver
We are generally content, generally at peace, generally optimistic, and with good reason.We are generally rich,more people have homes theirs own.We are generally healthy, thanks largely to remarkbale advances in medicine.People who died of certain dieases even 30 years age are rountinely saved today.
In short,we are generally OK in spire of notable low spots and areas of significant concern. Our movies are mostly silly. Our books? Mostly small.The quality of our culture criticism is generally so low that one can not tell how good or bad any others is.But in lierature, at least, it is highly unlikly that any writer toured as a heavyweigh in our era or make it to the ring in yours.Movies that once were judged by normal artistic criteria are now valued by the amount of money they make over a weekend. For your horrified amusement, see if u dig up something called"Scream" or "The Blair With Project".
We enlarge and expand. we have recently found out that the entired universe is expanding more than we had initially believed.We build, invent and discover at a peace that is dizzing for us,perhaps turtle footed for you
I wonder how far you have progressed.I wonder if you figured out how to make the best use of the past. I see you looking back at us.You see us looking out of at you.Because we can imagine one another, we constitute each other's dreams.
Outside,the air is cold and deep. The moom hangs in a fingernail of light. The clouds conspire and retreat to reveal your strats and ours. Come. Walk with me in the chill still of the night.
Yours,
Roger Rosenblatt
2009年11月27日星期五
The Day I Finally Cried
I didn't house Inflatable Jumpers cry when I learned I was the parent of a mentally handicapped child. I just sat still and didn't say anything while my husband and I were informed that two-year-old Kristi was - as we suspected - retarded.
"Go ahead and cry," the doctor advised kindly. "Helps prevent serious emotional difficulties."
Serious difficulties notwithstanding, I couldn't cry then nor during the months that followed.
When Kristi was old enough to attend school, we enrolled her in our neighborhood school's kindergarten at age seven.
It would have been comforting to cry the day I left her in that room full of self-assured, eager, alert five-year-olds.Kristi had spent hour upon hour playing by herself, but this moment, when she was the "different" child among twenty, was probably the loneliest she had ever known.
However, positive things began to happen to Kristi in her school, and to her schoolmates, too. When boasting of their own accomplishments, Kristi's classmates always took pains to praise her as well: "Kristi got all her spelling words right today." No one bothered to add that her spelling list was easier than anyone else's.
During Kristi's second year in school, she faced a very traumatic experience. The big public event of the term was a competition based on a culmination of the year's music and physical education activities. Kristi was way behind in both music and motor coordination. My husband and I dreaded the day as well.
On the day of the program, Kristi pretended to be sick. Desperately I wanted to keep her home. Why let Kristi fail in a gymnasium filled with parents, students and teachers? What a simple solution it would be just to let my child stay home. Surely missing one program couldn't matter. But my conscience wouldn't let me off that easily. So I practically shoved a pale, reluctant Kristi onto the school bus and proceeded to be
sick myself.
Just as I had forced my daughter to go to school, now I forced myself to go to the program. It seemed that it would never be time for Kristi's group to perform. When at last they did, I knew why Kristi had been worried. Her class was divided into relay teams. With her limp and slow, clumsy reactions, she would surely hold up her team.
The performance went surprisingly well, though, until it was time for the gunnysack race. Now each child had to climb into a sack from a standing position, hop to a goal line, return and climb out of the sack.
I watched Kristi standing near the end of her line of players, looking frantic.
But as Kristi's turn to participate neared, a change took place in her team. The tallest boy in the line stepped behind Kristi and placed his hands on her waist. Two other boys stood a little ahead of her. The moment the player in front of Kristi stepped from the sack, those two boys grabbed the sack and held it open while the tall boy lifted Kristi and dropped her neatly into it. A girl in front of Kristi took her hand and supported her briefly until Kristi gained her balance. Then off she hopped, smiling and proud.
Amid the cheers of teachers, schoolmates and parents, I crept off by myself to thank God for the warm, understanding people in life who make it possible for my disabled daughter to be like her fellow human beings.
"Go ahead and cry," the doctor advised kindly. "Helps prevent serious emotional difficulties."
Serious difficulties notwithstanding, I couldn't cry then nor during the months that followed.
When Kristi was old enough to attend school, we enrolled her in our neighborhood school's kindergarten at age seven.
It would have been comforting to cry the day I left her in that room full of self-assured, eager, alert five-year-olds.Kristi had spent hour upon hour playing by herself, but this moment, when she was the "different" child among twenty, was probably the loneliest she had ever known.
However, positive things began to happen to Kristi in her school, and to her schoolmates, too. When boasting of their own accomplishments, Kristi's classmates always took pains to praise her as well: "Kristi got all her spelling words right today." No one bothered to add that her spelling list was easier than anyone else's.
During Kristi's second year in school, she faced a very traumatic experience. The big public event of the term was a competition based on a culmination of the year's music and physical education activities. Kristi was way behind in both music and motor coordination. My husband and I dreaded the day as well.
On the day of the program, Kristi pretended to be sick. Desperately I wanted to keep her home. Why let Kristi fail in a gymnasium filled with parents, students and teachers? What a simple solution it would be just to let my child stay home. Surely missing one program couldn't matter. But my conscience wouldn't let me off that easily. So I practically shoved a pale, reluctant Kristi onto the school bus and proceeded to be
sick myself.
Just as I had forced my daughter to go to school, now I forced myself to go to the program. It seemed that it would never be time for Kristi's group to perform. When at last they did, I knew why Kristi had been worried. Her class was divided into relay teams. With her limp and slow, clumsy reactions, she would surely hold up her team.
The performance went surprisingly well, though, until it was time for the gunnysack race. Now each child had to climb into a sack from a standing position, hop to a goal line, return and climb out of the sack.
I watched Kristi standing near the end of her line of players, looking frantic.
But as Kristi's turn to participate neared, a change took place in her team. The tallest boy in the line stepped behind Kristi and placed his hands on her waist. Two other boys stood a little ahead of her. The moment the player in front of Kristi stepped from the sack, those two boys grabbed the sack and held it open while the tall boy lifted Kristi and dropped her neatly into it. A girl in front of Kristi took her hand and supported her briefly until Kristi gained her balance. Then off she hopped, smiling and proud.
Amid the cheers of teachers, schoolmates and parents, I crept off by myself to thank God for the warm, understanding people in life who make it possible for my disabled daughter to be like her fellow human beings.
An Open Heart
My aunt Edith was a widow of 50,adult Sumo Wrestling Suits working as a secretary, when doctors discovered what was then thought to be a very serious heart ailment.
Aunt Edith doesn’t accept defeat easily. She began studying medical reports in the library and found an article in a magazine about a well-known heart surgeon, Dr. Michael DeBakey, of Houston, Texas. HE had saved the life of someone with the same ailment. The article said Dr. DeBakey’s fees were very high; Aunt Edith couldn’t possibly pay them. But could he tell her of someone whose fee she could pay?
So Aunt Edith wrote to him. She simply listed her reasons for wanting live: her three children, who would be on their own in three or four more years, her little-girl dream of traveling and seeing the world. There wasn’t a word of self-pity---only warmth and humor and the joy of living. She mailed the letter, not really expecting an answer.
A few days later, my doorbell rang. Aunt Edith didn’t wait to come in; she stood in the hall and read aloud: “Your beautiful letter moved me very deeply. If you can come to Houston, there will be no charge for either the hospital or the operation. Signed—Michael DeBakey.”
Aunt Edith doesn’t accept defeat easily. She began studying medical reports in the library and found an article in a magazine about a well-known heart surgeon, Dr. Michael DeBakey, of Houston, Texas. HE had saved the life of someone with the same ailment. The article said Dr. DeBakey’s fees were very high; Aunt Edith couldn’t possibly pay them. But could he tell her of someone whose fee she could pay?
So Aunt Edith wrote to him. She simply listed her reasons for wanting live: her three children, who would be on their own in three or four more years, her little-girl dream of traveling and seeing the world. There wasn’t a word of self-pity---only warmth and humor and the joy of living. She mailed the letter, not really expecting an answer.
A few days later, my doorbell rang. Aunt Edith didn’t wait to come in; she stood in the hall and read aloud: “Your beautiful letter moved me very deeply. If you can come to Houston, there will be no charge for either the hospital or the operation. Signed—Michael DeBakey.”
2009年11月26日星期四
Away in a Manger
One afternoon about a week before Christmas, my family of four piled into our minivan to run an errand, and this question came from a small voice in the back seat: "Dad," began my five-year-old son, Patrick, "how come I"ve never seen you cry?"
Just like that. airblown Kids Bouncers No preamble. No warning. Surprised, I mumbled something about crying when he wasn"t around, but I knew that Patrick had put his young finger on the largest obstacle to my own peace and contentment -- the dragon-filled moat separating me from the fullest human expression of joy, sadness and anger. Simply put, I could not cry.
I am scarcely the only man for whom this is true. We men have been conditioned to believe that stoicism is the embodiment of strength. We have traveled through life with stiff upper lips, secretly dying within.
For most of my adult life I have battled depression. Doctors have said much of my problem is physiological, and they have treated it with medication. But I know that my illness is also attributable to years of swallowing rage, sadness, even joy.
Strange as it seems, in this world where macho is everything, drunkenness and depression are safer ways for men to deal with feelings than tears. I could only hope the same debilitating handicap would not be passed to the next generation.
So the following day when Patrick and I were in the van after playing at a park, I thanked him for his curiosity. Tears are a good thing, I told him, for boys and girls alike. Crying is God"s way of healing people when they"re sad. "I"m glad you can cry whenever you"re sad," I said. "Sometimes daddies have a harder time showing how they feel. Someday I hope to do better."
Patrick nodded. In truth, I held out little hope. But in the days before Christmas I prayed that somehow I could connect with the dusty core of my own emotions.
"I was wondering if Patrick would sing a verse of "Away in a Manger" during the service on Christmas Eve," the church youth director asked in a message left on our answering machine.
My wife, Catherine, and I struggled to contain our excitement. Our son"s first solo.
Catherine delicately broached the possibility, reminding Patrick how beautifully he sang, telling him how much fun it would be. Patrick himself seemed less convinced and frowned. "You know, Mom," he said, "sometimes when I have to do something important, I get kind of scared."
Grownups feel that way too, he was assured, but the decision was left to him. His deliberations took only a few minutes.
"Okay," Patrick said. "I"ll do it."
From the time he was an infant, Patrick has enjoyed an unusual passion for music. By age four he could pound out several bars of Wagner"s Ride of the Valkyries on the piano.
For the next week Patrick practiced his stanza several times with his mother. A rehearsal at the church went well. Still, I could only envision myself at age five, singing into a microphone before hundreds of people. When Christmas Eve arrived, my expectations were limited.
Catherine, our daughter Melanie and I sat with the congregation in darkness as a spotlight found my son, standing alone at the microphone. He was dressed in white, with a pair of angel wings.
Slowly, confidently, Patrick hit every note. As his voice washed over the people, he seemed a true angel, a true bestower of Christmas miracles.
There was eternity in Patrick"s voice that night, a beauty rich enough to penetrate any reserve. At the sound of my son, heavy tears welled at the corners of my eyes.
His song was soon over, and the congregation applauded. Catherine brushed away tears. Melanie sobbed next to me. After the service, I moved to congratulate Patrick, but he had more urgent priorities. "Mom," he said as his costume was stripped away, "I have to go to the bathroom."
As Patrick disappeared, the pastor wished me a Merry Christmas, but emotion choked off my reply. Outside the sanctuary I received congratulations from fellow church members.
I found my son as he emerged from the bathroom. "Patrick, I need to talk to you about something," I said, smiling. I took him by the hand and led him into a room where we could be alone. I knelt to his height and admired his young face, the large blue eyes, the dusting of freckles on his nose and cheeks, the dimple on one side.
He looked at my moist eyes quizzically.
"Patrick, do you remember when you asked me why you had never seen me cry?"
He nodded.
"Well, I"m crying now."
"Why, Dad?"
"Your singing was so wonderful it made me cry."
Patrick smiled proudly and flew into my arms.
"Sometimes," my son said into my shoulder, "life is so beautiful you have to cry."
Our moment together was over too soon. Untold treasures awaited our five-year-old beneath the tree at home, but I wasn"t ready for the traditional plunge into Christmas just yet. I handed Catherine the keys and set off for the mile-long hike home.
The night was cold and crisp. I crossed a park and admired the full moon hanging low over a neighborhood brightly lit in the colors of the season. As I turned toward home, I met a car moving slowly down the street, a family taking in the area"s Christmas lights. Someone rolled down a window.
"Merry Christmas," a child"s voice yelled out to me.
Just like that. airblown Kids Bouncers No preamble. No warning. Surprised, I mumbled something about crying when he wasn"t around, but I knew that Patrick had put his young finger on the largest obstacle to my own peace and contentment -- the dragon-filled moat separating me from the fullest human expression of joy, sadness and anger. Simply put, I could not cry.
I am scarcely the only man for whom this is true. We men have been conditioned to believe that stoicism is the embodiment of strength. We have traveled through life with stiff upper lips, secretly dying within.
For most of my adult life I have battled depression. Doctors have said much of my problem is physiological, and they have treated it with medication. But I know that my illness is also attributable to years of swallowing rage, sadness, even joy.
Strange as it seems, in this world where macho is everything, drunkenness and depression are safer ways for men to deal with feelings than tears. I could only hope the same debilitating handicap would not be passed to the next generation.
So the following day when Patrick and I were in the van after playing at a park, I thanked him for his curiosity. Tears are a good thing, I told him, for boys and girls alike. Crying is God"s way of healing people when they"re sad. "I"m glad you can cry whenever you"re sad," I said. "Sometimes daddies have a harder time showing how they feel. Someday I hope to do better."
Patrick nodded. In truth, I held out little hope. But in the days before Christmas I prayed that somehow I could connect with the dusty core of my own emotions.
"I was wondering if Patrick would sing a verse of "Away in a Manger" during the service on Christmas Eve," the church youth director asked in a message left on our answering machine.
My wife, Catherine, and I struggled to contain our excitement. Our son"s first solo.
Catherine delicately broached the possibility, reminding Patrick how beautifully he sang, telling him how much fun it would be. Patrick himself seemed less convinced and frowned. "You know, Mom," he said, "sometimes when I have to do something important, I get kind of scared."
Grownups feel that way too, he was assured, but the decision was left to him. His deliberations took only a few minutes.
"Okay," Patrick said. "I"ll do it."
From the time he was an infant, Patrick has enjoyed an unusual passion for music. By age four he could pound out several bars of Wagner"s Ride of the Valkyries on the piano.
For the next week Patrick practiced his stanza several times with his mother. A rehearsal at the church went well. Still, I could only envision myself at age five, singing into a microphone before hundreds of people. When Christmas Eve arrived, my expectations were limited.
Catherine, our daughter Melanie and I sat with the congregation in darkness as a spotlight found my son, standing alone at the microphone. He was dressed in white, with a pair of angel wings.
Slowly, confidently, Patrick hit every note. As his voice washed over the people, he seemed a true angel, a true bestower of Christmas miracles.
There was eternity in Patrick"s voice that night, a beauty rich enough to penetrate any reserve. At the sound of my son, heavy tears welled at the corners of my eyes.
His song was soon over, and the congregation applauded. Catherine brushed away tears. Melanie sobbed next to me. After the service, I moved to congratulate Patrick, but he had more urgent priorities. "Mom," he said as his costume was stripped away, "I have to go to the bathroom."
As Patrick disappeared, the pastor wished me a Merry Christmas, but emotion choked off my reply. Outside the sanctuary I received congratulations from fellow church members.
I found my son as he emerged from the bathroom. "Patrick, I need to talk to you about something," I said, smiling. I took him by the hand and led him into a room where we could be alone. I knelt to his height and admired his young face, the large blue eyes, the dusting of freckles on his nose and cheeks, the dimple on one side.
He looked at my moist eyes quizzically.
"Patrick, do you remember when you asked me why you had never seen me cry?"
He nodded.
"Well, I"m crying now."
"Why, Dad?"
"Your singing was so wonderful it made me cry."
Patrick smiled proudly and flew into my arms.
"Sometimes," my son said into my shoulder, "life is so beautiful you have to cry."
Our moment together was over too soon. Untold treasures awaited our five-year-old beneath the tree at home, but I wasn"t ready for the traditional plunge into Christmas just yet. I handed Catherine the keys and set off for the mile-long hike home.
The night was cold and crisp. I crossed a park and admired the full moon hanging low over a neighborhood brightly lit in the colors of the season. As I turned toward home, I met a car moving slowly down the street, a family taking in the area"s Christmas lights. Someone rolled down a window.
"Merry Christmas," a child"s voice yelled out to me.
[short stroy]Butterflies
There was a time in my life when beauty meant something special to me. I guess that would have been when I was about six or seven years old, china Inflatable Tent just several weeks or maybe a month before the orphanage turned me into an old man.
I would get up every morning at the orphanage, make my bed just like the little soldier that I had become and then I would get into one of the two straight lines and march to breakfast with the other twenty or thirty boys who also lived in my dormitory.
After breakfast one Saturday morning I returned to the dormitory and saw the house parent chasing the beautiful monarch butterflies who lived by the hundreds in the azalea bushes strewn around the orphanage.
I carefully watched as he caught these beautiful creatures, one after the other, and then took them from the net and then stuck straight pins through their head and wings, pinning them onto a heavy cardboard sheet.
How cruel it was to kill something of such beauty. I had walked many times out into the bushes, all by myself, just so the butterflies could land on my head, face and hands so I could look at them up close.
When the telephone rang the house parent laid the large cardboard paper down on the back cement step and went inside to answer the phone. I walked up to the cardboard and looked at the one butterfly who he had just pinned to the large paper. It was still moving about so I reached down and touched it on the wing causing one of the pins to fall out. It started flying around and around trying to get away but it was still pinned by the one wing with the other straight pin. Finally it's wing broke off and the butterfly fell to the ground and just quivered.
I picked up the torn wing and the butterfly and I spat on it's wing and tried to get it to stick back on so it could fly away and be free before the house parent came back. But it would not stay on him.
The next thing I knew the house parent came walking back out of the back door by the garbage room and started yelling at me. I told him that I did not do anything but he did not believe me. He picked up the cardboard paper and started hitting me on the top of the head. There were all kinds of butterfly pieces going everywhere. He threw the cardboard down on the ground and told me to pick it up and put it in the garbage can inside the back room of the dormitory and then he left.
( 2 )
I sat there in the dirt, by that big old tree, for the longest time trying to fit all the butterfly pieces back together so I could bury them whole, but it was too hard to do. So I prayed for them and then I put them in an old torn up shoe box and I buried them in the bottom of the fort that I had built in the ground, out by the large bamboos, near the blackberry bushes.
I would get up every morning at the orphanage, make my bed just like the little soldier that I had become and then I would get into one of the two straight lines and march to breakfast with the other twenty or thirty boys who also lived in my dormitory.
After breakfast one Saturday morning I returned to the dormitory and saw the house parent chasing the beautiful monarch butterflies who lived by the hundreds in the azalea bushes strewn around the orphanage.
I carefully watched as he caught these beautiful creatures, one after the other, and then took them from the net and then stuck straight pins through their head and wings, pinning them onto a heavy cardboard sheet.
How cruel it was to kill something of such beauty. I had walked many times out into the bushes, all by myself, just so the butterflies could land on my head, face and hands so I could look at them up close.
When the telephone rang the house parent laid the large cardboard paper down on the back cement step and went inside to answer the phone. I walked up to the cardboard and looked at the one butterfly who he had just pinned to the large paper. It was still moving about so I reached down and touched it on the wing causing one of the pins to fall out. It started flying around and around trying to get away but it was still pinned by the one wing with the other straight pin. Finally it's wing broke off and the butterfly fell to the ground and just quivered.
I picked up the torn wing and the butterfly and I spat on it's wing and tried to get it to stick back on so it could fly away and be free before the house parent came back. But it would not stay on him.
The next thing I knew the house parent came walking back out of the back door by the garbage room and started yelling at me. I told him that I did not do anything but he did not believe me. He picked up the cardboard paper and started hitting me on the top of the head. There were all kinds of butterfly pieces going everywhere. He threw the cardboard down on the ground and told me to pick it up and put it in the garbage can inside the back room of the dormitory and then he left.
( 2 )
I sat there in the dirt, by that big old tree, for the longest time trying to fit all the butterfly pieces back together so I could bury them whole, but it was too hard to do. So I prayed for them and then I put them in an old torn up shoe box and I buried them in the bottom of the fort that I had built in the ground, out by the large bamboos, near the blackberry bushes.
A True Gift of Love
“Can I see my baby?”kid Inflatable Obstacle the happy new mother asked.
When the bundle was nestled in her arms and she moved the fold of cloth to look upon his tiny face, she gasped. The doctor turned quickly and looked out the tall hospital window. The baby had been born without ears.
Time proved that the baby’s hearing was perfect. It was only his appearance that was marred. When he rushed home from school one day and flung himself into his mother’s arms, she sighed, knowing that his life was to be a succession of heartbreaks.
He blurted out the tragedy. “A boy, a big boy...called me a freak.”
He grew up, handsome for his misfortune. A favorite with his fellow students, he might have been class president, but for that. He developed a gift, a talent for literature and music.
“But you might mingle with other young people,” his mother reproved him, but felt a kindness in her heart.
The boy’s father had a session with the family physician... “Could nothing be done?”
“I believe I could graft on a pair of outer ears, if they could be procured,” the doctor decided. Whereupon the search began for a person who would make such a sacrifice for a young man.
Two years went by. One day, his father said to the son, “You’re going to the hospital, son. Mother and I have someone who will donate the ears you need. But it’s a secret.”
The operation was a brilliant success, and a new person emerged. His talents blossomed into genius, and school and college became a series of triumphs.
Later he married and entered the diplomatic service. One day, he asked his father, “Who gave me the ears? Who gave me so much? I could never do enough for him or her.”
“I do not believe you could,” said the father, “but the agreement was that you are not to know...not yet.”
The years kept their profound secret, but the day did come. One of the darkest days that ever pass through a son. He stood with his father over his mother’s casket. Slowly, tenderly, the father stretched forth a hand and raised the thick, reddish brown hair to reveal the mother had no outer ears.
“Mother said she was glad she never let her hair be cut,” his father whispered gently, “and nobody ever thought mother less beautiful, did they?”
REMEMBER...
Real beauty lies not in the physical appearance,
but in the heart.
Real treasure lies not in what can be seen,
but what cannot be seen.
Real love lies not in what is done and known,
When the bundle was nestled in her arms and she moved the fold of cloth to look upon his tiny face, she gasped. The doctor turned quickly and looked out the tall hospital window. The baby had been born without ears.
Time proved that the baby’s hearing was perfect. It was only his appearance that was marred. When he rushed home from school one day and flung himself into his mother’s arms, she sighed, knowing that his life was to be a succession of heartbreaks.
He blurted out the tragedy. “A boy, a big boy...called me a freak.”
He grew up, handsome for his misfortune. A favorite with his fellow students, he might have been class president, but for that. He developed a gift, a talent for literature and music.
“But you might mingle with other young people,” his mother reproved him, but felt a kindness in her heart.
The boy’s father had a session with the family physician... “Could nothing be done?”
“I believe I could graft on a pair of outer ears, if they could be procured,” the doctor decided. Whereupon the search began for a person who would make such a sacrifice for a young man.
Two years went by. One day, his father said to the son, “You’re going to the hospital, son. Mother and I have someone who will donate the ears you need. But it’s a secret.”
The operation was a brilliant success, and a new person emerged. His talents blossomed into genius, and school and college became a series of triumphs.
Later he married and entered the diplomatic service. One day, he asked his father, “Who gave me the ears? Who gave me so much? I could never do enough for him or her.”
“I do not believe you could,” said the father, “but the agreement was that you are not to know...not yet.”
The years kept their profound secret, but the day did come. One of the darkest days that ever pass through a son. He stood with his father over his mother’s casket. Slowly, tenderly, the father stretched forth a hand and raised the thick, reddish brown hair to reveal the mother had no outer ears.
“Mother said she was glad she never let her hair be cut,” his father whispered gently, “and nobody ever thought mother less beautiful, did they?”
REMEMBER...
Real beauty lies not in the physical appearance,
but in the heart.
Real treasure lies not in what can be seen,
but what cannot be seen.
Real love lies not in what is done and known,
2009年11月25日星期三
I Never Write Right
When I was fifteen,Yard Inflatables cheap I announced to my English class that I was going to write and illustrate my own books. Half the students sneered, the rest nearly fell out of their chairs laughing. “Don’t be silly, only geniuses can become writers,” the English teacher said smugly, “And you are getting a D this semester.” I was so humiliated I burst into tears.
That night I wrote a short sad poem about broken dreams and mailed it to the Capri’s Weekly newspaper. To my astonishment, they published it and sent me two dollars. I was a published and paid writer. I showed my teacher and fellow students. They laughed. “Just plain dumb luck,” the teacher said. I tasted success. I’d sold the first thing I’d ever written. That was more than any of them had done and if it was just dumb luck, that was fine with me.
During the next two years I sold dozens of poems, letters, jokes and recipes. By the time I graduated from high school, with a C minus average, I had scrapbooks filled with my published work. I never mentioned my writing to my teachers, friends or my family again. They were dream killers and if people must choose between their friends and their dreams, they must always choose their dreams.
I had four children at the time, and the oldest was only four. While the children napped, I typed on my ancient typewriter. I wrote what I felt. It took nine months, just like a baby. I chose a publisher at random and put the manuscript in an empty Pampers diapers package, the only box I could find. I’d never heard of manuscript boxes. The letter I enclosed read, “I wrote this book myself, I hope you like it. I also do the illustrations. Chapter six and twelve are my favourites. Thank you.” I tied a string around the diaper box and mailed it without a self addressed stamped envelope and without making a copy of the manuscript.
A month later I received a contract, an advance on royalties, and a request to start working on another book. Crying Wind, the title of my book, became a best seller, was translated into fifteen languages and Braille and sold worldwide. I appeared on TV talk shows during the day and changed diapers at night. I traveled from New York to California and Canada on promotional tours. My first book also became required reading in native American schools in Canada.
The worst year I ever had as a writer I earned two dollars. I was fifteen, remember? In my best year I earned 36,000 dollars. Most years I earned between five thousand and ten thousand. No, it isn’t enough to live on, but it’s still more than I’d make working part time and it’s five thousand to ten thousand more than I’d make if I didn’t write at all. People ask what college I attended, what degrees I had and what qualifications I have to be a writer. The answer is: “None.” I just write. I’m not a genius. I’m not gifted and I don’t write right. I’m lazy, undisciplined, and spend more time with my children and friends than I do writing. I didn’t own a thesaurus until four years ago and I use a small Webster’s dictionary that I’d bought at K-Mart for 89 cents. I use an electric typewriter that I paid a hundred and twenty nine dollars for six years ago. I’ve never used a word processor. I do all the cooking, cleaning and laundry for a family of six and fit my writing in a few minutes here and there. I write everything in longhand on yellow tablets while sitting on the sofa with my four kids eating pizza and watching TV. When the book is finished, I type it and mail it to the publisher. I’ve written eight books. Four have been published and three are still out with the publishers. One stinks.
That night I wrote a short sad poem about broken dreams and mailed it to the Capri’s Weekly newspaper. To my astonishment, they published it and sent me two dollars. I was a published and paid writer. I showed my teacher and fellow students. They laughed. “Just plain dumb luck,” the teacher said. I tasted success. I’d sold the first thing I’d ever written. That was more than any of them had done and if it was just dumb luck, that was fine with me.
During the next two years I sold dozens of poems, letters, jokes and recipes. By the time I graduated from high school, with a C minus average, I had scrapbooks filled with my published work. I never mentioned my writing to my teachers, friends or my family again. They were dream killers and if people must choose between their friends and their dreams, they must always choose their dreams.
I had four children at the time, and the oldest was only four. While the children napped, I typed on my ancient typewriter. I wrote what I felt. It took nine months, just like a baby. I chose a publisher at random and put the manuscript in an empty Pampers diapers package, the only box I could find. I’d never heard of manuscript boxes. The letter I enclosed read, “I wrote this book myself, I hope you like it. I also do the illustrations. Chapter six and twelve are my favourites. Thank you.” I tied a string around the diaper box and mailed it without a self addressed stamped envelope and without making a copy of the manuscript.
A month later I received a contract, an advance on royalties, and a request to start working on another book. Crying Wind, the title of my book, became a best seller, was translated into fifteen languages and Braille and sold worldwide. I appeared on TV talk shows during the day and changed diapers at night. I traveled from New York to California and Canada on promotional tours. My first book also became required reading in native American schools in Canada.
The worst year I ever had as a writer I earned two dollars. I was fifteen, remember? In my best year I earned 36,000 dollars. Most years I earned between five thousand and ten thousand. No, it isn’t enough to live on, but it’s still more than I’d make working part time and it’s five thousand to ten thousand more than I’d make if I didn’t write at all. People ask what college I attended, what degrees I had and what qualifications I have to be a writer. The answer is: “None.” I just write. I’m not a genius. I’m not gifted and I don’t write right. I’m lazy, undisciplined, and spend more time with my children and friends than I do writing. I didn’t own a thesaurus until four years ago and I use a small Webster’s dictionary that I’d bought at K-Mart for 89 cents. I use an electric typewriter that I paid a hundred and twenty nine dollars for six years ago. I’ve never used a word processor. I do all the cooking, cleaning and laundry for a family of six and fit my writing in a few minutes here and there. I write everything in longhand on yellow tablets while sitting on the sofa with my four kids eating pizza and watching TV. When the book is finished, I type it and mail it to the publisher. I’ve written eight books. Four have been published and three are still out with the publishers. One stinks.
Relationship that Lasts
If somebody tells you,Spiderman Bouncer wholesale “ I’ll love you for ever,” will you believe it?
I don’t think there’s any reason not to. we are ready to believe such commitment at the moment, whatever change may happen afterwards. as for the belief in an everlasting love, that’s another thing.
Then you may be asked whether there is such a thing as an everlasting love. I’d answer i believe in it. but an everlasting love is not immutable.
You may unswervingly love or be loved by a person. but love will change its composition with the passage of time. it will not remain the same. in the course of your growth and as a result of your increased experience, love will become something different to you.
In the beginning you believed a fervent love for a person could last indefinitely. By and by, however,“ fervent” gave way to “ prosaic” . Precisely because of this change it became possible for love to last. then what was meant by an everlasting love would eventually end up in a sort of interdependence.
We used to insist on the difference between love and liking. the former seemed much more beautiful than the latter. one day, however, it turns out there’s really no need to make such difference. liking is actually a sort of love. by the same token, the everlasting interdependence is actually an everlasting love.
I wish i could believe there was somebody who would love me for ever. That’s, as we all know, too romantic to be true. Instead,
I don’t think there’s any reason not to. we are ready to believe such commitment at the moment, whatever change may happen afterwards. as for the belief in an everlasting love, that’s another thing.
Then you may be asked whether there is such a thing as an everlasting love. I’d answer i believe in it. but an everlasting love is not immutable.
You may unswervingly love or be loved by a person. but love will change its composition with the passage of time. it will not remain the same. in the course of your growth and as a result of your increased experience, love will become something different to you.
In the beginning you believed a fervent love for a person could last indefinitely. By and by, however,“ fervent” gave way to “ prosaic” . Precisely because of this change it became possible for love to last. then what was meant by an everlasting love would eventually end up in a sort of interdependence.
We used to insist on the difference between love and liking. the former seemed much more beautiful than the latter. one day, however, it turns out there’s really no need to make such difference. liking is actually a sort of love. by the same token, the everlasting interdependence is actually an everlasting love.
I wish i could believe there was somebody who would love me for ever. That’s, as we all know, too romantic to be true. Instead,
Staring Me In The Face 2
" Well, I suppose one of us should press the button or we'll be here all day, won't we?"
I'd been so busy wondering what he was going to do and expecting him to do something,Christmas Decorations yard that I'd completely forgotten to do anything myself. I felt like an idiot and this made me smile and I hadn't wanted to. He smiled back, his blue eyes crinkling right up to the grey hair at his ears and making him look ... nice. Then there was a slap. My book hit the floor. I bent down and so did he, and we bashed heads. At that moment, the lift shuddered to a stop and the doors seemed to fling themselves wide open. I was so embarrassed, I marched out of the lift, straight towards the queue at the counter. I ordered without looking at the menu and took my tray to a table where there was only one empty seat. I breathed a sigh of relief and began to eat. But the salad stuck in my throat when I noticed that everyone else at the table had already finished lunch and they were getting up to go. I glanced over at the counter. He was paying and in a second, his eyes would scan the room to find me. I ducked my head. Waited. Any minute now he'd sit down with his tray.
Short Stories from Australasia. My book appeared in front of my eyes. His fingers were the longest I'd seen and his nails were manicured. I hadn't thought he'd bother.
< 3 >
"You left it in the lift," he said. "May I sit down?"
His voice was soft. Cultivated. What could I say? The tables were all pretty full so I nodded. He said bon app閠it and began to eat. I'd always thought he picked at his food. But as I watched, I noticed that he selected small pieces, speared them and moved them carefully to his mouth.
"Have you been there?"
"Been where?" I was totally dazed. From dropping my book and banging my head and everything.
"Australia, New Zealand."
I stared at him and thought again of what Mark had said about me reminding him of someone. An Australian? Maybe an ex-girlfriend or wife?
"Not such a strange question," he said. "You're old enough to have travelled there. And Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame, are most likely in the book."
His smile crinkled up his eyes.
"No, I haven't and yes, they are," I said.
That's how it started. He asked me a question, nodded when I spoke and then asked another. I was off, talking about reading, books and all that stuff I love.
Days later Malcolm passed our table with his tray and spontaneously I said a seat was free. Mark stared at me and I felt a rush of heat to my cheeks.
After that, Malcolm often sat with us and he and I discussed a lot of things. We spoke a little about ourselves too. I told him how Mom had brought me up on her own at the start of the Hippie Era. He said he had married during that time but divorced a few
years later. Mark asked me how come Malcolm and I always had so much to talk about.
"He's easy to talk to. And he reads a lot."
"You two got so much to say, I don't get a chance to open my mouth all lunch-time."
"You do. You shove food in."
One lunchtime Malcom asked me if I'd like to go to a reading with him.
"Um. Don't know."
"Amelia Turner. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year."
I wanted very much to go. But although I no longer thought Malcolm quite so weird, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go out in his company.
"Afterwards, I'll cook us curry. Do you like it? "
< 4 >
"Love it."
"Me too. Settled then?" he asked and smiled his soft smile.
It didn't surprise me that I nodded.
After the reading and the curry dinner, I went into Malcolm's sitting room where there were more books than I'd ever seen on anyone's shelves. I began to read the titles.
"Help yourself," said Malcolm.
"Thanks. But if I read a book, I have add it to my collection."
"Strange, same here." He waved his arms towards the shelves. "But look where it's got me."
"I'd hate to be without books. They're ... friends."
"That sounds like lonely," said Malcolm.
I turned and pulled out a book.
"Are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Lonely?"
I shrugged.
"Not really."
"Not really but what?"
My voice came from a distance as I tried to answer him.
"I'm choosy about my friends. Don't have a great many."
"I'm listening," said Malcolm and sat down, indicating the armchair opposite him.
"My childhood was ... I mean, my mother loved moving around. She had no trouble putting down roots all over the place. I hated it! Books were the constant things, so I buried myself in them."
"Hell, sounds familiar."
I sat down in the armchair.
"I had very academic parents," said Malcolm. "Was an afterthought, perhaps a mistake even. They loved me in their vague intellectual way but left me alone to get on with growing up. Hence the books."
"That's lonely, too," I said.
When I left, I took along a couple of Malcolm's books.
My friendship with Malcolm grew but my curiousity remained. Who did I remind him of? My mother? If so, could he be my father? Although Mom had never bothered with books, our physical similarities, apart from my tallness, were undeniable. She had never told me much about the man who had fathered me. Clever, was all she had usually said. Once though, when I had been ill with chicken pox, and hot and scratchy, she had relented.
"What was he like?"
"Skinniest man you ever saw."
"Where'd you meet him?"
"In a park. I was catching a suntan and these papers started blowin' in my face. I was a bit cheesed off at them blowin' all over me and then this man comes runnin'. He grabbed and grabbed but couldn't catch them all. So he jus' stood still, a helpless look on his face. It was so funny, I started laughin'."
< 5 >
"And then?"
"I helped and we chased all over the place after them papers. When we sat down to get our breath back, he told me he was a student. He was ever so clever. Can't re-member what the devil it was he was studyin'. Somethin' I'd never heard of then or since."
"Why didn't you marry him?"
"Marry him? Good Lord, Leanna, I wasn't ready to marry and he wasn't the type I'd have wanted to marry by a long shot."
"What else did he look like, Mom?"
"Lord, stop the questions, child. Get some sleep."
She saw my disappointment however, and said she would write it all down for me. Put it in an envelope to open when she was dead and gone. I was happy with that. On a wet, slick highway, driving to France for a weekend, she was involved in an accident and died instantly. I was twenty-three then and on my own feet but as I sorted through and packed up the belongings in her flat, I felt like a child again.Kids Bouncers china I looked for the envelope but didn't find one. For a long time after, my mother's death and not knowing who my father was, made me feel as though I was drifting on a sea without horizons.
One lunchtime I just decided to brave it and ask Malcolm who I reminded him of.
"Met her while I was a student," he said.
"Was she studying too?"
"Oh, heavens, no. That was what attracted me to her. She was ... so different."
"What were you like?" I asked.
"Like? Much as I am now. Nose in books, bit of a loner. Not very interesting. Not for a live wire like she was."
"Go on," I said.
"She fell pregnant. I was very happy until she told me she didn't want my help. Thought she'd change her mind, though, as the pregnancy advanced but when I attempted to see her, she told me to leave her be. I was very hurt but accepted her refusal to involve me. A few months later, I took a job I'd been offered in New York. Salary was dreadful but I thought it would be for the best."
"Was it? " I asked.
"No. When I returned, they'd moved. Left no forwarding address."
< 6 >
"So you never knew whether it was a boy or ...? "
"A girl?" asked Malcolm.
I nodded.
"A boy," he said. "Had the approximate date and went to the Registry of Births to look it up."
I sat there, trying to take in what Malcom had said. I felt as though I'd been flattened by a truck.
"Somewhere out there I have a child I know nothing about," Malcom continued. "I was stupid. Rushed off instead of staying to have a share in my son's life."
"I thought perhaps it was a daughter."
"Beg your pardon?"
"A daughter. Me."
"You thought I was ... your father?"
"Books, curry, I'm tall. We ... we like the same things."
"We definitely have things in common but I'm not your father." He looked at me.
"I'm so sorry to disappoint you, Leanna." I tried to smile.
"We're not related but we can be something else."
"What?"
"Can't you think of anything?"
"Uh uh."
"Friends."
"Friends?"
"It's been staring you in the face for weeks." Malcolm's use of that phrase made me burst out laughing.
"Let me in on the joke sometime," he said.
"Okay," I said. "Tell you sometime seeing we're friends."
I'd been so busy wondering what he was going to do and expecting him to do something,Christmas Decorations yard that I'd completely forgotten to do anything myself. I felt like an idiot and this made me smile and I hadn't wanted to. He smiled back, his blue eyes crinkling right up to the grey hair at his ears and making him look ... nice. Then there was a slap. My book hit the floor. I bent down and so did he, and we bashed heads. At that moment, the lift shuddered to a stop and the doors seemed to fling themselves wide open. I was so embarrassed, I marched out of the lift, straight towards the queue at the counter. I ordered without looking at the menu and took my tray to a table where there was only one empty seat. I breathed a sigh of relief and began to eat. But the salad stuck in my throat when I noticed that everyone else at the table had already finished lunch and they were getting up to go. I glanced over at the counter. He was paying and in a second, his eyes would scan the room to find me. I ducked my head. Waited. Any minute now he'd sit down with his tray.
Short Stories from Australasia. My book appeared in front of my eyes. His fingers were the longest I'd seen and his nails were manicured. I hadn't thought he'd bother.
< 3 >
"You left it in the lift," he said. "May I sit down?"
His voice was soft. Cultivated. What could I say? The tables were all pretty full so I nodded. He said bon app閠it and began to eat. I'd always thought he picked at his food. But as I watched, I noticed that he selected small pieces, speared them and moved them carefully to his mouth.
"Have you been there?"
"Been where?" I was totally dazed. From dropping my book and banging my head and everything.
"Australia, New Zealand."
I stared at him and thought again of what Mark had said about me reminding him of someone. An Australian? Maybe an ex-girlfriend or wife?
"Not such a strange question," he said. "You're old enough to have travelled there. And Katherine Mansfield, Janet Frame, are most likely in the book."
His smile crinkled up his eyes.
"No, I haven't and yes, they are," I said.
That's how it started. He asked me a question, nodded when I spoke and then asked another. I was off, talking about reading, books and all that stuff I love.
Days later Malcolm passed our table with his tray and spontaneously I said a seat was free. Mark stared at me and I felt a rush of heat to my cheeks.
After that, Malcolm often sat with us and he and I discussed a lot of things. We spoke a little about ourselves too. I told him how Mom had brought me up on her own at the start of the Hippie Era. He said he had married during that time but divorced a few
years later. Mark asked me how come Malcolm and I always had so much to talk about.
"He's easy to talk to. And he reads a lot."
"You two got so much to say, I don't get a chance to open my mouth all lunch-time."
"You do. You shove food in."
One lunchtime Malcom asked me if I'd like to go to a reading with him.
"Um. Don't know."
"Amelia Turner. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year."
I wanted very much to go. But although I no longer thought Malcolm quite so weird, I wasn't sure if I wanted to go out in his company.
"Afterwards, I'll cook us curry. Do you like it? "
< 4 >
"Love it."
"Me too. Settled then?" he asked and smiled his soft smile.
It didn't surprise me that I nodded.
After the reading and the curry dinner, I went into Malcolm's sitting room where there were more books than I'd ever seen on anyone's shelves. I began to read the titles.
"Help yourself," said Malcolm.
"Thanks. But if I read a book, I have add it to my collection."
"Strange, same here." He waved his arms towards the shelves. "But look where it's got me."
"I'd hate to be without books. They're ... friends."
"That sounds like lonely," said Malcolm.
I turned and pulled out a book.
"Are you?"
"Am I what?"
"Lonely?"
I shrugged.
"Not really."
"Not really but what?"
My voice came from a distance as I tried to answer him.
"I'm choosy about my friends. Don't have a great many."
"I'm listening," said Malcolm and sat down, indicating the armchair opposite him.
"My childhood was ... I mean, my mother loved moving around. She had no trouble putting down roots all over the place. I hated it! Books were the constant things, so I buried myself in them."
"Hell, sounds familiar."
I sat down in the armchair.
"I had very academic parents," said Malcolm. "Was an afterthought, perhaps a mistake even. They loved me in their vague intellectual way but left me alone to get on with growing up. Hence the books."
"That's lonely, too," I said.
When I left, I took along a couple of Malcolm's books.
My friendship with Malcolm grew but my curiousity remained. Who did I remind him of? My mother? If so, could he be my father? Although Mom had never bothered with books, our physical similarities, apart from my tallness, were undeniable. She had never told me much about the man who had fathered me. Clever, was all she had usually said. Once though, when I had been ill with chicken pox, and hot and scratchy, she had relented.
"What was he like?"
"Skinniest man you ever saw."
"Where'd you meet him?"
"In a park. I was catching a suntan and these papers started blowin' in my face. I was a bit cheesed off at them blowin' all over me and then this man comes runnin'. He grabbed and grabbed but couldn't catch them all. So he jus' stood still, a helpless look on his face. It was so funny, I started laughin'."
< 5 >
"And then?"
"I helped and we chased all over the place after them papers. When we sat down to get our breath back, he told me he was a student. He was ever so clever. Can't re-member what the devil it was he was studyin'. Somethin' I'd never heard of then or since."
"Why didn't you marry him?"
"Marry him? Good Lord, Leanna, I wasn't ready to marry and he wasn't the type I'd have wanted to marry by a long shot."
"What else did he look like, Mom?"
"Lord, stop the questions, child. Get some sleep."
She saw my disappointment however, and said she would write it all down for me. Put it in an envelope to open when she was dead and gone. I was happy with that. On a wet, slick highway, driving to France for a weekend, she was involved in an accident and died instantly. I was twenty-three then and on my own feet but as I sorted through and packed up the belongings in her flat, I felt like a child again.Kids Bouncers china I looked for the envelope but didn't find one. For a long time after, my mother's death and not knowing who my father was, made me feel as though I was drifting on a sea without horizons.
One lunchtime I just decided to brave it and ask Malcolm who I reminded him of.
"Met her while I was a student," he said.
"Was she studying too?"
"Oh, heavens, no. That was what attracted me to her. She was ... so different."
"What were you like?" I asked.
"Like? Much as I am now. Nose in books, bit of a loner. Not very interesting. Not for a live wire like she was."
"Go on," I said.
"She fell pregnant. I was very happy until she told me she didn't want my help. Thought she'd change her mind, though, as the pregnancy advanced but when I attempted to see her, she told me to leave her be. I was very hurt but accepted her refusal to involve me. A few months later, I took a job I'd been offered in New York. Salary was dreadful but I thought it would be for the best."
"Was it? " I asked.
"No. When I returned, they'd moved. Left no forwarding address."
< 6 >
"So you never knew whether it was a boy or ...? "
"A girl?" asked Malcolm.
I nodded.
"A boy," he said. "Had the approximate date and went to the Registry of Births to look it up."
I sat there, trying to take in what Malcom had said. I felt as though I'd been flattened by a truck.
"Somewhere out there I have a child I know nothing about," Malcom continued. "I was stupid. Rushed off instead of staying to have a share in my son's life."
"I thought perhaps it was a daughter."
"Beg your pardon?"
"A daughter. Me."
"You thought I was ... your father?"
"Books, curry, I'm tall. We ... we like the same things."
"We definitely have things in common but I'm not your father." He looked at me.
"I'm so sorry to disappoint you, Leanna." I tried to smile.
"We're not related but we can be something else."
"What?"
"Can't you think of anything?"
"Uh uh."
"Friends."
"Friends?"
"It's been staring you in the face for weeks." Malcolm's use of that phrase made me burst out laughing.
"Let me in on the joke sometime," he said.
"Okay," I said. "Tell you sometime seeing we're friends."
Staring Me In The Face 1
The tray didn't just hit the floor. It crashed and smashed his lunch to pieces. Serves you damn well right, I thought. You were staring again.
He stood stock-still and looked down at the food. Suddenly I got up and moved towards him.Holiday Inflatables sale I hadn't intended to, hadn't wanted to help him. I called to the woman behind the counter. She closed her mouth and brought a cloth to clean up the mess. I picked up crockery, put it on the tray. There was a soppy stain on his trousers and through it you could see just how bony his knees were. Like the rest of him. All bones, dangling jacket and hanging trousers. Stooped shoulders and mile-long arms. Then he smiled at me. A wonderful smile that creased up his worn face and totally surprised me.
"Thank you."
I shoved the tray at him and went back to my table.
I worked at a large publishing company and ate lunch in the canteen. I had noticed him because he stared at me. He was weird-looking. His hair was badly cut and his clothes were ancient and dull; too-short corduroys, baggy at the knees and colour-less sweaters, dotted with fluff. Often he sat alone and just picked at his food. Or he read and jotted things down.
A few days after the crash, he stopped at the table I was sharing with Mark from proof reading, and asked if he might sit down. I said the seats were taken and continued eating. He apologised and took his tray off somewhere else.
"What's your problem, Leanna?" asked Mark.
"No problem. It's just that I like to choose who I share my mealtimes with."
"A bit rough on the old chap though."
I shrugged.
It was Mark who told me more about him. He had gone over to scrounge a cigarette. By the time he came back to the table, I had my head stuck into the news-paper.
"Interesting chap. Sub-editor. Been all over the world," said Mark.
I decided to find the newspaper more interesting and finally Mark shut up and finished smoking.
"Asked your name," he said.
"He what?"
"Yeah."
"What'd you say?"
"Leanna, of course."
I folded the newspaper.
"I've loads of work this afternoon."
"Said you look familiar," said Mark. "Like someone he knew."
< 2 >
"Someone he knew?"
"Yeah. Could be strategy. Maybe he fancies you."
"Fancies me? But he's old."
"Only old enough to be your father."
I grabbed my tray and left the table.
I didn't do much work that afternoon. I kept wishing Mark hadn't said what he had said. Old enough to be your father.
The following week I took along a book to read during lunchtime. When I got into the lift on my floor, he was already inside. He greeted me so I had to reply but I didn't smile. We were alone and that worried me. I wondered whether I should get out at the next floor and walk up the stairs to the canteen. Don't panic, I thought. Just because he's stared at you for ages doesn't mean he's going to do anything.
He stood stock-still and looked down at the food. Suddenly I got up and moved towards him.Holiday Inflatables sale I hadn't intended to, hadn't wanted to help him. I called to the woman behind the counter. She closed her mouth and brought a cloth to clean up the mess. I picked up crockery, put it on the tray. There was a soppy stain on his trousers and through it you could see just how bony his knees were. Like the rest of him. All bones, dangling jacket and hanging trousers. Stooped shoulders and mile-long arms. Then he smiled at me. A wonderful smile that creased up his worn face and totally surprised me.
"Thank you."
I shoved the tray at him and went back to my table.
I worked at a large publishing company and ate lunch in the canteen. I had noticed him because he stared at me. He was weird-looking. His hair was badly cut and his clothes were ancient and dull; too-short corduroys, baggy at the knees and colour-less sweaters, dotted with fluff. Often he sat alone and just picked at his food. Or he read and jotted things down.
A few days after the crash, he stopped at the table I was sharing with Mark from proof reading, and asked if he might sit down. I said the seats were taken and continued eating. He apologised and took his tray off somewhere else.
"What's your problem, Leanna?" asked Mark.
"No problem. It's just that I like to choose who I share my mealtimes with."
"A bit rough on the old chap though."
I shrugged.
It was Mark who told me more about him. He had gone over to scrounge a cigarette. By the time he came back to the table, I had my head stuck into the news-paper.
"Interesting chap. Sub-editor. Been all over the world," said Mark.
I decided to find the newspaper more interesting and finally Mark shut up and finished smoking.
"Asked your name," he said.
"He what?"
"Yeah."
"What'd you say?"
"Leanna, of course."
I folded the newspaper.
"I've loads of work this afternoon."
"Said you look familiar," said Mark. "Like someone he knew."
< 2 >
"Someone he knew?"
"Yeah. Could be strategy. Maybe he fancies you."
"Fancies me? But he's old."
"Only old enough to be your father."
I grabbed my tray and left the table.
I didn't do much work that afternoon. I kept wishing Mark hadn't said what he had said. Old enough to be your father.
The following week I took along a book to read during lunchtime. When I got into the lift on my floor, he was already inside. He greeted me so I had to reply but I didn't smile. We were alone and that worried me. I wondered whether I should get out at the next floor and walk up the stairs to the canteen. Don't panic, I thought. Just because he's stared at you for ages doesn't mean he's going to do anything.
Look What You Find along the Way
If you have ever been discouraged because of failure, please read on.
For often,Christmas Inflatables giant achieving what you set out to do is not the important thing. Let me explain.
Two brothers decided to dig a deep hole behind their house. As they were working, a couple of older boys stopped by to watch.
"What are you doing?" asked one of the visitors.
"We plan to dig a hole all the way through the earth!" one of the brothers volunteered excitedly.
The older boys began to laugh, telling the younger ones that digging a hole all the way through the earth was impossible.
After a long silence, one of the diggers picked up a jar full of spiders, worms and a wide assortment of insects. He removed the lid and showed the wonderful contents to the scoffing visitors.
Then he said quietly and confidently, "Even if we don't dig all the way through the earth, look what we found along the way!"
Their goal was far too ambitious, but it did cause them to dig. And that is what a goal is for-to cause us to move in the direction we have chosen; in other words, to set us to digging!
But not every goal will be fully achieved. Not every job will end successfully. Not every relationship will endure. Not every hope will come to pass. Not every love will last. Not every endeavor will be completed. Not every dream will be realized.
But when you fall short of your aim, perhaps you can say, "Yes, but look at what I found along the way! Look at the wonderful things which have come into my life because I tried to do something!"
For often,Christmas Inflatables giant achieving what you set out to do is not the important thing. Let me explain.
Two brothers decided to dig a deep hole behind their house. As they were working, a couple of older boys stopped by to watch.
"What are you doing?" asked one of the visitors.
"We plan to dig a hole all the way through the earth!" one of the brothers volunteered excitedly.
The older boys began to laugh, telling the younger ones that digging a hole all the way through the earth was impossible.
After a long silence, one of the diggers picked up a jar full of spiders, worms and a wide assortment of insects. He removed the lid and showed the wonderful contents to the scoffing visitors.
Then he said quietly and confidently, "Even if we don't dig all the way through the earth, look what we found along the way!"
Their goal was far too ambitious, but it did cause them to dig. And that is what a goal is for-to cause us to move in the direction we have chosen; in other words, to set us to digging!
But not every goal will be fully achieved. Not every job will end successfully. Not every relationship will endure. Not every hope will come to pass. Not every love will last. Not every endeavor will be completed. Not every dream will be realized.
But when you fall short of your aim, perhaps you can say, "Yes, but look at what I found along the way! Look at the wonderful things which have come into my life because I tried to do something!"
2009年11月24日星期二
The Trees Outside my Window
From the window of my room, I could see a tall cotton-rose hibiscus. In spring, when green foliage was half hidden by mist, the tree looked very enchanting dotted with red blossom.Spiderman Bouncer yard
This inspiring neighbor of mine often set my mind working. I gradually regarded it as my best friend.
Nevertheless, when I opened the window one morning, to my amazement, the tree was almost bare beyond recognition as a result of the storm ravages the night before. Struck by the plight, I was seized with a sadness at the thought “all the blossom is doomed to fall”. I could not help sighing with emotion: the course of life never runs smooth, for there are so many ups and downs, twists and turns. The vicissitudes of my life saw my beloved friends parting one after another. Isn’t it similar to the tree shedding its flowers in the wind?
This event faded from my memory as time went by. One day after I came home from the countryside, I found the room stuffy and casually opened the window. Something outside caught my eye and dazzled me. It was a plum tree all scarlet with blossom set off beautifully by the sunset. The surprise discovery overwhelmed me with pleasure. I wondered why I had no idea of some unyielding life sprouting over the fallen petals when I was grieving for the hibiscus.
When the last withered petal dropped, all the joyful admiration for the hibiscus sank into oblivion as if nothing was left, until the landscape was again ablaze with the red plum blossom to remind people of life’s alternation and continuance. Can’t it be said that life is actually a symphony, a harmonious composition of loss and gain.
Standing by the window lost in thought for a long time, I realized that no scenery in the world remains unchanged. As long as you keep your heart basking in the sun, every dawn will present a fine prospect for you to unfold and the world will always be about new hopes.
This inspiring neighbor of mine often set my mind working. I gradually regarded it as my best friend.
Nevertheless, when I opened the window one morning, to my amazement, the tree was almost bare beyond recognition as a result of the storm ravages the night before. Struck by the plight, I was seized with a sadness at the thought “all the blossom is doomed to fall”. I could not help sighing with emotion: the course of life never runs smooth, for there are so many ups and downs, twists and turns. The vicissitudes of my life saw my beloved friends parting one after another. Isn’t it similar to the tree shedding its flowers in the wind?
This event faded from my memory as time went by. One day after I came home from the countryside, I found the room stuffy and casually opened the window. Something outside caught my eye and dazzled me. It was a plum tree all scarlet with blossom set off beautifully by the sunset. The surprise discovery overwhelmed me with pleasure. I wondered why I had no idea of some unyielding life sprouting over the fallen petals when I was grieving for the hibiscus.
When the last withered petal dropped, all the joyful admiration for the hibiscus sank into oblivion as if nothing was left, until the landscape was again ablaze with the red plum blossom to remind people of life’s alternation and continuance. Can’t it be said that life is actually a symphony, a harmonious composition of loss and gain.
Standing by the window lost in thought for a long time, I realized that no scenery in the world remains unchanged. As long as you keep your heart basking in the sun, every dawn will present a fine prospect for you to unfold and the world will always be about new hopes.
Let Me Say “Thank You”
I remember the first time I got on a horse. I was two years old and we were watching a friend of the family ride. My mom agreed to let me take a short ride around the arena with the friend and that was it! I was horse crazy. From then on, I drove my parents insane begging for a horse.Inflatable Santa Claus china
Whenever I saw a horse, I would beg even harder.
When I was four years old, my life as I know it now began. I have Selective Mutism. This is a rare childhood disorder in which children stop speaking in certain social situations, many times at around the age of four. I spoke normally to my parents, my brother and certain other people, but was silent at school and in social situations. I went days, weeks, months without a sound at school. At most, I might quietly whisper to a friend.
Often, children with Selective Mutism will not speak in the presence of others; even to a person they normally talk to. There is a lot of whispering in ears, so that others cannot hear. We have normal or above average IQs and usually no speech pathology. The most important factor in this disorder is, we cannot speak. We do not do this purposely or willfully, it feels impossible to speak. As you can imagine, many children are blamed, punished and traumatized, especially at school. The disorder is believed to be anxiety related and treatment is difficult, but not impossible. We have so much more to learn.
My parents searched for a cure. At that time, we did not even have a name for what I had. I suffered silently through school until I was ten years old when one in a long string of psychologists had an idea. Having discussed his plan with my parents beforehand, one day in my therapy session I was asked by the psychologist what I wanted more than anything in the world. He explained that I was going to be given an opportunity to work for what I wanted. I couldn't believe my good luck, but I could not answer. I just stood there struggling to verbalize what I wanted more than anything else in the world. Finally, I was permitted to whisper the answer in my mother's ear. "A horse," was all I could say.
I was to get a pony, but before we could even start looking, I had to live up to my end of the bargain. I had to try to talk. I had a chart of weekly tasks I had to accomplish. I had to answer the phone five times per week, something I had never done before. I had to make five phone calls to my friends. I had to say one word to my teacher at school and the list went on. For a child with Selective Mutism, saying one word to someone can be like climbing Mount Everest.
I did everything that was asked of me and the day came when my parents found a local riding stable that had the perfect pony. His name was Sequoia, a strong little chestnut with some roaning and a tiny white spot on his rump. He was perfect, of course, and I fell in love immediately. We boarded him at the riding stable and I began taking lessons. I wanted to be the best I could be and I swelled with pride every time I got on Sequoia. It truly was a dream come true. I learned to brush him, saddle him, pick his hooves out. Each week I could not wait for Saturday and my lesson, then my free time with my Sequoia. When I was in Sequoia's presence, I forgot all about my problems and felt strong and secure.
As I see it, horses are silent too, but they are fast, powerful and free at the same time. Horses give me the strength I lack. They give me a reason to push myself, when I can find no other. Horses have been part of my life for well over twenty years now, all the while helping me deal with an isolating, frightening disorder. When things get difficult, as they still sometimes do, I go to my horses. With them, I can be silent, but I can hold my head up and have dignity and freedom. By connecting with them, I have learned to embrace what I was once shunned for and I found my voice.
Whenever I saw a horse, I would beg even harder.
When I was four years old, my life as I know it now began. I have Selective Mutism. This is a rare childhood disorder in which children stop speaking in certain social situations, many times at around the age of four. I spoke normally to my parents, my brother and certain other people, but was silent at school and in social situations. I went days, weeks, months without a sound at school. At most, I might quietly whisper to a friend.
Often, children with Selective Mutism will not speak in the presence of others; even to a person they normally talk to. There is a lot of whispering in ears, so that others cannot hear. We have normal or above average IQs and usually no speech pathology. The most important factor in this disorder is, we cannot speak. We do not do this purposely or willfully, it feels impossible to speak. As you can imagine, many children are blamed, punished and traumatized, especially at school. The disorder is believed to be anxiety related and treatment is difficult, but not impossible. We have so much more to learn.
My parents searched for a cure. At that time, we did not even have a name for what I had. I suffered silently through school until I was ten years old when one in a long string of psychologists had an idea. Having discussed his plan with my parents beforehand, one day in my therapy session I was asked by the psychologist what I wanted more than anything in the world. He explained that I was going to be given an opportunity to work for what I wanted. I couldn't believe my good luck, but I could not answer. I just stood there struggling to verbalize what I wanted more than anything else in the world. Finally, I was permitted to whisper the answer in my mother's ear. "A horse," was all I could say.
I was to get a pony, but before we could even start looking, I had to live up to my end of the bargain. I had to try to talk. I had a chart of weekly tasks I had to accomplish. I had to answer the phone five times per week, something I had never done before. I had to make five phone calls to my friends. I had to say one word to my teacher at school and the list went on. For a child with Selective Mutism, saying one word to someone can be like climbing Mount Everest.
I did everything that was asked of me and the day came when my parents found a local riding stable that had the perfect pony. His name was Sequoia, a strong little chestnut with some roaning and a tiny white spot on his rump. He was perfect, of course, and I fell in love immediately. We boarded him at the riding stable and I began taking lessons. I wanted to be the best I could be and I swelled with pride every time I got on Sequoia. It truly was a dream come true. I learned to brush him, saddle him, pick his hooves out. Each week I could not wait for Saturday and my lesson, then my free time with my Sequoia. When I was in Sequoia's presence, I forgot all about my problems and felt strong and secure.
As I see it, horses are silent too, but they are fast, powerful and free at the same time. Horses give me the strength I lack. They give me a reason to push myself, when I can find no other. Horses have been part of my life for well over twenty years now, all the while helping me deal with an isolating, frightening disorder. When things get difficult, as they still sometimes do, I go to my horses. With them, I can be silent, but I can hold my head up and have dignity and freedom. By connecting with them, I have learned to embrace what I was once shunned for and I found my voice.
2009年11月23日星期一
A Plate of Peas
My grandfather died when I was a small boy, and my grandmother started staying with us for about six months every year. Holiday Inflatables china
She lived in a room that doubled as my father's office, which we referred to as "the back room." She carried with her a powerful aroma. I don‘t know what kind of perfume she used, but it was the double-barreled, ninety-proof, knockdown, render-the-victim-unconscious, moose-killing variety. She kept it in a huge atomizer and applied it frequently and liberally. It was almost impossible to go into her room and remain breathing for any length of time. When she would leave the house to go spend six months with my Aunt Lillian, my mother and sisters would throw open all the windows, strip the bed, and take out the curtains and rugs. Then they would spend several days washing and airing things out, trying frantically to make the pungent odor go away.
This, then, was my grandmother at the time of the infamous pea incident.
It took place at the Biltmore Hotel, which, to my eight-year-old mind, was just about the fancies place to eat in all of Providence. My grandmother, my mother, and I were having lunch after a morning spent shopping. I grandly ordered a salisbury steak, confident in the knowledge that beneath that fancy name was a good old hamburger with gravy. When brought to the table, it was accompanied by a plate of peas. I do not like peas now. I did not like peas then. I have always hated peas. It is a complete mystery to me why anyone would voluntarily eat peas. I did not eat them at home. I did not eat them at restaurants. And I certainly was not about to eat them now. "Eat your peas," my grandmother said.
"Mother," said my mother in her warning voice. "He doesn‘t like peas. Leave him alone."
My grandmother did not reply, but there was a glint in her eye and a grim set to her jaw that signaled she was not going to be thwarted. She leaned in my direction, looked me in the eye, and uttered the fateful words that changed my life: "I'll pay you five dollars if you eat those peas."
I had absolutely no idea of the impending doom. I only knew that five dollars was an enormous, nearly unimaginable amount of money, and as awful as peas were, only one plate of them stood between me and the possession of that five dollars. I began to force the wretched things down my throat.
My mother was livid. My grandmother had that self-satisfied look of someone who has thrown down an unbeatable trump card. "I can do what I want, Ellen, and you can‘t stop me." My mother glared at her mother. She glared at me. No one can glare like my mother. If there were a glaring Olympics, she would undoubtedly win the gold medal.
I, of course, kept shoving peas down my throat. The glares made me nervous, and every single pea made me want to throw up, but the magical image of that five dollars floated before me, and I finally gagged down every last one of them. My grandmother handed me the five dollars with a flourish. My mother continued to glare in silence. And the episode ended. Or so I thought.
My grandmother left for Aunt Lillian's a few weeks later. That night, at dinner, my mother served two of my all-time favorite foods, meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Along with them came a big, steaming bowl of peas. She offered me some peas, and I, in the very last moments of my innocent youth, declined. My mother fixed me with a cold eye as she heaped a huge pile of peas onto my plate. Then came the words that were to haunt me for years.
"You ate them for money," she said. "You can eat them for love."
Oh, despair! Oh, devastation! Now, too late, came the dawning realization that I had unwittingly damned myself to a hell from which there was no escape.
"You ate them for money. You can eat them for love."
She lived in a room that doubled as my father's office, which we referred to as "the back room." She carried with her a powerful aroma. I don‘t know what kind of perfume she used, but it was the double-barreled, ninety-proof, knockdown, render-the-victim-unconscious, moose-killing variety. She kept it in a huge atomizer and applied it frequently and liberally. It was almost impossible to go into her room and remain breathing for any length of time. When she would leave the house to go spend six months with my Aunt Lillian, my mother and sisters would throw open all the windows, strip the bed, and take out the curtains and rugs. Then they would spend several days washing and airing things out, trying frantically to make the pungent odor go away.
This, then, was my grandmother at the time of the infamous pea incident.
It took place at the Biltmore Hotel, which, to my eight-year-old mind, was just about the fancies place to eat in all of Providence. My grandmother, my mother, and I were having lunch after a morning spent shopping. I grandly ordered a salisbury steak, confident in the knowledge that beneath that fancy name was a good old hamburger with gravy. When brought to the table, it was accompanied by a plate of peas. I do not like peas now. I did not like peas then. I have always hated peas. It is a complete mystery to me why anyone would voluntarily eat peas. I did not eat them at home. I did not eat them at restaurants. And I certainly was not about to eat them now. "Eat your peas," my grandmother said.
"Mother," said my mother in her warning voice. "He doesn‘t like peas. Leave him alone."
My grandmother did not reply, but there was a glint in her eye and a grim set to her jaw that signaled she was not going to be thwarted. She leaned in my direction, looked me in the eye, and uttered the fateful words that changed my life: "I'll pay you five dollars if you eat those peas."
I had absolutely no idea of the impending doom. I only knew that five dollars was an enormous, nearly unimaginable amount of money, and as awful as peas were, only one plate of them stood between me and the possession of that five dollars. I began to force the wretched things down my throat.
My mother was livid. My grandmother had that self-satisfied look of someone who has thrown down an unbeatable trump card. "I can do what I want, Ellen, and you can‘t stop me." My mother glared at her mother. She glared at me. No one can glare like my mother. If there were a glaring Olympics, she would undoubtedly win the gold medal.
I, of course, kept shoving peas down my throat. The glares made me nervous, and every single pea made me want to throw up, but the magical image of that five dollars floated before me, and I finally gagged down every last one of them. My grandmother handed me the five dollars with a flourish. My mother continued to glare in silence. And the episode ended. Or so I thought.
My grandmother left for Aunt Lillian's a few weeks later. That night, at dinner, my mother served two of my all-time favorite foods, meatloaf and mashed potatoes. Along with them came a big, steaming bowl of peas. She offered me some peas, and I, in the very last moments of my innocent youth, declined. My mother fixed me with a cold eye as she heaped a huge pile of peas onto my plate. Then came the words that were to haunt me for years.
"You ate them for money," she said. "You can eat them for love."
Oh, despair! Oh, devastation! Now, too late, came the dawning realization that I had unwittingly damned myself to a hell from which there was no escape.
"You ate them for money. You can eat them for love."
The Doll and the White Rose
I hurried into the local department store to grab some last minute Chirsmas gifts.I looked at all the people and grumbled to myself . Kids Bouncers giant
I would be in here forever and I just had so much to do .Chirsmas was beginning to become such a drag.I kinda wished that I could just sleep through Chirsmas.But I hurried the best I could through all the people to the toy department .Once again I kind of mumbled to myself at the prices of all these toys,and wondered if the grandkids would even play whit them.I found myself in the doll aisle.Out of the corner of my eye I saw a little boy about 5 holding a lovely doll.
He kept touching her hair and he held her so gently. I could not seem to help myself . I just kept loking over at the little boy and wondered who the doll was for. I watched him turn to a woman and he called his aunt by name and said,"Are you sure I don't have enough money ?"She replied a bit impatiently, "You know that you don't have enough money for it." The aunt told the little boy not to go anywhere that she had to go and get some other things and would be back in a few minutes . And then she left the aisle .The boy continued to hold the doll.
After a bit I asked the boy who the doll was for , He said,"It is the doll my sister wanted so badly for Chirsmas.She just knew that Santa would bring it."I told him that maybe Santa was going to bring it . He said,"No,Santa can't go where my sister is....I have to give the doll to my Mama to take to her."I asked him where his siter was . He looked at me with the saddest eyes andsaid,"She was gone to be with Jesus.My Daddy says that Mamma is going to have to go be with her."
My heart nearly stopped beating .Then the boy looked at me again and said,"I told my Daddy to tell my Mama not to go yet. I told him to tell her to wait till I got back from the store."Then he asked me if i wanted to see his picture .I told him I'd love to.He pulled out some picture he'd had taken at the front of the store.He said,"I want my Mama to take this with her so the dosen't ever forget me. I love my Mama so very much and I wish she dind not have to leave me.But Daddy says she will need to be with my sister ."
I saw that the little boy had lowered his head and had grown so qiuet. While he was not looking I reached into my purse and pilled out a handful of bills. I asked the little boy ,"Shall we count that miney one more time ?" He grew excited and said ,"Yes,I just know it has to be enough ." So I slipped my money in with his and we began to count it . Of course it was plenty for the doll. He softly said ,"Thank you Jesus for giving me enough money ."Then the boy said ,"I just asked Jesus to give me enough money to buy this doll so Mama can take it with her to give my sister .And he heard my prayer.I wanted to ask him give for enough to buy my Mama a white rose ,but I didn't ask him ,but he gave me enough to buy the doll and a rose for my Mama. She loves white rose so much."In a few minutes the aunt came back and I wheeled my cart away.
I could not keep from thinking about the little boy as I finished my shoppong in a ttally different spirit than when I had started .And I kept remembering a story I had seen in the newspaper several days earlier about a drunk driver hitting a car and killing a little girl and the Mother was in serious condition ,The family was deciding on whether to remove the life support.Now surely this little boy did not belong with that story.
Two days later I read in the paper where the family had disconnected the life support and the young woman had died. I could not forget the little boy and just kept wondering if the two were somehow connected . Later that day ,I could not help myself and I went out and bought aome white roses and took them to the funeral home where the yough woman was .And there she was holding a lovely white rose,the beautiful doll,and the picture of the little boy in the store.I left there in tears ,thier life changed forever .
I would be in here forever and I just had so much to do .Chirsmas was beginning to become such a drag.I kinda wished that I could just sleep through Chirsmas.But I hurried the best I could through all the people to the toy department .Once again I kind of mumbled to myself at the prices of all these toys,and wondered if the grandkids would even play whit them.I found myself in the doll aisle.Out of the corner of my eye I saw a little boy about 5 holding a lovely doll.
He kept touching her hair and he held her so gently. I could not seem to help myself . I just kept loking over at the little boy and wondered who the doll was for. I watched him turn to a woman and he called his aunt by name and said,"Are you sure I don't have enough money ?"She replied a bit impatiently, "You know that you don't have enough money for it." The aunt told the little boy not to go anywhere that she had to go and get some other things and would be back in a few minutes . And then she left the aisle .The boy continued to hold the doll.
After a bit I asked the boy who the doll was for , He said,"It is the doll my sister wanted so badly for Chirsmas.She just knew that Santa would bring it."I told him that maybe Santa was going to bring it . He said,"No,Santa can't go where my sister is....I have to give the doll to my Mama to take to her."I asked him where his siter was . He looked at me with the saddest eyes andsaid,"She was gone to be with Jesus.My Daddy says that Mamma is going to have to go be with her."
My heart nearly stopped beating .Then the boy looked at me again and said,"I told my Daddy to tell my Mama not to go yet. I told him to tell her to wait till I got back from the store."Then he asked me if i wanted to see his picture .I told him I'd love to.He pulled out some picture he'd had taken at the front of the store.He said,"I want my Mama to take this with her so the dosen't ever forget me. I love my Mama so very much and I wish she dind not have to leave me.But Daddy says she will need to be with my sister ."
I saw that the little boy had lowered his head and had grown so qiuet. While he was not looking I reached into my purse and pilled out a handful of bills. I asked the little boy ,"Shall we count that miney one more time ?" He grew excited and said ,"Yes,I just know it has to be enough ." So I slipped my money in with his and we began to count it . Of course it was plenty for the doll. He softly said ,"Thank you Jesus for giving me enough money ."Then the boy said ,"I just asked Jesus to give me enough money to buy this doll so Mama can take it with her to give my sister .And he heard my prayer.I wanted to ask him give for enough to buy my Mama a white rose ,but I didn't ask him ,but he gave me enough to buy the doll and a rose for my Mama. She loves white rose so much."In a few minutes the aunt came back and I wheeled my cart away.
I could not keep from thinking about the little boy as I finished my shoppong in a ttally different spirit than when I had started .And I kept remembering a story I had seen in the newspaper several days earlier about a drunk driver hitting a car and killing a little girl and the Mother was in serious condition ,The family was deciding on whether to remove the life support.Now surely this little boy did not belong with that story.
Two days later I read in the paper where the family had disconnected the life support and the young woman had died. I could not forget the little boy and just kept wondering if the two were somehow connected . Later that day ,I could not help myself and I went out and bought aome white roses and took them to the funeral home where the yough woman was .And there she was holding a lovely white rose,the beautiful doll,and the picture of the little boy in the store.I left there in tears ,thier life changed forever .
For the Love of My Father
Over the years, I never thought of my father as being very emotional, and he never was, at least not in front of me. Even though he was 68 years old and only five-foot-nine, while I was six feet and 260 pounds, he seemed huge to me. I always saw him as being that staunch disciplinarian who rarely cracked a smile.Trackless Trains china
My father never told me he loved me when I was a child, and I never held it against him. I think that all I really wanted was for my dad to be proud of me. In my youth, Mom always showered me with “I love you’s” every day. So I really never thought about not hearing it from my dad. I guess deep down I knew that he loved me, he just never said it. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever told him that I loved him, either. I never really thought about it much until I faced the reality of death.
On November 9th, 1990, I received word that my National Guard unit was being activated for Operation Desert Shield. We would convoy to Fort Ben Harrison, Indiana, and then directly to Saudi Arabia. I had been in the Guard for 10 years and never dreamed that we would be activated for a war, even though I knew it was what we trained for. I went to my father and gave him the news. I could sense he was uneasy about me going. We never discussed it much more, and eight days later I was gone.
I have several close relatives who have been in the military during war time. My father and uncle were in World War II, and two brothers and a sister served in Vietnam. While I was extremely uneasy about leaving my family to serve my country in a war zone, I knew it was what I had to do. I prayed that this would make my father proud of me. My father is very involved in the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization and has always been for a strong military. I was not eligible to join the Veterans of Foreign Wars because I had not been in a war zone—a fact that always made me feel like I didn’t measure up in my father’s eyes. But now here I was, his youngest son, being shipped off to a foreign land 9,000 miles away, to fight a war in a country we had barely heard of before.
On November 17, 1990, our convoy of military vehicles rolled out of rural Greenville, Michigan. The streets were filled with families and well-wishers to see us off. As we approached the edge of town, I looked out the window of my truck and saw my wife, Kim, my children, and Mom and Dad. They were all waving and crying, except for my father. He just stood there, almost like a stone statue. He looked incredibly old at that moment. I don’t know why, he just did.
I was gone for that Thanksgiving and missed our family’s dinner. There was always a crowd, with two of my sisters, their husbands and children, plus my wife and our family. It disturbed me greatly that I couldn’t be there. A few days after Thanksgiving I was able to call my wife, and she told me something that has made me look at my father in a different way ever since.
My wife knew how my father was about his emotions, and I could hear her voice quaver as she spoke to me. She told me that my father recited his usual Thanksgiving prayer. But this time he added one last sentence. As his voice started to crack and a tear ran down his cheek, he said, “Dear Lord, please watch over and guide my son, Rick, with your hand in his time of need as he serves his country, and bring him home to us safely.” At that point he burst into tears. I had never seen my father cry, and when I heard this, I couldn’t help but start to cry myself. My wife asked me what was wrong. After regaining my composure, I said, “I guess my father really does love me.”
Eight months later, when I returned home from the war, I ran over and hugged my wife and children in a flurry of tears. When I came to my father, I embraced him and gave him a huge hug. He whispered in my ear, “I’m very proud of you, Son, and I love you.” I looked that man, my dad, straight in the eyes as I held his head between my hands and I said, “I love you too, Dad,” and we embraced again. And then together, both of us cried
My father never told me he loved me when I was a child, and I never held it against him. I think that all I really wanted was for my dad to be proud of me. In my youth, Mom always showered me with “I love you’s” every day. So I really never thought about not hearing it from my dad. I guess deep down I knew that he loved me, he just never said it. Come to think of it, I don’t think I ever told him that I loved him, either. I never really thought about it much until I faced the reality of death.
On November 9th, 1990, I received word that my National Guard unit was being activated for Operation Desert Shield. We would convoy to Fort Ben Harrison, Indiana, and then directly to Saudi Arabia. I had been in the Guard for 10 years and never dreamed that we would be activated for a war, even though I knew it was what we trained for. I went to my father and gave him the news. I could sense he was uneasy about me going. We never discussed it much more, and eight days later I was gone.
I have several close relatives who have been in the military during war time. My father and uncle were in World War II, and two brothers and a sister served in Vietnam. While I was extremely uneasy about leaving my family to serve my country in a war zone, I knew it was what I had to do. I prayed that this would make my father proud of me. My father is very involved in the Veterans of Foreign Wars organization and has always been for a strong military. I was not eligible to join the Veterans of Foreign Wars because I had not been in a war zone—a fact that always made me feel like I didn’t measure up in my father’s eyes. But now here I was, his youngest son, being shipped off to a foreign land 9,000 miles away, to fight a war in a country we had barely heard of before.
On November 17, 1990, our convoy of military vehicles rolled out of rural Greenville, Michigan. The streets were filled with families and well-wishers to see us off. As we approached the edge of town, I looked out the window of my truck and saw my wife, Kim, my children, and Mom and Dad. They were all waving and crying, except for my father. He just stood there, almost like a stone statue. He looked incredibly old at that moment. I don’t know why, he just did.
I was gone for that Thanksgiving and missed our family’s dinner. There was always a crowd, with two of my sisters, their husbands and children, plus my wife and our family. It disturbed me greatly that I couldn’t be there. A few days after Thanksgiving I was able to call my wife, and she told me something that has made me look at my father in a different way ever since.
My wife knew how my father was about his emotions, and I could hear her voice quaver as she spoke to me. She told me that my father recited his usual Thanksgiving prayer. But this time he added one last sentence. As his voice started to crack and a tear ran down his cheek, he said, “Dear Lord, please watch over and guide my son, Rick, with your hand in his time of need as he serves his country, and bring him home to us safely.” At that point he burst into tears. I had never seen my father cry, and when I heard this, I couldn’t help but start to cry myself. My wife asked me what was wrong. After regaining my composure, I said, “I guess my father really does love me.”
Eight months later, when I returned home from the war, I ran over and hugged my wife and children in a flurry of tears. When I came to my father, I embraced him and gave him a huge hug. He whispered in my ear, “I’m very proud of you, Son, and I love you.” I looked that man, my dad, straight in the eyes as I held his head between my hands and I said, “I love you too, Dad,” and we embraced again. And then together, both of us cried
Friends Forever
“Hey, Jenna, do you think we’ll still be friends when we’re eighty-two?” I stopped bouncing on the trampoline when I saw a puzzled look on my friend’s face. Boy, did her look say it all! It was clear she was wondering where in the world I had come up with such a random question. Being such good friends, it had become easy to read each other’s minds.Yard Inflatables for sale
So, while I waited for Jenna to answer, I started wondering what life would be like without her.
Definitely not the same, that’s for sure! Losing Jenna would be like losing a very close sister. We hang out together as often as we can. We laugh together. We cry together. We give each other advice. We even look a little bit alike. When I spend the night at her house, I feel like part of Jenna’s family. If it weren’t for Jenna, I don’t know where in my life’s journey I would be, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be here.
Suddenly, my thoughts were interrupted. “Of course, we’ll still be friends when we’re eighty-two,” Jenna announced loudly. I gave Jenna a friendly stare, and she returned it. We stared at each other until we were laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face. That moment was one of the most important in our friendship together and, as you might have guessed, eighty-two was our new magic number. But that’s not where the story ends.
The next year, in fourth grade, we met Jamie. Jamie had just moved from California, and since she lived in the same neighborhood as Jenna and me, the three of us soon clicked into a really tight group of friends. We played together almost every day. We shared our biggest secrets and crushes, and even came up with crazy ideas to make a little extra cash for the summer. I was happy to have reached out to Jamie as well as getting even closer to my other good friends. Things couldn’t have been better, and I thought even time couldn’t pull us apart, but that is where I was sadly mistaken.
The three of us started fighting a lot—and not just small fights where your friend won’t return a CD you let her borrow. No, these fights involved hurt feelings, crying, taking sides, nasty e-mails, and mean glares. Before Christmas, we had a really big fight, and it was just my luck that Jamie and Jenna were ganging up on me, both saying I was bossy and couldn’t keep my mouth closed. I felt helpless and alone. They wouldn’t even talk to me at school unless they had some mean insult for me. I had very little hope for the future, and I was almost positive that Christmas, my birthday, and New Year’s Day would be horrible! Why is this happening to me? I thought. How can I not even know what I did and have things end up this bad?
That’s why I was surprised when Jenna came to my house and gave me an awesome Christmas card she had made for me. I was so sure that she was still disappointed with me, and now I was getting a really nice card that she even made herself. Is time going to prove me wrong once again?
“Wow,” I said, breaking the silence as we stood on either side of my front door. “Thanks.”
“Okay . . . well . . . I have to go,” she said softly.
“Okay. See you later then. . . .” and I closed the door and headed back to my mom’s bedroom to finish watching a movie.
“Who was that at the door?” my mom asked.
“It was Jenna,” I explained, showing her the card. I pressed play on the VCR, but I wasn’t watching the TV screen. Instead, I was admiring the front of the card, which was decorated with snowmen, snowflakes, and a perfect image of Santa Claus. After a few minutes of admiring the front, I decided to peek inside.
The card started off with “Merry Christmas” (what else would you put in a Christmas card?), but then, farther down the page, it said, “I am so glad we’re friends. I am sorry about what I said when we were fighting. A fight won’t stop us from being friends. Besides, we said we were going to be friends even when we’re eighty-two.”
I stopped reading and started laughing. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten what she said that day in her back yard. I couldn’t believe I had been so selfish in trying to get even and making my friends feel sorry for me that I had forgotten about real friendship.
So, while I waited for Jenna to answer, I started wondering what life would be like without her.
Definitely not the same, that’s for sure! Losing Jenna would be like losing a very close sister. We hang out together as often as we can. We laugh together. We cry together. We give each other advice. We even look a little bit alike. When I spend the night at her house, I feel like part of Jenna’s family. If it weren’t for Jenna, I don’t know where in my life’s journey I would be, but I’m sure it wouldn’t be here.
Suddenly, my thoughts were interrupted. “Of course, we’ll still be friends when we’re eighty-two,” Jenna announced loudly. I gave Jenna a friendly stare, and she returned it. We stared at each other until we were laughing so hard that tears were streaming down my face. That moment was one of the most important in our friendship together and, as you might have guessed, eighty-two was our new magic number. But that’s not where the story ends.
The next year, in fourth grade, we met Jamie. Jamie had just moved from California, and since she lived in the same neighborhood as Jenna and me, the three of us soon clicked into a really tight group of friends. We played together almost every day. We shared our biggest secrets and crushes, and even came up with crazy ideas to make a little extra cash for the summer. I was happy to have reached out to Jamie as well as getting even closer to my other good friends. Things couldn’t have been better, and I thought even time couldn’t pull us apart, but that is where I was sadly mistaken.
The three of us started fighting a lot—and not just small fights where your friend won’t return a CD you let her borrow. No, these fights involved hurt feelings, crying, taking sides, nasty e-mails, and mean glares. Before Christmas, we had a really big fight, and it was just my luck that Jamie and Jenna were ganging up on me, both saying I was bossy and couldn’t keep my mouth closed. I felt helpless and alone. They wouldn’t even talk to me at school unless they had some mean insult for me. I had very little hope for the future, and I was almost positive that Christmas, my birthday, and New Year’s Day would be horrible! Why is this happening to me? I thought. How can I not even know what I did and have things end up this bad?
That’s why I was surprised when Jenna came to my house and gave me an awesome Christmas card she had made for me. I was so sure that she was still disappointed with me, and now I was getting a really nice card that she even made herself. Is time going to prove me wrong once again?
“Wow,” I said, breaking the silence as we stood on either side of my front door. “Thanks.”
“Okay . . . well . . . I have to go,” she said softly.
“Okay. See you later then. . . .” and I closed the door and headed back to my mom’s bedroom to finish watching a movie.
“Who was that at the door?” my mom asked.
“It was Jenna,” I explained, showing her the card. I pressed play on the VCR, but I wasn’t watching the TV screen. Instead, I was admiring the front of the card, which was decorated with snowmen, snowflakes, and a perfect image of Santa Claus. After a few minutes of admiring the front, I decided to peek inside.
The card started off with “Merry Christmas” (what else would you put in a Christmas card?), but then, farther down the page, it said, “I am so glad we’re friends. I am sorry about what I said when we were fighting. A fight won’t stop us from being friends. Besides, we said we were going to be friends even when we’re eighty-two.”
I stopped reading and started laughing. I couldn’t believe I had forgotten what she said that day in her back yard. I couldn’t believe I had been so selfish in trying to get even and making my friends feel sorry for me that I had forgotten about real friendship.
A Mother First
My mother did not work outside the home until later in life. And then she worked part-time in a bakery, waiting on people. She had me play where she could see me from the window, and often I would run inside to get a treat. At the time, she believed only her eyes were good enough to ensure my safety. She was always a mother first.
It was apparent to me, even at a young age, that wearing the title “mom” was my mother’s most important identity. I felt it in the way she looked at me,Inflatable Santa Claus kid
in her voice, and in her touch. From the beginning, almost to a fault, my mother offered me the most important part of her besides her love—her attention. In spite of the problems tossed her way, the distractions, her own yearnings for more in her marriage and in her life, she at least had attained one goal—to be a mother first.
Sometimes she would go overboard with her enthusiasm. If it was cold, I had on too many sweaters and never could be without my earmuffs. If it was hot, and our apartment was always hot, she would flee to the beaches and hurry me into the ocean. She was a worrying mother, and when a famous family lost their child in a kidnapping, my mother put bottles of coins on the window ledge so that, if they fell, she would be warned there was an intruder in the house. And if anyone threatened me at school with a schoolyard confrontation, my mother would square off with them if she found out. She was my protector, supporter, and the first person who ever made me feel as if I were special, as nowhere else in life.
I can still hear her voice encouraging me on my first date. “Go,” she ordered. “Have fun,” she smiled. “And don’t let him touch you,” she warned. And when I was older, and a date had left me waiting while he went out on the boardwalk with someone else, my mother found him and later told me, “I gave him a piece of my mind.” Though mortified at the time by her behavior, it is a memory I cherish.
Later in life, I wondered how she could know so much about me that I did not know about myself. She knew even though my marks were average in school, that I was just bored but smart enough. She believed in me even when I made mistakes that caused others to shudder. She wanted me to be more than she had been, when I thought she was everything I wanted to be.
Recently my children—a son and daughter—came to visit. In their forties now, they are married and with children of their own. Both were tired and soon fell asleep, one on the couch, the other on the bed. Carefully, while they slept, I took some blankets and tucked them in, as I had done so many times when they were young.
It was apparent to me, even at a young age, that wearing the title “mom” was my mother’s most important identity. I felt it in the way she looked at me,Inflatable Santa Claus kid
in her voice, and in her touch. From the beginning, almost to a fault, my mother offered me the most important part of her besides her love—her attention. In spite of the problems tossed her way, the distractions, her own yearnings for more in her marriage and in her life, she at least had attained one goal—to be a mother first.
Sometimes she would go overboard with her enthusiasm. If it was cold, I had on too many sweaters and never could be without my earmuffs. If it was hot, and our apartment was always hot, she would flee to the beaches and hurry me into the ocean. She was a worrying mother, and when a famous family lost their child in a kidnapping, my mother put bottles of coins on the window ledge so that, if they fell, she would be warned there was an intruder in the house. And if anyone threatened me at school with a schoolyard confrontation, my mother would square off with them if she found out. She was my protector, supporter, and the first person who ever made me feel as if I were special, as nowhere else in life.
I can still hear her voice encouraging me on my first date. “Go,” she ordered. “Have fun,” she smiled. “And don’t let him touch you,” she warned. And when I was older, and a date had left me waiting while he went out on the boardwalk with someone else, my mother found him and later told me, “I gave him a piece of my mind.” Though mortified at the time by her behavior, it is a memory I cherish.
Later in life, I wondered how she could know so much about me that I did not know about myself. She knew even though my marks were average in school, that I was just bored but smart enough. She believed in me even when I made mistakes that caused others to shudder. She wanted me to be more than she had been, when I thought she was everything I wanted to be.
Recently my children—a son and daughter—came to visit. In their forties now, they are married and with children of their own. Both were tired and soon fell asleep, one on the couch, the other on the bed. Carefully, while they slept, I took some blankets and tucked them in, as I had done so many times when they were young.
2009年11月22日星期日
Love in a Box
When I was a little girl, I found love in a box all because of a class assignment. On a Friday night I made an announcement at the dinner table. The words bubbled out in a torrent of excitement I could no longer contain. Inflatable Arch sale“My teacher said we have to bring a box for our valentines on Monday. But it has to be a special box, all decorated.”
Mother said, “We’ll see,” and she continued eating.
I wilted faster than a flower with no water. What did “We’ll see” mean? I had to have that box or there would be no valentines for me. My second grade Valentine’s Day would be a disaster. Maybe they didn’t love me enough to help me with my project.
All day Saturday I waited, and I worried, but there was no mention of a valentine box. Sunday arrived, and my concern increased, but I knew an inquiry about the box might trigger anger and loud voices. I kept an anxious eye on both my parents all day. In 1947, in my house, children only asked once. More than that invited punitive measures.
Late Sunday afternoon, my father called me into our apartment’s tiny kitchen. The table was covered with an assortment of white crepe paper, red construction paper, and bits and pieces of lace and ribbon from my mother’s sewing basket. An empty shoebox rested on top of the paper. Relief flooded through me when Daddy said, “Let’s get started on your project.”
In the next hour my father transformed the empty shoebox into a valentine box I would never forget. Crepe paper covered the ugly cardboard. My father fashioned a wrinkled piece of the pliable paper and glued it around the middle. He cut a slot in the lid and covered it with more of the white paper. Next came red hearts attached in what I considered all the right places. He hummed a tune while he worked, and I kneeled on my chair witnessing the magical conversion of the shoebox and handing him the glue when he needed it. When he finished, my father’s eyes sparkled, and a smile stretched across his thin face. “What do you think of that?”
My answer was a hug and a “Thank you, Daddy.”
But inside, joy danced all the way to my heart. It was the first time that my father devoted so much time to me. His world consisted of working hard to support his family, adoring my mother, disciplining my brother and me, and listening to every sports event broadcast on the radio. Suddenly, a new door opened in my life. My father loved me.
Monday morning, my mother found a brown grocery sack to protect the beautiful box while I carried it to school. I barely felt the bitter cold of the February day as I held the precious treasure close to me. I would let no harm come to my beautiful valentine box.
My teacher cleared a space on a long, wide windowsill where the decorated boxes would stay until Valentine’s Day. I studied each one as it was placed on the sill, and none compared with mine. Every time I peeked at my valentine box, I felt my father’s love. My pride knew no bounds. There were moments when the box actually glowed in a spotlight all its own. No doubt I was the only one who witnessed that glow.
Every day some of my classmates brought valentine cards to school and slipped them into the slots of the special boxes. The holiday party arrived, and we brought our boxes to our desks to open the valentines. Frosted heart cookies, red punch, valentines and giggles filled our classroom. Chaos reigned until dismissal time arrived.
I carried my valentine box home proudly. It wasn’t hidden in a grocery sack but held out for the world to admire. I showed it to the policeman who guided us across a busy city street. He patted me on the head and exclaimed about it. I made sure everyone along the way took note of my valentine box. My father had made it for me, and the love that filled it meant more to me than all the valentines nestled inside.
Mother said, “We’ll see,” and she continued eating.
I wilted faster than a flower with no water. What did “We’ll see” mean? I had to have that box or there would be no valentines for me. My second grade Valentine’s Day would be a disaster. Maybe they didn’t love me enough to help me with my project.
All day Saturday I waited, and I worried, but there was no mention of a valentine box. Sunday arrived, and my concern increased, but I knew an inquiry about the box might trigger anger and loud voices. I kept an anxious eye on both my parents all day. In 1947, in my house, children only asked once. More than that invited punitive measures.
Late Sunday afternoon, my father called me into our apartment’s tiny kitchen. The table was covered with an assortment of white crepe paper, red construction paper, and bits and pieces of lace and ribbon from my mother’s sewing basket. An empty shoebox rested on top of the paper. Relief flooded through me when Daddy said, “Let’s get started on your project.”
In the next hour my father transformed the empty shoebox into a valentine box I would never forget. Crepe paper covered the ugly cardboard. My father fashioned a wrinkled piece of the pliable paper and glued it around the middle. He cut a slot in the lid and covered it with more of the white paper. Next came red hearts attached in what I considered all the right places. He hummed a tune while he worked, and I kneeled on my chair witnessing the magical conversion of the shoebox and handing him the glue when he needed it. When he finished, my father’s eyes sparkled, and a smile stretched across his thin face. “What do you think of that?”
My answer was a hug and a “Thank you, Daddy.”
But inside, joy danced all the way to my heart. It was the first time that my father devoted so much time to me. His world consisted of working hard to support his family, adoring my mother, disciplining my brother and me, and listening to every sports event broadcast on the radio. Suddenly, a new door opened in my life. My father loved me.
Monday morning, my mother found a brown grocery sack to protect the beautiful box while I carried it to school. I barely felt the bitter cold of the February day as I held the precious treasure close to me. I would let no harm come to my beautiful valentine box.
My teacher cleared a space on a long, wide windowsill where the decorated boxes would stay until Valentine’s Day. I studied each one as it was placed on the sill, and none compared with mine. Every time I peeked at my valentine box, I felt my father’s love. My pride knew no bounds. There were moments when the box actually glowed in a spotlight all its own. No doubt I was the only one who witnessed that glow.
Every day some of my classmates brought valentine cards to school and slipped them into the slots of the special boxes. The holiday party arrived, and we brought our boxes to our desks to open the valentines. Frosted heart cookies, red punch, valentines and giggles filled our classroom. Chaos reigned until dismissal time arrived.
I carried my valentine box home proudly. It wasn’t hidden in a grocery sack but held out for the world to admire. I showed it to the policeman who guided us across a busy city street. He patted me on the head and exclaimed about it. I made sure everyone along the way took note of my valentine box. My father had made it for me, and the love that filled it meant more to me than all the valentines nestled inside.
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